It is no secret that the impacts of climate change are already occurring. A rapidly expanding human population, particularly following the industrial age, has had a significant influence on the natural environment. However, the effects of climate change vary across the world; even within a single community, the effects of climate change might differ between neighbourhoods or people. Let’s take a look at the differences between how a seemingly similar climate issue affects two metropolitan cities differently, the differences in their flood risk management, and their intertwined backstory.
The Dutch delta and Jakarta’s coastal metropolis are the outcomes of a continuing, developing, and dynamic interplay between people and sea-level rise. As a result, issues like climate change and sea-level rise are part of this development rather than something entirely new.
While the effects of climate change are not new to us, the significant differences in how climate change affects developing and developed countries, particularly Indonesia and the Netherlands, as well as how their respective governments intend to address the issues that climate change has brought or worsened in terms of flooding, can provide the rest of the world with a better understanding of how we can address the effects of climate change better.
Another concept that has been overlooked is the relationship between climate change and colonialism, as well as its long-term impacts. Indonesia has suffered floods and poor water and sewage management for centuries, dating back to the Dutch colonisation, and it is still a major issue today, particularly in the capital of Jakarta.
Little bit of backstory
Indonesia and the Netherlands have a longstanding relationship that dates back to 1602, with the Netherlands establishing the Dutch East Indies, which Indonesia was made known as then, as a nationalised colony in 1800. In the 1600s, the Dutch demolished Jayakarta and created Batavia, which is today known as Jakarta. Thereafter, Batavia was built in the Dutch fashion, with small townhouses bordering a grid of canals to make Batavia feel more Dutch, with the canals used as a mode of transit to transport goods around Batavia. The canals’ grid form also acted as a measure of segregation, keeping the population apart.
Furthermore, in 1648, the Molenvliet canal was built in Batavia with the approval of the Vereenigde Oost Indische Compagnie (VOC) authority to control flooding in the southern part of Batavia as a route to transport local goods and to open up the inland areas as well. The VOC is frequently regarded as the world’s first global corporation, with the Dutch government combining rival enterprises into the VOC and subsequently establishing Batavia as its capital, as it was granted a charter to wage war, construct fortresses, and negotiate treaties across Asia.
However, pollution soon became a concern and wealthy Europeans who had previously relied on the canal for transportation migrated out from the city in pursuit of a better environment free of pollution caused by the filthy canal and distillation smoke. As a result of natural and human influences, sedimentation has turned once-clean waterways into inhospitable ones, and the canals, as well as Batavia, soon began to deteriorate and become inhabitable.
Despite this, a dam was erected in 1725 to redirect water from the Ciliwung River westward through the Western Canal. Several more flood control canals have been developed since then during the 18th century in Batavia.
Unfortunately, such efforts were insufficient due to a lack of upkeep.
Following the bankruptcy of VOC in 1799, health became the key priority in relocating the city centre from the Old City in the south to Weltevreden. The Molenvliet canal then connected the polluted and unhealthy Batavia to the clean and healthy New Weltevreden in the south. With the development of Weltevreden as a new colonial centre in the early 19th century, where all the rich Europeans now lived, and the deteriorating quality of the old city area, as well as the growth of the population driven by migration to the region, the Molenvliet canal was left to serve as an area for bathing, washing, and fetching water for indigenous communities.
Present-day Jakarta is already incredibly vulnerable to climate change due to it being built on swampy grounds. With Indonesia’s emissions projected to rise by 50 percent by 2030, they are the third largest greenhouse gas emitters in the world, and climate change could have a detrimental influence on Jakarta’s economy, human health, and biodiversity, and the Indonesian government is not willing to gamble and wait. As a result, the Indonesian government has established solid preparations to relocate its capital from Jakarta to Borneo, with the shift set to take place in 2024.
From here, we can see the nexus and contrast of everyday life between the Europeans and indigenous people in Batavia, and how the negligence of the VOC was the root cause of the centuries of flooding and poor water and sewage management still evidently present in Jakarta today.
To put this into a much more recent context, in January 2020, Jakarta witnessed an overnight torrential downpour that deposited nearly 400 millimetres of water, causing catastrophic floods and landslides and forcing 173,000 inhabitants to abandon their homes in a matter of hours. In less than a week, 66 individuals were reported dead, with 60,000 people permanently displaced. Due to the prior centuries of poor water and sewage management that have plagued Jakarta, this particular flooding was among the worst the Indonesian capital has witnessed this century.
This particular occurrence alone should exhibit the magnitude of the situation faced daily in Jakarta.
