Learning from floods

Learning from floods

The beginning of this year has seen widespread flooding which
has taken a number of lives and caused considerable material
damage, swamping several areas in Indonesia. Successively, floods
hit two regencies in Aceh, Jakarta, Central Java, North Sulawesi,
the Kampar regency in the province of Riau and, during the past
week, once again the city of Jakarta.

The floods which again swamped Jakarta seemed to bring even
greater suffering to the capital city's populace than those which
occurred earlier on Jan. 6 and 7. This time the flooding was
widespread. It not only took a considerable toll in lives and
property, it also paralyzed parts of the city, upset people's
activities, disrupted road and air traffic and television
broadcasts, and forced the postponement of students' final
examinations at a number of schools.

Floods usually occur in river basins whose upstream forest
cover has been denuded and whose soil is no longer able to absorb
sufficient water. The forests of those areas have been cut down
and transformed into forests of concrete. As the development of
residential and business areas is undertaken in a random manner
and without sufficient coordination, drainage canals become
clogged in many places.

The big floods which have devastated Jakarta should serve as a
lesson to us all, especially in the big cities, and teach us to
revise our way of looking at nature. Ideally, we should learn to
build cities which do not destroy the natural environment. Unless
development is properly coordinated and steered in the right
direction, people in the cities may well have to suffer the
adverse consequences, including uncontrollable floods.

-- Waspada, Medan