Jakarta’s floods worsen, displacing thousands as extreme weather, poor planning collide

Extreme weather has exacerbated flooding in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta and its surrounding cities, adding to the metropolis’ chronic problems of poor urban planning and land subsidence, experts said. Severe flooding in the greater Jakarta region, home to 30 million people, last week resulted in the death of a young child and displaced 120,000 residents. This region includes Bekasi, Depok, and Bogor in West Java province, as well as Tangerang in Banten province. The country’s meteorological agency, BMKG, said the flood was caused by “extreme rainfall” on March 2 in Bogor. Located upstream along the Ciliwung River, the area typically directs floodwater toward Jakarta, as one of the 13 waterways that feed into the capital. Heavy showers persisted for several days, with daily rainfall recorded between 165mm and 208mm, BMKG said on March 4. Jakarta’s drainage system can only handle a maximum of 150mm of rain per day. Rainfall in Indonesia is expected to last until the end of the month. Footage across the region showed houses submerged and damaged, bridges collapsed, and vehicles overturned. In South Jakarta, a two-year-old toddler was swept away after the evacuation boat he was on capsized against the current. The disaster brought back traumatic memories for residents from the severe floods in January 2020, which saw rainfall of 377mm per day. “I initially thought the worst flood was in 2020, but now it turns out that 2025 is worse,” Muji, whose house was submerged by the flood, said on March 4, as cited by online media Kompas.com. He said this year’s floodwater rose quickly, reaching two metres in his neighbourhood – double the level of 2020. Due to heavy rains, the floods and landslides that year claimed nearly 70 lives. What caused the floods While extreme rainfall may have contributed to this year’s major floods in Jakarta, experts say the city’s poorly designed infrastructure and urban planning have worsened the problem. “Floods in Jakarta are a result of the conflict between spatial planning for water and spatial planning for humans,” Yayat Supriyatna, city planning expert with the University of Trisakti in Jakarta, said. “Jakarta does not provide ‘houses’ to accommodate water.” The annual flooding in Jakarta is expected to cause an economic loss of US$186 million, according to Yus Budiyono, associate researcher from the Centre for Limnology and Water Resources Research at the National Research and Innovation Agency. He attributed the recurring flooding to several factors, including land subsidence, changes in land use, rising sea levels and extreme weather. “The main cause of the increasing risk of flooding in the greater Jakarta region is land subsidence,” Yus told This Week in Asia, adding that the threat had risen 145 per cent, with the city sinking by 28cm annually. In Jakarta, most people and businesses, including offices in skyscrapers, rely on groundwater instead of piped water. This excessive pumping due to rapid urban growth causes the land to sink. Yus also argued that the persistent heavy rain earlier this month was not an example of “extreme” weather, as BMKG claimed. “Sudden rain with high intensity, that is an extreme event, and it is caused by climate change,” he said. “This occurred in Jakarta in January this year, as well as on January 1, 2020.” Aside from floods caused by torrential rain and overflowing rivers, tidal floods have also become a perennial threat to residents in the coastal area in northern Jakarta, as climate change causes sea levels to rise by 2 to 4 millimetres annually, according to Yus. Muhammad Aminullah, a campaigner with green group Walhi in Jakarta, argued the city’s lack of flood preparedness harmed residents more than the rainfall, which had been on “a downward trend from the 1980s”, with major floods happening every five years. “The people who have lived around the Ciliwung [river] for generations have noticed that this year there will be a big flood in Jakarta. But why does the government seem unprepared to face this flood? “We see this more as a failure of Jakarta to absorb water, due to the regional spatial planning. If we look at it, there is a large-scale change of land function in Jakarta, Bekasi, and Bogor, because the green areas in these places have been turned into commercial areas and villas.” He also emphasised that the absence of an early warning system caused “a huge loss” to residents of vulnerable neighbourhoods. Armed with a nearly 10 trillion rupiah (US$609 million) budget, newly installed Jakarta governor Pramono Anung has launched five programmes to tackle flooding within his first 100 days in office. These include river dredging, building embankments, improving drainage, maintaining infiltration wells, and other flood control projects. On Tuesday, Pramono also said he supported West Java governor Dedi Mulyadi to issue a moratorium on villa construction in Puncak, a popular tourist destination in Bogor known for its tea plantation and hilly landscape. Critics have argued that tourism development in Puncak has compromised Bogor’s ability to absorb rainwater. However, Yayat of the University of Trisakti said that for Jakarta, land procurement, which involved evicting people from riverside slums, was crucial for the success of any governmental programmes to improve and restore the natural function of the rivers. “[The previous river] normalisation programmes saw relocation of residents from the riverbanks to [affordable] flats. They could not pay the rent because their economic capabilities were limited,” Yayat said. “The government only relocated residents without economic empowerment. From 2010-24, the residents’ arrears [in rent] for their flats almost reached 95 billion rupiah.”

Jakarta’s floods worsen, displacing thousands as extreme weather, poor planning collide

Extreme weather and poor urban planning have exacerbated Jakarta’s annual flooding, displacing residents and highlighting critical infrastructure failures

nproxy.org