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Ministry aims for holistic flood mitigation
Rehabilitation, including construction of land and water conservation infrastructure, and law enforcement to curb illegal mining and forestry are among the efforts for mitigating future disasters.
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In the same boat: Soldiers help rescue residents from the flood-hit Bojong Indah residential area in West Jakarta earlier this month. Cooperation between the central government and local administrations is key to solving the annual disaster. (JP/Donny Fernando)
T
he massive flooding that hit Greater Jakarta area and Lebak, Banten at the turn of 2020, which were worsened by landslides that hit some parts of Lebak regency in Banten and West Java, has served as a wake-up call that something must be done to prevent disaster.
The disasters claimed more than 60 lives and displaced thousands others in the first few days of 2020.
The Environment and Forestry Ministry’s secretary-general, Bambang Hendroyono, said that minister Siti Nurbaya has received direct instructions from President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo to restore the ecosystem as part of flood mitigation and the ministry wanted to do it holistically.
“Rehabilitation, including construction of land and water conservation infrastructure, and law enforcement to curb illegal mining and forestry [are needed], but the most important thing is to restore the environment itself,” Bambang told reporters on Wednesday.
The ministry’s water pollution control director, Luckmi Purwandari, said that as floods happened because the rate of water discharged was higher than the rivers' capacity, so reducing both of them was important.
“We do that by restoring the rivers with the ‘ecoriparian’ concept, as well as by reducing river pollution,” Luckmi said.
The term "ecoriparian" comes from riparian ecology, referring to all zones adjacent to rivers and streams.
