Peatland plays an important ecological and economic role in many countries all over the world. At the same time, due to various human and non-human interventions, peatland is also a fragile ecosystem, which is currently facing severe problems, such as deforestation, fires, and peat subsidence. Peat subsidence is currently one of the most severe but least recognized issues. Because of its interconnectedness with other peatland problems, peat subsidence intensifies when there is a lack of proper interventions. In this paper, types of problems that arise along with and from peat subsidence and how various actors deal with it are going to be analysed. This paper illustrates an example from peatland areas in Indonesia and addresses two questions: (1) what kinds of problems are related to peat subsidence? In addition, (2) how do various actors deal with peat subsidence and what are the consequences of their interventions? Based on in-depth interviews with key persons from government institutions and NGOs, followed by focus group discussions with communities, analyses of policies, and desk study, this research discovered that peat subsidence is a hidden problem that is highly interconnected with other peatland problems that have caused severe physical-environment and socioeconomic impacts. While various actors have taken numerous interventions to deal with deforestation and fires, those concerning peat subsidence are still limited. Since dealing with peatland problems as a whole requires an ecosystem-based intervention, a more comprehensive approach is needed to manage peat subsidence.

Land subsidence can have a considerable impact on the socio-economic viability of areas. In urban areas, land subsidence tends to damage buildings and infrastructures gradually, while in rural peat land it slowly destroys vegetation. The damages will worsen since climate change has further implications for the areas affected by land subsidence. In Indonesia, the response to land subsidence varies in different areas in terms of awareness, urgency and action on the part of both public authorities and land users. This paper systematically investigates these varied responses in urban and rural peat land areas. Interviews with experts and surveys of 330 land users in selected sub-districts were conducted and further supplemented by focus group discussions. We found that both the public authorities as well as the land users' responses were considered as of limited value to contest land subsidence. We suggest that the endorsement of land users' response into governmental policies would make a significant difference in improving land subsidence management.

Land subsidence has severe physical and economic implications for both areas and people. Numerous scholars have shown that land subsidence has had massive impacts at global, national and regional levels, and that the impacts were usually responded to by the government. However, little attention has been paid to what land subsidence means to people's daily lives and how much it costs them. To fill that gap, this article draws on empirical research carried out in three areas in Indonesia to provide a better understanding of what land subsidence means to households, and how they respond to the consequences and how much it costs them to do so. An analysis of a survey of 330 households shows that they have been suffering from various severities of impacts of land subsidence for an extended period. Whereas some of the households respond to the impacts by making small preparations or adapting to the damages, others can do nothing due to a lack of money and their continuously declining earning capacity. Thus, the affected households are effectively throwing money into a bottomless pit. We argue that these households must escape the vicious circle caused by land subsidence by increasing their income capacity or even abandoning the affected areas.

Coastal areas have been growing massively worldwide. The fast growth also affects the land value in either a positive or a negative way. Many scholars have studied land value and the factors that affect it in areas prone to sudden-onset disasters. In contrast, studies on urbanized coastal areas that suffer from slow-onset disasters are still lacking. Using a case study from Semarang City in Indonesia, this research aims at ameliorating this limitation. To comprehensively understand the aim, two research questions are addressed: (1) What is the distribution of land value in urbanized coastal areas? (2) How do the different distribution factors determine the land value? Based on in-depth interviews with key persons, map analyses, and desk studies, this research discovers that land value is distributed randomly among coastal areas. The dynamics of land value are determined by road access, distance, and accessibility to the city center and CBD, public facilities, transportation facilities, population composition, physical environment, and disasters. Surprisingly, the coastal areas in Semarang that experience combined disasters showed that disasters could not decrease the land value; the value in some areas is constant or even increasing. This shows the different impacts of disasters on land value for slow-onset disasters and sudden-onset disasters.