But when people take a look around the village, it is clear that parts of it, including dozens of houses, have been submerged under water. The sea has crept out into the village, forcing residents to live in their sinking houses. Some even have to live with seawater reaching up to their windows.

"Most of these houses are still inhabited despite being inundated day and night," Morosari resident Saiful Muhammad Arif, 32, told The Jakarta Post. "These people don't have much choice; it is almost impossible for them to leave this village because no one will buy their houses."

Saiful is no exception. When he was still an elementary school student in the late 1990s, he would need to walk two kilometers through residential complexes, rice fields as well as fish ponds to get to the beach.

Now, he does not need to go to the sea as it has come to his house. Saiful’s family has lost its backyard to the rising seawater.

Massive coastal erosion in the regency began with large-scale clearance of mangrove forests along the coast in the 1990s to create fishponds. Things got worse with the launch in 1994 of a reclamation project to build an industrial zone in Terboyo, a district in the neighboring city of Semarang with a coast located next to Demak.

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