The Climate Resilient and Inclusive Cities (CRIC) project team met with Bappenas, Indonesia’s Ministry of National Development Agency on two occasions in 4th September 2023, to discuss climate actions and the project’s progress.
In the first meeting, Deputy of Maritime Affairs and National Resources of Bappenas, Dr. Vivi Yulaswati highlighted the agency’s focus on climate adaptation actions. She shared that Bappenas has published studies and reports on how to promote climate resilience developments, identify priority locations and actions. Such a report can be found here.
Dr. Yulaswati also emphasised the importance of high-level investments in marine, coastal, water, agriculture and health sectors to build climate resiliency. She also shared Bappenas’ priority interventions, such as investing in vessels, dams, early warning systems, and integrated residential areas.
The CRIC project team considers Dr. Yulaswati feedback and insights as valuable information for the project and its partners to identify relevant priority for climate actions and concrete ways moving forward. For example, this will help the project avoid reinventing the wheel and build on Bappenas’ existing work.
In the second meeting, CRIC was officially invited by Director for Multilateral Funding of Bappenas, Dr. Rd Siliwanti to present its developments and work plans for this year and next. The meeting was also attended by Counsellor Head of Cooperation of the European Union Delegation to Indonesia, Mr. Thibaut Portevin.
Dr. Siliwanti positively responded and commended CRIC’s progress and provided feedback on the project’s work plans. She also inquired about how CRIC would mitigate impact of the upcoming election year in Indonesia on its planned events.
In the meeting, CRIC also shared with Dr. Siliwanti some challenges encountered by the project, highlighting the limited time it has to deliver all its interventions and achieve its impacts. This is due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted some of the project’s activities, such as panel of experts, trainings, and visits to pilot cities.
Mr. Portevin echoed Dr. Siliwanti’s support for CRIC and emphasised the importance of ensuring that the project has enough time and resources to succeed. He also suggested that CRIC collaborate with other EU colleagues to deliver its activities. Meanwhile, on the topic of sustainable funding, Mr. Portevin mentioned the ARISE+ project as an investment tool that CRIC could learn from.
Upon this, CRIC confirmed that it would work and learn from other EU projects, tools, and interventions, such as ARISE+, an EU-funded project that aims to support ASEAN in deepening regional integration and achieving sustainable development.
Overall, the CRIC project team is grateful for the opportunity to meet with Bappenas and the EU Delegation to Indonesia to discuss its work and receive valuable feedback. The team is committed to working with its partners to support Indonesia’s climate adaptation efforts and build resilient and inclusive cities.
–##–