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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.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 27 2019, @10:55AM
That's not far-off from Florida tax law: Agricultural exemption granted to land which has been "put into productive use" which, until just last year, exclusively meant clearing out the native vegetation and wildlife. Ag exemption gets the owner a 90% reduction in property taxes.
20 years ago, I argued with the tax collector that harvest of native saw palmetto berries (which does not require total habitat destruction, but is still more invasive than not harvesting the berries) should be considered agricultural use of the land. He quoted current law to me at the time which translated to: NO. Apparently, others took up the argument in the capital and 20 years later land owners can now claim ag exemption for saw palmetto berry harvesting. The pace of progress.
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