Concerns grow about damage to international investment climate
Just a week after Jakarta
underwent the worst flooding in years, more may be on the way. A University of
Indonesia hydrologist, Firdaus Ali, said that starting tomorrow, a full moon
resulting in rising tides on the beaches of north Jakarta could combine with
rain make it almost certain that "parts of Jakarta will drown."
The current round of floods has
once again brought home to investors just how difficult the situation is in
Jakarta. A World Bank assessment of the situation by Jan T.L. Yap, the Lead
Capacity Building Advisor for the bank's Jakarta office, said that "the
city's efforts to attract investment and project an image of leadership
nationally and internationally were severely damaged."
The bursting of a 30-meter
section of a recently repaired canal dike, thus exposing one of the city's wealthiest
neighborhood to massive and deadly flooding, generated the widespread feeling
that the repair itself had been flawed - if not a result of outright
corruption.
Whether anything will be proven -
or even investigated - is not the ultimate point, of course. It is the
appearance that the city - and indeed much of the country - cannot get its act
together on basic infrastructure that undermines the bullish feeling Indonesia
has generated among investors, businesspeople and government officials in the last
few years.
Asked how he felt about the
investment climate, the head of the country's Investment Coordinating Board,
Chatib Basri, said time may be running out if changes are not forthcoming. Our
success "is a combination of good policy and good luck," he told the
American Chamber of Commerce-Indonesia Web site last week.. "We have to
use this momentum because when the other parts of the world recover and
Indonesia hasn't reformed itself, investors will rethink doing business in
Indonesia."
The government run-Antara news
agency quoted Industry Minister M.S. Hidayat as saying the floods might deter
foreign investors if steps to mitigate their impact are not taken.
The floods also appear to be
damaging the political prospects of the newly elected governor, Joko Widodo,
known universally as Jokowi, a rising and popular political star who has only
been in office fewer than 100 days, with political scientists and analysts
demanding more action.
"We can't expect him to
solve chronic issues immediately, but by now we would like to see plans laid
out," Iberamsjah of the University of Indonesia told The Straits Times of
Singapore. "There has to be some clear direction and not reaction to
things."
Former Indonesian vice-president
Jusuf Kalla agreed. "He shows enthusiasm but we need to see some concrete
plans from him," he said.
No matter how energetic Jokowi
is, however, solving Jakarta's flooding problems is going to take years. An
estimated 40 percent of the city lies below sea level, protected by dykes. The
northern part of the city lies only two meters above sea level. Thirteen rivers
through the city to empty into the sea, most of them silted up and filled with
masses of garbage. The Ciliwung has been called the most polluted river on the
planet. Hundreds of thousands of people have squatted on the river banks,
further constricting their flow. Settlements have been built on water catchment
areas in West Java.
Indonesia's Meteorology,
Climatology and Geophysics Agency has forecast torrential downpours from tomorrow
through Tuesday, mainly in the northern and western parts of Jakarta and in the
southern part of the city of Bogor.
The heavy rains that began on
Jan. 15 combined with clogged waterways to inundate vast sections of the city
including the presidential palace, producing a picture of President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono and two aides with his pants rolled above his knees. The
bursting of the dike caused flooding through the center of town and paralyzing
it. The yawning gap in the city's flood defenses burst its northern bank within
minutes of water being released from a floodgate upstream, while the south side
held firm.
Both sides had been reinforced
recently, leading to obvious speculation on whether the specifications had been
followed. Residents panicked at the sight of swimming monitor lizards, at first
thought to be crocodiles. Twenty people drowned.
Using a 2002 flood damage
assessment of US$1.1 billion in public and private damage as a yardstick, Yap's
World Bank report indicated that economic losses "are probably much higher
and include the fact that all businesses lost working time and revenue,
children could not attend school, and diseases and a poorly functioning
communication cut productivity."
Some 14,000 people remain in
flood shelters and apparently are refusing to leave, expecting the waters to
rise again tomorrow despite a vow by a spokesman for Yudhoyono that while
flooding could occur, Jakarta won't drown. The city's education department is
sending teachers out to the centers to take care of children's education,
Jokowi immediately waded out to inspect locations across the city, announcing
that the city would drill 100,000 infiltration wells in an effort to allow
water to seep into the underground aquifer. The government also intends to
build a 1.5km underground water canal connecting the Ciliwung River with the a
flood canal in the eastern part of the city at the cost of US$73 million.
Work on a $189 million World
Bank-funded project to dredge and rehabilitate floodways, canals and retention
basins is expected to start in March, with dredging of 67 km of key channel
systems and four retention basins , as well as repairing 42km of embankments,
the report said.
Eng said about 57 residential
areas in Jakarta - inhabited by 1.8 million people living near project sites -
will experience less flooding after the project's completion.
Jakarta isn't alone in distress
from floods. In February 2012 the World Bank issued a 638-page report titled
Cities and Flooding: a Guide to Integrated Urban Flood Risk Management for the
21st Century by Abhas K. Jha, Robin Bloch and Jessica Lamond, describing the
problem as a "global phenomenon which causes widespread devastation,
economic damage and loss of human lives."
In the past 20 years in
particular, the number of reported flood events has been increasing
significantly, with 178 million people affected by floods in 2010. The total
losses in exceptional years such as 1998 and 2010 exceeded $40 billion, the
authors write.
The problem is that as Asia was
settled - along with the rest of the world, of course - the settlers selected
the mouths of rivers for the locations of their principal cities because of the
ease of water transport. As climate has changed and as increased urbanization
has packed these areas with people, disastrous floods are becoming a way of
life.
"Urbanization, as the
defining feature of the world's demographic growth, is implicated in and
compounds flood risk," the authors write. "In 2008, for the first
time in human history, half of the world's population lived in urban areas,
with two-thirds of this in low-income and middle-income nations."
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