This was printed in the Jakarta Post. - Quite Fitting!
April 22 was Earth Day. The slogan for the event is Save Planet Earth. But do we need to save Planet Earth? It has gone through many drastic upheavals. About 60 to 70 million years ago it was hit by a large meteor which annihilated almost all life. But the planet persisted and life bounced back. Hence, it is not the safety of Planet Earth that we have to worry about, but the life of human beings on Earth. The aim of Earth Day is to improve the quality of life of humans, who require a suitable biophysical and sociocultural environment.
Let us look at Jakarta as an example. Jakarta has grown to become a strong economic pole for the country and a modern megacity. A noteworthy achievement indeed. But this achievement is not without costs. It requires an increasing use of resources. At the same time increasing amounts of waste are being released into the environment. Both have dire biogeophysical and social consequences.
Behind all the glitter Jakarta also provides a sharp contrast between the rich and the poor. Sitting adjacent to the modern buildings are the shantytowns built of cardboard and other scavenged materials, with plastic being used for roofing. Uncollected garbage lies scattered around.
In Botabek (outskirts of Jakarta) many fertile and well irrigated rice fields have been converted into industrial and residential estates. Hundreds of millions of dollars in investment for Jatiluhur Dam and the accompanying irrigation canals have been wasted. Small farmers are being dispossessed and driven off their land, worsening the problem of poverty.
Surface water and aquifers are seriously polluted with domestic and industrial waste, and fish and other marine foods from Jakarta Bay contain metals and other contaminants exceeding the threshold limit for safe consumption. The World Bank has estimated the total health cost of water pollution amounts to about US$300 million per year.
Aquifers are being depleted, causing seawater intrusion and land subsidence. Seawater intrusion pollutes the aquifers. Jakarta's geographical location makes it prone to flooding. This is being exacerbated by land subsidence, the development of industrial and residential estates in upland areas and the conversion of more and more land surfaces to roads, parking lots and buildings in Jakarta. This increases the runoff of rainwater, soil erosion, which causes heavy sedimentation of the rivers, the clogging of the rivers by solid wastes and water hyacinth whose growth is being stimulated by the eutrophication of the river waters, and the narrowing of their channels due to the illegal squatters who settle on the river banks, along with global warming which has caused a rise in sea levels. In 2002 Jakarta experienced a disastrous flood.
Public transportation in Greater Jakarta (Jabotabek) is poor. Buses and trains are overcrowded, uncomfortable, unreliable and unsafe. Hence, about 750,000 motor vehicles are used to commute daily to Jakarta by about four million people, along with many more cars that are primarily private ones. It is a very inefficient way of transportation. This inefficiency is made worse by frequent traffic congestion. The economic losses due to these inefficiencies have been estimated at about Rp 14.8 billion/day in Jakarta and Rp 47 billion/day in the Jabotabek region. A further consequence is high air pollution. The World Bank estimates the economic loss due to air pollution is $220 million/year.
At the national level the centralization of both political and economic power in Jakarta is resented and has created jealousies. It strengthens anti-Java sentiment, which fuels the separatist movements in some provinces. It threatens the unity of Indonesia.
Clearly, Jakarta is on a course of unsustainable growth. Should Jakarta follow the business-as-usual scenario, very serious sociocultural and biophysical environmental degradation would follow, with dire consequences. There is urgent need to seek alternative courses, which would lead Jakarta and the whole country to a sustainable route of development.
Since the primary drive of the deterioration is the exponential growth of its economy, which in turn spurs an exponential population growth, resource consumption and waste emissions, a planned and rational policy has to be formulated to build a negative feedback loop to slow down economic growth. In the U.S., for example, the capital, which is also the center of government and politics, is Washington, D.C., but the center of business is New York. At the state level the capital of New York state is not New York, but Albany.
Hence, it is proposed to create instruments of incentives and disincentives for decentralizing the business of Jakarta by stimulating the development of business centers in the provinces, e.g. at Sabang and Medan in the west, Surabaya and Balikpapan in the center, Manado in the north, and Makassar and Biak in the east, but keeping Jakarta as the capital city.
This would distribute economic development more equitably to the outer islands. The strength of the magnetic pull of Jakarta would be weakened. People would migrate out of Jakarta to the outer islands to seek new opportunities. Instead of a net immigration Jakarta would experience a net emigration. Irrational and inefficient resource use would be dampened, which would lower air and water pollution, depletion of the aquifers, rate of land subsidence and seawater intrusion.
The city should be redesigned from a horizontal growth to a vertical one with multistoried apartment buildings for the upper, middle and lower classes. The gap between the rich and the poor would become less visible, which in turn would reduce social jealousy. The space that would become free could be allocated to parks, city forests and urban agriculture. This would reduce the intensity of the city heat island, which would reduce the need for air conditioning. The vertical growth would reduce the distances of commutes and travel time, thereby saving human energy, which in turn would increase the productivity of human resources. The development of a public transportation system would be made easier. Fuel energy would be saved.
Since Indonesia is an archipelagic country, marine transportation should be encouraged. More traffic would go through the sea lanes, which are natural highways. Traffic congestion on the turnpikes and highways would be eased. With the development of marine transportation the seas would not be seen as barrier separating Indonesia's 17,000 plus islands from each other, but would be perceived as natural bridges uniting the islands into one whole country. Marine-based industries would reduce the population pressure on land, particularly on Java, thereby reducing land degradation.
The inequitable economic growth between Jakarta and the outer islands would be reduced, if not eliminated, which would weaken separatist movements. Thus the unity of Indonesia would be better ensured. Since air and water pollution and the rates of depletion of aquifers, land subsidence and seawater intrusion would be reduced, the physical collapse of Jakarta would be prevented.
Admittedly, the change would be painful and it would be resisted by many economists, politicians and the established class who are benefiting from the high economic growth rate of Jakarta. But the plight of Jakarta has to be addressed. This is not a pessimistic view, but a realistic one.
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