Indonesia: Raising Awareness about Inclusive Early Warning in Papua

Based on the World Risk Index 2021, Indonesia is categorized as a country with a high level of disasters due to the high level of its exposure and vulnerability such as varying rainfall, rising sea levels, and rising temperature that can lead to tidal waves, floods, landslides, forest fires, and droughts.

In 2021, there were 5,402 disasters that happened in Indonesia and 98% of them were related to the hydrometeorological hazard. More than 7 million people were impacted, 150,000 people lost their homes and 728 souls died. For the last decade, The National Agency for Disaster Countermeasure of Indonesia (BNPB) recorded that the natural hazards in Indonesia have increased more than five times. Consequently, 10,653 people died and more than 40 million lost their homes. That is why living in “harmony” with disaster is a must. Society needs to understand the importance of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) planning in order to move from a risky population to a resilient community. 

Reducing the impact of disasters can be done by increasing community capacity, reducing exposure, and increasing resilience through mitigation, preparedness, emergency response, recovery, and real action on climate change adaptation afterward. This action must be genuinely inclusive, requires a strong and specific context, and be included in regional planning. Moreover, the high level of ignorance on hydrometeorological disasters in Indonesia proves that education and awareness about disaster preparedness are still lacking.

It is true that training and mitigation education are held frequently, yet these current mechanisms do not include children and people with disabilities, who are often put among the vulnerable groups. 

As meteorologists, we are very aware of the importance of providing an inclusive movement in disaster mitigation and education. This inclusive movement could be started by conducting training on evacuation routes for persons with disabilities, raising awareness on how to react appropriately to early warnings for children, and educating the society at the local level about local wisdom in order to act for the climate change adaptation.

All of these movements have been started with the AWAKE Project: “Awareness and Knowledge about Early Warning” in Papua, Indonesia since May 2022.

In implementing the Pentahelix Collaboration, AWAKE works along with 24 agencies and NGOs that consist of (1) three academic sectors, (2) three government sectors, (3) two private sectors, (4) six NGOs, and two groups of community support services for people with disabilities, and (5) seven media platforms both printed and electronic. Hereinafter, AWAKE will hold training seminars at 25 regular schools, three schools for children with special needs, and two housings for the blind. Three thousand children and fifty people with disabilities are expected to be reached out by AWAKE, and the general public will be educated through webinars. 

The expected output of this project is:

1. Incorporating all the four learning styles: visual, auditory, reading and writing, and kinesthetic, would be effective in engaging the students to learn. This would help them to be aware of the potential disasters around them. Furthermore, this group of little souls would bring meaningful impacts to the community and act as stakeholders in disaster preparedness for the family.

2. Messages can only be understood effectively if they are delivered using the proper languages. Equipping people with disabilities with basic knowledge of preparedness can be done by making a handbook in Braille and informative videos using sign language. Moreover, inviting this community support service for people with disabilities to be trained while providing insightful feedback along the way to help equip them with basic knowledge on preparedness. This helps them to be well-prepared and more confident when disasters happen. 

Implementation:

In the first month of implementation, AWAKE Project started by expanding the network involving 20 meteorologists from all over Papua and working virtually. All of the members are divided into 3 groups, such as; 

1. Editorial team: Responsible to compile the learning material and analyzing data
2. Creative team: Responsible for the output of the project such as producing video animations, songs, board games, and digital comics.
3. Equipment team: Responsible for the documentation and report summary in every meeting and handling the correspondence & administration.

On June 7th 2022 AWAKE Team had the first visit to Junior High School 1 Wamena and reached 40 students. Wamena is one of the disaster prone-areas in Papua for floods, landslides, and drought. This first visitation was fully supported by the teachers, school staff, and Head of the Center for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Papua.

In the third week of June, AWAKE is planning to hold a roundtable webinar with stakeholders from Academia, Government, Private Sector, Community, and Mass Media. It is an organized discussion with one moderator, several chosen speakers that bring a variety of perspectives to a subject, and an audience who may simply observe or participate by asking questions. Roundtable discussions are also great for having conversations from other viewpoints on the same topic. Participants and speakers alike take away new perspectives and information from every discussion. 

This roundtable meeting will promote the “Early Warning, Early Action” goal for society, raising awareness of the potential disasters in Papua, as well as educating stakeholders and communities on disaster preparedness, introducing disaster preparedness and mitigation concepts from the policymaker's perspective to reach ideal dissemination for all and introducing the importance of an inclusive preparedness and mitigation education through AWAKE Project.