The Environment's Carrying Capacity Status Due To the Use of Groundwater by the Community

Abstract

The enhancement of the shift in settlement areas in the suburbs of Jakarta is getting out of control. This phenomenon of urban sprawl development has changed the function of open land into built-up land for the construction of new housing infrastructure. This urban sprawl phenomenon will continue along with the escalating number of inhabitants. In addition, the development of residential areas in the outskirts of Jakarta, as happened in the research location in South Jakarta, has social and environmental impacts caused by the high use of groundwater by the community and makes residential areas unsustainable. This paper aims to assess the status of the environment's carrying capacity related to the occurrence of unsustainable settlements and to offer efforts to implement groundwater conservation in residential areas. This study develops a dynamic system model using a feedback approach to obtain the surroundings' carrying capacity status. The feedback approach uses three environmental subsystem models to address sustainable ecological problems: the social-environmental subsystem, the built environment subsystem, and the natural environment subsystem. The variables affecting the simulation system are the community's water needs, land conversion, and groundwater availability. The study's findings indicate that when it begins in 2070, the status of the environmental carrying capacity at the research location will be experiencing a severe water deficit, resulting in groundwater scarcity. Based on the scenario results, several policies can have a positive influence on increasing the status of environmental carrying capacity so that they can assist decision-makers in implementing groundwater conservation policies.