Esai / (Pra)Sarana
Of the Water, By the Water, For the Water
In favor of more sustainable urban drainage and water conservation (and what can Jakarta and other cities learn)
Water is an integral part of our life. The earliest civilizations developed around major streams of water — where it’s both a blessing and a curse for them. The annual flood provided its surrounding lowlands with fertile soil and a place where agriculture may flourish. On the other side, the same flood also not seldom brought destruction upon the houses, livestock, and livelihood of the very same people that it had been blessed.
The same pattern that we can observe millennia ago has evolved to something similar today. However, the relationship between modern cities and their major source of livelihoods has became often more problematic. Those problems are especially severe in developing countries, which usually lack financial and governance resources to tame nature while at the same time seldom put the restraint in unsustainable developments. The major stream of water that flows right through the city center is often pollution-choked and cannot provide any useful source of clean water, while at the same time when the rain comes, it floods its surroundings and destroys everything in its path.
Meanwhile, the other water habitat is just as unfortunate as those rivers. For example, lakes that used to dot the landscape are often getting buried forever under the weight of new shopping centers. Marshy swamps that used to sprawl out in the city periphery are also now getting replaced by the development of new suburbs.
People often forget that from what we disturb from nature, it is always going to take it back — in one way or another.
Take Jakarta, for example. Jakarta is the capital of Indonesia and at the same time serves as its largest population center. Its traffic jam is legendary among visitors and inhabitants alike, and its monsoon flood is basically an anticipated annual event (sort of like a yearly festival). The fact that an almighty modern metropolitan with gleaming skyscrapers will come to a halt at the face of rain is a testament for that fact.
On why flood is the timeless icon of Jakarta
The reason why Jakarta still struggles to combat flood to this very day may lies in its course of development, starting from centuries prior today. Before Jakarta was built, the lands atop of it mainly consisted of swamps, jungles, paddy fields, and plantations. The very nature of Jakarta — in which its plains are lowland passed by 13 rivers and its very soil are made of alluvium — is what particularly made Jakarta so flood-prone even to this day.
Even back then in its colonial heydays where Jakarta was still named Batavia — which by then still was a relatively well planned small town controlled by a bunch of Dutch colonists — the occurrence of floods were already posing a significant problem to the administration. Flood has been ravaging Jakarta since time immemorial, and the notable ones that had occurred under the supervision of Dutch colonial authorities happened in the year of 1621, 1654, 1918, and 1942. The problem was so much of a problem that even the colonial authorities brought forth Dutch Indies’ most prominent engineers to tackle Batavia’s flooding problem.
When the Dutch East Indies administration was kicked out by the newly-independent Republic of Indonesia government, the colonial administration had left several flood control infrastructures which consisted of several flood canals and sluice gates — in which Tji Liwoeng-Bandjirkanaal (West Flood Canal, Kanal Banjir Barat) is one of these leftover infrastructures. The main idea of the colonial administration’s solution to solve the flood problem in Batavia was to control the flow of the water from the upriver and then to control the volume of water entering the city.
Continuing the preceding practice, the government of post-independence Jakarta has actually tried to continue the Dutch administration’s routine. In the subsequent years following the emerging political and economic stability in Indonesia post-Soekarno era, several masterplans to combat Jakarta’s flood were drafted and passed, including Master Plan 1973, which was revised in 1997, and which was revised again in 2007. Those masterplans were basically a further development of the original flood control master plan that was made in 1917 by the Dutch colonial government under the direction of Ir. H. van Breen.
Each of these plans has the same underlying concept, but with every update, the master plan was adapted to the then-current circumstances of Jakarta development. The most current master plan consists of a plan to make another flood canal (East Flood Canal, Banjir Kanal Timur), floodway in the course of the Ciliwung river (the main river of Jakarta) and several dry dams in Ciliwung’s upstream (CIBE ITB, 2020).
However, there is a bit discomforting pattern here. One of the most embarrassing parts of all this flood management fiasco is the local government’s reluctance to even implement its own planned and campaigned solution. Just at the end of 2019, Jakarta has scrapped its budget for Ciliwung River “normalization” project (another term for the process of river channelization).
“Normalisasi sungai” is an acceptable nomenclature in the context of Indonesian political and academic discourse, but in the context of river engineering worldwide, the term ‘river channelization’ is more acceptable). Unsurprisingly, just several months following that irresponsible decision, Jakarta was struck with the worst flooding that the area has seen in 13 years, which displaced 60,000 and killed 66 people in its wake.
But, besides that, there is an underlying problem too that is often overlooked. A research was once conducted using analysis of Jakarta’s flood data and account of flood control from the year of 1885–1983. Its conclusion was quite interesting and bold. Paraphrased, the research concluded that flood control by means of using a hard infrastructure approach — which the research summarized as channel construction — didn’t really able to solve Jakarta’s flood problems. Every time a channel was constructed, its capacity was always exceeded in years following its completion.
For example, in just several years following the completion of Manggarai Floodgate and West Flood Canal in 1917 under the direction of Prof. Ir. H. van Breen, a moderately extreme case of flood already overflowed both of these structures. Besides that, the post-independence flood control masterplan that was revised several times from 1973 was always updated because somehow when that plan was completed, a flood will always occur somewhere again (Gunawan, 2010).
