Flooding takes toll on Jakarta’s poor
RECENT flooding in Greater Jakarta has shown the harrowing impacts of extreme weather caused by the climate crisis, and the ones who suffer most are people in the low-income bracket, observers say.
“Take a look at the victims of disasters around the world. Most of them are the poor, people who are politically powerless. That is why [flood risks are] ignored.
“The question is, who should fight for this?” asked Bogor Agricultural University forest policy professor Hariadi Kartodihardjo in a recent panel discussion, when explaining numerous infrastructure failures that led to the ecological crisis in the capital.
The head campaigner for energy and urban issues of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), Dwi Sawung, told the Jakarta Post that underprivileged communities were particularly vulnerable to extreme weather because they resided near riverbanks or in high-density settlements.
One of the climate challenges for those communities in a city like Jakarta, Dwi added, would be the difficulty of accessing a decent life.
“Like it or not, they would have to move, but the problem is they have nowhere to go. Meanwhile, middle and upper-class residents can simply relocate,” he said.
Esrom Hamonangan Panjaitan of the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) said Article 28 of the Constitution guaranteed the right to live and the right to a healthy environment. Those rights are infringed upon during climateinduced disasters.
Sustainable land use manager of the World Resources Institute ( WRI) Indonesia Adi Pradana said aside from the need to pursue mitigation efforts, the city would have to invest in means of adaptation as well.
“The more we do to intervene and reduce carbon emissions, the more we can reduce the impacts, but what also needs to be done is an adaptation,” Adi told the Post, referring to mitigation efforts, increasing green open spaces, reducing excessive extraction of groundwater and building sea dykes as ways of adapting.
WRI Indonesia energy and land use program research assistant Anindita Nur Annisa elaborated how even adaptation to climate-related changes was affected by a person’s socioeconomic background.
She said, for example, that middle to upper-class people could afford the appropriate health care to treat respiratory problems caused by air pollution, but people from lower-income communities could have their life expectancy shortened by 2.3 years because they are unable to access treatment.
A study on sustainable urban development stated that “the most ef fective form of adaptation is mitigation – namely, curbing greenhouse gas emissions”.
In 2018, Jakarta’s greenhouse gas emissions amounted to 57.55 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), a standard unit for measuring carbon footprints.
About 49 per cent of the emissions came from indirect electrification in industries, 32.67 per cent came from transportation and households, 13.86 per cent came from power plants and 3.96 per cent came from waste, based on a report by the Jakarta Environment Agency.
According to Gubernatorial Regulation No 131/2012 on greenhouse gas reduction, Jakarta plans to reduce emissions by 30 per cent by 2030. The city’s commitment is laid out in an action plan document issued with the gubernatorial regulation.
In 2017, the city reduced emissions by 7.81 million tonnes of CO2, equal to 22.16 per cent of the 2030 target, while a year later the city managed to slash 9.52 million tonnes of CO2 or 27.2 per cent of the target.
The head of environment and sanitation management of the Jakarta Environment Agency, Erni Pelita Fitratunnisa, told the Post that in 2019, the emissions reduction target was 36 per cent, while this year it aimed for 41 per cent.
There had been roadblocks in executing the proposed action plan, she explained, but so far they had been overcome through the inclusion of climate disaster mitigation and adaptation efforts in one of the regional strategic programs and through the issuance of Gubernatorial Instruction No. 66/2019 on air quality control.
The administration is currently pushing to increase public participation to help achieve emissions reduction targets through programs such as Kampung Iklim (Climate Kampung) and Ikhtiar Jakarta ( Jakarta Endeavor).
Retno Wihanesta, a research analyst and urban transportation planner at WRI Indonesia, told the Post that she was involved in a multi-site research study that utilised Urban Community Resilience Assessment to create a participatory planning process against climate-related risks.
The report showed how involving the urban poor in climate-resilient planning was key to ensuring these strategies were implemented and reached all levels of a city.