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