Review article: Mapping the adaptation solution space – lessons from Jakarta

Abstract

Coastal cities are under rising pressure to adapt to climate change. They suffer from the severe effects of increased frequencies and intensities of coastal hazards, particularly flooding, while oftentimes continuing to sprawl into hazard-exposed areas and grow beyond the pace of sufficient infrastructure development. Even though these problems have been quite well understood for a while, there is still comparatively little knowledge and scientific assessment of the solution space, i.e., on the options available for adaptation and the ways in which they are being perceived, framed and evaluated in the scientific literature. Focusing on Jakarta, this study presents findings from a systematic assessment of peer-reviewed scientific literature on the adaptation solution space with regard to current and future flooding. Jakarta is chosen as a case study since it is among the cities with the highest flood risk and adaptation pressure globally while also being one of the most heavily researched coastal cities in this regard, certainly in the Global South. Based on a structured keyword search, we assess 339 articles. Results indicate that the perceived solution space is skewed towards hard protection against flooding, while measures to accommodate flooding or retreat from exposed areas are less widely considered in the scientific debate. Soft adaptation measures for the reduction of social vulnerability receive less attention in the literature than those measures targeting the taming of flood hazards, often through engineering solutions. Likewise, hybrid adaptation approaches, which combine soft and hard measures in a complementary way, are only rarely considered. Looking into the future, the findings suggest that despite the importance of hard flood protection as a main adaptation solution in Jakarta, other fields of the solution space deserve increased scientific attention. This relates in particular to urgently needed feasibility and effectiveness assessments of ecosystems-based solutions for flood mitigation and adaptation options targeting social vulnerability. While the empirical results are specific to Jakarta, heuristic observations from research on other coastal cities suggest that similar scoping exercises of the predominantly perceived solution space might be of relevance in many cities beyond Jakarta.