Rabu, 10 April 2013

Govt, business should join hands to combat Jakarta flood woes


Govt, business should join hands
to combat Jakarta flood woes
Jim Jarvie, Ratri Sutarto and Intan Asmara ;  The writers work for international development organization Mercy Corps, A Partner of the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN)
JAKARTA POST, 06 April 2013
  

Jakarta’s latest flood struck in January 2013. Across the capital, 15,000 people were displaced. Transportation, power and other essential services were disrupted. Damage to infrastructure and property was substantial.

Normally it is the poor that is hit the hardest, but this time the rich felt it too. This flood brought this fully into focus, as it was the first to inundate and close the city’s Central Business District. 

Factory assets were also destroyed, impacting profits and livelihoods; transportation disruptions prevented workers from getting to work and products to market. 

Surely now there is a need to find common ground between the government and businesses to make long-term plans concerning mutual growth and prosperity, investing in protecting against weather-related disasters that will likely worsen in frequency and severity as climate impacts accrue.

Forward-thinking businesses will have the ability to influence the government to invest in the development of climate resilience, finding mutual ground support of necessary protective measures from which both rich and poor will benefit.

The need is obvious and the window of opportunity to act is now.

Flooding in the capital is becoming more frequent and extreme. There are multiple causes, including deforestation in the Puncak hills feeding the rivers flowing through the city, farmland conversion to peri-urban and urban residential and commercial use and land subsidence in the city of several centimeters a year. 

Climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events and in addition will bring the added challenge of rising sea levels.

With each flood, the economic and social costs are growing. In social terms, the poor feel the impacts disproportionately. Maps of Jakarta’s contours show that the more low-lying and flood-prone areas are where low-income housing and slums are more likely to be located. 

Livelihoods also suffered badly. Accurate figures for the number of poor affected (58 percent of Jakarta’s workforce is made up of manual laborers) is difficult to calculate given a lack of information on the informal labor sector, including micro and small enterprises run by street vendors and home-based industry. 

What is known is that among the 500,000 street vendors in Jakarta and over 100,000 beneficiaries of micro enterprise financing facilities from the Koperasi Jasa Keuangan cooperative, few have insurance. If flooding destroys their assets, their economic plight and vulnerability become increasingly serious.

As flood frequency and severity increase, the better off are likely to also become more vulnerable. If their assets are destroyed, they will be at risk of entering into poverty themselves.

Impacts on business and the economy affect rich and poor alike. The Finance Ministry estimated it would boost the inflation rate by around 1 percent in January alone. The Association of General Insurance Companies estimated its members would have to pay claims of Rp 3 trillion (US$309 million). This is 50 percent higher than the Rp 2.1 trillion in flood-related claims in 2007, which was in turn greater than the Rp 1.5 trillion paid out after the 2002 flood.

The high cost of relief and recovery will adversely impact investment in infrastructure and other development activities. 

In addition, to receive protection from flood damage, clients need to purchase additional insurance coverage as in the commercial sector; most properties must buy all-risk insurance — floods included — as required by banks.

Mitigating flooding in Jakarta requires comprehensive measures to avoid entirely predictable impacts. A focus is need on long-term investment in safe and inclusive flood defenses, yet investment rarely goes beyond disaster response after flooding occurs.

Six days after the flood, the Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister launched a “Jakarta Coastal Defense Strategy” to alleviate flooding in Jakarta. 

The strategy mainly focuses on structural mitigation financed by the central government, provincial governments and potential investors. It remains to be seen whether these efforts will be implemented and coordinated with other relevant agencies’ responsibilities. 

These include the Environmental Management Agency, the Sanitation Agency and the Public Housing Agency. Together they are responsible for the enforcement of spatial planning, groundwater use restrictions, optimizing reservoirs, optimizing riverbanks, redevelopment of settlements, waste management for settlement along riverbanks and watershed conservation in the short, medium and long term. Criticism, however, has been frequent over poor coordination and implementation.

Two areas of concern are raised going forward. The first concerns coordination of complex, multiagency responses among institutions. The second concern is over whom and what has priority in flood protection. 

There is a danger that “flood protection” will be used to expunge untenured communities that have been the focus of land clearances in the past. For example, to facilitate the drainage of the 13 rivers running through Jakarta, and dredging all dams and canals, the Jakarta government proposed relocating communities from flood-prone areas and squatters from the Ciliwung, Pesanggrahan, Angke and Sunter riverbanks and embankments to affordable apartments. 

Housing, though, is in short supply; out of the 3,500 families being moved, there is a shortfall of 400.

It is clear that rich and poor alike now have a recognized common interest in Jakarta’s systems functioning, being resilient to challenges including the predictable impacts of flooding. 

As learned from our lessons elsewhere in building Urban Climate Change Resilience in Indonesia, it is clear that governance issues, and not technical capacity gaps, are the biggest obstacles to developing urban resilience in Jakarta. 

There is a clear need for a deepening of shared interest and learning between the government, the private sector and civil society representatives. 

Failure to act could mean paralysis of urban systems in Jakarta when floods hit again and ensue in hardship for all. 

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