Assessing community resilience to natural disaster and climate change in Maitara Island, North Maluku-Indonesia

Abstract

Small Islands face some of the main problems of any coastal area due to climate change and natural disasters. This study aims to analyze the resilience of coastal communities on a small island in terms of disasters and climate change, and to identify the strategies and adaptations that communities have undertaken as anticipatory for disaster and climate change in the future. Qualitative analysis combined with quantitative methods is used in this research to provide a clear estimate of the categories of resilience in each village. The primary data was collected by using interviews and focus discussion group and secondary data acquired through the documentation on related stakeholders. The resilience index provided by the Ministry of Maritime and Fisheries Affairs is used to categorize the resilience scales of villages. The results of this study show that the human aspects and natural resources aspects have high scores in resilience, but disaster and climate change aspects; environmental/infrastructures aspects; and economic aspects should be improved. Furthermore, the community had been taking participation in disaster mitigation.