Water and Urban Initiative
Working Paper Series
Number 04 — April 2015

Overview of Jakarta WaterRelated Environmental
Challenges

Apip Research Centre for Limnology, Indonesian Institute of Science (LIPI), Jakarta, Indonesia
Saut AH Sagala Bandung Institute of Technology, Bandung, Indonesia

Luo Pingping United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability, Tokyo, Japan

Water and Urban Initiative
This working paper series shares findings produced as part of the research activities under the Water and Urban Initiative(WUI), a research project of the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS). TheWUI aims to contribute to sustainable development, focusing on developing countries in Asia, by providing policy tools and an
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Overview of Jakarta Water-Related Environmental Challenges

2ABSTRACTJakarta, located on the northwest coast of Java, is theeconomical, political and cultural capital of Indonesia. The
Metropolitan area, Jabodetabek (Jakarta-Bogor-DepokTanggerang-Bekasi), is the 6th largest metropolitan areain the world with a little under 20 million people. About 9
million people live in Jakarta it self, in an area of 660 km2.
13 Rivers intersect the city and every year floods occur in
Jakarta. Widespread flooding occurred in 1996, 2002 and2007, inundating up to 40% of the city. Increasing population pressure and soil subsidence (10 cm/year or more) ofareas already under mean sea level lead to an autonomous
increase of flood risk. In addition, subsidence causes theJakarta sea defense to sink below critical levels and has
major impact on the quality of live in the city. Additionally,
all the rivers in Jakarta relatively are heavily polluted. Rivers
in Jakarta have been monitored on a regular basis, andconsistently show high BOD readings. The sources of BOD
in Jakarta’s River system originate from industrial and otherwaste water, solid waste, and domestic sewage. High pollution levels cause treatment costs to increase. All surfacewaters crossing Jakarta are heavily polluted by gray waterfrom households, commercial buildings, together with discharges from industries, pesticide and fertilizer run-off fromagricultural land, solid waste, and fecal matter from overflowing or leaking septic tanks. As summary, Jakarta facescommon environmental problems like other megacities do.
However, the variation of capacity of the city municipalitythat makes the different results. While several improvements have been made, the environmental problems havebecome really huge. Without proper plans, and coordination and actions for environmental management, Jakarta
will have difficulties to sustain for the future.

Figure 1: Map of the municipalities (kotamadya) in Jakarta province

Keywords: Jakarta; environmental challenges; water quantityand quality; water treatment

1. Introduction
Jakarta officially known as the Special Capital Region ofJakarta is the capital and largest city of Indonesia. Jakarta
City, located on the northwest coast of Java Island at themouth of the Ciliwung River on Jakarta Bay which is an inletof the Java Sea, is the economical, political and cultural
capital of Indonesia. Officially, the area of the Jakarta
Special District is 662 km2 (256 sq mi) of land area and6,977 km2 (2,694 sq mi) of sea area. Jakarta is administratively equal to a province with special status as the capitalof Indonesia. It has a governor. As a province, the officialname of Jakarta is Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta (“SpecialCapital City District of Jakarta”), which in Indonesian is abbreviated to DKI Jakarta. Jakarta is divided into five kota
or kotamadya (“cities” – formerly municipalities) (Figure 1).

Figure 2: The GDP per capita of Jakarta

The national capital of Indonesia, Jakarta, has faced
tremendous urban development and changes. Housingdevelopment has been increased due to economic boom
between 1972-1990s. These economic booms caused very
massive urban development to the surrounding cities ofJakarta, such as Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi.
Despite economic crisis in mid of 1990s, the city regain its
economic momentum from early 2000s (Figure 2).
Ultimately, built up areas in Jakarta has increased throughboth formal businesses and settlements as well as nonformal businesses and settlements. Within these periods,
Jakarta’s population has increased from about 8.3 millions (2000) into 10,075 million (2014) as shown in Figure
3. This increase has not been supported by the increasesof environmental service capacities to support the consequence of the development. Thus, environmental problems

Overview of Jakarta Water-Related Environmental Challenges

related to clean water provision, waste water production
and treatment as well as disasters such as flooding andland subsidence, have become commons in Jakarta. Whilesome responses and activities have been conducted bythe municipality, the environmental challenges tend to bebigger than the capacities of the municipality alone. This
writing highlights these issues in the detail in the rest of thesections.

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ter in Jakarta, and to access that water for domestic uses,
people have to compete with private sector that has donea major abstraction for their industrial activity.

Figure 4: Calculate water demand for domestic sector in DKI
Jakarta (2000-2014). (Source: Palyja (2011))

Figure 3: Total population growth of DKI Jakarta Province during
14-year.

