- Researchers say the Kendari Bay, on the island of Sulawesi, is rapidly disappearing.
- The main culprit is land clearing for development projects around the bay and the rivers the feed it. The land clearing releases sediment into the water that eventually settles on the bottom of the bay.
- The bay may be decades from filling up completely, but studies suggest hope of saving its plant and animal life may already be lost.
KENDARI, Indonesia — Next year will mark the completion of a nearly mile-long bridge being built over this booming industrial city’s iconic bay, say government officials here.
But researchers studying the bay’s declining health warn that in another 10 years, there could be no bay left.
The Kendari Bay Bridge is the largest in a series of infrastructure projects to accompany the rapid growth of Kendari, which sits back on an inlet of the Banda Sea on the eastern Indonesian island of Sulawesi. But land clearing for human settlements has released large volumes of silt into the rivers that feed the bay. The sediment finds its way into the bay itself, now only half as deep as it once was, studies indicate.
Researchers say the bridge, with its girthy legs planted at the bay’s bottleneck, could be the last nail in the coffin for the body of water that has helped make this city a hub for the region’s natural resource industries. Government plans to stifle the soil buildup are slow and limited by funding, officials say. But La Ode Alwi, a hydrology professor at the city’s Halu Oleo University, says efforts are lacking.
“It wasn’t clear how the city would be planned at the beginning,” said Alwi, whose Ph.D. dissertation examined the bay’s shrinking. “Zoning regulations were simple — build a house, then build a road, all close to rivers.” Eventually, he said, the rivers “became a garbage dump.”
Home to nearly 400,000 people, Kendari is the capital of Indonesia’s Southeast Sulawesi province. Its dusty streets, low traffic and green spaces contribute to a small-city feel that belies its rapid growth, mirroring that of Southeast Sulawesi’s nickel mines and oil palm plantations.
In the early 2010s, GDP growth in Southeast Sulawesi surpassed 10 percent, good for second-fastest in the country, before dropping closer to 6 percent in recent years, according to government figures. At the same time, Kendari’s population grew at an annual rate of 3.8 percent, nearly three times the national average.
In 2012, Alwi wrote in his dissertation that more than a million cubic meters (35 million cubic feet) of soil was deposited into the bay each year, shaving an annual 7 to 15 hectares (17 to 37 acres) off the surface area. A report by researchers from Hasanuddin University in nearby South Sulawesi province and government agencies in Konawe district to the north said Kendari’s “out of control” development had put pressure on the forests and fish stocks in the surrounding region. Locals complain of trash, especially plastic waste, found clogging drainage canals and rivers. Research done by a group of Halu Oleo students in 2017 suggested mercury in the bay was approaching dangerous levels.
“Construction of roads and housing has been done without any order,” Alwi said. “There are zoning codes but they’re barely enforced.”
The bridge isn’t the only project experts say is jeopardizing the health of the bay. Elsewhere along the coast, a colossal mosque built on a reclaimed land has also drawn criticism for releasing sediment into the water. Construction on the mosque only halted last year after the mayor who authorized its construction in 2015, Adriatma Dwi Putra, was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison for corruption involving a road-building project.
Longtime residents of Kendari and researchers examining the causes of sedimentation point to rapid land clearing in the Wanggu River watershed southwest of Kendari. There, around Haluoleo Airport, large housing complexes and farmland for cattle and rice have been opened up to accommodate the 25 percent jump in population in less than 10 years. The watershed, however, spans farther than the city’s borders, so the exact population increase may be greater.
The bay may be decades from filling up completely, but studies suggest hope of saving its plant and animal life may already be lost. A recent study by Bogor Institute of Agriculture researcher Zulfathri Randhi reported that fishing inside the 1,400-hectare (3,460-acre) bay could no longer support families on the coast.
