City Hall's will to expand green areas questioned

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Environmental experts have questioned the city administration's commitment to expand the capital's green, open spaces, as ruled in the city masterplan, when existing green spaces remain poorly maintained.

"How can they increase the city's green areas if they cannot keep up the existing parkland adequately," the head of the landscape architecture department at Trisakti University, Rully Besari Budiyanti, told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

Rully gave an example that the city administration had used nearly one hectare of parkland at the National Monument (Monas) as a parking lot for employees of City Hall and other nearby offices.

She slammed the decision made by city leaders to convert Monas' parkland, saying that such a bad example could be followed by other citizens.

Based on the Jakarta Masterplan 2000-2010, the administration is required to expand the area covered by parks, street greenbelt and riversides, to 13.94 percent of Jakarta's territory (63,744 hectares) within 10 years.

Based on data from the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), green areas now only cover around 9 percent of the city's total land area. It said that ideally it should be around 30 percent.

Environmentalists underlined two main functions of green areas, namely to minimize floods during the rainy season, as they absorb water, and to reduce air pollution as the trees absorb hazardous gas emissions.

Many parks in the city are in a very poor state. In Cideng subdistrict in Central Jakarta, for example, nearly half of its 600-square-meter park has been converted into a basketball court and an office building.

Teenagers playing ball in the park on Monday could be seen ignoring a notice stating that such games were prohibited in the park.

Data from the City Park Agency also shows that over 300 properties -- including fuel pumps, police posts, power relay stations, shops, kiosks -- occupy green areas.

Rahardjo Martosubroto, an environmental observer who is also from Trisakti University, said green areas could be increased significantly if the city administration firmly maintained the regulations for the land coverage ratio of properties in designated green areas.

The ratio ranges from 10 to 60 percent, depending on the type of property. The land use coverage ratio of green areas is ruled by, among others, Bylaw No. 7, 1991.

"If the city administration were able to strictly enforce these land use regulations, it would make a significant contribution to the addition of green areas in the city," he added.

But unfortunately, said Rully, the city administration had set a bad example by allowing the private sector to convert public facilities into other functions, which violated environmental principles.

She cited, as an example, the conversion of one piece of parkland by a private company in Kelapa Gading, East Jakarta, into a sports center.

Head of the city planning agency Setiawan Kanani admitted his agency lack the staff necessary to supervise the management of green areas. "Actually, if we strictly complied with the masterplan, the conversion of green areas would never happen," Kanani told the Post.

To stop the violation of land-use regulations, Rully advised the city administration introduce guidelines on the urban landscape, which provides more specific details about land use in the city.

"While the masterplan only rules on land-use zoning, urban landscape guidelines would elaborate on the detail uses of land in the city," he added.