Eruptions as ‘crises’ requiring state control

As discussed above, the need to relocate communities away from volcanic slopes in the interest of ‘public safety’ has validated state intervention in volcanic highland areas throughout Indonesia (see Dove 2010; Dove 2008; Laksono 1988; Pannell 1999). As a result, waves of relocation away from Central Java occurred following volcanic eruptions throughout the 1960s to 1980s. These relocations continued despite the known risks in transmigration sites or the fact that relocation often unfairly disadvantages the poor and their livelihoods (Dove, 2008; Dove, 2010; Wilson et al., 2012; Whiteford and Tobin 2004).

While the discussion above has focused on the 1979 transmigration program, the re-territorialisation and relocation of ‘at-risk’ communities has long been a feature of the Dieng Plateau (Figure 15). Kitchin and Dodge (2007) argue that the production of maps involves a constant process of re- territorialisation; they are ‘transitory and fleeting, being contingent, relational and context dependent’ (p. 1). The boundaries delineating which areas are safe and dangerous in Dieng have likewise evolved with time. When walking through fields whilst conducting fieldwork activities we often came across sites of rumah bekas. These were the remains of past settlements that have now been returned to farmland. Farmers commented that when cultivating their fields they would sometimes pull out the remains of past buildings buried within the soil. As Figure 15 displays, many of these relocations were conducted following eruptions that resulted in heavy loss of life from the 1930s onwards. These relocations occurred so far in the past that I was unable to corroborate the extent to which they were enforced. However, the total destruction of villages suggests that even if they were coercive, the loss of homes and temporary damage to fields caused by each eruption, means that at least some of them must have been easier to enforce than the 1979 Dusun Simbar experience.

Figure 15. The location of past and present villages affected by volcanic hazards and state territorialisation strategies in the past. The stars mark villages that have been destroyed and/or relocated and the circles mark the location where villagers have resettled. It is likely that many more villages marked by rumah bekas exist throughout the Dieng Plateau and this map represents only those we discovered during fieldwork (source: author).

While today in Indonesia, eruptions are no longer used as catalysts to enlist participants for transmigration; I argue that they still instigate state intervention and control over land during emergency response and post- disaster activities. When the main Timbang Crater effused gas in 2011 and 2013, BPBD drove in with their orange trucks, sirens blazing, to evacuate residents from Dusun Simbar. Informants reported that they ‘created panic as they ordered the community to run while ringing a siren like an ambulance’ (Interview 31, male aged 26, Dusun Simbar, 4/12/15). Dusun Simbar is located 700 m to the west of the main Timbang Crater and while

unlikely to be immediately affected due to the properties of CO2 gas24, residents were nonetheless forced to leave immediately. For a period of one month after the eruption BPBD deployed staff to man the newly constructed three-storey high Timbang Observation Tower built by the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) (Figure 16). From this post, farmers were accosted for trying to enter their fields, irrespective of whether the sought after fields were located in close proximity to the crater or gas flow. While many residents resisted25_{, the state has attempted to exclude farmers from} their land following these eruptions. One informant reflected on the annoyance of not being able to enter her fields and maintain her livelihood post eruption:

I was often angry with the Bagana26 _{team. I was stubborn and I} wanted to go to my fields. So that when it was time to apply the pesticides, I still went to the fields. I was told by the officials that it was dangerous; however, I still went to the fields because if I didn’t apply the pesticides my crops would fail (Interview 7, female landowner aged 38, Dusun Simbar, 18/12/15).

State-led rhetoric surrounding the need to intervene and relocate people away from volcanic craters represents what Roe (1995) refers to as a ‘crisis narrative’. In Roe’s (1995) words these ‘crisis narratives are the primary means whereby development experts and the institutions for which they work claim rights to stewardship over land and resources they do not own’ (p. 1066). Combined with the ‘development’ focused narrative promoted by the New Order Regime (Li, 1999b), this state-led rhetoric justified intervention and control over ‘hazardous’ land resources in Dusun Simbar. Pannell (1999) argues that narratives of humanitarian assistance often veil

24 _{CO2 is denser than air and hangs low to the ground, generally below 1 m in height. Its high} density means that it flows in a downhill direction following topographic depressions. 25 _{This balancing of livelihood and volcanic risk is explored more fully in the following} Chapter 6.

26 _{Bagana is a volunteer emergency management organisation. While the staffs manning the} tower were Bagana volunteers at this time, their actions were overseen and directed by the Banjarnegara BPBD.

state driven territorialisation strategies. Her study of the forced evacuation of the Wortay in Eastern Indonesia demonstrated how environmental phenomena, such as volcanic eruptions, are painted as destructive to human well-being and a legitimate precursor for state order (Pannell, 1999). These narratives both support and validate state territoriality strategies, and as the Dusun Simbar example demonstrates, can both contribute to, and alleviate, local vulnerabilities.

Political responses to the 1979, 2011 and 2013 gas effusions stem from the state’s representation of volcanically active land as unpredictable, dangerous, and in need of government control. In 1979 this justified recruitment to the transmigration program, and in 2011 and 2013 it validated the authority and control of the BPBD and BNPB in the area, witnessed most prominently by the construction of the branded (and in my perspective rather domineering) BNPB Timbang Observation Tower (Figure 16). Bankoff (2001) argues that ‘vulnerability’ is a predominantly western oriented discourse employed to label large areas of the globe unsafe with victims in need of remedy by technocratic expertise. While the Dieng example demonstrates that vulnerability is not only a western construct, elements of Bankoff’s argument are evidenced in Dieng. For example, rendering the population vulnerable, not only in terms of volcanic hazards but also as part of Java’s rural poor, allowed the central government to justify transmigration following the 1979 eruption. And more recently, portrayal of residents as victims justified state- led technocratic solutions (i.e. the BNPB funded Timbang Observation Tower) and land access restrictions immediately following the 2011 and 2013 eruptions. While these activities have most likely saved lives, they also contributed to vulnerability by inadvertently facilitating the redevelopment of land surrounding the main Timbang Crater and through isolating the community from genuinely participating in DRR activities (the technocratic style of governance favoured by the BPBD is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 7).

Figure 16. The BNPB and BPBD Timbang Observation Tower. This tower was constructed following the 2013 eruption to physically monitor gas emissions from the Timbang Crater Complex and provide warnings. However, by late 2015 the tower had yet to be equipped with any warning or technical equipment. Furthermore, the inside of the tower was scattered with rubbish and doors broken. A fence restricting local access was built around the tower in late December 2015 and WhatsApp conversations with the BPBD staff (pers. comm. 14/03/16) revealed more plans to install a seismograph and alarm system (source: author).