Arientha Primanita – The Jakarta administration's insistence on continuing with its reclamation project off its northern coast is an insult to the nation's highest court, legal and nongovernmental organizations said on Sunday.
The city should accept a Supreme Court ruling in favor of the State Ministry for the Environment, declaring the reclamation project illegal, they said.
"The Jakarta administration must respect the Supreme Court ruling and cooperate with the Environment Ministry by putting a stop to the project," Nurkholis Hidayat, from the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta), said on Sunday.
"The administration should instead rehabilitate the north coast by replanting the mangroves that have been destroyed as a result of the reclamation project."
The city is reclaiming a 32-kilo-meter-long stretch in Jakarta Bay to provide an additional 2,700 hectares of land. The project has failed to pass an environmental-impact analysis (Amdal).
City spokesman Cucu Ahmad Kurnia said on Sunday that the city had gone through proper legal channels to conduct the reclamation project. "Land reclamation is needed for Jakarta, and all Jakartans," Cucu told the Jakarta Globe.
Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo has said the city administration was proceeding with the plan based on a 2008 presidential decree regulating spatial planning in Greater Jakarta and the Puncak and Cianjur areas of West Java, as well as a 2007 law on spatial planning.
"This reclamation will trigger economic and social problems. People's lives and earnings will be drastically affected," Nurkholis said.
The coalition of legal and nongovernmental organizations will visit the Environment Ministry on Thursday to demand that it immediately execute the Supreme Court ruling, he said.
The coalition includes the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association (PBHI), the Indonesian Green Institute, the People's Coalition for Justice in Fisheries (Kiara), the Jakarta Fishermen's Communication Forum (FKNJ) and the national Traditional Fishermen Commission.
Kiara secretary general, Riza Damanik said the environmental costs of the reclamation project would be three times as big as the profits reaped by the city once the project was completed.
"It will no doubt worsen flooding and cause the fishermen of Jakarta Bay to lose their livelihoods," Riza said. "If the city continues to defy this Supreme Court ruling, it could set a bad precedent for other regions that may also want to reclaim land."
The plan was proposed in 1994, but was sidelined in 2003 by the State Ministry for the Environment after its Amdal failed. The contractors initially working on the project filed a suit to overturn the ministry's ban in the Jakarta Administrative Court.
The court ruled in favor of the contractors, but the project remained suspended after the ministry appealed. Last July, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Environment Ministry, but the decision was only forwarded to the Jakarta Administrative Court in March.
Made Suarjaya, chief of the legal disputes subdivision at the Jakarta Legal Bureau, said the six contractors handling the project were still studying the Supreme Court ruling.
Tiharom, 34, from FKNJ, said his forum was firmly opposed to the reclamation plans. "Our catch area has drastically decreased since the '90s," Tiharom said.