Ismira Lutfia Jakarta Globe 23 Nov 11;
Jakarta and other Indonesian cities located on coastal deltas face a litany of environmental and social problems as a result of being built on flood plains, experts have warned.
Jan Sopaheluwakan, a researcher with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), said delta cities historically suffer from a glut of problems, ranging from a shortage of fresh water to tidal flooding and land subsidence.
“That’s why it’s important to designate delta areas as an integrated part of a city’s wider spatial planning, and not as an independent sector,” he said at the World Delta Summit taking place this week in Jakarta.
“To address the problems in delta areas, you first have to address the problems upstream.”
Jan, who chairs the summit organizing committee, warned that these problems will only worsen over time if better urban planning, water management and environmental stewardship are not adopted in upstream areas.
He stressed the importance of responding to these issues, given that 50 percent of the world’s population and two-thirds of its large cities are located on delta or coastal plains.
Deputy Public Works Minister Hermanto Dardak explained that Jakarta was not the only Indonesian delta city threatened by flooding, land subsidence and coastal erosion. Others include Samarinda in East Kalimantan, which sits on the Mahakam River delta, and Pontianak in West Kalimantan, situated at the mouth of the Kapuas River, the country’s longest waterway.
“All the delta cities across Indonesia share the same sorts of problems, which require a special focus in terms of environmentally friendly urban planning to resolve,” Hermanto said.
Jan said protecting delta areas globally “will be key to maintaining human civilization.”
“The flooding that occurred in Thailand is an example of what can happen when a delta area, in this case the Chao Praya River, becomes degraded. This will happen in the Ciliwung River delta in Jakarta unless we take steps to prevent it.”
The first ever World Delta Summit is being held in Jakarta and follows the Delta in Times of Climate Change Conference in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in October 2010.
Organizers say the summit “is the first such world event that combines and brings science, policies and practical implementations into the discussions.”
They expect the event to “produce a common consensus on how a sustainable governance of world deltas in developed and emerging economies should be attained and continuously improved.”
