In several coastal communities in Indonesia, a woman’s day starts at two in the morning: walking to a water pump before sunrise so her family has something to drink, cook, and wash with before the heat sets in. By the time she goes to bed, she may have worked nearly 20 hours of invisible labor that keeps her family, and her community, afloat.
Women’s caretaking burdens are made worse by the impacts that climate change is having on Indonesia’s waterways that are a vital lifeline for coastal communities.
A decade ago, fishers could read wind patterns and know when it was safe to go to sea. Today, disrupted weather makes that knowledge unreliable, forcing many to stay ashore for far longer than before, according to Ibu Jihan, a leader of the Coastal Women’s Union, KPPI (Kesatuan Perempuan Pesisir Indonesia or KPPI), in Surabaya. Tidal flooding, once rare, now strikes many coastal areas more than once a year, damaging homes, bringing contaminated water, and rising costs along with it.
When the Water Turns Against You
In Medan, saltwater seeping into borewells during tidal floods contaminates drinking water and raises the risk of skin disease, forcing families to buy water instead. In Demak Regency, residents raise their floors with brick and cement to keep floodwater out, but the fix narrows the gap to the ceiling and traps heat inside the home. In Surabaya, coastal erosion is swallowing the shoreline: houses once 100 meters from the sea are now collapsing into it. And in Batu Bara Regency, floodwater can sit for up to seven days, degrading water quality and damaging septic tanks.
The cost of coping often falls hardest on household budgets, and within households, on women. In Karawang, fishers earn about Rp 23,000 a day, roughly 1.40 USD, while a family’s water needs can run Rp 600,000 to Rp 1,500,000 a month: as much as 87 to 217 percent of daily income, according to KPPI. When fishing income drops, financial strain in the household can escalate.
When husbands are stressed because they cannot go fishing and household income decreases, women and children also become more vulnerable to violence.
Many women also take on debt from cooperatives or loan sharks to keep their households afloat, on top of the unpaid work of collecting water, protecting homes from floods and caring for their families.
When Development Deepens the Damage
Government infrastructure projects have often deepened these pressures rather than eased them. In Surabaya, construction of the Suramadu Bridge increased marine sedimentation, pushing fish farther from shore and closing off the shoreline fishing grounds that female fishers rely on to gather clams, crabs, and shrimp. Fishers must now sail farther to fish, at greater risk to their safety. A newer proposal, the Surabaya Waterfront Land project, would reclaim 1,084 hectares of coastline into six man-made islands at a cost of Rp 72 trillion (around 4.1 billion USD), following a development model that, elsewhere in Indonesia, has displaced coastal communities and pushed residents into low-paid, precarious work.
If this program continues, traditional fishers may eventually disappear. In the future, our children and grandchildren may only hear stories that there was once a sea here, that their fathers and grandfathers were fishers.
Beyond livelihoods, projects like these also threaten “blue carbon” ecosystems such as mangroves and seagrass meadows, natural buffers which can store up to twice as much carbon as tropical forests hold in their soil and biomass.
From WASH to Climate Finance: Advocacy Skills Built Through PRIMA
Saltwater flooding a well, a septic tank overwhelmed by floodwater, a pipeline construction stalled due to storms—in coastal Indonesia, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) problems are climate problems. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) identifies reliable WASH access as a critical climate adaptation strategy, yet government planning and financing still treat WASH and climate adaptation as separate agendas.
Women and other marginalized groups are often among those most affected by gaps in WASH services and climate shocks and stresses that exacerbate these gaps. Yet they remain excluded from many of the decision-making spaces where priorities are set and public resources are allocated.
Women do not have strategic roles in government and community forums, not even in neighborhood forums, which are the lowest-level forums. Women are mostly positioned in domestic roles, while their political roles are limited to expressing their aspirations.
This exclusion is exactly what KPPI is working to address. Through the Public Resources Inclusive through Women Empowerment (PRIMA) initiative, KPPI women leaders have been able to work in coalition with other civic groups to generate community data that can be used to address service gaps and help government improve financing and planning for WASH, an approach that can also be applied to related climate adaptation strategies.
Coastal women learned to monitor government budgets directly, using the national procurement system to track WASH spending and hold officials accountable for it. With Perkumpulan Inisiatif, a PRIMA partner organization focused on decentralization and local governance, women from KPPI use the KoboCollect app to map water, sanitation and hygiene problems in their own communities, then use that evidence to build a Community Action Plan to suggest service improvements. Seknas FITRA then helps turn each plan into a formal proposal and, ultimately, a policy brief that KPPI members bring to meetings with government officials. Through KPPI’s Community Center Forum, women also build the budgeting and negotiation skills and use the SPAN Lapor public complaints platform to escalate WASH problems directly to officials.
Local media teams across the eight regions where KPPI operates further amplify these advocacy messages. Thanks to these efforts, 101, 000 people have indirectly benefitted from improved WASH services over the past two years.
Beyond formal advocacy, women have also become more confident in communicating through social media. Since participating in the learning sessions, they have become more thoughtful in choosing their words when posting online, so that their messages can support constructive dialogue and negotiation with government officials.
KPPI women leaders
The next step is to bring these approaches into climate adaptation and climate finance. The tools KPPI has built for WASH advocacy—participatory mapping, community action planning, budget monitoring, policy briefs and government engagement—can help women document climate risks, identify needed investments and track whether public resources reach those priorities. Coastal women are therefore not a vulnerable group to be consulted, but experienced advocates who can help make climate finance more responsive to communities facing the greatest risks. They can also bridge the divide between climate adaptation and WASH strategies to ensure investments are aligned to foster climate resilient WASH infrastructure and other needs.
KPPI’s experience also shows where community advocacy alone may not be enough. According to KPPI, land tenure remains a major obstacle to putting community evidence and voice into government action. In seven of KPPI’s eight target areas, contested land rights give local governments an excuse for inaction, whether it’s a waste collection site in Medan or construction of water pipes in Semarang. The same challenge can constrain climate adaptation: even when communities identify risks and advocate for investment, insecure land rights can prevent needed infrastructure and other solutions from moving forward.
Closing the Gap Between Voice and Decisions
Community evidence and voice need a direct line to the decisions that shape WASH and climate outcomes. That will require specific commitments from governments and climate finance institutions:
- Governments should invest in transparent, participatory mechanisms that channel climate-adaptation resources directly to the communities most affected by climate change, with coastal women’s organizations like KPPI formally included in how those decisions get made.
- Governments and climate finance institutions do not need to build participatory approaches from scratch. They can build on the capacities and relationships coastal women have already developed and use those as the foundation for climate-adaptation planning.
- Governments should resolve the land tenure disputes which continue to constrain progress on WASH and climate-related infrastructure.
KPPI has already shown what it looks like when coastal women’s evidence is taken into account: from budget proposals to community action plans acted upon by local and national government. As climate adaptation financing grows, the choice is whether it will respond to the realities and priorities of the communities already on the front lines of climate change or leave their proven experience on the sidelines.
Note: This blog draws on IBP’s 2026 learning note, Learning from PRIMA: Indonesian Coastal Women’s Advocacy as a Foundation for Climate Adaptation, written by Melissa Vargas and Vina Arimbi based on interviews with KPPI leaders Ibu Rasinah, Ibu Nilawati, and Ibu Jihan. Read the full learning note here.
