Fidelis E. Satriastanti – Lack of government support has forced Indonesian farming and fishing communities to come up with their own means of addressing their vulnerability to the impacts of climate change, activists said on Thursday.

Said Abdullah, from the People's Coalition for Food Sovereignty, said farmers and fishermen stood to suffer on the social, economic and cultural fronts as a result of erratic weather patterns, droughts and warming seas.

"Climate change affects both groups... but no one has really touched on adaptation efforts for them," he said. "There has never been any serious policy for climate change adaptation. Instead, the government keeps issuing policies that will only worsen the climate condition and these people's survival.

"For instance, to deal with decreasing harvests, the government always imports food. It's good to ensure sufficient stocks, but they also need to think long term and start to embrace these farmers and fishermen in finding a way out of the problem."

He added that while the economic impact to the farmers and fishermen had been addressed to an extent, the "social and cultural issues are mostly neglected."

"For instance, nowadays because of a shift in culture where farmers who used to focus on planting now focus on harvesting, they're just waiting for money instead of being creative in their planting methods."

"Nor is it uncommon for them to go abroad as migrant workers because that's the only logical alternative [to having to wait for the harvest] in places like Brebes [in Central Java] and Indramayu [in West Java]."

However, farming and fishing communities there have come up with their own ways to adapt to climate change effects.

"In Indramayu, farmers call this movement 'farmer's autonomy' because they've gotten so frustrated with measures by the authorities that haven't been implemented properly," Abdullah said.

"They've built up their own organization to put themselves on the same footing as government agencies. They're also experimenting with horticulture in planting their crops so that if there's a crop failure, they still have enough food to subsist on."

Giorgio Budi Indarto, the forest and climate program director at the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law, agreed the government had not been supportive of the groups and had failed to issue strong policies on dealing with climate change effects.

Giorgio added the government's policies on adaptation so far extended only to evaluating the vulnerability of each region to global warming, with no concrete actions proposed.

"In the National Communication [government report on climate change vulnerability], it states simply that Sumatra is vulnerable, Java is vulnerable and so on, but there are no significant actions," he said. "So given that they're vulnerable, what are you going to do about it?"