Climate crisis in Timbulsloko: coastal village faces sinking threat

• Timbulsloko, Indonesia, is sinking due to rising sea levels, coastal erosion, and excessive groundwater extraction.
• Residents have adapted by raising floors and installing wooden decks to combat floods.
• Climate change worsens the situation, requiring urgent action to protect coastal communities.

Timbulsloko in Indonesia, once a prosperous coastal village, now faces a grim fate as it sinks in rising tides. With more than 200 residents in one of the fastest sinking regions of the country, life has taken an alarming turn for the villagers. The lush rice paddies that once graced the landscape have given way to a network of boardwalks and canoes, highlighting the dire impact of climate change on coastal communities around the world.

Sinking village in Indonesia

Rising sea levels, coastal erosion, and excessive groundwater extraction have left the town vulnerable to encroaching waters. Clearing of mangroves for fishing ponds in the 1990s has further exposed the coastline to flooding.

In Timbulsloko, after crops failed in the 1990s - rice turned reddish-black - villagers turned to aquaculture, raising milkfish and tiger prawns in brackish ponds. They had some good years, but by the mid-2000s, the ponds had been overtaken by the sea as well. Now the "mainland" is more than 1.5 kilometres away, and the villagers go there by rowing boat.

In order not to get wet in their houses, they have installed wooden decks or have raised the floors up to two meters, so now they have to duck to get under the low roofs of their "dwarf houses", as they are called. Of the more than 400 families that used to live here, about 170 remain.

Data shows that some areas around Timbulsloko are sinking by up to 20 centimeters a year, a rate that has doubled since 2010, making it the largest land subsidence ever recorded in the area.

Unfolding disaster

For the villagers, this unfolding disaster has prompted drastic adaptations. Residents have modified their homes by raising floors with dirt and installing wooden decks to stay dry amid worsening flooding. But these moves come with challenges, leaving them with tight space and worries about the future.

Sulkan, a 49-year-old resident, has had to move his kindergarten to higher ground to prevent it from getting lost in the water. Sularso, a 54-year-old fisherman, has raised his floor several times, spending a significant amount to combat rising waters. He, like many others, fears that there is no future for the town.

Climate change threatens to further exacerbate the situation. Researchers predict that much of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, will be submerged by 2050. Yet the inhabitants of coastal Java are already grappling with the urgency of the crisis. With the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warning of rising sea levels, the residents of Timbulsloko face an uncertain and precarious future.

Drinking water, sinking land

Heri Andreas, a researcher at the Bandung Institute of Technology in Indonesia who has studied subsidence off the north coast for more than a decade, says there is another factor at play: massive groundwater extraction, which is causing sediment compaction and faster land subsidence.

In the Demak Regency alone, in 2014, there were almost 250,000 wells drilled at various depths, between 24 and 152 meters, in an area the size of Berlin, Germany, or Fort Worth, Texas. There are probably more by now; 2014 is the latest year for which government data is available. 

Most of the wells are private. But the Demak Water Supply Agency, which is part of the local government, has also drilled deep wells in four places. It uses them, along with water from the Jajar River, to supply piped water to more than 58,000 households in 59 villages, out of a total of 249 in the regency. In 2020 that system distributed at least 9.7 million cubic meters of groundwater.

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