What about the Netherlands?
On the other side of the globe, the Netherlands also had a history with flooding and canals, considering the VOC was responsible for the grid-like structure of Batavia. The Netherlands is a delta-type low-lying area, and the local population has lived on the higher land or on artificial mounds protected by a simple dyke since a millennium ago.
In addition, the nation is highly populated, with about one-third of the people living below sea level. Flooding was also so common that it was either acknowledged as a natural occurrence that could never be entirely controlled, or it was viewed as the result of a neglected and rapidly rebuilt small dike stretch. Alternatively, for some, it was recognised as God’s will.
However, despite the fact that flooding is not new to the Netherlands, including historic floods such as the Christmas flood of 1717, it was not until the great storm surge of 1916, and most significantly, the North Sea Flood of 1953, that the Netherlands properly and seriously dedicated infrastructure work to combat and prevent such great flooding from happening again.
Following the great storm surge of 1916, on January 31 and February 1, 1953, a storm tide raged across the northwest European shelf, flooding the low-lying coastal portions of the nations around the North Sea. The subsequent calamity in terms of loss of life and infrastructural destruction was massive, and the flood killed 1836 individuals in the Netherlands. The Netherlands suffered the most fatalities as most of the affected area was below sea level.
For centuries, Dutch flood risk management has been founded on building defences to reduce the likelihood of flooding as much as conceivable. However, following the 1953 flood, flood risk management was subsequently aimed at achieving complete safety by reducing the likelihood of flooding with high dikes and a shorter shoreline.
Similarly, both the 1916 and 1953 events triggered additional protective measures which then led to large-scale endeavours such as the Zuiderzee Works and the Delta Project in the twentieth century.
Flood risk management after the 1916 and 1953 flooding in the Netherlands
The Netherlands is a global reference for flood risk management. This reputation stems from a combination of world-class civil engineering projects and revolutionary water governance principles. In dealing with the various water-related difficulties, Dutch society has always been receptive to new innovative technology, techniques, and regulations throughout its history.
The success of organised human reaction explains why water boards were successful as the first democratic organisations in the Netherlands. The Dutch Golden Age also saw the growth of technology and improved financial resources, resulting in increasingly practical flood abatement and reclamation initiatives of broader proportions.
Interestingly, while flood protection remained a primary concern, human interventions were evaluated from a broader, more holistic perspective, with ecological values balanced against economic objectives.
Rijkswaterstaat and Zuiderzee Works
The Rijkswaterstaat and the district water (control) boards are in charge of water management in the Netherlands.
It is the Dutch government’s infrastructure agency, founded in 1798. It offers flood protection, navigable canals, and highways to the Netherlands, but it is most remembered for its “battle against the water,” which included the Zuiderzee Works, the Delta Works, as well as the Room for the River initiative.
District water boards are in charge of regional waters such as canals and polder waterways. The district water boards also safeguard the Netherlands from flooding, ensuring farmers have enough water for their crops and are in charge of waste water purification.
Furthermore, the Water Act distinguishes responsibilities for the central government, provinces, district water boards, and municipalities. Most notably, the central government is in charge of national policy and national actions and is responsible for flood protection standards applicable to major flood defence systems.
The floods of 1916, as well as the seeming fragility of the Dutch food supply during WWI, prompted a scheme to shut the Zuiderzee lagoon. On June 14, 1918, the Zuiderzee Act was passed. The Zuiderzee Works entailed the building of a 32-kilometre-long dam to close the Zuiderzee, an inland sea in the northwest of the Netherlands, and the reclamation of new polders in the newly constructed vast freshwater lake.
Polders are a Dutch invention, and word, that refers to low-lying regions, often below sea level, which are protected from floods by a dike built around them and must be drained of incoming groundwater. This resulted in a 300-kilometre-shorter coastline, 220,000 hectares of new land, and a 120,000-hectare fresh water reservoir. Despite the concerns, the Zuiderzee Works panned out to be a massive achievement.
Delta Works
A crucial turning point in Dutch water management was the 1953 flooding. The Delta Act was approved in 1958, and work began to minimise the entire length of the coastline and, as a result, the length of potentially vulnerable coastal defences.
The Delta Works comprises three locks, six dams, and four storm surge barriers in total, and it is still the Netherlands’ largest flood defence system. In addition to their primary function, flood barriers provide additional benefits such as allowing the flow of water to be manipulated to admit fresh water and release polluted water, thus improving water quality, improving access to large parts of the province of Zeeland for inland shipping, by mitigating the impact of tidal movements.
