Indonesia's Capital Relocation Quiz and Flashcards

Study Notes

Indonesia announced its decision to relocate its capital from Jakarta on April 29 due to decades of warnings about the city's dangerous flood risk.
The city's flood risk is attributed to sinking land and rising seas.

Jakarta has sunk more than 10 feet in the past 30 years, a process called subsidence.
The city's subsidence is exacerbated by massive overuse of groundwater, causing the land to sink further.

Rising temperatures and climate change have threatened the residents of Jakarta's northern coast with the loss of their homes.
The melting of the world's great ice sheets, due to climate change, is contributing to Jakarta's subsidence.
Burning fossil fuels creates greenhouse gases that trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere, leading to climate change.

Hundreds of major cities, including Washington, D.C., are threatened by rising seas.
Other cities at risk include New Orleans, Louisiana, and Norfolk, Virginia, in the United States, and Mumbai, Calcutta, Shanghai, Lagos, Manila, Dhaka, Bangkok, Copenhagen, Tokyo, London, Houston, and Tampa.
Thousands of coastal cities and rural communities are already experiencing increased flooding during extreme high tides, known as "king tides".
The latest projections for average global sea-level rise this century show a possible range of 3 to 8 feet.

Indonesia's decision to relocate its capital is an example of "intelligent adaptation" to the threat of rising seas.
The country will invest in a new capital city with a safe future, rather than spending millions on hopeless efforts to protect Jakarta.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has announced that the combination of rising seas and subsidence will make the $14 billion fix to New Orleans' levees inadequate.