Waterlogged Jakarta fights for survival
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Waterlogged Jakarta fights for survival
Rising sea levels and sinking ground threaten the future of the Indonesian megacity, which faces increasingly frequent floods. Confronted with mounting challenges, the authorities are searching for solutions, the most radical of which is to move the capital.
Sitting under the porch of their modest home, Dede, Chandra and their daughter Saphira watch us approach. In front of them, a construction site where several labourers are at work stretches along the entire street. The builders’ job is to raise, by one metre, the dirt road that cuts through this block in Muara Angke, a slum in northern Jakarta.
“Just yesterday, the water came up to here,” Dede says, pointing to the doorstep. Last year, the family didn’t have such a lucky escape. Water entered their home, and that of their neighbour, Saphira’s grandmother. “I had to leave in a hurry. I lost all my electronic devices,” the elderly woman says.
Just 20 metres from the shoreline, the houses in this neighbourhood, which sit slightly above or even below sea level, are regularly threatened by the tides. Flooding is nothing new for the locals, but many say it happens more often now, several times a year.
The day after the latest floods, the water has not completely receded. Some alleys remain submerged, while others are strewn with debris washed in from the sea. In the hot, humid air of this late October morning, the smell of sewage lingers. Mosquitoes swarm around the stagnant water.
Double threat
The residents of Muara Angke face alarming prospects. Jakarta is sinking faster than any other city in the world, with the north suffering the most. In some places the ground is dropping by more than 20 centimetres due to overextraction of groundwater. Rising sea levels and increasingly intense rainfall caused by climate change add to the pressure. This community of around 20,000 people, many of them fishermen dependent on easy access to Jakarta Bay, is particularly at risk.
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Dede’s family confronts this double threat with resignation. Moving elsewhere is not an option they consider. “Leave? And go where? We’ve lived here for decades,” the father says.
About 100 metres farther on, the small street opens onto a fishing harbour. Four men sit together at a table. The mood is festive. They share plates of spicy mussels gathered that morning, washed down with a dark local liquor. They chat, laugh loudly and take turns singing karaoke.
Around them, stilt houses stand two metres above the ground, out of reach of the floods. These new homes were provided by the authorities last year.
Abdusachman, a 57-year-old fisherman from Indramayu, a coastal town east of Jakarta, welcomes the construction of the new housing, even though he, like many colleagues, still sleeps on his boat.
In Jakarta, tides are only one factor behind flooding. Everyone we spoke to said rainfall had become more unpredictable and more intense.
Studies show that short, heavy downpours nearly doubled from 1900 to 2010. In January 2020, record rainfall of 377 millimetres fell in just 24 hours.
According to the Indonesian media platform Kompas, citing the National Disaster Management Agency, Greater Jakarta experienced 33 floods last year, inundating more than 12,000 homes and affecting over 50,000 people. Major floods in 2020 killed around 70 people.
Drainage systems can no longer cope with the volume of water, and the narrow rivers, clogged with waste and blocked by unregulated housing, overflow regularly. Wedged between the sea and mountains to the south, the city forms a kind of basin that collects rainwater from surrounding areas.
‘Giant Sea Wall’
To counter the rising sea level – it’s now rising at 2-4cm a year – the authorities have built dykes stretching for about ten kilometres. But they offer only partial protection. Seawater still seeps through, and some fear the dyke walls may eventually collapse.
Further dykes are planned, totalling 28 kilometres by 2030. A project to build a “Giant Sea Wall” – a huge offshore barrier enclosing a new district built on an artificial island – could also one day become reality.
“Conditions for the fishermen here have improved recently, but the flood risk remains high,” says Dwi Sawong, looking at the puddles lining the small houses near the harbour. A campaigner for land-use planning and infrastructure at WALHI, an Indonesian environmental NGO, he knows Muara Angke well and has watched it change. “People living over there will have to move in the coming years,” he predicts.
Around two million people live in northern Jakarta, where the risk of recurrent flooding is greatest. It is also home to many informal settlements. Relocating residents who live outside the official system, often on land they do not own, will be difficult – even though some projects exist. These include large dormitory-style buildings of which several have already been built.
Sinking ground
While Dwi Sawong welcomes measures to counter rising sea levels, he stresses that “the main problem is still land subsidence”. Unlike tides and rainfall, this threat stems directly from human activity, and the authorities are struggling to tackle it.
To understand why the city is sinking, it is necessary to examine the water supply network – or the lack of it in many places.