Kahar Bugis, now 27, migrated to Kendari from a more rural part of the province in 2012, after finishing high school. He managed to earn a living and start a family with income from selling mangrove crabs from the bay. But last year, he switched to selling crabs imported from his hometown, even though the price had tripled.
“I can’t find enough crabs in the bay anymore. I think it’s because of the waste, plastic and mud in the mangroves now,” said Kahar, a father of two. Despite the higher prices, he can still sell crabs because other sellers on his street have also switched to imported crabs.
For nearly two decades, Emiyarti, a fisheries lecturer at Halu Oleo University, has been studying the bay’s benthos, the aquatic life found at the very bottom of a body of water. The benthos in the bay, she said, were already showing signs of decline by the time she started her research in 2003, an indication of the bay’s dwindling health more broadly. Today, when her students study the benthos for their own research, they have trouble finding any specimens at all.
“When I was young, I remember there were so many sea urchins around the bay. But now I can say they have all disappeared,” Emiyarti said. “This means that some things just can’t live in the bay anymore.”
Subhan, a marine biologist at Halu Oleo, combined his work as a researcher with his diving hobby to study the coral in the bay. In a paper published in 2017, he found the rate of sedimentation prevented coral recruitment, the process by which new coral grows and forms.
“When you dive in the bay, you can’t even see your own hand because it’s so dirty,” Subhan said.
The province’s fisheries office says it relies on universities to carry out studies, but there has been little research on the health of the bay and upstream watershed since 2015, when Subhan recorded data for his work.
Government officials acknowledge that the bay is at risk of disappearing, but there’s little consensus as to how long it will take.
In May, the head of the province’s legislative council pressed the governor to act to slow the silting, noting that it was reaching a “critical point.” In 2011, the head of the city’s development office made a similar call, predicting the bay would be gone by 2031. The 2012 dissertation by Alwi, the hydrology professor, predicted Kendari Bay would be gone by this year, but others are now saying it will be another 10 or 20 years.
Fifty years until the bay disappears: that’s the number offered by Anung Wijaya, the head of conservation at the province’s fisheries office. But rehabilitation work is slow because there are so many actors involved. The city has deployed an excavator to dredge soil out of the bay, but Anung says it only dumps the dirt on the coast, creating new land and reducing the bay’s area.
“I’ve seen that the dirt at the bottom is very dense, and there’s 5 to 7 meters [16 to 23 feet] of it,” Anung said. “We have to have everyone who is affected involved to solve it.”
Anung counted roughly 10 government offices that are involved in planning for the bay’s conservation, but the list doesn’t include NGOs and private groups involved. Because work is slow, he said, conservation relies on citizens taking action, such as student projects to plant mangroves.
“With public awareness, we have to think about how to change residents’ behavior,” Anung said. “It’s not new. Government offices have been holding programs for a while. But that’s the thing: there’s been no change. Maybe it’s the ways they are working, or the bay is really actually very complex.”
Alwi is critical of the government’s efforts to mitigate the damage done by downstream flow of sediment and other materials. What’s really needed, he said, is strong enforcement of zoning laws to manage the expansion of the city. A reservoir that can mimic the region’s once widespread swamps will help catch rainwater and prevent flooding, Subhan said. He recommends creating an additional channel by the legs of the bridge to allow for water and sediment to escape.
Alwi and his daughter, Astriwana, built De Greenity, a green park space in the city 250 meters (820 feet) from the bay, where Alwi says the coastline used to be. Monday through Saturday, parents can pay for their children to learn English and natural sciences through hands-on practice in a garden and fish pond that stand out among cracked roads and stale housing.
“I remember I could fish when I rode boats to school in Kendari. I would just drop the line in and immediately catch one,” Alwi said.
“At the time, ferries run by PELNI [the state ferry operator] used to come into the bay. Now, it’s too shallow. No ferry is brave enough.”
Follow Ian Morse on Twitter: @ianjmorse
Banner: A motorbike plies a road next to Kendari Bay. Image by Leah Mahan/Flickr.
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