Jakarta is sinking. So Indonesia’s President is building a new capital

Before he led the world’s fourth most populous country, the president of Indonesia was consumed by an even more challenging mission: saving Jakarta. For two years, Joko Widodo served as the governor of a capital city that seemed to teeter on the brink of ruin. Since Indonesia’s independence in 1945, Jakarta had expanded from less than a million people to roughly 30 million. It had grown tall with skyscrapers built with fortunes made from timber, palm oil, natural gas, gold, copper, tin. But the capital had run out of space. It grew thick with traffic and pollution. Most of all, Jakarta was sinking, as thirsty residents drained its marshy aquifers and rising sea waters lapped its shores. Forty per cent of the Indonesian capital now lies below sea level.

Raised in a riverside slum in a smaller city, without family ties or a military background to propel him to power, Joko derived his political strength from his connection with ordinary Indonesians. In Jakarta, he made a habit of canvassing poor neighbourhoods about their needs.

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So Joko rolled up his sleeves, put on his sneakers and set about trying to fix the city. He raised sea walls and improved public transport. He later talked up the construction of a constellation of artificial islands to break the waters hitting Jakarta. His entire career — first as a carpenter and a furniture exporter and then as mayor of his hometown, Solo — had been built on building.

In Jakarta, however, his passion for construction could only get him so far. All the Sisyphean dredging, the endless concrete inches slathered on sea walls, the duct tape solutions could not raise Jakarta above the sea’s reach. And so Joko has turned to a different solution: If Jakarta cannot be saved, he will start over.

Joko is using his presidential authority to forsake the capital on the slender island of Java and construct a new one on Borneo, the world’s third largest island, about 800 miles away. The new capital is to be called Nusantara, meaning “archipelago” in ancient Javanese and befitting an unlikely nation of more than 17,000 islands scattered between two oceans.

Indonesia encompasses hundreds of languages and ethnic groups. Some of its regions are governed by Shariah-inspired rules, gripped by separatist fervour or animated by Indigenous traditions. It is also a secular democracy with the world’s largest Muslim citizenry, a sizable Christian minority and several other official faiths. Although deadly sectarian conflict has flared over the decades, Indonesia has cohered while other countries have come apart. A new capital city for a place with such disparities and diversity presents both a challenge and a chance for reinvention.

Joko’s ambitions go far beyond saving Jakarta’s residents from the sea. Nusantara won’t be just any planned city, the president asserts, but a green metropolis run on renewable energy, where there are no choking traffic jams and people can stroll and bike along verdant paths. The new capital, which is known in Indonesia by its abbreviation, IKN, will be a paradigm for adapting to a warming planet. And it will be a high-tech city, he says, attracting digital nomads and millennials who will purchase stylish apartments with cryptocurrency.

“We want to build a new Indonesia,” Joko said. “This is not physically moving the buildings. We want a new work ethic, new mindset, new green economy.”

The hope is to inaugurate Jakarta’s replacement in August of next year, with the unveiling of the presidential palace and other key government buildings. But while bulldozers are clearing acres of plantation forestland, not a single showcase structure has been completed.

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“As an urban planner, I can say that there is some scepticism about IKN,” said Deden Rukmana, chair of the community and regional planning department at Alabama A&M University and the editor of “The Routledge Handbook of Planning Megacities in the Global South.” “But as an Indonesian, I think we need to prove to ourselves that we can do it.”

“IKN is not just being built for Indonesians,” Deden added. “It’s being built for the world. That’s why it must succeed.”

On Joko’s recent visit to IKN, construction workers wearing their hard hats askew stood at attention as he described where the parliament building and the presidential palace — shaped like the mythical bird Garuda, a national symbol — would be. Tethered balloons tilting in the wind marked each spot. There was little evidence of actual construction. Joko’s entourage marched on. There, he explained, would be the national mosque and other places of worship for a multi-faith society. Nearly 2 million residents will flock to the new capital within a couple of decades, the president promised.

At lunch — capped, Joko was careful to note, by a wild durian, locally grown — he expanded on his IKN plan, describing how daily needs would be met within a 10-minute stroll or ride. In Jakarta, 16 per cent of the population uses public transport; he is aiming for 80 per cent in Nusantara.

But IKN’s construction is being rushed to meet a tight deadline: the end, in 2024, of Joko’s term in office. Architects were given 10 days to submit proposals for some of the capital’s showpiece buildings. The first phase of the city is expected to be completed in just two years. The urgency is born of anxiety: Without Joko’s imprimatur, the capital project could founder, leaving the jungle to reclaim half-built ministries.

Borneo, which Indonesia shares with the countries of Malaysia and Brunei, is home to some of the world’s largest tracts of primary rainforest, bursting with about 15,000 plant species.

In these humid jungles live orangutans, pygmy elephants, proboscis monkeys and clouded leopards — though fewer than there used to be. About half of Borneo’s rainforests were cut down in the four decades before 2015, much of it illegally, based on satellite analysis by environmental groups.

Much of the future capital’s sprawl is on land that was supposed to be protected from urban development, including part of an officially designated national park. Environmental groups say they still have not seen an environmental impact assessment for IKN. Although local officials trumpet the area’s commitment to conservation, timber, paper and oil palm plantations spread across the hills down to the bay. The national park itself is pockmarked with coal mines. A crackdown last year on illegal mining in the preserve had little effect.

These facts on the ground show the chasm between Joko’s ambitions — a clean, green city for a clean, green nation! — and the reality of a country where the destruction of virgin rainforest is propelled by rampant corruption. (The country ranks 110th out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s 2022 corruption perception index.)

Joko has repeatedly called for moratoriums on forest-clearing, and he has had success in taming the theft of rainforest for the palm oil industry in parts of Indonesia. But local leaders have considerable autonomy to issue permits for the extraction of natural resources.

“Indonesia is notorious for having good laws that are poorly implemented,” said Eka Permanasari, an associate professor of urban design at Monash University, Indonesia. “There is the possibility that Nusantara can be a reference for future cities, but that depends on what’s on paper being implemented in the field.”

On a hill above the construction site for the presidential palace, a man named Roni stepped down from his truck and wiped away sweat. He was glad for the work ferrying loads of earth. It paid $110 a month, better than his previous hours spent at a coal mine. But he was nonetheless baffled by the project. “I have no idea why Jokowi wants to put the capital here,” Roni said, laughing. “But I’m glad we have his attention.”