We meet Nirwono Joga in a small café in downtown Jakarta, near the city hall, where imposing government buildings stand alongside the towering glass headquarters of banks and multinationals. “Most households still rely on groundwater extracted with pumps,” explains Joga, an urban planning expert at Trisakti University in Jakarta and an adviser to the governor.
According to the authorities, the mains water network now covers 75% of the city. But, Joga says, “this mainly encompasses industrial and commercial areas in central Jakarta”.
Water extraction is draining the supplies of groundwater beneath the city, which is sinking under the weight of the growing number of high-rises. Meanwhile, Jakarta’s rapid concrete expansion leaves almost no green spaces, preventing groundwater reserves from replenishing.
Today, around 40% of the city – mainly in the north – lies below sea level. Experts warn that the entire capital could sink by 2050 if nothing changes.
A water system under construction
Yet in theory, Jakarta and its 12 million residents – more than 30 million in the wider metropolitan area – could avoid using groundwater, Joga says.
The city has access to the sea and is crossed by 13 rivers, now badly polluted, that weave between roads, rail tracks, office towers and homes. It is also connected to two dams: Karian to the southwest, inaugurated last year, and Jatiluhur to the southeast. But infrastructure such as pipelines, sewers, treatment plants and reservoirs remains largely inadequate.
The authorities aim to connect the entire city to clean water by the end of the decade; an ambitious goal intended to address land subsidence.
“Our target is to reach 100% coverage by 2029,” says Arief Nasrudin, chief executive of PAM Jaya, the public water utility. “About one million households still need to be connected.” They are scattered across the city, he says, though the largest concentration is in the south, “where groundwater quality is still quite good”.
Construction sites will be unavoidable, and in a city as congested as Jakarta, disruptions will be significant. “The main challenge is that the people are already living here, while the infrastructure is not yet in place. When we talk about 25% of households still unconnected, that means 7,000 additional kilometres of pipelines. I have to tell residents that we’re sorry, but the pipes will have to go under the roads,” Nasrudin says by video from Paris, where he is on a business trip that will also take him to Zurich.
Forgotten northern districts?
The authorities insist that the disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the north of the capital will not be neglected, but critics are not convinced.
Back in Muara Angke, we walk along the quay where traditional wooden fishing boats are moored. In the distance, tall residential towers surrounded by a massive shopping centre confront the sea, defying all predictions about future water levels.
“Those people will remain safe from flooding, whatever happens,” Sawong says quietly. The contrast between the tin-roofed shacks and the ultramodern complex is striking. It highlights the inequalities in north Jakarta, where some of the wealthiest and poorest residents of the capital live side by side.
For Dede, the prospect of being connected to the water mains feels remote and uncertain. In the meantime, the small family continues to buy eight jerrycans of water a day, at a cost of 20,000 rupiah (CHF1). This is a considerable monthly expense given that the average national salary is around three million rupiah.
“The target of 100% water coverage was not originally set for 2029. It dates back several decades. Progress has been very slow,” says Tiza Mafira, the director of the Climate Policy Initiative, a non-profit that analyses environmental policies. “In all likelihood, informal settlements will remain completely unregulated – whether we’re talking about taxes, business permits, building permits, water, gas or electricity. These are vulnerable populations, and they will remain so in all respects.”
For this former activist who campaigned against plastic pollution, the authorities’ efforts are still insufficient. “I live in a neighbourhood that is not connected to the water network, and I have received no indication that my situation could change,” says Mafira, who lives in the south of the capital. “So I continue to draw groundwater.”
In theory, regulations exist to limit the use of wells, but these cannot be enforced until the mains network is built.
New capital
In 2019, faced with the seemingly intractable problems plaguing Jakarta – flooding, drinking water, pollution, traffic – the former Indonesian president Joko Widodo proposed a radical solution: moving the capital more than 1,000 kilometres to the northeast, to the island of Borneo, and building a futuristic new city named Nusantara in the middle of the forest.
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As the first civil servants begin to move in despite numerous construction delays, the new president, Prabowo Subianto, in office since October 2024, no longer appears to treat his predecessor’s flagship project as a priority. The term “political capital” is now favoured.
For Dede, Chandra and Saphira, as for many Jakarta residents, Nusantara is little more than an abstract concept. It is far removed from their everyday priorities: living in safe housing, earning a decent income, gaining access to clean water, and moving around the city without losing hours on the road.
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This report was produced as part of En Quête d’Ailleurs, an exchange programme between journalists from Switzerland and countries in Africa, eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America. The theme of 2025 was “water in all its forms”.
Edited by Virginie Mangin. Translated from French by Catherine Hickley/ts
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