Indonesia: Launching of cultural heritage risk mapping project in Prambanan areas

As an active State party to the UNESCO 1972 World Heritage Convention, and 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), the Government of Indonesia maintains a list of registered national monuments and a national inventory of intangible cultural heritage. However, such national heritage is not the obvious scope of disaster management plan as heritage related data are typically missing at the level of disaster management agencies.  

To address the gap, UNESCO Jakarta, in cooperation with the National Disaster Management Agency (Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Bencana/BNPB) and the Ministry of Education and Culture (MoEC) launched an initiative to incorporate data on the location of heritage buildings and ICH communities into BNPB’s natural hazard map. The map will serve as a primary tool to raise awareness of disaster management agencies on heritage, while sensitizing the heritage stakeholders on potential natural hazards, and the need for preparedness. Prambanan Temple Compounds area is chosen as the target of the pilot study, as this World Heritage is located above one of the most active tectonic faults with frequent past records of earthquakes and landslides.    

The first stakeholder workshop took place on 6 November 2019 in Prambanan, Yogyakarta to introduce the initiative to local authorities and community members.  The project will mobilize the participation of the Heritage Preservation Office of Yogyakarta and Central Java, Disaster Management Agency for  Yogyakarta Province, PT Waindo SpecTerra (partner in the mapping process), anthropologists, community representatives of Prambanan, as well as digital-risk-mapping experts from Gadjah Mada University (Faculties of Geodetic Engineering, Geography and Geology). During the workshop, some of the data collection methods for both tangible and intangible heritage in the selected geographical areas of the pilot project were discussed, i.e. the seven temples in Opak line faults: Prambanan, Sewu, Bubrah, Lumbung, Ghana, Boko and Ijo temples.

“We are very pleased with this collaborative work between the disaster management sector and cultural sector and will be providing support throughout the process. We hope the later result will also be useful to be shared to other heritage sites in Indonesia as an inspiration,” said Mr Sukronedi, Head of Cultural Heritage Preservation Office, Central Java Province, during his opening remark.

The three-month digital risk-mapping project in Prambanan is supported by the UNESCO Heritage Emergency Fund and its donors (the Qatar Fund for Development, the Kingdom of Norway, the Government of Canada, ANA Holdings INC., the Principality of Monaco, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Republic of Estonia, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the Slovak Republic and the Principality of Andorra). It aims at contributing to the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goal 1 target 1.5 (to build the resilience of the poor and those in vulnerable situations and reduce their exposure and vulnerability to climate-related extreme events and other economic, social and environmental shocks and disasters) and Goal 11 target 11.4 (Strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage).