The changing climate threatens to deluge the region's big cities if urgent mitigation measures are not taken seriously
Zakir Hussain Straits Times 18 Mar 13;
WHEN heavy floods hit Jakarta in January, sections of the city were crippled for days.
A levee close to the centre of the city broke, effectively turning the main thoroughfare into a river for 24 hours. A large dam in the north overflowed, leaving some streets under at least 2m of water for a week.
There were fears that the deluge could become as severe as that in Bangkok in 2011 and Manila last year, when thousands of people were displaced for weeks.
Politicians rushed out ambitious plans to overhaul and improve infrastructure, as disaster officials carried out cloud-seeding, so that rain would fall into the sea instead of on Jakarta.
Today, some of these flood mitigation plans are embroiled in bureaucratic wrangling once more.
But the key concern has not changed: A great deal of work needs to be done if 500-year-old Jakarta is to survive as a liveable city for another 50 years.
A disregard for planning regulations, large populations, politics and poverty remain key challenges for the authorities in Jakarta and other major cities which must put in place measures to fix them.
Record heavy rainfall was, of course, the main trigger for the severe flooding. But haphazard development over the past decade was also to blame - and reining it in is a key part of the solution.
The Jakarta city authorities, under pressure from developers to issue building permits for glitzy new shopping malls and apartment complexes for a rapidly expanding middle class, had disregarded zoning plans and environmental considerations.
It is not always easy for officials to stand their ground against business interests with lots of money, even if the latter have only short-term gains in mind. But there are compelling reasons to resist these pressures.
Risks from climate change
A RECENT report by the Economy and Environment Programme for South-east Asia, funded by Canada's International Development Research Centre, identified Jakarta as the Asean city most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
This year, risk consultancy Maplecroft rated five major Asean commercial capitals among the top cities in the world facing the greatest risk from severe flooding and other fallout from more intense storms - Manila, Bangkok, Yangon, Jakarta and Ho Chi Minh City.
As Maplecroft's Climate Change and Environmental Risk Atlas noted: "These risks have heightened relevance given the substantial forecast population increase and economic growth of these cities."
All five are sorely unprepared for rising sea levels and more intense rainfall projected to be the new normal in the years to come.
Large numbers of people are at risk: Greater Jakarta is home to 30 million people and growing, Metro Manila to more than 20 million, and Bangkok to 10 million. Ho Chi Minh City and Yangon, both in delta regions, have some eight million and five million people respectively.
Ho Chi Minh City academics have proposed deepening the sewers and increasing their capacity to tackle a surge of rainwater.
The local authorities, which are just starting to take heed of the severity of the problems ahead, are pledging infrastructure projects to prepare not for the worst-case scenario, but for what now looks like an eventuality of rising sea levels slowly swallowing up part of their cities.
Manila's two-decade-old sea wall was damaged during a typhoon two years ago. It has since been repaired, but the city is looking to fortify it. Plans for a similar sea wall have been mooted south of Bangkok.
Jakarta wants to build a giant sea wall along its coastline to keep out rising waters, a plan mooted by then Governor Fauzi Bowo in last year's gubernatorial election, which he lost. His successor Joko Widodo says he wants to bring forward the project's construction.
Corruption and red tape
BUT there has been little by way of concrete plans, and Mr Widodo's initial proposals to reclaim land for the project have been criticised by central government ministers over feasibility issues.
Getting the project off the ground this year would, of course, divert resources away from possible pork-barrel projects in Indonesia's general election next year. Sadly, few politicians have their eye on the longer term.
In Manila, the authorities released funds this month to upgrade water pumping stations, widen and deepen rivers, and buy flood control equipment, among other things.
But local media reports note that reclamation and infrastructure projects have also attracted considerable opposition and concern that flooding will be worsened rather than alleviated.
A recent study by two Philippine academics says such projects are also vulnerable to corruption. They also neglect the fact that groundwater extraction is a key contributor.
"Money would be better spent on preventing the subsidence by reducing groundwater pumping and moderating population growth and land use, but these approaches are politically and psychologically unacceptable," it said.
As for Bangkok, criticisms about flood plans being inadequate and favouring the better-off have continued to surface. A March 7 editorial in The Nation newspaper noted: "Thailand's plans for flood prevention and coping with natural disasters are not up to scratch; much more needs to be done by all parties concerned."
Megacity inequities
THE trouble with all natural disasters, though, is that while they affect and inconvenience rich and poor equally, the poor take a longer time to get back on their feet.
Jakarta's rampant overdevelopment has seen disadvantaged residents living in the shadow of glitzy new buildings, often on lower ground and next to filthy and choked up canals and rivers prone to flooding.
Making things worse, poor water supply forces many of these residents to tap the groundwater. As a result, the city is sinking by several centimetres every year due to subsidence.
The picture is somewhat similar in the other megacities.
While economic growth and a consumer boom have made these urban areas more dynamic, living conditions often fail to keep up, in particular for poorer residents.
Observers note that several pockets of Jakarta that flood annually draw little notice, because most of their residents are poor. A key effect of disasters like floods, United Nations Development Programme assistant administrator Jordan Ryan told a recent conference in Jakarta, "is the compounding of poverty and inequality".
"This comes as the reality of climate change increases both the frequency and scale of natural disasters," he said.
River dredging projects in Jakarta, for instance, will help these poorer residents stay put for some time yet while the city develops more low-cost housing for them.
But the politics of inequality is also rearing its head in development plans: Some residents are concerned that talk of a giant sea wall will see more high-rise waterfront housing for the rich built on reclaimed land instead.
Better prepared, better future
FEW are optimistic that cities like Jakarta and its Asean counterparts will be fully prepared for worse weather occurrences in the years ahead, even though mitigation work is now seen as critical if they are to stay liveable.
Yet, as World Bank disaster risk management official Abhas Jha and his team noted in a 2012 guide on urban flood risk management, it is impossible to entirely eliminate the risk of flooding. But all parties can be better prepared to limit the damage caused.
There is room for officials to pitch these projects better: Flood-prevention measures, for one thing, should also clean up poorly planned sections of megacities and improve both waste and water management.
And projects like sea walls and land reclamation offer opportunities to resettle residents into mass housing for the lower-income.
It would be ironic if years from now, cities like Jakarta - whose growth was aided by sea-borne trade - were to become less liveable as a result of excess rainwater.
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