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Water and Forest City.

Indonesia is one of the developing countries in South-East Asia. As we can see, this country is trying to follow the other modern countries. They build the cities by scarifying the nature such as forests and resorts.

Do we have a city in the forest? Most of our cities are always or in the middle of the forests or in the middle of the rock-hills or in the middle of the deserts. We just have forest in the middle of the city. It's named "forest of the city". In Indonesia it named "Hutan Kota". How about a city in the forest, that named "forest city" or "city of the forest", like a city under water?

That is just an imagination. We hope to still have a natural forest while building our living circumstance. It's no need to destroy the forest first before building our country. How about yours?

Here in Banjarmasin, where I am living, we are going to adapting our building design with wet soil areas. The local government has planned a building development regulation. This regulation will asked the developers to build the foundation of their buildings by using pillar-system, named "Rumah Panggung", instead of fill it with solid soil or rock (mound) that can stop the water flow freely. The aim of this action is to let the soil absorbs the water freely and save it under it surface. If the water are over it can be flew freely to the rivers than to the see. This is the solution for the flood as like in Jakarta.

Banjarmasin, as A Thousand Rivers City ("Kota Seribu Sungai") must pay a full attention about this water management. Since, this city is about 1 meter below the see level, geographically. They must deeper their rivers to let the water straight to the see. They must keep the river clean all the time. They must build a systematic roads and paths to let the water flowing freely. This is a serious problem for this city beside other problem like mining and forestry.

That regulation will be effective on 2009, as reported by the local newspaper. Right now that regulation is matured by local government and local senate. We hope this regulation can be our real action to preparing and adapting to the impact of global climate change.

A small steps to the big harmony.

Learn more about this author, Isyaias Sawing.
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