Experts blames unchecked development for floods
Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
An imbalanced policy between physical development and environmental conservation has contributed to the flooding in the capital in the last 10 years, environmentalist Ahmad Syarifuddin says.
"The intensifying conversion of open spaces into buildings has made the remaining green areas unable to support the physical development," he told The Jakarta Post recently.
President Megawati Soekarnoputri has blasted some city's administration policies in altering the land use master plan to allow private sector construction projects.
With the rainy season coming, people are worrying about possible floods that might be as bad as last years, where water inundated 168 of 262 subdistricts across the city. At least 31 people were killed while 300,000 others had to be evacuated in the calamity.
Ahmad, also former chairman of the Environment Forum (Walhi) in the city, expressed concern that the city administration had done little to prevent floods but only taken measures to overcome the impact.
"They have learned absolutely nothing from annual floods, particularly last year's," he said, adding that the administration was only busy preparing rubber dinghies, setting up rescue teams or monitoring the Manggarai and Depok sluice gates.
The main problem, he said, was caused by the reduced number of green areas. In 1965, Jakarta had around 24,000 hectares of green areas, or around 40 percent of its 60,000-hectares. The figure decreased to 18,000 hectares in 1985 and to 6,000 hectares in 1998. Now Jakarta only has 4,320 hectares of green areas.
Bylaw No.5/1984 on Jakarta's spatial zoning states that the city must have between 26.5 percent and 31.5 percent, or between 15,900 hectares and 18,900 hectares of green areas.
"But we have only seen successful lobbying by businessmen to the city governor to covert more and more of the open spaces into business centers in Kapuk, Pluit, Pulomas, Kuningan, Kelapa Gading and South Jakarta," Ahmad said.
With 13 rivers flowing through the capital, more areas have become prone to flooding since the conversion of the function of the 1,114-hectare mangrove forest in Kapuk, North Jakarta, for luxury housing, commercial areas and the Sedyatmo toll road in the 1990s.
The decreasing number of water catchment areas in the mountains to the south of Jakarta namely Bogor, Puncak and Cianjur -- due to the mushrooming estate development -- have also been partly blamed for causing floods in the capital.
"An average of 60 big trees are slashed down illegally in the Mt. Salak forest everyday," Ahmad said, referring to the mountain in Bogor regency.
A weather forecast says that high-intensity rain between January and March next year will likely hit the city and could cause landslides like last year.
"Besides an El Nino phenomenon, the wind will also blow strongly, bringing at least two cyclones from Australia to the southern part of Java. This will certainly worsen the situation in Jakarta," said an independent meteorologist Hendro Purnomo.
Ahmad said the only way to make Jakarta free from floods was by "building a better drainage and flood-control system, dredging rivers frequently and coordinating with the Bogor regency administration to build more canals and lakes in the highland areas."