Six villages in Malang Regency, East Java, namely Gajah Rejo Village, Sumber Agung, Ngabab, Ngroto, Karang Sari and Wonokerto Village are committed to preserving the environment, especially in Malang Regency during the Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction Jamboree (API PRB) on Saturday , February 18 2017.
PATTIRO Program Manager, Agus Salim said, the results of the declaration would be submitted to the Regency Government to help residents face the threat of climate change which they feel is detrimental to them.
“The Village Government hopes that the Regional Government will help by giving the Village Government freedom in managing its environment,” said Agus.
The aim of the meeting was also so that residents could learn from each other in dealing with climate change. The event, which was initiated by the Regional Research and Information Center (PATTIRO), is a series of API PRB programs that have been running for eight months.
“In facing the threat of climate change, society must build resilience together by strengthening each other, not just individually,” he said.
Furthermore, regarding increasing his own capacity, Agus explained, for eight months residents had been given knowledge and their capacity had been increased to face the threat of change.
Agus gave an example, such as in the villages of Ngabab and Ngroto which have household waste problems. Now, they are able to process waste by turning it into fertilizer or selling plastic waste to processing factories.
“We hope that residents can independently face disasters due to climate change, even though they live in vulnerable areas,” concluded Agus.
For your information, Malang Regency was chosen to carry out the API PRB program because Malang has quite high vulnerability to disasters, especially those caused by climate change. This was also proven by the results of a study by the Ministry of Environment in 2012 which showed that the earth’s surface temperature in Malang increased by 0.690 C and, extreme rainfall continued to increase.
Second, no other party, including the Malang Regency government, has carried out a similar program in these six villages. Finally, these six villages are used to being used as intervention locations for various programs, as a result, both the government and its residents have a fairly good level of acceptance. (AR)
