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The growing number of indoor futsal courts and fitness centers inside Jakarta’s gleaming malls may be a sign of the sprawling Indonesian capital’s booming prosperity, but in reality it reflects the alarming lack of open spaces for residents to do outdoor activities.

Nirwono Joga, an urban planning expert from Trisakti University, told the Jakarta Globe that the city was facing an impending “ecological suicide.”

He said Jakarta had only managed to preserve 9.79 percent of its land as green open spaces, far less than the 30 percent allocation as outlined in the 2007 spatial planning law, which was adapted from the recommendations of the UN’s 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The 30 percent designation had aimed for 20 percent of the green areas to be public, such as parks and green belts, while the remaining 10 percent was to be covered by individual gardens in private homes and office spaces.

The worrying trend, critics have said, would soon deprive Jakarta’s residents of the fresh air and clean water that should be available if there were enough green open spaces and water catchment areas to function as an environmental buffer.

“In the long run, there will be more citizens with respiratory diseases as there are no green areas that can filter the pollution,” Nirwono said, adding that the lack of open ground needed to absorb rain would also lead to water shortages during the dry season and exacerbate problems with flooding during the rainy season.


Reversing the Decline

Nirwono said the allocation for green space in the city had steadily decreased since the Jakarta Spatial Plan 1965-1985, which initially designated a target of 37.2 percent open green areas. That figure dropped to 25.85 percent in the 1985-1995 urban spatial plan and reached its lowest point of only 13.94 percent of the total city area in the 2000-2010 plan.

The decrease, Nirwono said, was caused by the conversion of designated open spaces to accommodate new roads and zones for housing, shopping centers and office buildings.

“That is what has been happening for the past 40 years,” he said, adding that the city administration has been inconsistent in the implementation of its own spatial planning.

Ery Basworo, head of Jakarta’s parks and cemeteries agency, admitted that it would be difficult to achieve the 30 percent allocation for green areas.

The city itself roughly covers an area of 665 square kilometers, so to be able to create just one percent of the open space required, the city administration would have to convert about 665 hectares of land. “That’s about six times the total size of Monas Park and the four streets enclosing it,” Ery said.

Nirwono said that according to the parks agency’s data, the city administration would only be able to convert a mere four hectares of land to green areas annually as part of its efforts to increase open spaces in the city.

Obstacles in the way of the city’s conversion program were, among other things, financial constraints in land acquisition and the lack of encouragement for private citizens to participate in the program.

“The city administration must be creative and smart in engaging citizens to create open areas,” Nirwono said.

He said the city must encourage park adoption schemes for big companies operating in the city. “Or they could cooperate with related institutions, such as the state-owned railway operator, PT Kereta Api, to manage the safety zone along rail lines and turn them into green areas,” he added.

Nirwono said there was a lack of “good synergy” between the institutions concerned to convert potential areas into green areas.

Resolving Issues

From the city administration’s point of view, Ery said another major problem with land acquisition was the minefield concerning the legal status of the land.

He said that while evicting squatters was one way to clear some areas for green spaces, “there is also land that is owned by individuals, so we have to acquire that first.”

Wiriatmoko, head of the city’s spatial planning agency, agreed with Ery that it was indeed difficult to achieve the 30 percent allocation for green spaces.

“There should be an exception for developed areas and big cities like Jakarta, Bandung or Surabaya,” Wiriatmoko said, explaining that while the capital still needed more open areas, the public-to -private ratio in the allocation should be switched to engage more residents in the program.

“We are fully aware that it is a mandate of the spatial planning law, but it would also depend on the city’s [financial] capabilities,” he said.

Despite the obstacles, Wiriatmoko said the city did endeavor to create as many open spaces as possible — particularly to serve as important water-catchment areas.

Green initiatives the city is currently undertaking include a project to convert 27 gas stations built in areas originally designated as green areas back into parkland. The city has already closed the stations and plans to convert them into green areas over the next year, with a budget of between Rp 200 million ($21,000) and Rp 500 million for each site.

Dire Straits

Nirwono said the lack of green spaces had also brought about salt water contamination in the city’s water catchment area.

As of 2007, the intrusion had reached from the sea to as far as the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle, he said, covering as much as 70 percent of the city.

“About one-third of Jakarta’s underground water is now undrinkable,” he added.

Nirwono hoped the stark facts would be taken into consideration in the city’s next spatial plan, which would cover from 2010 to 2030.

“They have to be able to take bold action to end commercial construction,” he said, adding that it was simply a matter of weighing up the costs and benefits.

“The recovery cost due to environmental damage caused by commercial buildings is more expensive compared to improving the environment by creating more parks,” he said.

“Buildings will decrease in value over 20 years while trees will only grow bigger and fully function as air filters.”

On Nov. 10-12, international experts will gather in Jakarta to map out a sustainable path for the capital. For more information, visit sjconvention.com.

This story is part of a five-day series on some of Jakarta’s most serious problems. Tomorrow, we look at Jakarta’s housing issues.