We live in an unprecedented time. Since 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has hit every country in the world, rich and poor, affecting our lives in tremendous ways. It has diminished the livelihoods of millions of people and turned economies upside down. After almost two years, the effects of the pandemic and endeavors to contain it continue to reveal socio-economic inequalities, discrimination and uneven access to health care. The pandemic exposed variations in access to health care and showed glaring neglect for the lives of the majority of people, evidencing deeply rooted inequalities and uneven wealth, power and resources.

At the same time, we also have to deal with climate change and disasters. Unlike the COVID-19 pandemic, not all people are immediately feeling the effects of the global temperature change and other aspects of climate change . The warming climate is causing sea level rise, landslides, extreme and unpredictable weather, ranging from droughts to floods, as well as impacting global health and food production. Because the effects of climate change are largely long-term, there is little pressure for the world leaders to act quickly to address the problem and issues in raising people’s awareness. Yet, no one can escape from the consequences that are caused by climate change, whether one is rich or poor. However, the impact of climate change will affect poor communities much more heavily than the other segments of society. The poor will suffer the most because they only have limited options to find alternatives for livelihoods, domiciles and other aspects of their lives. Moreover, Indonesia has many active volcanoes and is frequently hit by earthquake due to its location on the “ring of fire.” It has experienced several mega volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunami that have had devastating effects. Earthquakes have caused loss of life, as well as inflicting damage upon homes, properties, and also government infrastructures. We often have to deal with multiple crises that have happened in interconnected fashion in a short time period.

These crises also have a social, political, and economic dimensions. Ecological or health problems are never entirely a product of “natural” causes unshaped by human action; ‘disasters’ always involve social components among their multiples causes. The underlying social, political, and economic contexts related to these crises have made our effort to address them challenging. If two or more crises happen simultaneously, it creates a high potential risk of synchronous failures. This risk may be exacerbated by deficiencies in state capacity to deal with these disasters, especially when of multiple origin and simultaneous impact. Factors that may contribute to failures of response include, among others: poor coordination across governmental sectors and between central and regional government levels; conflicts of interest among actors within and beyond the state; lack of motivation to address such issues, especially when in the periphery; lack of transparency in decision-making processes, failure to engage with the local populace using participatory mechanisms. Cultural beliefs may in some instances mobilize actions to surmount the impacts of disasters, but in other contexts may also hinder practical mobilization of the local administration and populace to deal with disasters.

Given the social, cultural and political dimensions of disaster etiology and crisis management, Anthropology plays important roles in addressing these crises. We hope through this symposium we can gain insight regarding how anthropologists in their own research and in collaboration with our colleagues in other disciplinary backgrounds have engaged with these issues, and what we can do in our roles as scholars, activists, officials, and practitioners, in addressing these pressing problems of our time. How can our anthropological perspective make a difference when we are trying to engage with these issues and to make contribution in our society to preventing and alleviating such disasters? We hope presented papers do not only focus on Indonesia, as we welcome panels to include presentations and discussion of comparative phenomena outside Indonesia, as well as global frameworks for addressing such issues.