Jakarta Bay as an opportunity for collaborative and integrative research and the need for knowledge brokering

Jakarta Bay as an opportunity for collaborative and integrativeresearch and the need for knowledge brokeringPearson, Stuart*1, Amanda Putri1 and Wiwin Windupranata21 School of Physical, Environmental, and Mathematical Sciences, UNSW, Canberra, 2600, Australia2 Bandung Institute of Technologystuart.pearson@unsw.edu.auThe research relationships that develop between Australian researchers and Indonesian researchers are significant. This paper reflects on the experience of a PhD student (Putri et al., 2015), Indonesian and Australian researchers as they seek to address pressing issues in the coast 215 of Jakarta, through various funding opportunities, in a way that is appropriate and efficacious. A quest for sharing capacity resources, research experience (including but not exclusively based on research outputs) and other knowledge needs over four years offers some insights and is also a call for help. Jakarta Bay’s problems are challenging, typical of coastal megacities and the focus of many knowledge investments (research, aid, health, diplomacy, monitoring, regulatory frameworks, spatial planning). So there is a need for interdisciplinary, multi-stakeholder engagements that rarely are solutions as much as messolutions – ongoing programs of long-term adaptation through negotiation between agents. The first part of the paper discusses the experience of an Indonesian Government-funded PhD student working in an interdisciplinary way to discover how water pollution affects the livelihood of traditional fishers as vulnerable stakeholders that rely heavily on the degraded fishery resources. An integrative approach, that combined water quality assessment and participative exercises (group mapping, discussions, and interviews with the fishers, NGO, researchers, and government representatives), was effective in providing deeper insights on the Bay’s water conditions and environmental degradations, how these affected the traditional fishers and how they adapt to the environmental stressors. This illuminates the complex socio-environmental problems in Jakarta Bay where comprehensive solutions are required and therefore more inclusive collaboration between multi-stakeholders is crucial if the Bay's environments and the fishers' livelihood are to be sustained. The second part highlights the collaborations between Indonesian and Australian researchers as they progress beyond this research and hopefully contribute to the development of solutions for Jakarta Bay's problems