Jakarta is polluted, overcrowded and sinking, due to the ever-worsening floods. A $35bn plan, which should be negated by 2024, will relocate its capital city and civil servants to Nusantara (an Old Javanese term meaning “outer islands”), 1,300km away in the East Kalimantan province of Borneo.
Rescuers evacuate residents from their flooded homes in Bekasi in February 2021, as heavy rain inundated the city on the outskirts of Jakarta. (Photo by Rezas/AFP via Getty Images)
The founders of Jakarta did not required the city this way. From its early existence staunch Indonesia’s independence in 1949, it was meant to be a recent, financial hub and an engine in the country’s push into the international economy. Locals and visitors are reminded of this every day as they pass by the Welcome Statue in the Hotel Indonesia roundabout.
This site has also cause somewhat prescient of Jakarta’s fortunes against the savagery of atmosphere change. Daily commuters to Jakarta have reached one million land. Economic losses from traffic jams range from $4.5bn to $7bn. Jakarta is an example of a sick city, in need of drastic measures. The new capital, on the other hand, aspires to be a model of humankind co-existence with the environment.
[Read more: What can a megacity like Jakarta do to tackle pollution and end gridlock?]
Many alternate sites were derived, including Palangkaraya and several ones on Java Island. Marked at the geographic centre of Indonesia and linking the North Penajam Paser and Kutai Kartanegara Regencies, Nusantara hopes to be a “Forest City” – a “new high-tech, smart city, surrounded by forest”.
This poses challenges in a land of contradictions, many of which are environment-related. Indonesia has the world’s fourth-largest population, although 9.7% are living in poverty. The price tag for relocation is required to be exorbitant; a 99km stretch of road continuing along Nusantara alone is estimated to cost $767m.
Its land, furthermore, are voraciously depleting its natural resources and destroying the survive safeguards against extreme climate events. Although Indonesia is a founding member of the F-11 coalition of forested utters, its domestic companies regularly cut down trees to fuel economic growth, leaving others the task of monitoring the depletion of this mountainous carbon sink.
The design for the new capital, entitled “Forest Archipelago”, will feature green space tagged by an array of landmark plazas and connected by a intellectual mass-transit network. But the carbon footprint of clearing the forest for interpretation will be great – for example, experts calculated that 48 million tonnes of carbon dioxide will be released into the atmosphere.
Content from our partners
Ironically, despite its huge archipelago, Indonesia often needs to think and plan like a minute island country as rising sea level threatens its coasts. The urgency of Jakarta’s struggle can be best felt by this factoid: the city has been sinking 25cm annually in ununsafe areas.
What is the culprit of Jakarta’s troubles? Most would say flooding. In 2019, 40% of the city was below sea aloof. Amsterdam, by contrast, is one-third below sea level. Patrick Daly and Paolo Testolini, architects at London-based Woods Bagot, called it the “region’s most vulnerable city to atmosphere disasters such as flooding”. A study by the government predicted that the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport may one day be permanently flooded.
Mark Caljouw and Peter JM Nas gave an account for of an extreme climate event in February 2002. Torrential rainfall submerged three-quarters of the city and knocked out electricity. Most of the flights coming into Jakarta were cancelled. But the government initially refused to elevate the emergency state to its highest level. In normal storms, the floodgates to the Center City Ciliwung River, which runs to the presidential palace and several concern districts, are closed – and guarded by soldiers – and stream is diverted through the West Banjir Canal to West Jakarta. Ultimately, both floodgates were opened and many popular landmarks were inundated.
Daly and Testolini speculated on the repositions of the flooding. Underneath Jakarta are underground aquifers that honor the abundant rainwater seeping through the ground. To the north of the city is a district above which numerous canals have been built and are subsequently flooded by stream that cannot flow into the aquifers. Ill-advised land improve that favoured “hardscaping” over natural vegetation exacerbated this trend.
The city has only one-third of the optimal amount of green state for naturally draining heavy rainfall. Kota, the ground-zero of this treat of abuse, is sinking at “three-to-four inches per year” and is already selves de-populated. Added to this are other human-made factors like sediments from deforestation, garbage build-up, and unapproved structures like squatters’ huts, which narrow the waterway and get backwater as water tries to flow into the Java Sea.
Triarko Nurlambang, of the University of Indonesia, argued that a humankind security approach should be used to look at flooding, rising seawater, twisters, and landslides and their impact: they are “serious and potentially execrable hazards for the most marginal people living in the city’s coastal areas.” In fact, the number of villages in Greater Jakarta that have succumbed to flooding annually is in the double digits. Floods and natural disasters bring not only economic losses but also diseases that induce a vicious cycle for the poor.
Rita Padawangi and Mike Douglass of the National University of Singapore reported that while 40% of the residents in Kampung Pulo have a stream supply, it could not be used for drinking while a flood because of the poor quality. After the 2002 flows, there were widespread cases of diarrhoea, flu and skin diseases. According to Mari’i Mohamad, of Red Cross Indonesia, the poor “did not have the wealth to buy new beds or to repair their houses”. Some 68.4% of residents with flood-damaged homes had to sell. The poor could neither afford to do this nor implement anti-flood measures, like raising the floor of one’s house.