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Indonesia: for climatic reasons, the capital becomes Nusantara
Indonesia: for climatic reasons, the capital becomes Nusantara
(Franceinfo)
Indonesia is changing its capital. Jakarta is no longer the name, but Nusantara will now be the symbol of Indonesia. This project comes at a time when the city of Jakarta is threatened by rising waters.
It is the symbol of a new capital that must make Indonesia shine: Nusantara, and its presidential palace with bird wings. A monument inaugurated with great pomp on Saturday, August 17, but it is one of the only completed constructions in this nascent city. The rest is for the moment only an immense construction site where 13,000 workers are busy on complicated roads. The project is titanic: to move the capital Jakarta, which has 11 million inhabitants, to an island 1,200 kilometers away, to Nusantara.
The government intends to rebalance the development of the archipelago outside the island of Java, which alone accounts for 58% of GDP. But there is another emergency: that of rising waters, which are now threatening Jakarta. To escape it, a new capital has been built in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the jungle.
The budget is 30 billion euros, 80% financed by private investors, with a stated ambition: to make it a carbon-neutral city by 2045. The first civil servants will move into Nusantara this fall, and the city plans to welcome 2 million inhabitants within 20 years.