2. Land Use Development of Jakarta
Urban Jakarta has had limited green areas as the negative
impact from an immense development of high-rise, residential, and other commercial buildings until mid of 1990s(Rukmana, 2015). The percentage of green space in theJakarta spatial plans has decreased from 27.6% in Jakarta
Master Plan 1965–1985 and 26.1% in Jakarta Spatial Plan
1985–2005 to 13.94% in Jakarta Spatial Plan 2000–2010(Rukmana, 2015). WALHI, a national Indonesian environmental NGO, has identified at least five areas designatedgreen areas in the Jakarta spatial plan 1985–2005 havebeen converted into built up areas, among others settlements, commercials and shopping malls. Finally, in 2013
Jakarta has only about 10,008 hectares (9%) of green areasfrom the original amount in 2007 which amounting to33,467 (29%).

3. Water Demand and Supply in Jakarta
Water demands can be categorized for domestic and nondomestic use in Jakarta. In the last one decade, domestic(settlements) demand’s in Jakarta has increased from 243
million m3 to about 294 million m3 (Veldhuis, 2014). Figure
4 shows the estimate calculation of water demands inJakarta.
The most common water source for Jakarta mainly comesfrom water purification from Citarum River and from otherareas outside Jakarta, such as Jatiluhur Dam (Figure 5). The
second water source option is groundwater. Unfortunately,
groundwater was not very dependable water source fordomestic needs. There is only limited amount of groundwa-Figure 5: Water supply from Citarum river (Jatiluhur Dam) toJakarta City.

4. Waste Water
Wastewater is another water management issue that needs
to be considered more thoroughly. Higher population density and their activity not only affect the water supply anddemand, but also the production of waste water released
to the river or open channel. There is still 75% of remaining
waste water that needs to be treated in Jakarta. However,this amount of waste water is still released directly into therivers. More than 50% of the shallow wells have contaminated by E. coli that comes from domestic waste water, andmore than 10% of shallow wells also has contaminated byiron and manganese (Tutuko, 2002). Based on BPLHD Pollutant Index from 2004-2009, most of the river water quality
in Jakarta were highly polluted. Although in 2007 to 2008
there was a decreasing of polluted river water percentage,
but generally the river water in Jakarta were still highly polluted (Table 1).

Overview of Jakarta Water-Related Environmental Challenges

Table 1: River water quality in Jakarta (Source BPLHD (2009))

Additionally, all the rivers in Jakarta are heavily polluted.
Rivers in Jakarta have been monitored on a regular basis
for the past ten years, and these findings consistently showhigh BOD readings. The sources of BOD in Jakarta’s Riversystem originate from industrial and other waste water,
solid waste, and domestic sewage. High pollution levels
causing treatment costs to increase. In 2010, all surface
waters crossing Jakarta are heavily polluted by gray waterfrom households, commercial buildings, together with
discharges from industries, pesticide and fertilizer run-off
from agricultural land, solid waste, and fecal matter fromoverflowing or leaking septic tanks (see Figure 6).

Figure 6: Map of water pollution status in the rivers of Jakarta
City in 2010.

Different from ground water case in Jakarta, pollutant
index shows that from 2004-2009, most of the groundwater quality was low polluted. Unfortunately, even thoughground water has better quality water comparing to riverwater, ground water volume was limited to meet the needsof water use in Jakarta.
In Jakarta, there are 11,800,000 populations for waste water treatment (including floating population) and 9,900,000
if only the actual population. Waste water treatment
divided into off-site (sewerage) and on-site sanitation (PDPAL JAYA, 2012). On-site sanitation was mainly used in

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residential and slum area. About 8,4 million populationsin Jakarta (71%) treat their waste water using individual
septic tank before release the waste water to the sewerage. About 1,300,000 populations (11%) in slum area will
directly deliver their waste water into the river. Off-site
sanitation was used by mainly apartment, office buildings,and industry in Jakarta. There are 1,900,000 of population(16%) using individual treatment plant (ITP) and some using
individual treatment plant with advanced treatment process(ATP) before the waste water was delivered into the river.
There are also 200,000 of population who use off-site
sanitation by delivered their waste water through sewerage
into Pumping Station and Setiabudi WWTP.

Table 2: Ground water quality in Jakarta (Source: BPLHD (2009))

Waste Water Treatment
There is a sewerage system in the cities, but they are inadequate and not well maintained. Sewerage system is usually
directly connected to the rivers accrossed the city. Though
there are some waste water treatment systems, most ofthem are not functioning well. The rising demand for waterand in the Jakarta Province has put pressure on the qualityof water. The quality of both surface and ground water has
deteriorated and scientific study for the urban water environment of Jakarta Capital City has become essential.
Jakarta Province Government currently manages two Septic tank Waste Treatment Installation (IPLS) that hold 300
m³ of their capacities, which are IPLS Pulo Gebang and IPLS
Duri Kosambi. The monitoring report shows that both ofIPLS currently have ineffective and inefficient operation due
to the advance of technology nowadays, there is no further
septic tank waste process so the waste can be used asenergy resources for example, IPLS capacity cannot meetthe needs of the population, and current IPLS technology
spends a lot of cost and time (DKI Jakarta Province Government, 2013). Wastewater management issue deals with acomprehensive team work between government, professional companies, and community is needed.

