Indonesia: Future capital on Borneo is called Nusantara

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Jakarta in the evening: no longer Indonesia's capital in the future

Photo: Cavan Images / IMAGO

The capital of Indonesia will be relocated from Jakarta on Java to Borneo in the next few years - this has been known since 2019.

Now the new capital of the island state also has a name: Nusantara.

This was announced by the Minister for National Development Planning, Suharso Monoarfa, citing President Joko Widodo.

Nusantara is an old name for the Malay archipelago, which includes Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei.

Parliament is expected to pass the law for the move on Tuesday. The construction work for the new metropolis could then begin. The cost of the complex move is estimated at more than 32 billion dollars (28 billion euros). The first authorities are expected to move to East Kalimantan on Borneo in 2024 – shortly before the end of Joko Widodo's second and last term in office.

Three years ago, the President announced that a new capital would be built in the jungles of Borneo, halfway between the cities of Balikpapan and Samarinda.

Reason for the step: Coastal regions of the metropolis Jakarta with eleven million inhabitants are regularly flooded.

About 40 percent of Jakarta is below sea level.

By 2050, experts say the entire area of ​​North Jakarta could be flooded.

Other problems: gridlock and air pollution

The reason for the sinking of the city is above all the excessive pumping of groundwater - because when the groundwater level falls, the swampy subsoil is sucked empty and increasingly sinks in on itself.

Other problems in the mega-metropolis Jakarta are the daily collapse in traffic and high levels of air pollution.

Jakarta is not the only Southeast Asian metropolis with such problems.

In Bangkok, too, water is increasingly becoming a major threat.

There are forecasts that say the megacity could be partially flooded as early as 2030.

Heavy rains will increase there over the next century - especially towards the end of the monsoon season in October and November (read a report on the subject here).

bam/dpa