Sea-level rise in Indonesia: On adaptation priorities in the agricultural sector

Abstract

Adaptation to climate-change impacts requires understanding of where impacts are to be expected and what their magnitude may be. Adaptation funds are only a limited resource for helping affected parties in coping with climate-change impacts. The application of suitable methods helps to determine the recipients of adaptation aid. A quantification of impacts based on different impact analyses can aid in taking on various perspectives on the same problem in order to identify the appropriate perspective for the given decision-making context or for identifying impact patterns. Once executed, this prioritizes adaptation needs and finding a suitable allocation rule, given the policy makers perception of the decision-making context. The study introduces a set of methods of spatially explicit, sub-national (province level), and country-wide impact analyses regarding inundation impacts on agricultural areas for four important food crops in Indonesia. These methods are applied to a 1 and 2 m sea-level rise scenario and include a novel approach for impact analyses, data envelopment analysis, which is not widely used in environmental studies as of yet. Based on the given case study, the paper demonstrates the applicability of these methods and identifies impact patterns. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.