Identification of Best Practices for Climate Planning Using Comparative Case Study at Pilot Cities in Indonesia

The pilot cities are defined as the municipalities in Indonesia which have been developing adaptation and mitigation action plans since the early initiatives in 2009 until today (2016). The approaches of the arrangement of the adaptation and mitigation actions of the cities may vary from being either a stand-alone or a combination of both actions of approach. This study focuses on cities with the combination of adaptation and mitigation approach and observes the level of integration of adaptation and mitigation objectives in the cities‘ climate action plan. In this study, the integrated action plan is defined as the policy and program to implement the combination of adaptation and mitigation action plans.This study also explores the various driving forces which have brought the cities to arrange such plan. There are four selected pilot cities with each having its own urban area characteristics, based on the variation of locations, expert bodies involved behind the process of arrangement, and the time of release for the first action plan documents. Those cities are Bandung City, Malang City, Palembang City and Semarang City. This study finds that, the driving forces of the majority of the selected pilot cities to arrange integrated plan are similar with the driving forces of city to arrange a climate action plan in general. Those driving forces are also a combination of some variables and context specific. They range from the awareness of climate change impact, the awareness of co-benefit to climate change issue, public demand, environmental factor, political leadership, awareness of adaptation-mitigation relationship until marketability orientation. To some extent, they are influenced by the level of knowledge and experiences owned by local governments with the integrated action plan concept. In the climate actions they have, it is identified that all cities have synergy and co-benefit interrelationship other than actions with single adaptation or mitigation objective. Although having an integrated plan, most of cities unable to avoid trade-off interrelationship in their actions due to insufficient information about the interrelationship. However, the four cities have built the enabling condition as an initial part for integration of adaptation and mitigation objectives in their governance system. It can be seen from the readiness of the institutional arrangement to execute and coordinate both actions, the linkage program between climate planning with spatial and city development planning, the sustainable resource funding for both adaptation and mitigation actions, and the equal opportunity for the execution of adaptation and mitigation programs. Yet, the pilot cities need to emphasize more on the capacity building for their working group members, keep maintaining the function of climate working group to reach its optimum level, and also define clearly the special unit to conduct evaluation and monitoring to the implementation of climate action plans.