Indonesia announced today that Jakarta, the capital city of 10 million souls located on the island of Java, will be relocated because the large metropolis is sinking rapidly into the sea. Jakarta is one of the world’s mega-cities.
Newly elected Indonesian President Joko Widodohas has not named where the massive undertaking will be, but according to Indonesian state television, it is likely to be Borneo, the third largest island on earth (after Greenland and New Guinea). Borneo located southeast of the Malay Peninsula, the northern part of the island in Malaysia, the rest of the island by Indonesia.
Straddling the Equator, Borneo is home to a diverse ecosystem and the remaining tropical forests on the island are one of the few places on earth where healthy rainforests still exist according to the World Wildlife Foundation.
Humanity always bats last, and unfortunately, a drowning megacity will likely take precedence over rainforest reserves even though the island has lost 50% of its forests over three decades. Like all of the world's rainforests, corporate interests such as agriculture, mining, and logging have pillaged the land and life in the jungle.
Though climate change does play a role in the sinking of the city, the main culprit is the extraction of freshwater.
Julia Macfarlane writes:
Indonesia is one of the world’s biggest producers of waste -- creating several million tons of plastic waste each year. After China, Indonesia is the world’s biggest marine polluter, dumping millions of tons of garbage into the sea. Jakarta is also home to the largest uncovered landfill site in all of Southeast Asia.
Despite the monstrous scale of the filth in the Bantar Gebang landfill site, it is still home to thousands of poor families who live amongst the garbage, many of whom salvage among the scraps. Earlier this year environmental campaigner and actor Leonardi di Caprio shared an image on his Instagram of the landfill sight, to highlight the crisis.
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One of the main issues contributing to Jakarta’s instability and its sinking levels is the lax regulation that does little to combat the many instances of residents using their own groundwater extraction units, since water from the river is too dangerous to drink. Only 35% of Jakarta’s annual water needs were met by the national water provider -- the remainder comes from private firms and residents digging up their own ground wells. This, among other factors, are the biggest contributors to the city’s increasing flood risk. Despite wells being illegal, there were more than 4,700 counted in 2016 and the number continues to grow.
Pam Wright of the Weather Channel writes:
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.
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.
All coastal cities should begin a planning process for a retreat from the coasts due to sea-level rise and/or sinking land.
So much land is used by humans for cities and farmland, building new cities will not be helpful for the survival of uncountable species, including the one that has caused this mess in the first place. We are lousy caretakers of the earth.