TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2019 The Boston Globe TheWorld A
By Richard C. Paddock
and Muktita Suhartono
NEW YORK TIMES
Jakarta, the Indonesian cap-
ital, is the city that people love
to hate.
With a population of about
10 million, Jakarta is steadily
sinking. Its traffic is legendary.
Its air quality ranks among the
world’s worst. It has few parks
or cultural monuments. Even
walking on its sidewalks is a
hazardous exercise.
Indonesia’s president, Joko
Widodo, announced Monday a
plan to fix the capital: Start
from scratch. He has proposed
stripping Jakarta of its status as
the country’s capital and build-
ing a new capital on the island
of Borneo.
Under his plan, political fig-
ures and government workers
would desert the sinking city on
the island of Java and relocate
to one of the country’s less
crowded islands, Borneo — fa-
mous for threatened orang-
utans and dense jungles that
are giving way to palm oil plan-
tations.
On Monday, Joko said the
new capital would be built in
the province of East Kaliman-
tan near the coastal cities of Ba-
likpapan and Samarinda where
the government already owns
about 440,000 acres.
“The government has con-
ducted in-depth studies, and we
have intensified the studies in
the past three years,” the presi-
dent told reporters. “The result
of those studies shows that the
most ideal location for the new
capital is part of North Penajam
Paser Regency and part of Kutai
Kartanegara Regency in East
Kalimantan.”
The project is estimated to
cost about $33 billion. Joko said
19 percent would be paid for
from the state budget, with oth-
er funding to come from private
investment and public-private
partnerships.
The president, who was gov-
ernor of Jakarta before winning
the presidency in 2014, won re-
election this year in part be-
cause of his record of building
major infrastructure projects.
He said one reason for pick-
ing East Kalimantan is that it
does not have a history of natu-
ral disasters — unlike islands
such as Java, Sulawesi, Bali,
and Lombok that have been
struck by tsunamis, earth-
quakes, and volcanic eruptions
over the past 20 months.
He also said that the site is
near the country’s geographic
center and already has substan-
tial infrastructure.
Building a new capital
would require the construction
of a new presidential residence,
ministry buildings, housing for
government workers, and high-
ways. Construction could begin
as early as 2021.
The target to begin moving
to the new capital is 2024, just
as Joko’s second and final term
will be ending.
Jakarta was founded in the
fourth century on marshland
on the northwest coast of Java
and served for centuries as the
capital of kings and sultans.
With Dutch colonization in
the early 1600s, it became the
capital of the Dutch East Indies
and eventually grew into a ma-
jor port city that was plagued in
the early years by malaria.
Today, when combined with
the neighboring cities of Bekasi,
Tangerang, and Bogor, it forms
a vast, teeming megacity of
more than 30 million people.
Along the north coast, parts
of Jakarta have been sinking
more than 2 inches a year, mak-
ing it one of the world’s most
vulnerable cities to rising sea
levels caused by climate
change. Sea walls have had lim-
ited success in holding back the
Java Sea, and without an ag-
gressive plan to protect the
coast, parts of the city are likely
to be lost in coming decades.
In recent years, the city has
sought to tackle its traffic con-
gestion by building a subway
and an airport rail line. And it
has imposed alternate drivingdays based on odd- and even-
numbered license plates in
some parts of the city. But for
many residents, the efforts are
too little, too late.
In July, a group of citizens
and activists filed a class-action
lawsuit against the president,
Jakarta’s governor, and various
government agencies demand-
ing tighter air quality regula-
tions and enforcement to pro-
tect the public health. But no
quick action on air pollution is
expected.
Borneo is split among three
countries: Brunei, Malaysia,
and Indonesia. Proposals to
move the capital to Kaliman-
tan, the Indonesian part of Bor-neo, have been floated for
years. Joko recently revived talk
of relocation but, until Monday,
had been short on specifics.
It is unclear whether the
government will pay the enor-
mous cost of protecting Jakarta
from rising sea levels at the
same time it is building the new
capital. But the president said
he was not abandoning Jakarta,
which is also the country’s fi-
nancial capital.
“Jakarta will remain as the
priority in development and
will continue to be developed as
a business city, financial city,
trade center, and service center
on a regional and global scale,”
the president said.Indonesia’s fix for its decrepit capital: Build a new one
Plan is to replace
Jakarta with new
center in Borneo
JOSH HANER/NEW YORK TIMES FILE 2017
Jakarta, the steadily sinking Indonesian capital founded in the fourth century on marshland, is a teeming megacity also plagued by traffic and pollution.ATRUSTEDNAMESINCE
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