The Oosterscheldedam, the largest of the Delta Works, is a massive storm surge barrier and the world’s largest, and only under extreme weather circumstances do its doors close, which ensures that the distinctive salt water habitat, where mussel and oyster cultivation is a traditional industry, is maintained, and the tides remain constant for wildlife conservation. The Delta Works marked a second turning point in the history of Dutch water management.
Room for the Rivers initiative
Despite the Zuiderzee Works and Delta Works, the risk of flooding in the Netherlands is still steadily growing due to the rising sea levels because of climate change. Extremely high water levels in the Netherlands in the 1990s generated several concerns, leading to the adoption of ‘Room for the River’ as the new starting point for addressing high water levels in and around the Netherlands’ rivers and river areas.
The Room for the River Programme was launched by the Dutch government in 2007. The principal goals of the programme were to regulate higher water levels in rivers by decreasing floodplain levels, installing water buffers, repositioning levees, increasing the depth of side channels, and constructing flood bypasses.
From the Delta Works project alone, it is clear that proper government involvement when it comes to flood risk management is more than crucial. The lives of citizens, as well as their livelihoods, are intricately intertwined when it comes to planning and executing such projects. We are fortunate that we can only speculate about what the Netherlands may have become like if the Zuiderzee and Delta Works, as well as the Room for the Rivers initiative, had not existed.
Flood risk management in Indonesia
Flood defence management is a crucial governmental operation; flood protection is critical for the continuation of economic activity especially for Jakarta. In Jakarta, it’s determined that traditional flood management also emphasised technical measures.
The Indonesian government created a “master plan for drainage and flood control” in 1965, which was later amended in 1973. Given Jakarta’s vulnerability to floods, flood protection was prioritised in the Master Plan’s early stages of development. The 1973 revision was essentially a modification of the 1917 Van Breen plan to develop several structural flood defence measures, including the Western Banjir (flood) Canal.
However, the construction of flood defences such as the Eastern Flood (or Banjir in Bahasa) Canal (EFC) has been a time-consuming and labour-intensive procedure. The canal’s initial concepts date back to the early 1970s, and while they gained early support throughout the policy design process, actual construction did not commence until 2003, as a result of institutional and political changes.
Nonetheless, research revealed that the reasons for the delay to the EFC lay beyond budget constraints. In truth, several high-budget infrastructure projects in Indonesia have been completed in the past. The causes of the delay and opposition have been analysed in two areas: (i) the Indonesian institutional structure and (ii) the way the decision-making process was organised.
The new allocation of authority and duties among government agencies offered a political opening through which the province linked the problem of uncontrolled floods to the EFC option. Because of changes in the provinces’ roles and positions, Jakarta’s province was able to persuade the federal government to provide financial assistance for the EFC’s implementation.
What did we learn from this?
Internationally, flood management is transitioning from a traditional safety standard strategy to a more risk-based and adaptive one, and governance is playing an essential role in this transition. It’s noted that climate change is a continuous process, and that because of its long-term nature, adaptation efforts should not be undertaken just in response to climate change.
Adaptation should be linked with other social goals and interests, including both long-term and short-term objectives, most notably flood mitigation.
The significance of governance in flood risk management is beyond important, not only at a governmental level but also in terms of response to climate change.
Some of the failures experienced by Indonesia were institutional misalignment, implementation, non-involvement, and the absence of crucial players, in this case, policy entrepreneurs. While the Dutch are well-known for their early mastery of coastal engineering and water management, it is nevertheless due to the central government’s continual and unwavering commitment to preserving national flood policies and activities.
However, it must be noted that both the failures and successes of the Indonesian and Dutch governments in terms of flood mitigation go way beyond this article, and that there are many underlying and intertwined occurrences that were not mentioned.
The inherent link between colonialism and present-day flood challenges in developing countries, where, eventually, the segregation in Batavia resulted in an uneven water pipe infrastructure that excluded the majority of Indigenous Jakartans, requiring them to seek alternative water sources, has plagued them for over 400 years. At the end of the day, while we can continue to compare the responses of different countries or even just situations, there will still be an unfair and unjust answer due to various and sometimes intertwined histories.
The bottom line is that climate change arrived yesterday, and we need to act twice, if not thrice as quickly if we want to prevent any more countries or cities from sinking or flooding.
FEATURED IMAGE: via Nova Wahyudi/Antara Foto, via Reuters | IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Aerial photograph of Jakarta with high water levels