Dutch settlers built modern Jakarta where the Ciliwung River meets Jakarta Bay which becomes the Java Sea. They came from a low-lying country and therefore built a network of familiar canals to lead the monsoon waters away. Their settlement grew to a city of an astonishing thirty million people. However, it is a city riddled with corruption. Population density is 37,000 per square mile and the city floods frequently. Will Jakarta be the first city destroyed by melting arctic ice?
Will Jakarta Disappear Some Day?
This outcome could become a reality by the end of the century unless city dwellers commute between skyscrapers in boats. This is because the land is sinking by up to two inches per year at the same time that ocean levels are rising and the climate is becoming harsher. Locals are wondering, will Jakarta be flooded by a tsunami?
Freakish storms turn Jakarta’s streets into rivers with increasing intensity. The sea walls are growing taller. Beyond them, the ocean is tearing apart abandoned homes. Half of the population is without municipal water because it is so expensive. They dig illegal wells just to survive and the aquifer is vanishing. Jakarta has covered 97% of land with asphalt and concrete so the rainwater no longer filters through.
Urgent Attention Essential to Save Jakarta
As the aquifer shrinks, the earth above it subsides. The city needs to replace the wells with piped potable water, refill the aquifer, and retrofit modern sewage. It also needs to decide what to do with the displaced as they are the poorest of the poor. Does the world care?
Meanwhile construction is sky rocketing, New York Times reports. New businesses open up as more foreigners arrive, in response to millions fleeing the lowlands of Sumatra and Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo. Coal mines and tobacco farms have overrun their traditional farmlands.
Are we still opening coalmines and selling tobacco? Are we hell-bent on more cancers and more global warming? The Jakarta disaster is down to human selfishness and greed. Will Jakarta be around in a hundred years’ time? We fear not, unless something fundamental changes.
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Preview Image: 2013 Jakarta Flood
