While local government is playing its critical roles to tackle effects of climate change, a number of factors pose challenges to the adaptation process in Jakarta. Identification of these constraint factors will allow the policy makers to have a better adaptation planning process. This paper aims to investigate the key barriers in adaptation process from the local government context in Jakarta city and discusses how to overcome those barriers.

The authors used a combination method between document review and in-depth interview with a total of 26 different stakeholders. Mind mapping software to analyse and find the key themes from the collected data and information.

The results identified that there a number of factors hindering the process of adaptation in Jakarta. They were: (1) leadership and governance; (2) institutional, such as fragmented institutions which leads to “competition atmosphere” between different agencies; (3) knowledge and information, such as misconception of “adaptation” and disputed, uneven and untargeted disaster relief; and (4) project planning process aspects, such as difficulties to develop measurement of successful adaptation.

In response to these barriers, a number of proposed solutions were recognized. They were strengthening the mandate of the agency that lead climate change risk adaptation in Jakarta, strengthening dialogue between science – policy – and practitioner communities, translating national and provincial guidelines into a workable document at community level, and develop more partnership and collaborative efforts between different agencies.

Although this paper focuses only on Jakarta, the findings of this paper might benefit other cities with similar settings.