Building a new capital city from scratch in a jungle-covered area with little to no infrastructure and moving nearly 1 million civil servants to the city within 5 years is definitely a mammoth and expensive undertaking.
And yet, it’s what the government of Indonesia has decided to do. President Joko Widodo recently announced that the country’s capital will be relocated from Jakarta to a yet-to-be-built city in the east of Borneo island, more than 1,000km away.
The Indonesian government reasoned that the country’s capital needed to be moved as the current capital, Jakarta, is rapidly sinking and is suffering from chronic traffic jams and choking air pollution.
Furthermore, the government also justified its decision by arguing that the relocation will open up new opportunities to develop the economy of the Indonesian part of Borneo island, called Kalimantan, and shift away the focus of the development from Java island. Java has been the economic and political center of Indonesia for decades, accounting for 65 percent of the country’s economy.
Despite the challenges that come from designing new capital cities from scratch, more than 30 other countries have succeeded in relocating their capital cities to newly built ones. And thus, relocating the capital of Indonesia might not be that far fetched of an idea.
The government said there’s enough land available for the new capital, which will occupy 180,000 hectares of areas, and that it’s confident that it would be able to secure the 466 trillion rupiah ($33bn) needed for the relocation.
Construction is expected to begin as early as 2021, pending approval by the parliament, and last until 2024, when Widodo’s second and last term in office ends.
Moving the capital will give a second chance for the government to start from scratch. A lack of proper urban planning and rapid urbanization have made Jakarta inhospitable. It is currently one of the fastest sinking cities in the world as households, mega malls and luxury hotels drain the crowded city’s aquifers resulting in the ground caving in.
Jakarta is currently sinking by up to 6.7 inches per year and by 2050, 95 percent of North Jakarta will be submerged.
Will the government learn from its past mistakes in mismanaging Jakarta? Or will it repeat the same mistakes in the new yet-to-be-named capital city?
At first, it looks like the government is hell-bent on not repeating the same mistakes by touting that the infrastructure of the new capital city will be developed in a sustainable and environmentally-friendly way.
The government brands the new capital as a “smart and forest city”. Various officials have also repeatedly reassured that the construction of the new city will not harm the environment, despite the fact that parts of the city will be located in a protected forest area.
Instead, the government promised that the protected forest area would be reforested and that the unique ecosystems of East Kalimantan will be protected.
The government is currently conducting a strategic environmental study, expected to be finished in November, to make sure that the construction of the new city doesn’t entail the destruction of rainforests.
But experts have pointed out that there are still many questions that needed to be answered by the government for the construction of the new capital city to be truly considered “green”.
For instance, could deforestation be truly avoided when building the new capital city? A recent study evaluating ongoing and planned large-scale road-building projects in the Indonesian part of Borneo island shows that they will lead to further fragmentation of forests resulting in a drastic reduction of forest habitat accessible to wildlife, including critically endangered species such as Bornean orangutans.
That study hasn’t taken into account the capital relocation project and thus it’s possible that the projected forest fragmentation is even greater with more roads planned in the future to support the new capital city. The government, however, hasn’t shared details on how the project will avoid deforestation.
