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posted by martyb on Monday August 26 2019, @11:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the can-you-say-land-speculation? dept.

Jakarta Is Crowded And Sinking, So Indonesia Is Moving Its Capital To Borneo

Indonesian President Joko Widodo says his country will create a new capital city on the island of Borneo, revealing new details about his plan to move the central government out of Jakarta. The capital's current location faces a number of problems, including the fact that it's sinking.

Widodo's announcement Monday comes months after he said he wanted to move the capital, seeking a place that can offer a break from Jakarta's environmental challenges as well as its relentlessly gridlocked traffic.

While rising seawater levels from climate change are a widespread concern for island and coastal areas worldwide, experts say Jakarta has played a central role in its own predicament. "Jakarta's problems are largely man-made," NPR's Merrit Kennedy reported earlier this year. "The area's large population has extracted so much groundwater that it has impacted the ground levels, and many surface water resources are polluted."

Jakarta has a population of around 10 million, with 20 million more in the greater metropolitan area.

Also at NYT and CNN.


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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 27 2019, @10:49AM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday August 27 2019, @10:49AM (#886021)

    I bought some acreage on a river in Central Florida about 20 years ago - academically, I knew the phosphate mines were located just 30 miles north of it, I have even driven through them - deep in mine country - dozens, if not hundreds of times. It wasn't until I was flying over at 30,000 feet, not sure where I was, that I spotted the vast expanse of strip mines and was thinking: where am I, West Virginia??? just seconds later: oh, no, look, there's our land, just downriver.

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