UIN Jakarta-IFI holds conference series
Diorama Room, UIN News Online – UIN Jakarta, in collaboration with Institut Francais Indonesia (IFI) Jakarta holds conference series entitled “Benefit in the wake of disaster: Long-run effects of earthquakes on welfare in rural Indonesia” by presenting Jérémie Gignoux as keynote speaker on Friday (10/25/2019) at Diorama room, Harun Nasution Auditorium, Campus I of UIN Jakarta.
Present in the event, AAKK bureau chief of UIN Jakarta Khaeruddin, Students Affairs Division and Sub-division head, and academic community of UIN Jakarta.
Representing the Rector of UIN Jakarta who is unable to attend, Khaeruddin in his remarks positively appreciated this event to further develop the knowledge of UIN Jakarta’s students.
“I hope that the audience can pay attention to the exposure provided by the speaker,” said Khaeruddin.
Meanwhile, Jérémie Gignoux in his presentation said that this paper will examine the long-run economic consequences of earthquakes for households in rural Indonesia. According to Jérémie, Indonesia is one of the most seismically active regions in the world.
“The areas most vulnerable to earthquakes include virtually all Sumatra, Java, the Lesser Sunda Islands (Bali, Nusa Tenggara), Maluku, Sulawesi, and Papua, though seismic activity is also reported in parts of Kalimatan,” said Jérémie.
He also said that dozens of large earthquakes have occurred in recent decades. Furthermore, those disasters remain rare and unpredictable to a given location, and this makes it very costly and difficult for households to adopt ex-ante risk-reduction strategies to mitigate the effects.
“Yogyakarta earthquake for example, it caused damages estimated at 3.1 billion USD and 5700 killed,” he said.
However, he continue, after going through short-term losses, the affected area were able to recover in the medium run, and even exhibit income and welfare gains in the long run.
“First, business holders, notably farmers, manage to reconstitute their stock of productive assets, and maybe improve it compared to before the shock. And the second, d, there is evidence that public infrastructures in affected areas, notably roads and the electricity network, get reconstructed and even improved compared to their pre-disaster state. These investments in public infrastructures likely benefit farms and other businesses by reducing transactions costs, notably for marketing the outputs and accessing inputs,” he concludes. (usa)