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Fresh green ideas needed: Experts
People often complain about scorching heat in Jakarta without realizing that the city has less than half the recommended number of trees it needs to provide shade and create fresh air
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eople often complain about scorching heat in Jakarta without realizing that the city has less than half the recommended number of trees it needs to provide shade and create fresh air.
Bambang Sulistyantara, a landscape architecture expert from the Bogor Institute of Agriculture, said a city needs a 4-meter canopy of trees per person.
“The bigger the number of trees, the better they will absorb carbon, which will in turn reduce the heat,” he said.
Data from the city’s parks and cemetery agency shows that 4 million trees now grow in the city, about one tree for every two people in Jakarta, whose population exceeded 9.6 million this year
Agency chief Chatharina Suryowati said budget and space constraints prevented the agency from planting more trees.
“We plan to plant 50,000 trees a year. However, this target has been hard to meet,” she said.
Over the last several years, the agency has planted 20,000 trees every year.
This year, the city has planted 5,000 trees along the banks of the East Flood Canal.
Chatarina said that next year the agency would plant another 7,000 trees along the canal.
She said her agency would improve its efforts to tend to the trees it had already planted.
Indonesian Landscape Architect Association (IALI) deputy chairman Nirwono Joga said the administration should find more creative approaches for re-greening the city.
“The city needs a breakthrough,” Nirwono said. “If the administration can invite greater participation from the residents, it can make the replanting program more successful,” he said.
He cited the example of Tomohon and Manado, both cities in North Sulawesi, where the local administrations required couples who were tying the knot or having babies to plant trees.
Nirwono cited another example from Bogor, West Java, which called upon its residents who lived next to big trees to become “foster parents” and look after the trees.
Aside from creative approaches to replanting the city, Nirwono also called on the administration to replace old, big trees in the city. Most big trees planted in the 1970s are prone to uprooting during stormy weather and heavy downpours.
He said that the administration launched a massive planting campaign in the 1970s for New Guinea Rosewoods trees, locally known as angsana, and acacia trees. Angsana can grow fast but break easily. On the other hand, most of the city’s acacia trees were cut down in the 1990s amid reports that their yellow flowers triggered allergies among residents.
Nirwono said it would be a good investment for the city to plant trees from seedlings and not stem cuttings. Seedling trees can live up to 600 years, much longer than those from stem cuttings, which may stand for only 40 to 50 years.
Nirwono said the administration could encourage residents to replant their neighborhoods in accordance with the names of the neighborhoods.
“The administration can advise the residents of Bintaro [in South Jakarta] to plant bintaro trees [sea mango or Cerbera manghas], or those in Gandaria [also in South Jakarta] to plant gandaria trees [Marian plum or Bouea macropylla],” he said.
The city could also make use of its roof spaces, as a way to solve the limited space available for the replanting program, he said.
