Indonesia is a land with a problem: Its capital is subsiding. The problem isn’t new for the city of ten million. Jakarta’s subsidence was first noted in 1926. Now people are complaining.
What might seem to be a problem specific to Jakarta is actually an old problem. Coastal cities and cities built on unconsolidated sediments have been subsiding since the rise of civilization. In the United States, New Orleans has a similar problem. Deltas don’t remain above sea level unless they get a new influx of sediments, hardly a condition of the city with a controlled river like the Mississippi. Jakarta has 13 rivers, some highly controlled. And Jakarta has an added problem. It doesn’t have the infrastructure of water pipelines to service all ten million residents. What do they do? They pull out groundwater. * Since 1926, the people have sucked enough groundwater from the Quaternary sediments on which the city lies to mimic the subsidence caused in mid-twentieth-century Long Beach, California. One can’t take the apples out of the pie and expect the crust to be unaffected.
When one lives at sea level, sea level is a problem. On the positive side, marine archaeologists have something to dig in all those once-above-water, now-sunken cities; on the negative side, the government of Indonesia might have to move the city off West Java and onto Borneo. It’s not that capital cities of countries haven’t been moved before; think Brasilia. But in the case of Jakarta, the displacement might be forced not by the government’s desire to open new territory for exploitation but rather by the residents’ exploitation of an underground resource.
So, why should anyone outside Indonesia pay attention to Jakarta’s subsidence problem? The answer lies in our daily lives. Just by occupying a place we alter it in some way. For billions of us the alteration isn’t noticeable, or we believe someone else will take care of the “problem.” Occupied as we are with occupations and life in general, we don’t spend much time thinking that what we do has ramifications beyond our lifetimes and local geography. When most realize a problem in the making or one already made, they complain.
And that brings me to the news, however iffy, that July, 2019 was the warmest month on record. First, a caveat: Such information should be understood in the context of our limited weather records that start only a couple of hundred years ago and only in specific, and not global, places and with the realization that Earth has had periods much warmer than the current temperature regime. Second, a question: What are you personally going to do about the news?
Do you think the average Indonesian in Jakarta will stop taking groundwater from those Quaternary sediments? Right. Probably not. Jakarta will continue to subside unless some government entity takes measures similar to those taken at Long Beach, California, where subsidence dropped the local region by about thirty feet in just two decades.
We’re little more than the beavers when it comes to making our homes convenient. They change dry land into wetlands, and we do the opposite in places like Jakarta’s swamps and marshes, in New Orleans and Long Beach, and in the Netherlands.
I remember some friends telling me that they bought property in Florida in the 1970s. Well, not property exactly, but future property. What they bought was still underwater, but it was slated for development in one of those projected coastal communities with homes neatly lined along newly formed canals. They could have their own boat dock right outside their future home. Today, if one flies over Florida, such communities stretching not only along the ocean but also into the Everglades are quite evident. Many of the residents, now second and third generations of those original families, probably live unaware that where they live is another version of Jakarta, albeit one with pipeline infrastructure. If problems arise, such as those associated with changes in the Everglades, do you think individuals will take it upon themselves to rectify those problems?
Jakarta’s subsidence problem is a long way from being solved. Ten million people doing what they do has an inertia that is almost impossible to overcome. If the Indonesian government, short of building the infrastructure to supply water to all its residents, tries to solve the problem by adding clean fill to the subsiding areas, it will discover a problem related to unconsolidated sediments in an active earthquake zone. Yes, on the southern side of Java lies the Java trench, a subduction zone that, as many around the world learned at Christmas, 2004, can generate very large earthquakes and subsequent tsunamis. Seismic shaking liquifies sediments. People in Alaska lost their homes to such liquefaction in 1964, and the Marina District residents of San Francisco suffered losses when their unconsolidated sediments liquefied during the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989.
You might say, “So, what am I supposed to do about any of this?” And that’s the point here. Of the seven plus billion people on the planet, relatively few have any awareness of how we alter Nature just by our occupation. Still even fewer act to prevent or mitigate problems caused by our interaction with the planet.
Say you are one who thinks that global warming is a problem. Now, what are you personally doing about it? Say you think your community is overusing some resource like groundwater. What are you personally doing about it?
We live in a society of complainers. We live in a society that waits for others to take some action on our behalf. Not that that is unusual. It’s been the way of the world since the rise of the first communities. But the complaining is louder now, I believe, because of our interconnectedness. It’s become collective complaining. And in the collective, the individual loses individuality. How so? Being an individual, if I may be permitted an opinion, means exhibiting personal responsibility. And for those who would say, “But I’m just one person,” I might ask, “So?”
* Abidin, H.Z., Djaja, R., Darmawan, D. et al. Natural Hazards (2001) 23: 365. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011144602064
Land Subsidence of Jakarta (Indonesia) and its Geodetic Monitoring System.
