Environmental Equity at Bay: Climate-Driven Evictions in Jakarta,Indonesia

Rising Seas, Sinking City: The Professed Harbingers of Evictions

Located just off the coast of the Java Sea in a tropical climate, Jakarta experiences routine extreme flooding, especially during the monsoon season, and this is increasingly used as justification for evicting kampung residents from riverbanks, marshes, and other flood-prone areas. The Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) model (see Figure 1) provides a compelling framework to describe the interactions between climate change and its impact on Jakarta residents (e.g., Omann et al., 2009).

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Figure 1.

DPSIR framework model on how climate change and covert drivers impact Kampung evictions

Moss et al., (2021) define the components of the DPSIR framework as follows:

Drivers are anthropogenic causes of changes within a system such as climate change which is now widely accepted as an independent driver of environmental change.

As depicted in the figure, over the past few decades, climate change has increased both the intensity and frequency of monsoon storms (Costa et al., 2016). In 2007, a monsoon left 70 percent of the city underwater and in response prompted the construction of seawalls and artificial islands around Jakarta Bay (Earth Observatory, 2019). Despite these efforts, in 2020, a storm displaced over 36,000 individuals and took the lives of 66 Jakarta residents (Leung, 2020). Roughly 40 percent of the city sits below sea level (Kimmelman & Haner, 2017), and scientific modeling from the Bandung Institute of Technology predicts that 95 percent of the Jakarta coast will be submerged by 2050 (Lin & Hidayat, 2018).

In addition to severe flooding, Jakarta faces water challenges due to its high population density. Home to 11 million people with a density of roughly 40,000 individuals per square mile, the city is currently unable to provide enough clean drinking water to sustain its growing population (Tarrant, 2014). In response, to compensate for this inadequate water supply, residents have begun to drill wells illegally to draw water from underground (Kimmelman & Haner, 2017). In turn, this has caused new negative impacts. Unregulated groundwater extraction has depleted aquifers and created large underground caves. The sheer weight of the city above ground has placed tremendous pressure on the land surface, causing these voids to cave in. This phenomenon, called land subsidence, has resulted in some parts of the city sinking by as much as 11 inches each year (Tarrant, 2014). As land subsides, underground drainage networks are damaged as sediments block previously clear waterways (Colven, 2020). Compounded with rising seas, land subsidence has made Jakarta one of the fastest-sinking cities in the world (Kimmelman & Haner, 2017).

In response, the Indonesian government launched efforts in 2019 to build a new capital city on the neighboring island of Borneo (Arys, 2021). This move has been widely contested by environmental groups concerned with rainforest deforestation and the new development's adverse impact on native endangered species (Gokkon, 2019). Indigenous rights activists also have warned that the Indonesian government's failure to consult the Indigenous communities of Borneo in its decision to move the nation's capital may result in deadly conflicts (Gokkun, 2019). The Indonesian government's indifference toward these considerations is illustrative of the urgency of the need to relocate the nation's capital and is reminiscent of colonial-era policy deeming some populations disposable. Within Jakarta, local efforts to build and heighten sea walls to keep out storm surges have proven to be mere temporary fixes (Leung, 2020). Over time, these walls crack and allow seawater to seep into the city. As such, the local government has resorted to a more permanent solution: forcibly evicting residents from flood-prone areas—specifically, kampungs.

Jakarta's Legacy of Evictions: The State-Sanctioned Rise and Fall of Kampungs

While kampungs existed in Jakarta long before the Dutch colonization period, they were first isolated in the early 1600s as the Dutch East India Company colonized various parts of Indonesia. The company aimed to establish monopoly control over the region's rare spices and “civilize” the native Indonesian population. In 1619, Dutch imperialists adapted traditional European models of canal port towns to build the port city of Batavia in present-day Jakarta. They established order through an apartheid system and evicted, segregated, and displaced those already living in the area to kampungs—creating the proverbial “city of a thousand villages” (Cowherd, 2021). Because the Dutch perceived these waterfront housing communities as uncivilized and the opposite of a modern city, kampungs were granted a high level of autonomy and were largely politically isolated from colonial society (Dovey et. al, 2019). This insulation from Dutch society would create long-standing effects to this day. The Dutch granted a “Chinese” minority decision-making control over these non-White neighborhoods by appointing them as mayors. While many individuals within this mixed group were neither racially nor ethnically Chinese, this distinction positioned them high in the racial pecking order, leading most to embrace this title. Tensions between ethnic Chinese and native Indonesians continue to exist today. By the late 19th century, the apartheid system fully flourished in Batavia with resolute divides between the Dutch, “Chinese,” and native Indonesians.

