Indonesia's Capital Relocation Announcement

Indonesia's Capital Relocation

• 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's Subsidence

• 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.

Climate Change and Rising Seas

• 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.

Global Impact of Rising Seas

• 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.

Intelligent Adaptation

• 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.