Even before the relocation policy was nixed, support for the villagers' rebuilding efforts come from many quarters. Besides survivors from all over Banda Aceh, Udeep Beusaree communities have received blessings from many important guests, including the UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery Erskine Bowles, the Minister of the National Planning Board, the Minister of Environment, the Mayor of Banda Aceh as well as local district and sub-district heads. National mass media such as Kompas Newspaper, national TV channels, and international cable TV stations such as NHK, Dutch Television and the Sydney Morning Herald have also come and filed upbeat reports on the people's rebuilding program

While the government's aid to tsunami-hit Aceh has been notoriously slow, Jakarta was quick to draft policies to prevent people from moving back to their coastal communities, presumably for safety purposes. Six weeks after the disaster, Jakarta's "blueprint" for Aceh's reconstruction and rehabilitation was made public. In the 12-volume master plan, all coastal villages and towns within 2 kms of the sea would have to be relocated to new sites inland.

In Banda Aceh, the blueprint went further, dividing the wrecked areas of the city into three zones: totally destroyed, structurally damaged and not damaged-but-flooded zones. Initially, the plan was to construct a US$ 67 million sea wall to protect the city and relocate the tens of thousands of surviving households and businesses in all three zones (covering 75% of the city!) to three new futuristic cities that the government would construct 20 - 30km from the sea. In the blueprint, all three zones would then become coastal greenbelts, where no building would be allowed.

This was also supposedly for reasons of safety, but as soon as the policy was announced, there was a huge rush by government insiders to buy land in the "new city" areas, and private sector contractors and commercial interests began jockeying for a share of the lucrative mega-project contracts the blueprint would entail.

THE PEOPLE'S ALTERNATIVE

Use ecological means to create safety in the villages where they are now ....

From very early, one of the most urgent tasks of the Uplink and Udeep Beusaree networks was to jointly formulate a viable alternative to the government's top-down blueprint - an alternative which would allow villagers to decide about their own settlements, to maintain their livelihood and to build their future life in the same place. To do this, a two-level strategy was adopted:

-At the grassroots level, to continue assisting villagers to move back to their former villages, build temporary housing and carry on with their rehabilitation planning, regardless of the official policy.
-At the policy level, to formulate a strong on-site redevelopment alternative to the government's relocation plans, to use to negotiate with local and national government agencies. Safety became the basis for the network's counter-proposal, in which people living within the three zones would rebuild in the same place, but make their communities safe by using other means, such as ecological buffers between sea and village, rings of greenbelt, escape routes and evacuation centers (see next page).

In early March, this community-based alternative was formally presented to the committee set up under the National Development Planning Board to deal with the relocation policy for Aceh. The timing was critical. By then, international donors were waiting for a reconstruction policy from the government that was clearly pro-people before releasing aid money, and nobody imagined evicting the entire province's coastal communities could be perceived as being pro-people. So this gave the people a little room to maneuver. At the same time, Uplink worked closely with the media, so all the activities happening on the ground in the Udeep Beusaree villages were well-covered in the national newspapers and television programs. This helped build awareness of the issues and support for people's determination to go back.

IT WORKED! As a result of all these efforts, the government scrapped the 2-km "safety" zone and accepted the people's in-situ alternative. The zoning policy for Banda Aceh was also cancelled. Instead of any blanket zoning, the official policy now is to support a more bottom-up process of micro-planning, done in consultation with the affected villagers and their local governments. Villagers are now free to choose either to go back to their original villages or relocate. Needless to say, very few are opting for relocation.

TEAMWORK

How some strategic inputs from outside friends helped convince the government to ditch the 2-km safety zone and allow villages in Banda Aceh to rebuild in situ :

Help from friends in
INDIA

Help from friends in JAKARTA

In January, professionals from the Indian NGO Abhiyan joined Uplink and ACHR on a visit to Aceh. During the visit, Uplink arranged for the Indians to present to the Environment Minister their experiences of participatory rehabilitation and self-help reconstruction after the 2001 earthquake in Gujarat. The Indians proposed the idea that planning in Aceh could similarly incorporate both green belt safety features as well as in-situ rehabilitation of traditional coastal habitats. The minister accepted the idea and subsequently became a key ally in promoting a participatory, in-situ redevelopment. Since then, Abhiyan has provided technical assistance to Uplink and the 25 villages to start refining and localizing the "eco-village" concept, adapting the elements to suit the particular needs and environmental conditions of Aceh

Andy Siswanto, a senior architect from Semarang, has helped urban community groups around Indonesia to develop technical alternatives to government planned evictions and lobbied for these alternatives at national level. Andy hasn't worked in Aceh directly, but has coordinated with Uplink to refine and formalize the concept of in-situ eco-village redevelopment and present it to the government, as a viable alternative to the 2km safety zone. The teamwork has been very good: Uplink fed Andy with maps and community data, which he then used to prepare a sophisticated and persuasive presentation of the "eco-village" concept, complete with colorful drawings, plans, concept notes and conceptual diagrams in PowerPoint, showing all the protective layers between sea and village, the escape routes, etc.

An unusually active and committed funding agency also played a key role in bringing about this important policy change for tsunami affected villages in Aceh. Besides supporting the formation, expansion and ongoing development activities of the national Uplink network, the German funding agency Misereor has also been a strong supporter of all aspects of Uplink's relief and reconstruction work in Aceh, from the very beginning. Besides funding, this active support has included advice, bringing in experts from elsewhere in the Asia region to assist the process and helping get regional networks to support the Udeep Beusaree villagers in different ways. Misereor also supported all phases of the preparation of the "eco-village" alternative, which was eventually was accepted by the government.