5. Law, Policies, and Management Set-up
Regarding Water Pollution
Water pollution in Jakarta occurs because of limited
amount of housing or buildings that equipped with WWTP

Overview of Jakarta Water-Related Environmental Challenges(Waste water Treatment Plant). It has been reported that
only 4% of housing in Jakarta have WWTP and he considers to create local regulation regarding WWTP permit for
housing construction (Faris, 2013). Water pollution control
was regulated in Indonesian Government Regulation No.
82 of 2001 regarding water quality management and waterpollution control. In accordance to the regulation, national
government is responsible for pollutant load capacity
identification, source of pollution inventory and identification, waste water requirements determination for groundapplication, waste water discharge requirement determination, water quality monitoring in water sources, and water
sources quality changes monitoring. Those all will become
supporting tools for building construction permit, water
source management, spatial planning of Jakarta, waste
water discharge permit, and water quality identification.
The responsibility of national government can be disposed
to province and city government. The province government
will be responsible for cross-city water pollution, the city
government will be responsible for cross-district water pollution, and lastly the district government will be responsible
for water source pollution in its area. Usually, government
has its specific agency to manage their water pollution
problems more thoroughly, such as Ministry of Environment on national scale and BPLHD on province scale. For
monitoring purposes, province and municipal governments
are required to provide reports to the Ministry of Environment at least one report every year. Province Government
also created a regulation regarding waste water retribution
for every amount of waste water discharged into the water
source. They also have EIA Review Commission of DKI
Jakarta Province to assess the waste water condition before
allowing them to discharge the waste water into the water
source, which is why the waste water needs a treatment
before it got discharged.

6. Summary5water result in that a majority of the population is suffering from diseases caused by water parasites. Thecity has no proper sewage system and most citizens’
don’t have an indoor plumbing system. This meansthat they use the rivers and the public canals for washing, bathing and dumping garbage which causes great
sanitary problems.
•Jakarta is a heavily polluted city but by making thesewage, water, and garbage treatments more efficientand more environmental friendly will make it a moresustainable and healthier city. This will of course cost a
lot of money, but it could be considered as a long term
investment that will give the city and its inhabitants
work opportunities, better health and a better environment.

7. Acknowledgments
The financial and administrative supports received from theWater and Urban Initiative (WUI) Project (United Nations
University - Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS) in association with funding from Ministryof the Environment, Japan) and the Research Centre for
Limnology-Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) are gratefully acknowledged.

References
BPLHD (2009). “Hasil Kegiatan 2012.” From http://bplhd.jakarta.go.id/filing/PEMANTA UAN %20KUALITAS%20LINGKUNGAN.pdf.
Faris, A. F. (2013). “Ahok Akan Buat Perda untuk Cegah Pencemaran Air.” Retrieved 6 March, 2015, from http://metropolitan.inilah.com/read/detail/2004202/
ahok-akan-buat-perda-untuk-cegah-pencemaran-air#sthash.5eNQxXFi.dpuf.
PD PAL JAYA (2012). Concept And Strategy For Wastewater Management Of•••

Jakarta is the capital of Indonesia and is situated on
the island of Java. Jakarta is a part of a big city region
consisting of various cities with a total of 25 million inhabitants, the city of Jakarta has an estimated population of 8,6 million. The land surface of Jakarta is heavily
populated and has many environmental challenges toface. Among them are the land-water pollution, rapid
land-use change and ecosystem degradation.

Jakarta. Jakarta.

The Jakarta situation today needs improvements. The
citizens have an unsatisfactory access to clean drinking
water, there is no sewage system for the greater part ofthe population and on top of this the city is suffering ofwater scarcity especially in the dry season.

Tutuko, K. (2002). “Jakarta water supply.” Jakarta Water supply : How to imple-A big part of the population don’t have access topiped water which means that they either have to buy
expensive bottled water or take water of bad quality
from the rivers and wells in the city. The lack of clean

Pemerintah Provinsi DKI Jakarta (2013). Rencana Pembangunan Jangka Menengah Daerah Provinsi DKI Jakarta Tahun 2013-2017. B. P. P. D. D. Jakarta. Jakarta.
Rukmana, D. (2015). “The Change and Transformation of Indonesian Spatial Planning after Suharto’s New Order Regime: The Case of the Jakarta Metropolitan
Area.” International Planning Studies: 1-21.

ment a sustainable process ?
Veldhuis, M.-C. t. (2014). “Water for urban development.” Introduction to Water
and Climate.