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Tuesday 20 December 2011
I’ve just been having a skype discussion with a colleague who lives in Bangkok. She was affected by the recent floods, had to move her family to Manila for 7 weeks. She is just now moving back home and assessing the damage left by 2 metres of water over 7 weeks. Some snippets:
“We have some erosion at one side where a platform is not supported by a framework. Construction standards in Thailand are appalling. Our house has really poor quality doors and windows, stairs with no support below, just inserted into a concrete wall and I've seen how foundations are made - laid deep, not tied.”
The Thai newspapers were interesting too. Some headlines: “The benefits of annual flooding”, “Democrats urge flood prevention plans”, Monsoon hits South, causes flash floods”, “Residents submit flood plan”, and ….”Soldiers get lucky”???? Don’t worry, they just received gifts from grateful residents because of their help during the peak of the waters.
Overall it seems that the floods were at an unprecedented level and duration. And the water from the north and the inland could not escape because Bangkok lies across the mouth of the floodplain, and the urban development has blocked much of the original escape route for floodwaters. A depressingly familiar story! But pretty tough for a brand new Prime Minister, who was criticized for whatever she tried to do to help, whereas you'd reckon her advisers and bureaucracy should have understood what to do and how.
How to prepare for disasters?
Last month I helped to run a workshop in Incheon, South Korea, for a bunch of cities from Africa and Asia, on disaster risk reduction. The idea is for a city to understand the full range of potential disasters which could afflict them, then to work out ways to minimize the effects on their population and environment. So it is as much about mitigating the effects of floods, earthquakes etc as it is about how to respond and recover after the event.
We had cities from India, Indonesia, Philippines, Nepal, Sri Lanka and South Africa. The United Nations disaster reduction agency ISDR has developed an online self assessment tool for cities. It is a checklist of ten “essentials” for preparing for disasters and gives some key questions for cities to answer to help them diagnose their strengths and weaknesses. The workshop was a big report-back and talkfest to understand how well the self assessment process worked and, more importantly, what are the biggest challenges facing the cities to become truly disaster resilient. After evaluating and refining the tool, we are hoping to make it available in 2012 to any interested city in any country.
Some of the interesting experiences – Quezon City in the Philippines is very prone to earthquakes. The have initiated a “Walk The Fault” program with residents to help them understand the hazard, the most dangerous locations and safety strategies. The South African cities have done a great job to assess and map their areas most vulnerable to floods, mudslides etc. But very difficult to introduce planning controls to restrict building in these areas as they are experiencing a huge influx of rural dwellers to their city fringes, and new informal (slum) settlements are springing up in the most dangerous locations – without any approvals. Makassar City in Indonesia experiences several flood events every wet season in their traditional Chinese commercial area. Water up to a meter deep stands in the streets for days or even weeks, bringing commerce to a standstill. When the new port was built along the foreshore, several of the major drainage canals were blocked off.
 - Cities sign up to the ISDR Making Cities Resilient Campaign in Incheon, October 2011
Like many Asian megacities Jakarta is struggling to keep up with the boom in car and motorbike ownership. Newspaper headlines on the weekend trumpeted the national car sales figures, heading for 1 million new vehicles each year. And the city already swarms with several million motorcycles each day. Credit is easy to get and the emerging middle class is keen to get hold of western goodies like whitegoods and wheels.
Unfortunately Jakarta has been slow to build mass public transport facilities. Very limited rail network and the MRT Express Bus routes suffer from lack of dedicated lanes and ageing vehicles. But fortunately the Jakarta administration is now investing heavily in expanding and upgrading the Express Bus service and will start construction of the first phase of a MRT light rail network in 2012. But unfortunately the same administration is still building more tollroads and city flyovers to “ease” the congestion. Studies show that more roads lead to more cars, not the reverse.