What might seem to be a problem specific to Jakarta is actually an old problem. Coastal cities and cities built on unconsolidated sediments have been subsiding since the rise of civilization. In the United States, New Orleans has a similar problem. Deltas don’t remain above sea level unless they get a new influx of sediments, hardly a condition of the city with a controlled river like the Mississippi. Jakarta has 13 rivers, some highly controlled. And Jakarta has an added problem. It doesn’t have the infrastructure of water pipelines to service all ten million residents. What do they do? They pull out groundwater. * Since 1926, the people have sucked enough groundwater from the Quaternary sediments on which the city lies to mimic the subsidence caused in mid-twentieth-century Long Beach, California. One can’t take the apples out of the pie and expect the crust to be unaffected.
When one lives at sea level, sea level is a problem. On the positive side, marine archaeologists have something to dig in all those once-above-water, now-sunken cities; on the negative side, the government of Indonesia might have to move the city off West Java and onto Borneo. It’s not that capital cities of countries haven’t been moved before; think Brasilia. But in the case of Jakarta, the displacement might be forced not by the government’s desire to open new territory for exploitation but rather by the residents’ exploitation of an underground resource.
So, why should anyone outside Indonesia pay attention to Jakarta’s subsidence problem? The answer lies in our daily lives. Just by occupying a place we alter it in some way. For billions of us the alteration isn’t noticeable, or we believe someone else will take care of the “problem.” Occupied as we are with occupations and life in general, we don’t spend much time thinking that what we do has ramifications beyond our lifetimes and local geography. When most realize a problem in the making or one already made, they complain.
And that brings me to the news, however iffy, that July, 2019 was the warmest month on record. First, a caveat: Such information should be understood in the context of our limited weather records that start only a couple of hundred years ago and only in specific, and not global, places and with the realization that Earth has had periods much warmer than the current temperature regime. Second, a question: What are you personally going to do about the news?
Do you think the average Indonesian in Jakarta will stop taking groundwater from those Quaternary sediments? Right. Probably not. Jakarta will continue to subside unless some government entity takes measures similar to those taken at Long Beach, California, where subsidence dropped the local region by about thirty feet in just two decades.
We’re little more than the beavers when it comes to making our homes convenient. They change dry land into wetlands, and we do the opposite in places like Jakarta’s swamps and marshes, in New Orleans and Long Beach, and in the Netherlands.
I remember some friends telling me that they bought property in Florida in the 1970s. Well, not property exactly, but future property. What they bought was still underwater, but it was slated for development in one of those projected coastal communities with homes neatly lined along newly formed canals. They could have their own boat dock right outside their future home. Today, if one flies over Florida, such communities stretching not only along the ocean but also into the Everglades are quite evident. Many of the residents, now second and third generations of those original families, probably live unaware that where they live is another version of Jakarta, albeit one with pipeline infrastructure. If problems arise, such as those associated with changes in the Everglades, do you think individuals will take it upon themselves to rectify those problems?
Jakarta’s subsidence problem is a long way from being solved. Ten million people doing what they do has an inertia that is almost impossible to overcome. If the Indonesian government, short of building the infrastructure to supply water to all its residents, tries to solve the problem by adding clean fill to the subsiding areas, it will discover a problem related to unconsolidated sediments in an active earthquake zone. Yes, on the southern side of Java lies the Java trench, a subduction zone that, as many around the world learned at Christmas, 2004, can generate very large earthquakes and subsequent tsunamis. Seismic shaking liquifies sediments. People in Alaska lost their homes to such liquefaction in 1964, and the Marina District residents of San Francisco suffered losses when their unconsolidated sediments liquefied during the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989.
You might say, “So, what am I supposed to do about any of this?” And that’s the point here. Of the seven plus billion people on the planet, relatively few have any awareness of how we alter Nature just by our occupation. Still even fewer act to prevent or mitigate problems caused by our interaction with the planet.
Say you are one who thinks that global warming is a problem. Now, what are you personally doing about it? Say you think your community is overusing some resource like groundwater. What are you personally doing about it?
We live in a society of complainers. We live in a society that waits for others to take some action on our behalf. Not that that is unusual. It’s been the way of the world since the rise of the first communities. But the complaining is louder now, I believe, because of our interconnectedness. It’s become collective complaining. And in the collective, the individual loses individuality. How so? Being an individual, if I may be permitted an opinion, means exhibiting personal responsibility. And for those who would say, “But I’m just one person,” I might ask, “So?”
* Abidin, H.Z., Djaja, R., Darmawan, D. et al. Natural Hazards (2001) 23: 365. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011144602064
Land Subsidence of Jakarta (Indonesia) and its Geodetic Monitoring System.
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