(Timbulsloko) In Indonesia, from the lush rice paddies of the Timbulsloko region, only a network of stone boardwalks remain on the surface of the waters that engulfed them, illustrating the disaster that climate change could wreak on coastal communities everywhere.
More than 200 people still live in this coastal region of the island of Java, although their lives have been drastically changed by rising sea levels, coastal erosion and excessive groundwater extraction, which has caused land subsidence.
The clearing of mangroves to create fishing ponds in the 1990s further made the coastline extremely vulnerable to flooding.
Sulkan, an Indonesian teacher, contemplates his photos from a bygone era. He remembers a marching band and a swarm of smiling schoolchildren standing on a road that has now disappeared under the glaucous waters.
“These are just memories,” sighs the 49-year-old, who, like many Indonesians, has only one name.
The waters penetrated five kilometers inland around Timbulsloko and the surrounding Demak region, said Denny Nugroho Sugianto, a professor at Diponegoro University.
According to scientific studies, the region around Timbulsloko is sinking at 20 centimeters a year, he says, double the rate recorded in 2010.
“This is the highest rate of land subsidence ever recorded in the region”, underlines the researcher, referring to a “slow disaster”.
Villagers on the Javanese coast are the first victims of the climate emergency, according to researchers estimating that a large part of the Jakarta megalopolis risks being in turn submerged by 2050.
“No future”
In Timbulsloko, residents have raised the wooden floor of their houses with earth to keep them dry as the floods worsen.
Sulkan was forced to transfer his kindergarten to higher ground.
Sularso, 54, says he has raised his floor three times since 2018, a total of 1.5 meters, for a budget of around 22 million rupees (nearly 2,000 Canadian dollars).
The height under the ceiling has decreased so much that you have to bend over it so as not to hit your head.
“For me, there is no future”, regrets this fisherman to AFP. ” This village […] will be gone in less than five years. We can’t build, we can’t do anything.
Its floor is submerged during high tides. He says he fears that a wave more violent than the others will end up destroying his house.
Khoiriyah, 42, a housewife, struggles to shop or take her three children to school due to flooded roads.
“Being able to move”
“Life is more difficult now. Every time the water gets into my house, I wish I could move,” she says.
The problem is set to get even worse with climate change.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that a 2°C rise above pre-industrial levels could raise sea levels by 43 centimeters by the next century.
The village cemetery was also raised to prevent it from being submerged. The villagers have installed a makeshift dike with tires.
Residents funded a stone walkway to link their homes together and allow them access to the graves of their loved ones.
“Life here is monotonous. Young people often go out because they hate staying in their house,” which is often flooded, explains Choirul Tamimi, 24.
Before the boats arrived in the village, he said, he walked through the flooded streets to get to work, with a change of clothes.
Professor Sugianto appealed to the government to provide residents with access to piped water to reduce reliance on groundwater and to consider backfilling sand to fill erosion.
“If we don’t restore the original coastline, we won’t be able to solve this problem in a lasting way,” he says.
In Timbulsoko, Sulkan refuses to surrender to the elements. He assures that he will stay there, to teach a new generation of children, like those who once stood on the now-sunken road.
“As long as there are inhabitants, as long as there are houses, I will stay here”.