Towards Urban Climate Resilience in Indonesian Metropolitan Areas: Local Strategies and Governance Challenges in Bandung City

Cities in Southeast Asia are facing a range of climate challenges related to the water sector, such as flooding due to increased extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and difficulties accessing water during prolonged dry seasons. Urban water systems must continuously adapt and transition between these extremes. Whereas traditional approaches have prioritised engineering measures, addressing climate change requires diverse strategies, including governance arrangements and inducing behavioural change. Drawing on urban climate resilience literature, this chapter uses three dimensions of resilient cities – robustness, adaptability, and transformability – to analyse Indonesia's climate strategies. Indonesia's ambition is climate-resilient development within the sustainable development framework. This study explores how Indonesian cities contribute to Indonesia's national strategies for climate resilience in the water sector. Bandung, Indonesia's fourth-largest city, is used as a case study because it faces the effects of climate change in addition to existing issues of urbanisation, water supply, and flooding. The study finds that Indonesia's national policy specifically aims to strengthen the three resilience dimensions. Local strategies in Bandung City do not seem to be based on a local-level action plan dedicated to developing urban climate adaptation. Yet, the city increases its urban climate resilience by applying a green-grey approach following a paradigm shift toward green infrastructure and local water storage inspired by the sponge city concept.
Keywords: Climate resilient city; Climate adaptation; Global South; Multi-level governance; Urban water resources