Mitigating Environmental Impacts at Jakarta Bay

Jakarta is a highly-developed city and an urban area in Indonesia owing to the fact that Jakarta is Indonesia's capital city. It’s located near the coastline on the northwest of Java island overlooking the Java Sea, a part of Pacific Ocean. Most area in Jakarta is actually a lowland and to make it worse, the massive use of underground water to fulfil more than ten thousand people demand has made an impact on the rise of sea level. As a consequence, the probability of flooding is rather high in every year.

The most famous beach in Jakarta is Ancol Beach as part of Jakarta Bay and it becomes an effluent of 13 rivers. The streams of those rivers added by the rise of sea level and extreme weather anomaly may increase the possibility and frequency of abrasion along the coastline of Jakarta Bay. Furthermore, with many industrial and other anthropogenic activities, those 13 rivers are considered highly polluted. There are still many of the population living along the riverbanks and it is a common phenomena where people often throw away their waste and garbage to the river. It causes sedimentation, contamination, and eutrophication that endanger the water ecosystem and biodiversity. Even in 2015, it was reported that the massive number of fishes at Jakarta Bay died due to high contamination, predominantly of ammonia, and low level of dissolved oxygen (Detiknews, 2015).

It could be predicted how the condition of biodiversity and its habitat at Jakarta Bay. If we look at the Mitigation Hierarchy (CSBI, 2015), we can analyse what efforts has been and to be carried out to undertake the environmental impact, especially the efforts by the government.

As an Avoidance step, Environmental Department of DKI Jakarta has established and carried out Environmental Impact Assessment for every industrial, economic, and any other activities that can impact the environment including the marine lives. They have certain standards that hopefully can eliminate as much potential environmental effect as possible. However, those standards by the Jakarta government or even the Indonesia government itself was standards enacted since long ago and, more often than not, are not yet updated or even complied to any other more recent and reliable standards such as international standards.

To minimise the impact on nature, many industry now has been obliged to apply certain engineering control for every process and tool they use. They can’t establish an industry/business and use any tool for any process if they can’t provide the masterplan of efforts or technology they will apply to minimise and compensate the possibility of adverse environmental effect. Thus, to support the Minimisation step, government and people concerned about the environment should promote more and initiate the use of green technology and nature-based solution, and more importantly to build a better education about it.

As a more-than-400-year-old city, with many development causing environmental effects, Jakarta has been significantly changed, harnessed, and developed over decades even centuries. It makes the Restoration effort rather hard to implement. On the other hand, the anthropogenic or human activities such as settlement area, fishing, and so on has evidently endangered mangrove and coral reefs population in Jakarta Bay. Thus, as a Remediative effort, for years Jakarta has been carrying out numerous efforts of Rehabilitation instead of Restoration. Jakarta’s government has promoted activities such as community activities to rehabilitate the coral reefs, to clean the area around the beach and coastline, and also to fix the sanitation system.

So, with all been outlined above, further action that we can possibly do as a part of the community is to promote better standards and encourage the application of more reliable standards (such as international standards) on water quality by raising the issue such as through social media or, if it's possible, by approaching environmental activist/organisation thus can catch the stakeholder's attention. This method also applies to the effort in promoting the use of green technology and sanitation system by e.g. making virtual poster, broadcast, or video using platforms like Instagram, Youtube, etc.

As for the effort of cleaning the beach and coastline; planting mangroves; and also to rehabilitating the coral reefs around Jakarta Bay, we can involve ourselves in many activities like the ones on the pictures above that are usually initiated by activists or environmental organisation. We can promote more of Nature-based Solutions to be implemented in this remediative and rehabilitation effort. We can also help to mobilise people and community around the area to participate in these activities. And again, we can use social media to spread the words so people from another area can participate and even give their idea or innovation.

If it’s not yet possible for us as an individual to make a huge environmental activity or mobilisation to promote Mitigation effort especially the nature-based ones, at least we can involve ourselves to any activitiy that is around us because small action really matters.

Cross-Sector Biodiversity Initiative. 2015. "Mitigation Hierarchy Guide - CBSI". http://www.csbi.org.uk/our-work/mitigation-hierarchy-guide/

Detiknews. 2015. "Jutaan Ikan Mati di Ancol, KKP: Teluk Jakarta Terdegradasi". https://news.detik.com/berita/d-3085181/jutaan-ikan-mati-di-ancol-kkp-teluk-jakarta-terdegradasi

Dinas Lingkungan Hidup Provinisi DKI Jakarta. "AMDAL Dinas Lingkungan Hidup Provinsi DKI Jakarta". https://lingkunganhidup.jakarta.go.id/layanan_kami/amdal

Dinas Lingkungan Hidup Provinisi DKI Jakarta. "Pengawasan Penaatan Lingkungan dan Kebersihan Dinas Lingkungan Hidup Provinsi DKI Jakarta". https://lingkunganhidup.jakarta.go.id/program/pengawasan

Portonews. 2021. “Peduli Alam, Komunitas Mangrove Jakarta Tanam Mangrove Bersama Wall Street English.” https://www.portonews.com/2021/keuangan-dan-portfolio/lingkungan-hidup/peduli-alam-komunitas-mangrove-jakarta-tanam-mangrove-bersama-wall-street-english-di-tanjung-burung/

TERANGI. 2021. “Tanam Terumbu Buatan "Prisma Artificial Reef Fish Shelter di Pulau Seribu”. https://terangi.or.id/index.php/id/aktivitas-id/170-adopt-me-terumbu-karang-jakarta