The Dieng ‘hazardscape’: a political ecology of vulnerability to natural hazards in Java’s highlands

ABSTRACT

This research article describes the construction of vulnerability to natural hazards in the Dieng Plateau of Central Java, Indonesia. The Dieng Plateau is a volcanically hazardous landscape, featuring a series of craters with a history of recurrent phreatic eruptions and emission of poisonous gases. Drawing on four months of in-depth fieldwork, this article applies the ‘hazardscape’ as a conceptual lens to describe how economic necessity and political processes frame volcanic risk, and how this influences vulnerability. Vulnerability in Dieng is linked to its history of upland settlement, the unequal spatial distribution of land prices, and the impact of internal state-led territorialisation strategies. Territorialisation strategies are characterised by the spatial designation of certain areas as ‘hazardous’, a process that historically led to the relocation of upland Javanese farmers to the outer islands as part of the politically significant transmigration programme. However, these territorial zones were locally contested, leading to the reoccupation of hazardous land with mixed outcomes for conditions of vulnerability. By unpacking the political construction of risk, through the concepts of territoriality and the hazardscape, this article demonstrates how the utilisation of hazardous land can bring economic opportunity alongside disadvantage in Java’s volcanic landscapes.

KEYWORDS:

• Vulnerability
• hazardscape
• territorialisation
• Java’s volcanoes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Keith Barney for his valued comments on this manuscript. This research was made possible with permission from Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia and Ristek. A special thank you to Dr Herry Yogaswara for his support of this project and to the local and state informants who generously provided their knowledge.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Christina Griffin http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4209-6226