Jakarta, the Greenery Area?

If you lived in Jakarta a couple of decades ago, you experienced as living in a big village.  There was a movie entitled "Big Village" telling the story about life in Jakarta on those days. Jakarta indeed had been known as a big village which gradually changed into a big metropolitan with many skyscrapers and concrete blocks. Now Jakarta is getting hotter and more polluted due to the increase in the number of vehicles moving around and the lack of greenery areas in the city. 

The city government is planning the development of city forest around 30% of the total Jakarta area. However, the target seems too optimistic because the greenery area dwindled drastically from 27%  in the early 1960s to only 9.5% as of today, making Jakarta become barren. Instead of having a city forest, we get a forest of concrete blocks. What amazing development!

 Plants are necessary for improving air quality through the process of photosynthesis, which converts carbon dioxide into oxygen. Every one hectare of greenery area can convert 3.7 tons of CO2 – resulting from human activities, industry, and vehicles – to become 2 tons of O2.

Today, the city forest is prevailing in 14 locations including city forest of Kemayoran, Halim Perdana Kusuma, Pondok Kelapa, Cijantung, Srengseng, and the University of Indonesia. The activities of planting more trees in those locations last year were mainly handled by privates sectors through the program of one man one tree. This program was launched after the city government was only able to allocate a meager budget for such activities. 

An exemplary successful model of the man-made forest of 6.3 hectares at Kemayoran developed starting four years ago. Various trees of 1,700 species have grown up well and now become the den for around 90 species of birds. It becomes the city lungs producing fresh air for people living in the nearby areas and making their living condition become healthier. Other public parks recently developed are Taman Menteng and Taman Mahakam which changes the landscape a lot for the better. 

The officials of the city park department have set the plan to cultivate more rare and exotic plants in the whole city forests. We are happy with that planning and hope that it will be seriously implemented. We appreciate the sidewalk ornamental plant traders in Jakarta. They make the street where they sell their goods to become tidier, greenery and beautiful. 

 Due to the worsening condition of the ecosystem in the coast of  Jakarta, some of the activist groups planted seedlings of mangrove in a belt along the coast which in turn might hamper the coastal erosion in North Jakarta. As to the present condition, not only the erosion of the coast has taken place for years, the intrusion of seawater has even reached the area around the National Monument.

The city government hopes that the people movement might gain two results in at once: Jakarta is more greenery and coastal erosion is reduced. But what is more important in such an activity is that people are taught to be more aware of maintaining good ecosystem and more careful in improving the environmental condition.

Some people criticized the City Park Department in their efforts to create new forest had put stress more to the aspect of aesthetic rather than their effects on the environment. They pointed out the plantation of some palm trees, which they claimed the trees absorb too much water for themselves. We are, however,  in the opinion of the contrary. Many of the plant species cultivated along the street do not meet the esthetical aspect at all. 

The Department of City Park still has to pay more attention to it. Albeit they contribute less for the greenery spaces, the palm tree, for example,  is able to give the impression of tropical exotics which represents Indonesian image as a country located along the equator.  Maybe we can take the lessons from the big cities located in the similar condition such as Singapore, Honolulu, Los Angelos or the cities along the Mediterranean.