Amid the hectic national political-economic stage, Indonesia’s territory continues to decrease. In silence, several areas lost an increasingly significant land area, not invasion but abrasion. As the largest archipelagic country in the world with 17,504 islands and a coastline of up to 108 thousand Km, the water area reaches 6.4 million Km2; Indonesia is vulnerable to the threat of global warming and rising sea levels.
By 2020, of the approximately 84,000 village-level administrative areas, more than 15 percent are geographically located on the seafront. Thus, rising sea levels directly threaten the lives of 12,879 seaside villages across the country. Almost all coastal towns, more than 95 percent, use the sea for fishing activities. However, between 2003-2019, the number of fishermen in the sea decreased to 1.5 million. The sea and the coast are increasingly unable to become a source of livelihood.
The livelihoods of the rural population depend a lot on nature. Nature is often the foundation of subsistence activities and an adequate safety net in times of crisis. For many rural poor, natural resources are a crucial source of livelihood, ranging from food and building materials to medicine. The poorer the household, the more dependent they are on nature. For the rural poor, nature is the most important asset. Thus, the maintenance of natural resources in a sustainable manner has an essential contribution to poverty reduction and income distribution in rural areas.
The agricultural sector is the primary source of income for most seaside villagers. Nearly 90 percent of coastal villages in Indonesia rely on the food crop sector (rice), plantations, capture fisheries, aquaculture, animal husbandry, and forestry as the population’s primary income source. Thus, sea level rise will directly threaten the primary source of income for seaside villages and create socio-economic vulnerability for its inhabitants.
