Nusantara, a city rising from the ground in the middle of the rainforest on the island of Borneo, is to succeed Jakarta, the current capital of Indonesia, which is congested and sinking inexorably below sea level. But the construction site arouses criticism from environmentalists and residents.
Djarkarta, on the island of Java, is overpopulated, polluted and, in addition, it sinks a little deeper each year into water and regularly suffers from floods. The outgoing Indonesian president therefore launched the gigantic project of moving the administrative capital to another island, Borneo.
Since the end of 2022, Nusantara has been under construction. The Indonesian government aims to settle a population of 1.9 million inhabitants there by 2045 and to concentrate human and industrial activities there, in the heart of Borneo.
The new administrative capital is presented as a modern, green city, with a goal of zero carbon emissions, but this relocation project is not unanimous in Borneo. Its establishment is strongly criticized by environmentalists, who denounce deforestation in one of the largest expanses of tropical rainforest in the world.
Water management and expropriations
On the Nusantara construction site, residents saw a dam being built at the foot of their village. A man from the Balik tribe, an indigenous people on the island of Borneo, expresses his fears: “Its existence has consequences on the production of the village’s farmers, particularly in terms of fresh water. We use water from the rivers, it’s part of our culture, we are dependent on them But with the dam, the water is blocked.
For this resident, the risk of expropriation is also real, while several cases have already been reported around the future capital. At issue: the absence of a property certificate for members of the indigenous population.
Disturbed wildlife
Furthermore, in Balikpapan Bay, a fisherman explains that he has struggled to fill his nets since the construction of the new city began. A member of a local NGO also agreed to testify on condition of anonymity. Because “the pressures are real,” he explains.
“Before all this activity, it was full of mangroves…and it was the place where the fishermen came. They could always catch a lot of fish. And sometimes you could see the big-nosed monkeys, the proboscis”. But since then, these primates have “gone away”.
The situation around Nusantara is being closely scrutinized by several NGOs. For Zenzi Suhadi, director of Walhi, Indonesia’s largest and oldest environmental NGO, “the new capital is not about a better geographical distribution of the country’s economy. But it is mainly about a political transition.”
Because the land on which the new capital is being built are largely concessions from Prabowo Subianto, the next Indonesian president, continues Zenzi Suhadi. “So for us, the new capital Nusantara is not a city to respond to the environmental or economic problems of the country.” The project also leaves aside the problems of overpopulation and flooding in Jakarta, the activist further believes.
Inauguration of the presidential palace
While the end of work on Nusantara is scheduled for 2045, the current Indonesian president Joko Widodo plans to inaugurate the Nusantara Presidential Palace on August 17, the anniversary of the independence of this archipelago, before passing the torch to his successor Prabowo Subianto.
Thousands of civil servants are expected in this city from September, but the project has been delayed for several months due to the slow pace of construction work.
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Radio subject: Juliette Pietraszewski
Web adaptation: Caryl Bussy
