Reoccuring floods are part of wicked problems in Indonesia. Even when flood mitigation floods are available, current data shows that flooding in Indonesia is on an upward trend, costing losses of around 4.63 trillion Rupiah each year.  

This raises the question of how to formulate an effective and efficient policy on flood mitigation History shows that current infrastructure solutions have not been able to provide the desired protection. In contrast, the infrastructure approach has environmental impacts and increases the risk of flooding elsewhere.  We must abandon our tunnel vision to look at multiple other approaches.

The Learning Begins: Curiosity and Openness to Listen
 

Previously, we looked at the importance of communities’ ecological relationship to water, social cohesion, and human security to understand the whole system better. Policymakers need to reduce disparities with affected communities to understand the complexities and remove key barriers to mitigating water-related disaster.

In a collaboration with the Directorate for Water and Irrigation Development at National Development Planning Agency (DIPI Bappenas), Accelerator Lab Indonesia explored the relevance of their built infrastructure intervention. While national-level plans have already incorporated statistics of flood survivors, DIPI Bappenas strived to listen to  aspirations of affected communities.

Together with the Rujak Center for Urban Studies  and seven community-based organizations we dove deep and immersed among flood-impacted communities in seven cities across Indonesia to understand the context of the issue. We were supported by participatory tools, survey, and solutions mapping method with its canvas that we co-designed with Design Ethnography Lab- Bandung Institute of Technology.

Immersion: Learn to Unlearn
 

We dove  into the affected communities to understand their perceptions, needs and grassroot solutions regarding flooding and infrastructure. Immersion led by community representatives was carried out collectively and iteratively through sense making.

Immersion is a participatory method used by policy makers and development workers which considers cultural values ​​and the plurality of knowledge systems in society.  This method allows exploration into emic or insiders’ perspectives to understand the context of the communities in which they work. Some scientists categorize immersion as ground-truthing, namely efforts made to relate to social realities in the field.

Immersion means deep mental involvement and is done by opening oneself to understand and feel the in-depth context by applying experiential learning and informal conversations. Empathy, openness, humility, reflexivity, active listening, awareness of one’s biases and assumptions form the basis for understanding context from another’s perspectives.

The key to uncover unexpected discoveries during immersion lies in the ability to maintain an interpersonal stance that is other-oriented in relation to aspects of cultural identity (cultural humility),  and the recognition that knowledge of the world is always interpreted, structured, and filtered by the observer (epistemic humility).

Context Discovery: Complexity of Community-Based Resilience

Through immersion, we learned that communities have different strategies to face floods, determined by the geographical context of their settlements which cannot be separated from their social and economic status, ecological relationships, belief systems, and cultural and religious practices. Communities that view floods as a blessing have the adaptive capacity to overcome it, while those who see flooding as a threat scramble for short-term mitigation strategies.

The social cultural construction on water governance, for example customary views on waterways,  are yet to be recognized as part of social infrastructure. Besides weather changes, people are also concerned about economic pressures and globalization that erode cultural practices and local assets in dealing with floods.

People shared with us about the interrelationships between floods, flood infrastructure and other elements of social and ecological systems – like history of the area and  landscape change. People explained that physical infrastructure alone cannot control the changes of the water landscape, because there are various bottlenecks covering human behavior and policies, such as  waste and disposal problems to name a few, that affect the entire ecosystems.

The people we spoke to said that their involvement in the construction of flood infrastructure such as canals and river management, has proven to be effective in flood prevention. While they are also aware that the lack of participation in the urban system renders less effective flood infrastructure.

Some communities devised local solutions to mitigate flooding, like growing plants along the riverbank or trees around their settlements as a “water diversion” method. Communities utilize social capital in their disaster response and are not limited to biophysical infrastructure.

To be Continued: Reflective Learning
 

The learning path toward immersion begins with cognitive flexibility showing agile and divergent thinking, interest in developing new approaches, ability to see and make use of new connections, willingness to learn from experience and recognize outdated approaches. Intellectual humility and courage to take risks are important to challenge established long-term paradigm.

Immersion allows us to sense and feel the context deeply such described in this quote, "When a flower doesn't bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower (Den Heijer)."  Instead of focusing on single reality and approach, immersion takes us to multiple realities and ecosystem approach. Unlearning makes  room for the context to reveal itself, which will shape our understanding of the relevance of an intervention, thinking, strategy, policy and so on. 

As a method, immersion carried out by the community of seven cities resulted in a policy brief as the basis for evidence-based policy. However, the value attribute attached to immersion should be owned by any reflective learner.

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Sincere thanks to Rujak CUS, Kaki kota, Arkom Jatim, Studio 301, Arkom Makassar, MDS, IRGSC, Sinau Kota for meaningful engagement in the immersive research. And huge appreciation for all community members in 7 cities for welcoming and sharing their valuable insights with us.