UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Navigating the Waters of Flood Mitigation in Jakarta: Promoting and Contesting Expert Knowledges A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Geography by Emma Louise Colven 2018 © Copyright by Emma Louise Colven 2018 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Navigating the Waters of Flood Mitigation in Jakarta: Promoting and Contesting Expert Knowledges by Emma Louise Colven Doctor of Philosophy in Geography University of California, Los Angeles, 2018 Professor Helga M. Leitner, Co- Chair Professor Eric Stewart Sheppard, Co-Chair While urban adaptation projects are designed to protect urban residents, their differentiated impacts on communities warrant critical scholarly attention. This dissertation contributes to deepening our understanding of why particular forms of adaptation prevail over others in different contexts and the implications for social and environmental justice by examining the planning, promotion and contestation of Jakarta’s planned Great Garuda Sea Wall (GGSW) project. Drawing on a critical discourse analysis of the project master plan and supporting engineering and financial reports and documents, press releases, policy documents and legislation, and news articles from local and national sources, as well as 60 in-depth interviews with consultants, bureaucrats and activists conducted during ii seven months of cumulative fieldwork in Jakarta and the Netherlands, I examine how different environmental imaginaries, situates forms of expertise, and discourses are mobilized by consultants, bureaucrats, and activists in debates concerning flood mitigation. Chapter 2 examines how the GGSW project retains its allure as the optimal solution for Jakarta, despite failing to address what is understood to be a primary cause of flooding: land subsidence. Drawing on the theoretical insights of science and technology studies, urban political ecology, and postcolonial urban theory, I contribute to understandings of the political and economic forces that drive large infrastructure projects. While Chapter Two illustrates the broader structural processes driving the project forward, Chapter Three documents the processes of articulation between Dutch consultants and Indonesian bureaucrats. I interrogate both the disruptive and productive elements of friction, as Dutch consultants seek to realize the GGSW project in Jakarta. Examining the GGSW project as a liminal project that constitutes neither a success nor a failure, I advance theoretical understandings of policy immobility and failure. Chapter 4 examines the contentious politics of flood mitigation in Jakarta more broadly through an analysis of the environmentalism of Forum Kampung Kota, a network of activists, architects and academics. By tracing its changing tactics, from one centered on appeals to social and environmental justice to what I call ‘insurgent expertise’, this chapter enriches understandings of localized and differently positioned forms of environmental politics. iii The dissertation of Emma Louise Colven is approved. Judith A. Carney Ursula K. Heise Helga M. Leitner, Committee Co-Chair Eric Stewart Sheppard, Committee Co-Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2018 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One: Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 1 Socio-ecological transformations in Jakarta. .................................................................................................. 4 Methodological strategies.................................................................................................................................. 7 Methodological reflections ............................................................................................................................. 12 The limitations of liminality. ................................................................................................................................. 12 Producing knowledge for whom?. ........................................................................................................................... 13 Summary of chapters ....................................................................................................................................... 15 Chapter Two: Understanding the Allure of the Great Garuda Sea Wall Project ....................... 17 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................... 17 Theoretical framework: Science and technology studies, urban political ecology, and postcolonial urban theory ...................................................................................................................................................... 21 Contested narratives, contested solutions: Constructing the GGSW project as the ‘optimum way’ .. 24 Understanding the allure of the GGSW project ......................................................................................... 31 Speculative urbanism, world-class city building and the reimagining of North Jakarta ............................................. 31 Jakarta’s colonial history and postcolonial context .................................................................................................. 36 Conclusion. ....................................................................................................................................................... 37 Chapter Three: Disruptive and productive frictions: The messiness of globalizing the Dutch Delta Approach .............................................................................................................................................. 40 v Introduction. ..................................................................................................................................................... 40 Policy im/mobilities ........................................................................................................................................ 43 Success/failure ...................................................................................................................................................... 43 Failure or friction? ............................................................................................................................................... 46 Globalizing Dutch expertise: Exporting the Dutch Delta Approach ...................................................... 48 The Dutch Delta Approach .................................................................................................................................. 50 Operationalizing the Dutch Delta Approach: Jakarta’s Great Garuda Sea Wall Project ...................... 53 As the rubber hits the road: Productive and disruptive friction ............................................................... 57 Friction as disruptive. ........................................................................................................................................... 57 Friction as productive ............................................................................................................................................ 67 Conclusion. ....................................................................................................................................................... 75 Chapter Four: Insurgent Expertise: Tracing the Shifting Socio-Ecological Environmentalism of Forum Kampung Kota ...................................................................................... 77 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................... 77 The geographies of environmentalism ........................................................................................................ 81 The travels of environmental justice ....................................................................................................................... 81 Environmental justice: An elastic concept stretched too far? ................................................................................... 84 Varieties of environmentalism .............................................................................................................................. 86 Situated environmentalisms, situated knowledge .................................................................................................... 88 The contentious politics of flood mitigation .............................................................................................. 90 vi In pursuit of an infrastructural fix ....................................................................................................................... 90 The political ecologies of eviction and resettlement .................................................................................................. 93 The Socio-ecological environmentalism of Forum Kampung Kota ....................................................... 97 Social and environmental justice ........................................................................................................................... 99 Ecological reasoning and insurgent expertise ....................................................................................................... 101 Co-producing