JAKARTA, April 15, 2008 --- Fact: 40 percent of the Indonesian capital city of Jakarta is between one to one and a half meters below sea-level. Add to that an ever-growing population, densely-populated residential areas, rapid infrastructural development, a diminishing number of green areas and catchments, plus six months of near-constant rain --- and you have a recipe for flood disasters which literally paralyze the city.

The severity of floods in the capital has become a national issue given the huge financial losses it incurs and the impact it has on communities in the Greater Jakarta area. The provincial government of DKI Jakarta (Pemda DKI) is embarking on an extensive flood management initiative with the support of the World Bank, in which 13 rivers will be dredged during the first phase of the project’s implementation.

The details of the World Bank’s support to Pemda DKI were shared in a recent seminar held at the University of Indonesia, on the social and ecological impacts of developing a “megapolitan” – a sprawling multi-city complex with strategic national value, which Jakarta aspires to become. Speaking before an audience of students, faculty members, civil servants and civil society organizations, Risyana Sukarma – a senior infrastructure expert with World Bank Indonesia – revealed the action plans which Pemda DKI have approved. These plans were designed by fellow infrastructure specialist Hongjoo Hahm of World Bank Indonesia, and flood management expert Janjaap Brinkman of Delft Hydraulics, an independent Dutch institute specializing in delta issues.

The river dredging is part of a short-term action plan, and goes by the Star Wars-inspired acronym of JEDI – the Jakarta Emergency Dredging Initiative. JEDI will be carried out over a three-year period using state-of-the-art equipment from the Netherlands. “It is hoped that the dredging measures could return Jakarta floods to the previous cycle of once every 25 years,” said Risyana –a one-time bureaucrat with the Department of Public Works that joined World Bank Indonesia in the early nineties. In his presentation, Risyana stressed that dredging will still leave some parts of North Jakarta prone to flooding, but overall would help reduce the flooded areas in Jakarta by up to 70 percent.

Many of the seminar participants questioned the social impact of the action plan, given the large numbers of people that live along river sides. Fellow panelist El Khobar MN Msc, a civil engineering lecturer at University of Indonesia, believes that the intensive dredging approach would lead to mass evictions. “Pemda DKI should socialize these plans from now,” said El Khobar. The lecturer also believes that more needs to be done to educate inner-city dwellers of their environmentally-hazardous behavior. “I once asked a neighbor not to toss his household garbage into a nearby river, and he was deeply offended,” said El Khobar. “My neighbor understood that tossing garbage into sewers would clog drainage, but didn’t realize that the same rules applied to rivers until I politely explained that to him.”