Risk Returns

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culture, threat of climate change and practicality of efforts in the

advent of complex humanitarian situations.

Cultural belief: Mount Merapi eruptions, Central Java

Despite their destructive prowess, Indonesia’s volcanoes have played

an important role in feeding the soil – and have deep cultural influ-

ence. Agricultural productivity is a direct result of volcanoes like

Merapi. The short-term destruction of eruptions like the one now

occurring is more than outweighed by the long-term benefits of the

nutrients that ash falls bring to soils.

Due to their attachment to mythical beliefs, villagers living on the

slopes of Mount Merapi continued to trust the power of their cultural

leader, Mbah Marijan, the Gatekeeper of Merapi, who believes that

it is his duty to stay even when an eruption is imminent. Despite

the Government’s order for a full-scale evacuation, villagers will not

move until the Gatekeeper does. The fate of 500,000 residents of

Yogyakarta, a city 20 miles (32km) to the south, rests on Marijan’s

thin shoulders. It is his responsibility to perform the rituals designed

to appease an ogre believed to inhabit Merapi’s summit.

Marijan’s behaviour might seem suicidal anywhere else, but not in

Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,500 islands that straddles the western

reaches of the hyperactive Ring of Fire. It is a zone of geophysical

violence, a juncture of colliding tectonic plates that loops more than

25,000 miles (40,200km) around the Pacific. Geography has dealt

Indonesia a wild card: nowhere else do so many live so close to so

many (129 by one count) active volcanoes. On Java alone, 120 million

people live in the shadow of more than 30 volcanoes, a proximity that

has proved fatal to more than 140,000 in the past 500 years.

Given Mount Merapi’s characteristics, spewing or erupting once

every four or five years, local authorities have been trying to relocate

those communities between three and ten kilometres from the volcanic

mountain. Based on Mercy Relief’s experience with the communities

from its post-2010 eruptions relief and recovery efforts in Central Java,

while Merapi may have ceased erupting, the impact on the communi-

ties residing on its slopes remains, and the people remain

vulnerable to the onset of disaster. As well as reconstruc-

tion efforts to provide new communal water distribution

systems (which were damaged during the eruptions), a

comprehensive disaster riskmitigation (DRM) programme

has been implemented for the communities. The DRM

programme includes the provision of respiratory care

equipment for three health clinics where medical person-

nel will be trained in first response and respiratory care

management. Twomulti-purpose halls and improved sani-

tation facilities at two schools in the Dukun and Muntilan

sub-districts were also constructed, for conversion into

relief evacuation centres in the event of an emergency.

Along with the establishment of an early warning system,

educational workshops were held to prepare communities

for future eruptions. In this instance, it is hoped that if

communities go against the government’s disaster mitiga-

tion strategies and evacuation efforts by strictly sticking

to their traditional cultural beliefs, loss of lives could be

avoided as communities themselves are equipped with

disaster response facilities and knowledge on prepared-

ness. In short, CBDRR initiatives were embraced by the

people as they could still maintain, to some extent, their

cultural beliefs.

Ancestral knowledge: earthquake and tsunami, Simeulue Island

The tsunamis on 26 December 2004 and 28 March 2005

killed only seven people on Simeulue Island in Indonesia’s

Aceh province. Simeulue was close to the epicentre of the

2004 earthquake, but loss of life was surprisingly low,

mostly due to the impact of the earthquake rather than

the tsunami, because the people are familiar with the twin

disasters in the seismically active region. At Langi, on

the north end of Simeulue, which is 40km south of the

Provision of necessary medical equipment and supplies at the village clinic used by

evacuees during an eruption times Mt Merapi

As part of the DRR training programme in the Philippines, participants

were guided to prepare presentation materials to highlight disaster

risk factors present in their community and ways to counter them

Image: Mercy Relief