Concerns Indonesia’s bold plan to build $45 billion jungle capital is off track
It’s not often a nation shifts its capital city, but that’s exactly what one of Australia's closest neighbour’s is planning to do - but has it jumped the shark?
It’s not often a nation shifts its capital city, but that’s exactly what Indonesia has been doing in recent years.
Indonesia, one of Australia’s closest neighbours and the fourth most populous nation in the world, has been working to a late 2024 deadline to move its capital from sinking, overpopulated Jakarta, to a “green forest city” in Borneo, more than 1000 kilometres away.
Indonesia’s political centre is set to move from Jakarta on the Island of Java, to Nusantara, located in the East Kalimantan province of Borneo, as 40 per cent of the current capital sinks below sea level.
The move a vision Indonesian President Joko Widodo who hands over the presidency to Prabowo Subianto in October.
The new Indonesian capital is expected to be fully ready by 2045, but the plan was to have the government start moving there in early 2024.
Already plagued by controversy over its positioning, there are now fears the 2024 move for some departments is off track.
According to a government estimate, the project will cost $45.2 billion, with taxpayer money expected to cover about 20 per cent of that.
Jakarta has been offering substantial tax incentives to lure potential investors, including those from Saudi Arabia and China.
Nusantara authority secretary Achmad Adiwijaya told AFP in 2023 that it had also secured the backing of three property developers to fund housing worth AU$4 billion.
But funding has proven elusive, with few commitments announced. Japanese tech conglomerate SoftBank pulled its backing for the project in March without elaborating.
Indonesia faces a challenge in relocating and financing Nusantara’s opening before President Widodo’s term ends, leading to concerns about potential corner-cutting.
Eka Permanasari, urban design professor at Monash University Indonesia, warned that there was still a lot of “homework that needs to be done”.
Why the move?
Indonesia’s government plans to move its capital, Jakarta, due to its climate and environmental challenges, notorious traffic gridlock, and poor air quality.
Challenges in Southeast Asian megacity due to flooding, land subsidence, and rising sea levels make living difficult for over 10.5 million people.
By 2050, approximately 25 per cent of the city on the west side of Java could be submerged.
Jakarta is sinking is due to unsustainable groundwater depletion that has resulted in subsidence — but the city is being swamped by rising sea levels linked to global warming.
Edvin Aldrian, a professor of meteorology and climatology at the Agency for Assessment and Application of Technology BPPT Indonesia, recently said that building a new capital is “only moving the problem.”
He added, moving will not prevent the increasingly heavy rainfall and floods, which are becoming more frequent in Jakarta and may occur in Nusantara in the future.
“I’m afraid that there are many floods already in Kalimantan,” he said.
President Widodo plans to hold Indonesia’s 79th Independence Day celebrations in Nusantara in August this year.
The goal is to complete core infrastructure for an initial 500,000 residents.
“Green vision” or “ecological disaster”
Environmentalists warn that constructing a metropolis will accelerate deforestation in one of the world’s largest and oldest tropical rainforests, estimated to be over 100 million years old.
“It’s going to be a massive ecological disaster,” Uli Arta Siagian, forest campaigner for environmental group Walhi, told AFP.
The island that Indonesians call the “lungs of the world” – shared with Malaysia and Brunei – is home to long-nosed monkeys, clouded leopards, pig-tailed macaques, flying fox-bats and the smallest rhinos on the planet.
By 2045, the Indonesian government plans for Nusantara to have 1.9 million residents bringing in a wave of human and industrial activities to the heart of Borneo.
The relocation to the 2,560-square-kilometre area follows the capital moves by Brazil to Brasilia and Myanmar to the ghost town of Naypyidaw.
Drastic changes to the land’s topography and the man-made disasters that could follow “will be severe and far more difficult to mitigate compared to natural disasters”, said Siagian.
Indonesia already has one of the world’s highest rates of deforestation linked to mining, farming and logging, and is accused of allowing firms to operate in Borneo with little oversight.
