Every
year, large populations must deal with hazardous flooding, and the problem is
getting worse.
Indonesia’s predictable, but
hazardous, annual floods inundate the city every rainy season from December to
February, engulfing tens of kilometers of residential city areas with up to
four meters of sewage-infused floodwater for days, according to the UN Office
for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Indonesia.
“We feel stressed when we have to
keep evacuating our houses. Our children cannot go to school, and we do not
work during this time,” said Saripudin, 40, a resident of North Kedoya, a
riverside community of 7,000 that sits next to the Palanggrahan River.
Between December and February each
year, North Kedoyan residents are accustomed to living with bechek, the
Indonesian word for “puddles” – pools of water ranging from 30 cm to one meter
of water inside their homes. But since 2012, the flood water levels in Jakarta
have been increasing, according to community members and the Palang Merah Indonesia (PMI), the local Red
Cross. In January 2014 alone, some neighborhoods were evacuated nine times
to escape water between two to four meters inside their homes. Despite recent
attempts by the government to encourage residents to relocate to less
flood-prone land, the majority prefer to stay and continue to cope with floods.
“The issue is not why do they live
there, but how to save them in times of flooding,” said Ahmad Hussein, the
spokesperson for the International Federation of the
Red Cross (IFRC) in Indonesia.
While communities have developed
creative coping mechanisms to deal with incoming deluges, such as keeping
chickens and other valuables on the heightened railroad tracks running parallel
to the village, humanitarians and hydrological experts point to the perennial
health concerns and safety hazards of living in flood plains beside rivers. But
with the majority poor of Jakarta dwelling beside rivers and working in
informal labor, easy access to the city center is necessary for economic
survival, and the riverbanks have become their home.
Health Hazards
Flood water mixing with garbage
piles in the cramped residential areas can spur disease, including skin
infections and diarrhea, especially in children under the age of 5, according
to the IFRC.
“Leptospirosis from rats also
spreads more easily with floods as the bacteria goes into the water,” said
Husein, warning of outbreaks of the fatal animal-borne disease that can result
in high fever, internal bleeding and organ failure.
While PMI has trained the community
in cleaning the houses after the floods recede using antibacterial sprays,
sanitation – an ongoing problem in Jakarta’s poorer areas – continues to
challenge the flood-prone households, according to Husein.
“The water is black when the floods
come in,” said Saripudin, explaining that the dirty liquid generally takes one
to two weeks to subside, leaving their houses stained and foul-smelling, and
added that “most of us do not even know how to swim.”
Meanwhile flood precautions, such as
keeping electrical appliances on high shelves and storing household goods, such
as roosters and bicycles, on top of the nearby railroad tracks (which are
elevated by roughly five feet), have become second nature to the north Keboyan
residents. Sofas are propped on three feet high cinder blocks to accommodate bechek.
“People are so used to the floods
that usually they refuse to leave until the water level is very high [more than
two meters inside their houses], and then they are yelling to leave,” said Bu
Marbun, a veteran PMI volunteer who has helped Keboyan residents to evacuate
onto rubber boats to ad hoc evacuation centers— made from schools and mosques—
for the past eight years.
But such adaptive measures, while
effective to protect household assets, reduce the day-to-day urgency of
much-needed structural measures to address the root causes of the water surges,
such as building channels for water flow and re-designing peoples’ homes to
allow them to continue to live there while reducing risks to their health and
homes.
“This is particularly challenging in
mega-cities like Jakarta because of the numbers of people involved. The
challenge is how to create housing designs that allow for water flow, and to do
it well. It takes a long term high level of investment,” said Marcus
Moench, the president of the Institute of Social and Environmental Transition
(ISET-International), a global research institution providing
technical advice on climate change adaptation to Indonesia and other Asian
countries with high rates of urban growth, such as India and Vietnam.
Raised embankments, such as the
heightened train tracks five feet above ground level, trap dirty water in the
neighborhood, while garbage blocks existing drainage canals. “Urban garbage is
as much a cause of flooding as rainfall and floods themselves,” said Moench.
A Problem of Drainage
While regular flooding is
partly due to northern Jakarta’s low lying areas, which sit below sea level,
the rapid pace of urbanization and overcrowding provoke flood waters to
stagnate and rise instead of receding.
“It is a central dilemma in urban
areas. If you want space for floods to come in, you need open space that can be
inundated quickly,” said Moench.
Ideally wetlands with floodways
would permit the water to stream out— but this is impossible with the dense
housing structures that clutter North Keboya, according to ISET-International
and OCHA.
The building structures and paved
ground do not allow water to be absorbed, while garbage from communities clogs
the rivers and drainage canals. To accommodate the annual three-month rainy
season, peoples’ houses to either be redesigned, or they need to move, say
hydrological experts.
“There is a tension trade off
between what is best to mitigate flooding hydrologically speaking, and what is
best for the communities,” said Moench, stressing that often times the
communities have few other affordable options for places to live.
“It is a very sensitive part of
urban development,” said Titi Moektijasih, a humanitarian affairs analyst
with OCHA.
Reluctant to Relocate
Since 2013, municipal authorities
have been encouraging households in flood-prone areas, such as North Kedoya, to
relocate to low-cost government housing further inland. Roughly one hundred
people from the northern and western areas of the city have already departed
their swampy homes, but the majority staunchly refuse.
“This is our home. If we move from
here, we will have to pay rent somewhere. We cannot afford it so we will make
do how to live with floods,” said Saripudin, whose family has lived in Keboya
for generations.
Most North Keboyans works in
low-skilled and informal labor such as selling cooked meatballs from portable
street food stalls, or as motorbike taxi drivers and vegetable vendors in any
of the city’s countless wet markets.
“There are strong livelihood reasons
why people continue to settle and live in these places,” said Moench.
Low income communities tend to live
in marginal areas, such as along riverbanks, because land is available and
cheap (or free) while still central – with easy access to areas of employment,
such as markets. “They wouldn’t have such easy access to employment in a more
outlying, less exposed spot,” added Moench.
“The majority of the poor in Jakarta
live along the river,” said Knarik Kampala, the deputy director of OCHA based
in Jakarta, explaining that ongoing measures to improve drainage as well as
initiatives to improve garbage management and sanitation in the communities
would help. “They are the first to be affected by heavy rains, and the slums
can be dangerous when it floods,” she stressed.
“They deal with it because they have
to. No one likes sewage in their house,” said Moench.
Dana Maclean is a journalist
covering Southeast Asia. The Diplomat
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