Stiks and
carrots
in urban
waste management in Indonesia
Jonatan A Lassa ; A Research Fellow at the Institute of Resource
Governance and Social Change (IRGSC), Kupang; Post-Doctoral Fellow of
ACCCRN, Indonesia
|
|
JAKARTA
POST, 05 Maret 2013
The Adipura Award has been used as
sticks and carrots to encourage Indonesian cities and urban regions to be
clean and green since 1986. It stopped for a few years after the fall of
Soeharto in 1998 but was rejuvenated during Megawati’s presidency in 2002.
Every year, there is an Adipura contest among metropolitan cities, big
cities, medium cities and small cities in Indonesia. Additional categories
include the best cities in urban-forest ratio, the best city markets and
the best city parks.
In the 2009 Adipura, Bandar Lampung city won in the big cities category.
The perception was, however, that the real face of the city was a lot
dirtier. Some people even noted that heaps of garbage could be found in
many places. But, yes, the officials were happy.
The situation changed when some of the local and national media broadcast
that Bandar Lampung was the dirtiest city in Indonesia in 2012.
There are some pretty good reasons why people were not happy with the
Adipura assessment in 2012. I talked to taxi drivers, garbage collectors,
officials at mayor’s office and city environmental agency and they all
seemed to agree that the city had gotten cleaner and better at managing its
waste over the last three years. They said it would have been easy to
accept if the city had been at the bottom in 2009 but it is not acceptable
in 2012. Why? People feel that there has been a wrong stick and wrong
carrot.
Rewards and punishments were not dished out at the right time and place.
Some people even suggest that there was meddling from the provincial
government because of the ceaseless political bickering between the city
and provincial administrations: The provincial government picks two out of
four Adipura assessors. Suspicion of the provincial government by city
officials may be trivial but there is an interesting fact worth mentioning
here.
The budget for the city parks and cleansing department (CPCD) for 2009 was
only US$247,000. When the new mayor of Bandar Lampung took office in 2010,
the CPCD budget dramatically increased by 700 percent to $1.8 million.
The city then increased its CPCD budget to $3.2 million and $5.5 million in
2011 and 2012 respectively. The city spent about 20 times more on keeping
itself clean in 2012 than it did in 2009.
There is obviously a something going on in Bandar Lampung. There is clearly
excellent waste management in the city. One can easily see trash and
garbage being removed from streets and roads day and night. I could almost
say that the CPCD work 24/7 to clean the city. The question is this: Can
this investment in waste management be sustained through future regime
changes?
When challenged, a few city officials believed the Adipura assessor
downgraded the city based on the city’s coastal areas.
Someone at the environmental department argued that almost all coasts in
cities in Indonesia are in poor condition. Therefore, apple-to-apple
comparison, one cannot use coastal conditions to downgrade any particular
city.
However, there is a deeper problem here. The coastal littorals of the city
were hit by the Krakatau tsunami in 1883 and thousands of people were
killed. The area continues to be occupied by vulnerable groups today. In
addition, it is true that over the last 30 years, the city was unable to
properly clean up its trash.
The coastline of Bandar Lampung has expanded into the sea. Local
communities use garbage as a raw material to landfill the coast. As a
result, the coast has advanced 10 to 100 meters into the sea.
This form of community-based coastal reclamation is complemented by
uncontrolled reclamation by the private sectors. The “new” settlements
resulting from this urban malpractice cannot be fully seen as informal
because the government has legally extended electricity and water services
to these areas and collects land and housing taxes from the areas too.
In October 2012, with help from Lampung University students, I interviewed
14 men and women in seven villages who have been living on the coastline of
the city for 30 years or more. What we found is that there are still
challenges. There is a big gap in the perception of the communities on the
coasts and the local government concerning the definition of garbage.
One man’s trash is another man’s raw material. Informal reclamation using
waste is an effort to adapt to urban pressure. This activity continues
today despite significant reforms by the city government over the last
three years.
Future vulnerability toward coastal disasters and climatic extremes is
being laid down today. When extreme weather or new tsunamis are unleashed
in the future, these coastal communities will
become communal graveyards.
There is a polycentric waste management system in Bandar Lampung. Different
institutions deal with different sources of trash.
Waste on the coastline and near the shore solid is the responsibility of
the marine and fisheries department. Refuse at urban markets is looked
after by the market managers. The parks and cleansing department deals with
the waste in the streets, canals and selected public spaces.
They are all part of the team that developed the master plan for solid
waste management in 2011, supported by Asian Cities Climate Change
Resilience Network (ACCCRN). Funds for the departments have been increased
too.
Bandar Lampung is moving on the right track, towards an adaptive and
resilient city. With the emergence of innovative leaders like Joko Widodo
in Jakarta and Herman HN in Bandar Lampung, we can hope for better urban
development in Indonesia in the near future. ●
|
|
Stiks? Carrots? Never knew about the uses of these two in waste management but hell, anything that helps the environment is better than nothing.
BalasHapus