Indonesia is building a brand new capital. Will it become another environmentally doomed Jakarta?
A tower inside the Samboja Lestari Orangutan Sanctuary offers a panorama of over 4,000 acres of dense tropical forest packed with slender sengon trees that poke out of the jungle canopy over a smattering of sugar palm, bamboo and rambutan trees bursting with bright red fruit.
The plan, still greeted with widespread skepticism, embodies the infrastructure-heavy, nation-building aspirations of the Jokowi era in a country that perpetually underwhelms on the world stage despite its size and wealth of resources. The changes couldn’t come to a more storied region of Indonesia. East Kalimantan serves as a gateway to Borneo’s mythical jungles, the backdrop to Joseph Conrad novels and home to the native Dayak tribes once feared for headhunting.
Environmental advocates say a new capital could invite excessive development, further straining a province that increased its rate of deforestation last year at a time when the national rate declined.“I’m not worried about the capital,” said Jamartin Sihite, chief executive of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation. “I’m worried about everything they’re going to build around the capital.”
A moratorium on clearing primary forest and carbon-rich peatlands for activities such as palm oil planting and logging has proved ineffective because of lax enforcement. Additionally, millions of acres aren’t beholden to the rule because permits to clear the land were granted before the first moratorium was declared in 2011.
Basri said he and his neighbors expect to be relocated to make way for the capital since they live in one of the two districts — known in Indonesia as regencies — where core government buildings such as the presidential palace, parliament building and Ministry of Defense will be located. Still, experts say any relocation could take decades to unfold, particularly if Indonesia has to rely on state owned-companies saddled with debt to execute the plan. Australia was still moving government departments out of Melbourne into Canberra in the 1970s — more than six decades after it was named the new capital.
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