Indecision on flooding will cost Jakarta

After the 2013 flood, then Governor of Jakarta, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, launched the National Capital Integrated Coastal Development (NCICD), an ambitious and dynamic project promising to protect the city from rising sea levels and severe flooding.

Since the announcement, the costly plan has been marred by conflict and uncertainty, causing many concerned community groups to call for responses they argue may be less visually spectacular but more effective.

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“Small-scale centralized water solutions are less attractive than the NCICD, this big, grand project,” [Thanti Octavianti from University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment] said. Underground piping and closing illegal wells may go unrecognized. “It’s different with NCICD. It’s vividly visible and creates an infrastructural legacy.

“The narrative that is built is that we have a seawall, so Jakarta’s flooding will be solved. But it doesn’t solve the root cause of flooding.”

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A failure to control land subsidence could come at a great environmental and social cost to the city. Deltares modeling suggests that unless construction of the seawall begins within the next four years, parts of North Jakarta may be permanently flooded by 2030. Even with the seawall, by 2055 the bay would need to be closed for several months of the year to allow for excess water to be drained. The exact extent to which closing the bay would impact Jakarta’s environment is unclear. Some researchers have suggested a worst-case scenario in which the city’s polluted water drains into a stagnant bay.

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