So what’s it like living amidst all this? Most days the sky is a whitish blue haze, we can only see the nearby extinct volcano Gunung Salak about once a week, early mornings while the sky is still clear. If I need to travel to a meeting, I plan my timing and route very carefully and often walk quite a distance to get to a traffic lane heading in the right direction before jumping into a taxi. Many roads are now one-way, no turning at intersections. If I’m not careful I can spend a very rewarding half hour or more sitting in a taxi stuck in traffic heading in the wrong direction. And I often commit myself to the old tin-can minibuses which ply all the main routes – just as quick, much more interesting, and you can go anywhere for less than 50 cents.
 - A love affair with motorcycles
 - New flyover construction Jalan Casablanca
We usually think of Indonesia as being wet and tropical all year around. But in fact parts of Indonesia experience marked dry seasons and these periods seem to be becoming more prolonged. Eastern Indonesia - Timor, Sumbawa etc have always been relatively dry, being under the influence of the wind systems coming off the Australian continent. Central Indonesia on the other hand has always had sufficient rainfall to grow year-round crops. This is one of the main rice bowls in the region and everywhere is traditionally green and lush. But now in Java we have had no significant rain for months.
The Bureau of Meteorology is fairly confident the rains will return in October-November to most parts. But at present many rice farmers are unable to plant their crops as they don’t have alternative water supplies. The norm in Java is to achieve at least three rice harvests per year, sometimes four, yet many rice farmers will only manage one crop this year. My friends are lucky – they own some padi fields in their village in Central Java with a permanent, free spring-fed water supply. In the middle of this drought they have just this week planted a new crop of rice seedlings and will be harvesting by December.
The authorities are careful to not automatically attribute a very dry year like this to climate change, but all the climate projections are indicating that while the total rainfall in most parts of Indonesia may not change, it will come in much shorter, more intense periods. This is expected to result in more frequent, destructive storm events, and longer dry periods, putting pressure on agriculture and urban water supply systems. Two very different countries, but very similar climate stories.
ICLEI is working with a number of partners to help Indonesian cities assess and prepare for the likely impacts of the changing climate on their local areas. Because of the perhaps surprising similarities between our two countries, we hope that lessons learnt can be transferred across our borders.
Welcome back to my blog! After I went back to Australia in mid-2009 to help run the ICLEI office I sort of lost touch with keeping my snapshots site up-to-date. So now that I’m back, the first few entries will be catch-ups.
Last year ICLEI was engaged by the German Technical Cooperation group GIZ to develop a new-style climate planning process which would help a city develop an Integrated Climate Plan. This plan maps out how the city intends to reduce its energy consumption and emissions (mitigation) and to prepare for and adapt to the threats of the changing climate (adaptation). So we were involved in lots of research and writing and several workshops in Indonesia.
One of our favourite project cities is Pekalongan. This is quite small, population around 150,000, located on the north coast of Java. It is a centre for Batik production and a lot of the batik workshops are housed in small buildings on the edge of the beach. This is so they can use salt water in their process, but it also makes them prime targets for sea level rise. Our job is to train up a group of Indonesian advisers, who then conduct training workshops with the City staff. This photo shows Pungki running an activity for Pekalongan staff on climate risk analysis, and a couple of the ICLEI team lurking unobtrusively at the back. Pungki is an amazing guy – fluent in several languages, studied engineering in Europe, musician and singer, stand-up comedian, devout Muslim.
Speaking of music, one of the favorite pastimes in Indonesia is Karaoke. But this is conducted in regular gigs at regular venues. So if you are enjoying a meal at a restaurant and there’s a band playing western and Indonesian popular music, partway through the evening guests who have finished eating will make their way to the stage and join in. After a while it is full-on Karaoke with the band providing songsheets and backing. I’ve been amazed at how many Indonesians are beautiful, semi-professional singers. I’ve heard the Mayor of Kupang crooning at the microphone in front of a formal civic gathering. I even had a go myself in a floating restaurant on the Musi River in Palembang.
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