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[KangNa]

The Sinking City: The bid to prevent Jakarta becoming the new Atlantis​

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The Indonesian Cabinet today announced a series of measures to tackle the country’s greatest crisis, the sinking of Jakarta.

The Greater Jakarta metropolitan area is home to more than 33 million people, making it the second largest metropolitan city in the world by population. With such a huge population, the Indonesian capital has now claimed the title of the world’s fastest sinking city. The city is sinking at an unprecedented rate of up to 25cm annually, with experts predicting that by 2050, the entirety of North Jakarta, along with large parts of West and Central Jakarta districts, will be below sea level. Whilst many regions of the world thrive below sea level, such as Europe’s Low Countries, for a coastal megacity that is Jakarta, its only spells devastating results. The affects are already being experienced across the region. Each passing year brings with it record-breaking floods as the sea attempts claims the city, crippling businesses, rendering tens-of-thousands homeless and killing hundreds.

So why is Jakarta sinking at such a rapid rate? Ironically, the cause of the sinking and flooding is a result of a severe water shortage. The 42 per cent of Jakarta’s inhabitants do not have access to the city’s plumbing infrastructure, leaving them without access to clean and sustainable water sources. Consequently, to access water, households and communities have resort to constructing wells to extract groundwater. With urbanisation preventing the groundwater refilling naturally, as more water is extracted, the further the ground level falls and faster the city sinks.

To combat this crisis the government has announced an ambitious project to expand Jakarta’s water and sewage network with the target of connecting all of the city’s households to piped water by 2010, eliminating the need to extract groundwater. In addition to this, the construction of a 13km seawall and the renovation and dredging of canals will mitigate the flooding in the capital. Stricter legislation on waste disposal with also be implemented, aimed at reducing the pollution of alternative water sources.

This has also been accompanied by new legislation regarding the construction of wells and high-rise buildings. From the 1st of January 1999, wells and pumps extracting groundwater across the city will the phased out, with households and landlords facing fines and even eviction if they possess groundwater extraction capabilities on their property. On top of this, from 1999, there will be an enforced ban on the construction of new buildings exceeding 100 metres in the North Jakarta district, and a ‘high-rise tax’ implemented on buildings exceeding 60 meters.

Whilst it is impossible for the current damage to be reversed, these efforts will significantly reduce the rate of sinking and drastically ease the severity of flooding.