You can live right next to the ocean and never see it. This is the case for the residents of Muara Baru, a working-class neighborhood in North Jakarta, who live in the shelter of a long wall protecting them from the waves.
The curious architecture of this neighborhood, located below sea level, is obvious when you walk there: the floor of Riri’s house is a good meter higher than that of her neighbor Ponyem, with whom she chatting in the street.
This allows Riri to be less affected by the floods which regularly affect the neighborhood. “When the rain comes, we take our things upstairs, if we have one,” says Ponyem. It only takes a rain of an hour or two for water to accumulate in the street.”
Indonesia’s capital, former Batavia, has long had a serious flooding problem, so much so that the city is often said to be “sinking.” Indonesian President Joko Widodo cites this reason to justify the construction of a new capital, 2,000 km away. Under construction on the island of Borneo, we perceive in its description – “green”, “planned”, “dedicated to active mobility” – everything that is criticized in Jakarta, a metropolis of 30 million inhabitants concreted to the extreme, chaotic and polluted.
“There are three components to the Jakarta floods,” explains urban planner Nirwono Joga. First, the water which arrives in large quantities from the mountains south of the city during the rainy season, from October to March. Then, what I call local flooding, caused by an old and clogged sewer system that cannot evacuate the water. And finally, submergence by the ocean.” This last factor is so common that the Javanese language invented a word to describe it, rob.
The sinking city
To make matters worse, a large part of the city is sinking by at least 5 cm per year, and even more than 10 cm near the coast, where the soil is softer, according to measurements carried out by Heri Andreas, geodesy researcher at Bandung Institute of Technology.
“More than half of the population pumps water from the groundwater for their daily needs,” explains this Indonesian authority on the phenomenon, called subsidence. However, the water present in an aquifer exerts a certain pressure; if it is removed, this force decreases, which causes the ground to subside.”
Subsidence can be slowed or even stopped by stopping drawing water, but never reversed. What is today below sea level (i.e. more than 20% of Jakarta, the worst place reaching 4.6 m in accumulated height) will therefore always remain so.
“When the rain comes, we take our things upstairs, if we have one” Ponyem
“In Muara Baru, the most affected sector, subsidence has fallen from 25 to 11 cm per year since the closure of ice production factories drawing water,” says the researcher. On the other hand, near the airport, where many industries have recently been established, it has increased from 5 to 10 cm per year.
Elsewhere, we continue to build heavy skyscrapers, which in turn pump water from the ground and increase its compaction. A few years ago, this prompted Heri Andreas to sound the alarm: if nothing is done, 95% of Jakarta’s coastal area will be threatened by the robhe believes.
The national and provincial governments are not remaining idle, assures MP Ida Mahmudah, who heads the commission responsible for this issue in the regional parliament. Basins were dug upstream of the city to store the water flowing from the mountains. Of the 38 km that the coastal wall must cover, 20 have already been built.
The thirteen rivers that run through Jakarta are regularly dredged to increase their flow capacity. A tunnel which is to divert part of the flow of the largest, the Ciliwung river, has just been inaugurated. During periods of flooding, pumps suck water from the city to discharge it higher up, into the sea…
A single breach would be enough
The residents interviewed by Reporterre say they have noticed real improvements. No more major floods which left a meter of mud in houses and even washed away some, says Siti Anah, 72, who lives on the banks of the Ciliwung River.
However, this balance is fragile, and not only because it would only take a breach in the coastal wall to cause a catastrophe. “The city is built in a flat and marshy area, so the water will always come back,” warns architect Elisa Sutanudjaja, director of the Rujak Center for Urban Studies. And climate change brings more and more intense and unpredictable rains.
So how do we save Jakarta once and for all? Ask an urban planner like Nirwono Joga and you will get a detailed plan: widen the rivers, change the pipes, create parks to infiltrate the water, rehabilitate the seaside with mangroves, and above all build HLM to relocate those who live in areas at risk or whose precarious homes sometimes invade riverbeds…
But walk through the small streets where the smells of sewage and fried chicken mingle, and you will understand the difficulty of the thing: few people are ready to abandon their neighborhood and their friends for a building, and not only because that they would then go from owners to tenants.
“How would I make a living in an HLM, where you can’t have a business,” asks Riri, who has a small shop on the ground floor of her house in Muara Baru. “For fishermen, living far from the sea is inconceivable, if only because they have to watch their equipment,” explains Susan Herawati, general secretary of the Kiara association which supports this community. Furthermore, it is unfair to blame people who live by the sea or rivers for the floods when the culprits are all the inhabitants of this city, and above all very poor urban planning.
In particular a faulty water supply system, which only supplies 35 to 60% of the population, depending on the sources. “Many people say that water is too expensive and the flow is too low, which is why they prefer to use groundwater, even if it is contaminated with Escherichia coli,” explains MP Ida Mahmudah.
Half the city for Suez
However, initiated in 1997 following advice from the World Bank, the privatization of the water distribution system – which saw the French company Suez obtain a contract for half the city – was supposed to improve service. A failure, especially since the Indonesian Supreme Court declared this privatization illegal in 2017. The regional government now intends to build an aqueduct connected to the artificial lake of Jatiluhur, 70 km away, and supply Jakarta 100%.
Elisa Sutanudjaja thinks it is possible to rehouse populations at risk while meeting their needs. Not far from the sea, she oversaw the construction of a housing cooperative called Kampung Akuarium on the ruins of a slum neighborhood forcibly evicted in 2016.
The 240 evicted families took the government to court and reached an agreement allowing them to return to live there. “They were the ones who made the plans, and our team assisted them to tell them what was possible or not in terms of regulations,” says the architect.
Four of the five buildings in Kampung Akuarium have already been built thanks to a fund dedicated to social housing to which real estate developers active elsewhere in the city must contribute. The complex has its own retention basin to manage its rainwater, and residents share the tasks of maintaining and monitoring the complex.
“For fishermen, living far from the sea is inconceivable” Susan Heawati
“To reduce maintenance costs, they also collectively launched a laundry and a catering service, and they have a boat that they rent to tourists,” adds Elisa Sutanudjaja. They also have the right to have an individual commercial activity in their apartment, such as a small shop.”
The accommodations open onto wide corridors which reproduce the friendly atmosphere of working-class neighborhoods, where everyone gets some fresh air in front of their door and chats with their neighbors.
But even if this model is more socially acceptable and is starting to be copied elsewhere in the capital, a problem on which all our interlocutors agree remains: the pace of construction of HLM is far from being sufficient to meet needs. So, in deprived areas, we adapt as best we can.
Thus, in Muara Angke, a shantytown of planks and sheets on the edge of the ocean, the inhabitants try to raise the ground by depositing the mussel shells brought back by the fishermen. Here, the rob strikes more and more often, every month according to Khalil Charlim, a fisherman.
For him, the culprit is obvious: two artificial islands which have been built not far away. “In addition, because of them, we have to go further to fish,” thunders this man who took part in the protest which succeeded in stopping the 40 billion francs project of which they were to be the first step: ten- seven islets raised from the waves, delivered to real estate developers, and a wall in the open sea to protect the coast…
Other cities on borrowed time
A symptomatic story of the evil that is gnawing away at Indonesia, and summed up by Susan Herawati of Kiara: “We like to solve the problems caused by concrete by pouring even more concrete.”
The observation can be applied to the fragile wall which protects Jakarta against the sea, but also to the construction site of Nusantara, the new capital, which, for 30 billion francs, will at best relieve the metropolis of two million of its residents. So much money that cannot be invested in all the small coastal towns of Indonesia which are also sinking in silence.
2023-09-19 18:02:24
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