Studies in Indonesia this week have warned that more than a quarter of Jakarta’s 661.5 square kilometres will be submerged by water in less than a decade.

Every day, Jakarta’s 13.5 million people face water-related risks. Some have too much water, while others just do not have enough. Some have water but it is not consumable because of dirt or salt. Some even face the threat of sea water entering their homes. As grave as the situation is, for Jakartans in this megacity, conditions are expected to worsen as a result of climate change.

Jakarta is one of the most populous urban agglomerations on earth. Its population has grown immensely in the last century. The megacity was once home to just 115,000 people in the 1900s when it was a Dutch colony, which then grew to 1.43 million in the 1950s at the time of Indonesia’s independence. In the 2000s, its population was 8.39 million after the collapse of the New Order and in 2017 this figure has grown to almost 13.5 million.