TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Are climate concerns behind the capital city relocation?
While the potential impacts of climate change, such as rising sea levels and increased flooding, could be significant, they do not feature prominently in the rationale behind the capital relocation.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Rising city: Construction progresses on May 6, 2024 at the Central Government District (KIPP) of Nusantara, the country’s new capital under development in East Kalimantan.
(Antara/Muzdaffar Fauzan)
B
usiness Insider published on April 28 an article on the new capital city of Nusantara, highlighting it as the world’s first climate-related capital city relocation. Unlike similar initiatives in Brazil and Nigeria, this project is unique because it is the first instance where the climate crisis has been cited as a contributing factor in relocating a capital city.
According to the article, the primary motivation behind this move is that “rising sea levels have made Jakarta the world’s fastest-sinking megacity.”
This narrative brings to mind questions I encountered at the Climate Academy Conference last year in Dakar. The event, which focused on planned relocation, featured participants from various countries who were intrigued by the Nusantara project.
They assumed it was the world’s most significant climate-related planned relocation effort. However, I found their questions somewhat bewildering. In Indonesia, discussions about the new capital city have predominantly focused on other factors, with climate-related arguments typically on the periphery within the broader debate surrounding the relocation.
On Aug. 26, 2019, during the announcement of the capital’s location, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo explained that the capital relocation was part of a longstanding plan initiated by founding president Sukarno. Jokowi emphasized that it was time for Indonesia, as a great nation, to design its own capital city. He also underscored the importance of development equity and the need to shift economic activities away from Java, which has been the country’s economic epicenter since independence.
Environmental issues were mentioned only briefly, focusing on air and water pollution. Notably, there was no mention of Jakarta’s land subsidence or other climate-related concerns.
The lack of climate-related arguments in the discussion about the relocation is also evident in Law No. 3/2022 on the national capital. Notably, the law outlines five reasons for relocating the capital, none of which mention climate-related factors or the risks of flooding and subsidence in Jakarta.
