Urban Flood Management, Policy Mobilities and Networks of Expertise
Funded by the UCLA International Institute, the UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative & The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Department of Geography, my Ph.D thesis closely traces the promotion, circulation and contestation of the planned Great Garuda Sea Wall, a USD$40 billion Dutch-designed flood defence project. In addition to a giant sea wall, the design includes plans for an attractive waterfront city build on land reclaimed from Jakarta Bay in the shape of the garuda, a mythical bird and Indonesia’s national symbol. Championed by consultants and bureaucrats as constituting the best solution to flooding, this project is representative of the Indonesian state’s infrastructural approach to flooding, which relies on concrete-heavy, capital-intensive engineering interventions such as sea walls, pumping stations, and river ‘normalization’ (normalisasi).
This highly ambitious project stands in stark contrast to attempts to plan with nature, which the same consultancy firms are promoting across North America and Western Europe. Acknowledging that urban flooding is a socio-ecological process that cannot readily be ‘fixed’ through such infrastructural interventions alone, my research examines how and why this approach to flooding prevails in Jakarta. To address this question, my research draws a discourse analysis of engineering and consultancy documents, as well as more than fifty semi-structured interviews with consultants, engineers, bureaucrats, government officials, staff of NGOs, community organizers, reporters, academics, and activists conducted during multi-sited fieldwork in Jakarta and the Netherlands between 2014 and 2017. This work also examines the intersections of eviction, displacement, and adaptation to environmental threats.
Selected Outputs
Colven E (2021) Better Flood Management Can Save Jakarta. East Asia Forum https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2021/07/13/better-flood-management-can-save-jakarta/
Colven E (2020) Subterranean Infrastructures in a Sinking City: The Politics of Visibility in Jakarta. Critical Asian Studies.
Colven E (2020) Thinking beyond success and failure: Dutch water expertise and friction in postcolonial Jakarta. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 2399654420911947. (Download PDF of accepted version here).
Colven E (2017) Understanding the Allure of Big Infrastructure: Jakarta's Great Garuda Sea Wall Project. Water Alternatives, 10 (2) 250-264.
In the Media
The Economist (2019, Sep 19) Climate change is forcing Asian cities to rethink their flood defences. Available online at: https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/09/19/climate-change-is-forcing-asian-cities-to-rethink-their-flood-defences