The government, however, says it wants to spread economic development – long centred on densely populated Java – around the vast archipelago nation.
President Widodo, whose presidential term ends this year, pitched a utopian vision of a “green” city four times the size of Jakarta where residents would commute on electric buses.
His city authority chief, former president Bambang Susantono, presented the initial plan to journalists in mid December 2022, pledging carbon neutrality by 2045 in what he dubbed the world’s first-ever “sustainable forest city.”
Architect Sofian Sibarani is in charge of creating a master plan for the new city, outlining everything from road maps to a transit system. He insisted that his plan envisaged “minimum changes to the environment”.
Sibarani described a metropolis that appears out of the jungle rather than replaces it.
“We are trying to create (a city that is) working with nature instead of working against it,” he said.
Initial projects include a parliament, workers’ homes, a dam, a grand mosque and a presidential palace shaped as the towering mythical bird Garuda.
Experts, including Sibarani, however, have warned authorities against breakneck building.
“My concern is if you rush this, we may compromise,” he said.
Indigenous concerns remain
Alongside an ecological impact, there have been fears Nusantara, meaning “archipelago”, could also displace generations-old Indigenous communities.
Sibukdin, a local Indigenous Balik tribe leader who goes by one name, told AFP in 2023 of fears the development will drive away his people.
Like other Indigenous groups in Borneo, thousands of Balik tribe members rely on the forest to meet their daily needs.
More than 90 per cent of the forest the tribe uses for hunting and foraging has already been lost to commercial activity since the 1970s, Sibukdin said.
A nearby tribal cemetery was demolished because of the dam project, leaving him “heartbroken”.
“It erased our traces,” he said.
While officials have vowed to respect Indigenous rights and compensate those affected by Nusantara, provincial officials said they would verify all land claims and only accept ownership proof.
Sibukdin said not all Balik tribe areas had been formally recognised.
“When the new capital comes, where else can we go?” he asked.
Since the announcement of the capital’s location, illegal encroachments have increased at an orangutan sanctuary housing around 120 apes.
The sanctuary is situated on land designated for Nusantara’s future expansion.
“Mines, land speculators, they encroach on our place,” Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF) chief executive Jamartin Sihite recently said.
Around 40 per cent of the sanctuary’s 1,800-hectare reforested area has been damaged in recent years, it’s claimed.
New satellite images show rapid deforestation and soil removal
NASA recently released photographs taken by Landsat 8 and Landsat 9, showing the rapid progress in construction work in just two years.
A snapshot from April 2022 shows little more than a small settlement, several main roads, and a primarily dense, green jungle.
A February 19, 2024, snapshot shows a web of cleared arterial routes, an apparent widening and further clearing on existing roads, and large, levelled development areas.
NASA’s own Earth Observatory noted: “(The) soil has been exposed for a network of roads carved into the forest.”
ABC program to air progress woes
Construction started in July 2022 and Nusantara with being built in stages.
A “core” government area of ministries and offices is hoped to be finished this year.
ABC’s Foreign Correspondent aired footage this week from a recent visit to the city, reporting there is “a long way to go before the initial part of Nusantara is fit for officials to live and work.”
Footage showed that even getting to the site presented issues, with the crew bogging its car on the way before swapping to a four-wheel drive to complete the journey.
Images from the story showed the majority of the government centre, including the presidential palace, very much still under construction.
Prabowo Subianto, Indonesia’s president elect, will be joined by the son of his predecessor as his vice president, indicating continuity for the project.
The number of employees moving to Nusantara in 2024 has already been reduced by two-thirds, the program reported.
The episode will feature a local beauty queen Natasya Priyanka, crowned “Miss East Kalimantan”, who has been enlisted as the official face of Nusantara to promote the government’s vision.
She told the ABC the deadline is “very tight” adding, “the pressure is on”.
“The pressure is there,” Susantono also told the program.
“It’s going to be a challenge for anybody who is taking this job because we’re going to develop not only a capital city but a sustainable city with all the principles of green, smart, inclusive, resilient and sustainable.”
-With AFP
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