“An approach of flood control using means of flood control channel was unable to solve Jakarta’s flood problems […]. Besides of that, channel siltation which was aggravated by piling up of heaps of garbage does help to hinder those channel effectiveness. […] and in a case of a higher rainfall […], those channel capacity will be exceeded […] and the flood will enter the area within its vicinity due to the fact that those area has been transformed into a built area.” — Conclusion from “The Failure of The Canal System: An Account of Jakarta’s Flood Control Throughout History” (Gunawan, 2010)
With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clearly becoming more visible that to tackle Jakarta’s flood problems, it needs so much more than canal-building and other similar conventional hydraulic infrastructure planning. To complement those already planned solutions, a more city-wide, far-reaching, and sustainable solution is required, although it’s definitely more radical and difficult to implement.
Back to nature
We have agreed on something that is quite controversial here: we cannot completely stop flooding by only building more channels, not without sorting out why the water still keeps coming and coming.
The basic science behind the occurrence of a flood is surprisingly simple: a flood will happen when an inflow of water caused by rainfall exceeds the capacity of the soil that it falls in and the capacity of the channel that it flows in. When we deepen and widen our river or construct a new flood control channel to deal with stormwater — so it doesn’t need to deluge our city — we are only addressing parts of the problem.
Perhaps, apart from building more channels to deal with floods, should we also let the water be absorbed into the ground, like it always had been in the past, and even increase its natural ability?
Development that alters our land use is inevitable to some degree, but there must be a way to control it so it doesn’t have to wreck our environment.
Let’s check out the figures. The number of green spaces in Jakarta is currently at 9,98 percent, far below from the figure of 30 percent that even the local spatial planning authorities are stipulating (Febrianti & Sofan, 2014). Some data also showed that approximately 71% or 152,000 ha of forest have disappeared from Greater Jakarta Area from 1972 to 2012. Meanwhile, the built-up area has expanded 31-folds over the course of the same years (Rustiadi et al., 2015).
Besides that, regarding the data from BBWS Ciliwung-Cisadane (the river authority that is responsible for the management of main rivers in Jakarta), Greater Jakarta Metropolitan Area used to have 207 lakes that dotted its landscape. Now that figure has dropped because there are around 50 lakes that have mysteriously disappeared when the authorities updated the data.
There’s something very fishy and disappointing that have been happening around here. You cannot just destroy plots and plots of green spaces, lakes, and wetlands while in the end isn’t expecting any kind of retaliation from nature itself. It doesn’t work that way.
Integrating features of a natural environment with conventional development is actually possible, and it has been done in numerous places (which obviously doesn’t include Jakarta unfortunately). Jakarta used to have acres and acres of wetland sprawled inside its perimeters. Where has it gone today? We really should restore parts of them. And when we open it up to the public, the public will have a nice place to hang out and recreate, besides it being great at controlling floods and housing colonies of waterbirds.
Let’s create new lakes (or restore some of them) and spice up the already existing ones so our resident can have tons of water reserves in a case of dry monsoon, meanwhile in wet monsoon, our resident can worry less about annual flooding knocking at their door. And to integrate nature in our urban fabric, it doesn’t have to be by tearing down swaths of skyscrapers and then replacing it with a jungle. We can just actually imitate some parts of nature and then place it somewhere while not having to destroy everything. Green roofs and open swales are a great example of that method of integrating nature with urban fabric (Zhou, 2014).
Other benefits?
As one of the fastest sinking cities in the world due to its excessive groundwater pumping, land subsidence will exacerbate floods in Jakarta to the point that its potential extent will increase by a fifth area of the city (Takagi et al., 2016). Restoring natural lakes, rivers, and wetlands, would increase the availability of clean freshwater on the surface, reducing the need to pump groundwater.
The addition of such developments will also definitely help stormwater getting retained and absorbed to the ground, therefore recharging the already depleting groundwater storage. Furthermore, we may reap the benefits of improved air quality, additional recreational places, and economical gains from not having to face infrastructure disruption every time a natural disaster occurs.
From a more philosophical side of the argument, wouldn’t it be quite beautiful for a modern city to remember its original roots? To remember where it had begun and to build such memorials everywhere. By building our cities so entangled with nature, we will perhaps begin to appreciate nature more and be more inclined to be more protective of them.
And not only Jakarta — let’s work our way to make this kind of planning a norm in every part of the world.
When it comes to the choice of either protecting natural habitat or building more for economic development, it’s not a matter of or. It’s a matter of and, because what kind of economic growth is worth to be striving for when even our children will be unable to enjoy its fruits? Compromise should be made to accommodate both of them, and if the balance between both of them has been achieved, we can ensure that our living spaces will forever be livable to be living in.
Bibliography:Center for Infrastructure and Built Environment ITB (2020). Kajian Pengelolaan Banjir DKI dan Sekitarnya Bagi Pembangunan Infrastruktur Berkelanjutan. Fakultas Teknik Sipil dan Lingkungan Institut Teknologi Bandung.Febrianti, N., & Sofan, P. (2014). Ruang terbuka hijau di DKI Jakarta berdasarkan analisis spasial dan spektral data Landsat 8. Sumber, 100, 11–5.Gunawan, R. (2010). Gagalnya Sistem Kanal: Pengendalian Banjir Jakarta dari Masa ke Masa. Penerbit Buku Kompas.Rustiadi, E., Pribadi, D. O., Pravitasari, A. E., Indraprahasta, G. S., & Iman, L. S. (2015). Jabodetabek megacity: From city development toward urban complex management system. In Urban development challenges, risks and resilience in Asian mega cities (pp. 421-445). Springer, Tokyo.Takagi, H., Esteban, M., Mikami, T., & Fujii, D. (2016). Projection of coastal floods in 2050 Jakarta. Urban Climate, 17, 135–145. Zhou, Q. (2014). A review of sustainable urban drainage systems considering the climate change and urbanization impacts. Water, 6(4), 976–992.
