Efforts under way to green Ciliwung

Efforts under way to green Ciliwung

Bambang Parlupi, Contributor/Jakarta

Small forests are still to be found in the outlying parts of Jakarta despite the rapid development the city is witnessing.

These areas are located along the Ciliwung, the largest river in Jakarta, which flows through numerous subdistricts from Srengseng Sawah to Tanjung Barat in South Jakarta. Exploring these areas is just like going through forested parts of West Java and they are home to a great variety of flora and fauna.

One particularly green area is the forest in Srengseng Sawah, Jagakarsa in the south of Jakarta. This forest, which borders Depok and the University of Indonesia campus is home to over 50 species of plants that grow along the river floodplain.

Jackfruit, ketapang, durian and lanseh trees (Lansium domesticum) grow freely in steeply-sloping areas.

There are also many species of taro and edible fern trees -- indicating how fertile some of these areas remain.

Several spots along the river bank are areas of natural bamboo forest. So far, five species of bamboo have been identified and they have been sustainably cultivated by the locals.

"Indigenous locals take good care of these forest areas because they benefit from the plants that grow there," said a local resident and subdistrict councillor, 35-year-old Sarman.

These locals take care of the forest areas that belong to the government, based on zoning that has been passed down from one generation to another.

This explained, Sarman said, why the floodplain of the Ciliwung River, particularly in Srengseng Sawah, was still in a natural state. "In some places, you can find houses standing close to the river, but they belong to migrants that run their own businesses along the river bank areas. They make tempeh and tofu, for example, but they are small in number."

However, it is not all green and unspoiled. The pressures of development are obvious in some areas, with garbage mounting up in some spots.

The dump the local administration had designated was simply not large enough to accommodate the amount of garbage the residents produced, Sarman said.

"Worse still, the local administration's sanitation officers rarely come to these places. That's why garbage from several illegal sites is dumped here," neighborhood community No. 01 head Neddi said.

The garbage in the rivers that flowed downstream from Depok and Bogor also ended on the riverbanks, he said.

Sarman said one of the impediments to tidying up the area was that locals living along the riverbanks were puzzled about the status of the land on which their homes stood.

"There is not enough information about the extent of the riverbank areas that locals may use for their homes. Of course these areas belong to the government but very often information about this does not reach the people in the lowest social classes."

There was a regulation stipulating that a plot of land located 25 meters from a riverbank was controlled by the state.

Unfortunately, he went on, the regulation did not specify whether the measurement started from the river bank or from somewhere within the body of the river. Some land certificates, for example, showed that the plots of land owned by locals started some 15 meters away from the river bank, he said.

This confusion about the extent of the land that the government controled would end up affecting the forest areas growing along Ciliwung. If this confusion about land status was cleared, much could be done to save the forest areas, he said.

Srengseng Sawah and Lenteng Agung are a natural home to a number of wildlife species -- tropical nightingales, honey- sucking birds, swallows, civets, squirrels, snakes, monitor lizards and turtles.

"Now we don't allow anybody to shoot birds or catch monitor lizards. It is true, however, that some youngsters violate this prohibition just for fun," Neddi said.

In welcoming the National Program of Regreening and Nature Conservation, formally initiated by deputy Jakarta governor Fauzi Bowo on Dec. 12 this year, three subdistricts in South Jakarta -- Srengseng Sawah, Lenteng Agung and Tanjung Barat -- have been made pilot projects of for environmentally friendly villages.

The conservation of forested areas along the Ciliwung River is part of this program and is expected to generate added value to the locals living in these areas.