By the time Indonesia gained its independence in 1945, the hard-line separation of kampungs and modern development in Jakarta had largely dissolved (Dovey et. al, 2019). Much of this was due to a housing shortage resulting from a rapid influx of Southeast Asian migrants fleeing areas poverty-ridden from World War II (Human Rights Watch, 2006). Because most of these individuals were unable to afford homes or land to build on, they took up residence within kampungs and expanded these informal settlements along reclaimed riverscapes, marshes, and coastal areas. By 1993, an estimated 60 percent of houses in Jakarta were built upon unregistered land (Winayanti & Lang, 2004).

At first, continuing the practice of the Dutch imperialist government, the new Jakarta government rarely included these informal settlements in their urban development plans and allowed them to remain fairly autonomous (Winayanti & Lang, 2004). However, in 1968, it launched the Kampung Improvement Program, which precipitated the eradication of kampungs from Jakarta's cityscape. Although it was marketed as an effort to upgrade existing informal settlements, the Kampung Improvement Program cleared and displaced entire neighborhoods (Winayanti & Lang, 2004, p. 46). It also encouraged private developers to contest the land rights of kampung residents so that they could then purchase the land newly acquired by the government through forced evictions (Human Rights Watch, 2006). The Kampung Improvement Program highlighted the Jakarta government's indifference toward kampung dwellers and its view that kampungs were unsalvageable. It also created the narrative that improving these communities meant removing them from the city.

At the turn of the century, newly elected Jakarta Governor Sutiyoso amplified efforts to clear kampungs from the city. In a speech to the Indonesian House of Representatives Commission II for Home Affairs in 2003, Sutiyoso defended his frequent issuing of forced evictions by rationalizing that evictions provided an incentive to respect the law, which is a needed foundation for investment. In this manner, Sutiyoso remained consistent with his campaign rhetoric: All kampung residents are illegal squatters, disregarding that many kampungs pre-date Batavia and thus the post-colonial government's issuing of formal land permits (Coté 2010; Dovey et al., 2019; Winayanti & Lang, 2004). Sutiyoso also reaffirmed his allegiance to upholding the interests of Jakarta's wealthy elite in his testimony—something of no surprise to those familiar with his political platform.

One of Sutiyoso's key political promises was to transform Jakarta into a global city rivaling that of Singapore (Gokkun, 2019). Accordingly, he waged a campaign against the urban poor living in kampungs—communities he deemed incongruent with his vision for a modern city. Arguing that people with social welfare problems obstruct the public order, Sutiyoso blamed the urban poor for Jakarta's pollution, traffic congestion, and crime and presented forced evictions as a panacea. Throughout his campaign, Sutiyoso's outspoken disdain toward kampungs fueled city-wide resentment toward their residents (Human Rights Watch, 2006), ushering in the election of several government officials holding similar anti-kampung viewpoints.

In 2014, newly elected Governor Ahok continued this anti-kampung political trend by passing a law that declared all kampungs to be illegal. However, he took a new approach to rationalize this act. Within the statutes of the law, he cited concerns over flooding and included a plan to demolish all buildings within 15 meters of a river (Dovey et al., 2019). By framing the law as an essential part of the city's flood-risk mitigation efforts, Ahok created a legal pathway for the removal of kampungs from the city all in the name of climate resiliency. To enforce this law, the Jakarta Water Resources Agency launched the normaliasasi sungai (river normalization) program, which carried out the majority of climate-driven evictions (Dovey et al., 2019). Between 2014 and 2016, climate-driven evictions displaced 25,533 kampung residents from their home communities (Sholihah & Chen, 2020). Kampung Pulo was one of many of the neighborhoods demolished.

Given the Jakarta government officials' long-standing history of hostility toward kampungs, it's difficult to argue that flooding alone is responsible for the rise in climate-driven evictions over the past few decades (Irawaty, 2018). While those in positions of power reason that kampungs limit drainage and are thus a primary cause of flooding, the effects of these settlements on flood risk have not been rigorously studied (Dovey et. al, 2019). Instead, geologists contend that an accumulation of sediment and other debris in riverbeds is a more likely culprit—especially because Jakarta's rivers have not been dredged since the 1970s (Dovey et. al, 2019). Nevertheless, the same political forces that segregated, displaced, and relegated unwanted populations to kampungs are now driving them out of society again.

