Since early 2000s, the Petanglong area (Pekalongan City, Pekalongan Regency and Batang Regency) in Central Java Province, Indonesia, is repeatedly hit by extreme flash and coastal floods that could even reach a daily occurence. Loss of asset and productive land, damages to infrastructure, disruption of livelihood are among impacts faced by the community. Without strategic actions with visionary view, the severity of these impacts could increase due to climatic and non-climatic factors. The current strategies to address this flood risk are focusing on flood-defense structure. While this approach is somewhat justified considering the rapid response that must be given, but it often overlook the role of human and ecosystem in shaping the risks, which for long-term sustainability is critical. Human and ecosystem play a dual role in flood risk context; they are directly hit by the impacts, while also contributing in shaping the level of risks.

The BRAVE project thus intends to build community’s resilience to climate change under flood resilience building framework, by balancing livelihood improvement and ecosystem preservation across Kupang and Sengkarang watersheds in Petanglong area. Transboundary watershed perspective is used to ensure chain socio-economic- environment impact between watershed segment that located across three administrative areas of Petanglong can be mitigated.