thechallengesforurbanwatermanagementintropical.docVIP

The Challenges for Urban Water Management in Tropical Coastal Megacities: Bangkok, Jakarta and Manila Yoslan Nur Abstract Over the last three decades, cities in Asia-Pacific have been growing rapidly and transforming functionally and physically. The most spectacular phenomenon of urbanisation in the region is undoubtedly the emergence of megacities, which are characterised by an intensive urbanisation process in their adjacent suburban areas, the urbanised areas extending up to 100 km into cities hinterlands. The term megacity is used for the cities with at least 10 million inhabitants. For the city managers this phenomenon pose both old and new problems, because megacity development has gone hand in hand with urban poverty concentration and environmental degradation, particularly in urban hydrological systems. Hydrological impacts then include the effects of these changes on the natural drainage, runoff, groundwater, sediment, water quality, water demands etc. Even where economic “miracles” have occurred in Asian megacities during the last three decades, urban water supply and sanitation services have remained well below standard. The objectives of this paper are to discuss the issues the challenges of urban water management in three Asian tropical coastal megacities: Bangkok, Jakarta and Manila. The paper also proposes an alternative to improve urban water management to ensure the sustainability and equality of water related services. Keywords: megacity, urban water management, urban poor, water supply, sanitation and flood. Introduction Bangkok (Thailand), Manila (Philippines) and Jakarta (Indonesia) are national capital in Southeast Asia. The three megacities have physical, environmental and socio-economic similarities, but they have no obvious cultural and religious similarities (Bangkok is a Buddhist city; Manila’s population is predominantly catholic and Jakarta is capital of the biggest Islamic country). They lie within the tropical zone. Thro