Clean Water Crisis Stirred by Climate Change Haunts Jakarta

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Residents of Indonesia’s capital Jakarta are still faced with the threat of a clean water crisis. This, particularly, affects the vulnerable demographic such as children.

The Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) sub-coordinator of climate and air quality information Siswanto said urbanization has caused Jakarta’s surface air temperature to be higher than other regions. 

In the latest study, Siswanto found that the city’s surface temperature had increased by one degree which correlates with the spike in extreme rainfall (up to 14 percent), which led him to conclude that the capital city will be damper during the rainy season and be even more droughty in the dry season. 

"This is in accordance with the paradigm in climate change related to rainfall parameters, where climate experts often state that areas with rainfall characteristics will experience the saying ‘the wet gets wetter, the dry gets dryer’," he told Tempo in mid-May, 2030.

A researcher for the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) Heru Santoso projected that the average rainfall in Indonesia will decrease from 2070-2100 due to climate change, with direct impacts including heightened chances of water crises, particularly in the densely-populated island of Java, Sumatra, and Kalimantan.

"Extreme rainfall will increase with climate change," he said.

Residents living in the coastal area of North Jakarta, have experienced a clean water crisis for some time to date which is driven by the lack of a clean water piping network installed in residential houses.

The Jakarta Statistics Indonesia (BPS) recorded that the population of the Capital City had reached 10.74 million in 2022. Of this number, 3,214,604 residents are children or approximately 30 percent of the total population.

The potential for a widening clean water crisis due to climate change will continue to haunt these children in the future. Residents of Gedong Pompa Village, Penjaringan Subdistrict, Penjaringan District, North Jakarta tell how the water crisis is in their area. Children remain the main victims.

The extensive report in Bahasa Indonesia can be accessed on Tempo’s interactive page interaktif.tempo.co. 

TEMPO.CO  | LANI DIANA WIJAYA

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