Working Groups in six of the ten CRIC pilot cities held Working Group meetings in each city, which took place November – December 2020 to discuss 2021 work plans and priorities. These meetings were also a follow-up to the issuance of the Mayor’s Commitment Letter and Working Group Establishment Decree.
The Banjarmasin, Samarinda, Gorontalo, Ternate and Pangkalpinang Working Group meetings took place via the Zoom application, while the Cirebon City Working Group meeting took place at the Cirebon City BP4D Office and was also attended by CRIC Project Coordinator Putra Dwitama and CRIC program staff Anwar Hadipriyanto. Through this meeting, CRIC reaffirmed the support that will be provided to the city government until 2024. This opportunity was also used to discuss the direction and priorities of the Pokja work, strategic sectors to be intervened and the Pokja funding mechanism.
The 2021 Pokja work plan needs to be agreed upon by the Pokja and CRIC and serve as a reference for organizing activities at the city level. One of the main activities in the city is training on the preparation of Climate Action Plans through 12 training themes. Training topics include general concepts of climate change at the global, regional and local levels; climate science, predictions and projections; as well as climate hazards, risk and vulnerability assessments and identification of climate change adaptation actions. From the discussion, the Working Group accepted the work plan but needed additional time to agree on it.
The Pokja meeting also discussed the funding mechanism for Pokja activities. The Pokja in Banjarmasin and Samarinda committed to allocating matching funds to cover city-level meetings and secretarial costs for 2021, but did not specify the amount of the allocated budget. The commitment to prepare matching funds from the APBD was also conveyed by Bappeda Gorontalo during the meeting.
During the meeting, strategic sectors and tools to be adopted were discussed. In Cirebon, the Pokja realized the importance of addressing urban waste issues and agreed to adopt waste management tools. While in Ternate, several strategic issues were raised. Yakub Abas from Bapelitbangda said that Ternate needs to improve its early warning system to deal with climate change-induced sea level rise. However, the Working Group needs to refine the aspects of the early warning system that it wants to target for intervention.
From these meetings, it can be concluded that the city government is serious about addressing the impacts of climate change. Commitment to allocate counterpart funds and openness to receive CRIC support in integrating climate change issues into KLHS-RPJMD was also shown by many Pokja. This marks a good start of a partnership that will last for the next four years.