Sinking City Forcing Indonesia to Move Capital
Jakarta, widely seen as the world's fastest sinking city, may soon no longer be Indonesia's capital, the country's planning minister announced this week.
Indonesia's Minister of National Development and Planning Board Chief Bamband Brodjonegoro said newly elected President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has decided to relocate the capital, although an alternative location has yet to be determined. Local media suggests Palangkaraya, on the island of Borneo about 860 miles northeast of Jakarta, is a frontrunner, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported.
Widodo, who campaigned on a promise to spread economic development more evenly around the country and to address Jakarta's overpopulation, declared victory in the recent election, although official results will not be announced until May 22. His opponent also declared victory.
“We want to have a capital that represents the nation’s identity and improves the efficiency of the central government and establish a smart, green and beautiful city,” Bambang said, the Jakarta Post reported. “The capital relocation must serve the strategic vision of our long-term development agenda.”
Should the move become a reality, it won't be immediate and could take up to 10 years, CNN reports. It will also take an estimated $23 to $33 billion dollars to move the capital, build new infrastructure and relocate civil servants from Jakarta.
Another impetus for the move, although not specifically cited as a reason by Widodo, is the fact that Jakarta, located on the country's most populated island of Java, is sinking at an alarming rate.
About half of Jakarta's metropolis now lies beneath sea level, and several districts, including Muara Baru, have sunk as much as 14 feet in recent years, the New York Times has reported.
Heri Andreas, an expert in Jakarta's land subsidence at the Bandung Institute of Technology says most of northern Jakarta will be under water within the next 30 years.
"If we look at our models, by 2050, about 95 percent of North Jakarta will be submerged," Andreas told NPR.
The city that is home to 10 million people is reportedly sinking at a rate of nearly 10 inches per year, largely due to the overconsumption of groundwater.
(MORE: Jakarta Is the World's Fastest-Sinking City and It May Have Only a Decade Left)
Only about a third of the city's population is served with piped water, so residents are resorting to digging illegal wells deeper and deeper into the ground to access groundwater. As the aquifers are depleted, the land sinks under the weight of concrete and buildings.
There is ample rainfall to fill the emptied aquifers each year, but with an estimated 97 percent of the city covered in concrete and asphalt, and a lack of sewers, the water is prevented from sinking back into the ground. Instead, it runs off into the ocean and the 13 highly polluted rivers that serve the city, which only exacerbates the city's flood risk.
The residents of Palangkaraya are not entirely sure it's a good idea to move the capital to their relatively quiet city.
"I hope the city will develop and the education will become as good as in Jakarta. But all the land and forest that's empty space now will be used. Kalimantan is the lungs of the world, and I am worried we will lose the forest we have left," a high school student told the BBC.
There are other considerations in relocating the capital from Jakarta, including the world's worst traffic congestion, which is bolstered by government ministers' needing to be escorted by police to arrive at meetings on time, the BBC reports.
The planning minister estimated traffic jams in Jakarta cost the economy some $6.8 billion annually, the BBC also reported.
Instead of relocating the capital off the island of Java, other options include creating a special zone for government offices inside the current capital or a new site on the outskirts of the city.
