Wild plant knowledge and local disaster mitigation in West Java’s deforested highland, Indonesia
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Abstract. Fatimah FZN, Mulyanto D. 2025. Wild plants knowledge and local disaster mitigation in West Java deforested highland, Indonesia. Asian J For 9: 418-427. Communities in disaster-prone mountainous areas often face limited access to stable food and health resources, making wild plants an essential safety net during emergencies. This study aims to identify the diversity, utilization, and role of wild plants in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in the mountainous areas of West Java, Indonesia. A total of 26 informants were selected purposively according to the established criteria. They were individuals actively involved in wild plant collection and in small-scale domestication. Data were obtained through ethnobotanical surveys, free-listing interviews, and free walking. These data were then analyzed using Relative Frequency of Citation (RFC) and Sørensen's Similarity Coefficient (SSC) to ensure methodological rigor. The study recorded 87 species of wild plants that serve as sources of food, medicine, and multifunctional plants. In crisis situations, wild plants contribute to the four pillars of food security: availability, access, utilization, and stability. This strengthens their role as a community-based DRR strategy. However, a limitation identified in the study area was the lack of use of carbohydrate-rich tubers and long-term preservation techniques. This gap may weaken the community's self-resilience as households would become overly dependent on external assistance when access to food supplies is disrupted. Nevertheless, the domestication of 19 wild plant species in home gardens represents another DRR-relevant adaptive strategy. It can maintain food security and easily accessible medicine at minimal cost, time, and risk. Thus, these findings confirm that knowledge and practices of wild plant utilization are an important part of community-based DRR and play a vital role in strengthening forest-based resilience strategies in disaster-prone areas.
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