Improving Evictions: What's Next for Those Evicted?

The local Jakarta government rarely provides compensation post-eviction to the families it has displaced (Human Rights Watch, 2006). In an interview featured in The Guardian, Yusuf Supriyadi, a former resident of Kampung Pulo, detailed the local government's treatment of his community post-eviction. He explained that the majority of Kampung Pulo residents were initially supportive of the governor's call to clear the neighborhood because he had promised that they would be compensated for their loss. However, after sending surveyors to the area to make bids on properties, the governor changed his mind, announcing that only residents with formal home permits would receive compensation. Harkening back to Jakarta's colonial past, because kampungs have historically been excluded from mainstream society, the majority of Yusuf's neighbors did not possess the legal documentation necessary to qualify for compensation. This allowed the local government to assume ownership of Kampung Pulo at little to no cost, something many residents perceived was intentional.

Many of those evicted suspect that the local government displaced them for economic, not environmental reasons. During an interview for the New York Times, 31-year-old Topaz explained how he came to the conclusion that the government cleared his neighborhood to enrich developers. Expressing a view widely held among his former neighbors, he articulated that evictions based on environmental protection obscured underlying greed observable in subsequent development. What Topaz references are the luxury apartments that were built on his former neighborhood after it was cleared. Padawangi and Douglass (2015) came to a similar conclusion, arguing that Jakarta's flood problems have entered into the politics of land use by becoming a justification for clearing settlements in flood-prone areas of people labeled as squatters, many of whom have lived along rivers for decades and even generations without formal land-ownership documents. Kampungs are increasingly cleared as part of “flood management” efforts though the cleared areas are later redeveloped into various high-end residential and shopping complexes equipped with flood protection infrastructure (Padawangi & Douglass, 2015).

The practice of the government taking land from the urban poor to sell and distribute among wealthy developers has been widely contested by nongovernmental and human rights organizations (Human Rights Watch, 2006). It is also reminiscent of Dutch imperialists displacing native Indonesians under the pretense of “civilizing” missions to expand their stake in the global spice trade. Allowing land previously cleared in the name of flood control to be redeveloped into new commercial and residential infrastructure calls into question the motives of the local government: Are Jakarta officials issuing forced evictions to respond to climate change, or are they using climate change as a pretense to drive out the poor from the city?

The government's failure to provide alternative housing to those displaced supports the latter conclusion. In an interview with Human Rights Watch, 50-year-old Ibnu Darmawan explained that “[her family has] been evicted many many times. But we just come back because we have nowhere else to live” (Human Rights Watch, 2006, p. 99). Her account illustrates how a lack of public assistance post-eviction makes rehabilitation difficult, if not unattainable, for Jakarta's urban poor. Another former resident, Jullieta Indryanti, noted in her interview that she had been evicted 30 times over a five-year period. Jullieta's experience sheds light upon the fact that displaced residents often move from kampung to kampung—having nowhere else to go—only to be evicted again. This suggests that the local government is more concerned with clearing land and driving out predominantly poor neighborhoods than lending support to those displaced by the process. Further, the cyclical and serial nature of these evictions highlights that clearing kampungs does not reduce the number of informal settlement dwellers in the city. Rather, evictions simply displace kampung dwellers to other flood-prone areas, proving the policy to be an ineffective strategy for fostering climate resiliency.

Secure Housing, Financial Compensation and Economic Opportunity

What's next for those evicted? Solving this crisis requires the acknowledgment of existing injustices and their reversal, namely through the provision of assistance to those displaced in the form of public housing, honest financial compensation, and the creation of economic opportunities near the public housing developments. (See Table 1.) Otherwise, forced evictions will continue to fail to address the local government's professed concerns over protecting residents from climate change. The lack of recourse provided to those displaced creates a self-reinforcing cycle of evictions. Beyond providing secure housing and financial compensation, the local government must also create economic opportunities for those relocated. Doing so will also address the extreme poverty that gives rise to informal settlements in the first place. While flooding is an ever-present threat to kampung residents, the use of gangs, riot gear, and violence to carry out these climate-driven evictions is traumatic and unnecessary. The current missteps that the local Jakarta government is taking serve as lessons for additional coastal cities that will be in a similar position in the coming decades.

As global temperatures rise and climate refugees become increasingly common, recognizing that climate change disproportionately affects historically marginalized communities, mobilizing governing bodies to reverse deep-rooted environmental injustices will be imperative for building a climate-resilient future for all.