Separated by a road and a viscous finger of black, garbage-choked water, the stilt-house slum of Muara Baru and the BMW car dealership that faces it appear as if from different worlds.
But on Dec. 6, 2025, these two extremes of the Indonesian capital will have something in common as a World Bank study shows that unless action is taken, they and much of the coastal city of 12 million will be submerged by seawater.
Experts have pinpointed that date as the next peak of an 18.6-year astronomical cycle, when sea levels will rise enough to engulf much of Indonesia’s low-lying capital.
Climate change is causing sea levels to rise, but the study’s authors say that the main problem is that Jakarta is sinking under the weight of out-of-control development.
CLIMATE CHANGE?
“The major reason for this is not climate change or whatever, but just the sinking of Jakarta,” said JanJaap Brinkman, an engineer with Dutch consultancy Delft Hydraulics who worked with the World Bank on the study.
“We can exactly predict to what extent the sea will come into Jakarta,” Brinkman said.
By 2025, estimates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that sea levels will have risen by only about 5cm.
But Brinkman says Jakarta, which spans a flat plain between mountains and coast, will be between 40cm and 60cm lower than it is now.
The study shows that without better defenses, in 2025 the sea will reach the presidential palace around 5km inland as well as completely inundating Jakarta’s historic old city to the north.
Dec. 6 will be the highest point of the tidal cycle, but Brinkman warns there are likely to be plenty of floods before then.
Brinkman blames the swelling city’s over-development, which is compressing the land it is built on.
LITTLE PROGRESS
The problem has been exacerbated by factories, hotels and wealthy residents drilling deep water bores to bypass the city’s shambolic water grid, sucking out the groundwater and causing further subsidence.
The World Bank has called for a halt to deep groundwater extraction, and the city administration has raised the price of groundwater but so far there has been little progress.
“If you do nothing about the groundwater problem, parts of Jakarta will sink 5m [by 2025],” Brinkman said.
A glimpse of the future can be seen in the shacks of Muara Baru, where the city’s north meets the sea, and where flood levels late last year reached up to 2m.
The few trees that shaded this fishing slum were underwater for so long they are now dead and bare.
Muara Baru is bordered by just the kind of high-rise towers, luxury homes and megamalls that are pushing the area into the sea.
There is little water to drink in the slum itself — around 40 percent of Jakarta’s population is not connected to the water grid, said Achmad Lanti, the city’s water regulator.
PRIVATIZATION
Jakarta’s water was privatized in 1997 in the hope of improving services. But Lanti said the two foreign operators brought in to run it had failed to live up to pledges to bring water to 75 percent of the population by last year.
The shortage leaves many Jakartans with limited options: Buy the water at a marked-up price, dig for it, or steal it.
Around half of the water from Jakarta’s pipes disappears through a combination of leaks and theft, Lanti said.
“Sometimes [those who steal] are only individuals, sometimes they form a kind of organized crime, what I call a water mafia,” he said.
In Muara Baru, Sayong, a 65-year-old grandmother, and Aris, who says he is in his 70s, skid down hill holding a pushcart filled with jugs of fresh water.
Each day Sayong fills three carts full of water from a pump and sells it on to other residents. After using the water she needs and selling the rest, Sayong, who lives with two adult children and two grandchildren, said she earns a maximum of 20,000 rupiah (US$2.20) a day.
THREAT
Her tiny income means she has no option but to stay in Muara Baru, where the floods are a constant threat.
“It’s serious, I can’t sleep because I’m always afraid that there will be flooding from the sea,” she said..
The waste-filled canal that runs up to the slum’s edge shows the effect of the city’s chaotic development.
Massive buildings have taken over natural drainage sites, while human waste and rubbish clog waterways, causing freshwater floods that surge up from the ground during the rainy season.
The drainage system built by the Dutch who once ruled Jakarta is unable to cope with the city’s rapid growth, said Hongjoo Hahm, the top infrastructure specialist at the World Bank in Indonesia.
“Every year we get floods,” he said. “The scale of the floods [the Dutch] were talking about every 25 years are happening every year.”
The Chinese government on March 29 sent shock waves through the Tibetan Buddhist community by announcing the untimely death of one of its most revered spiritual figures, Hungkar Dorje Rinpoche. His sudden passing in Vietnam raised widespread suspicion and concern among his followers, who demanded an investigation. International human rights organization Human Rights Watch joined their call and urged a thorough investigation into his death, highlighting the potential involvement of the Chinese government. At just 56 years old, Rinpoche was influential not only as a spiritual leader, but also for his steadfast efforts to preserve and promote Tibetan identity and cultural
Former minister of culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) has long wielded influence through the power of words. Her articles once served as a moral compass for a society in transition. However, as her April 1 guest article in the New York Times, “The Clock Is Ticking for Taiwan,” makes all too clear, even celebrated prose can mislead when romanticism clouds political judgement. Lung crafts a narrative that is less an analysis of Taiwan’s geopolitical reality than an exercise in wistful nostalgia. As political scientists and international relations academics, we believe it is crucial to correct the misconceptions embedded in her article,
Sung Chien-liang (宋建樑), the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) efforts to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-cheng (李坤城), caused a national outrage and drew diplomatic condemnation on Tuesday after he arrived at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office dressed in a Nazi uniform. Sung performed a Nazi salute and carried a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf as he arrived to be questioned over allegations of signature forgery in the recall petition. The KMT’s response to the incident has shown a striking lack of contrition and decency. Rather than apologizing and distancing itself from Sung’s actions,
US President Trump weighed into the state of America’s semiconductor manufacturing when he declared, “They [Taiwan] stole it from us. They took it from us, and I don’t blame them. I give them credit.” At a prior White House event President Trump hosted TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家), head of the world’s largest and most advanced chip manufacturer, to announce a commitment to invest US$100 billion in America. The president then shifted his previously critical rhetoric on Taiwan and put off tariffs on its chips. Now we learn that the Trump Administration is conducting a “trade investigation” on semiconductors which