Is Indonesia's New Capital City Heading for Disaster?

Indonesia plans a new capital, Nusantara, to address Jakarta's sinking and congestion, but the project faces political, financial, and environmental challenges.

Key Takeaways

Jakarta's sinking is a severe environmental and urban challenge driven by groundwater depletion and weak soil.
Building Nusantara aims to decentralize political power and create a sustainable, modern capital.
The project faces significant political, financial, and environmental controversies.
Jakarta will remain the economic center, so the new capital may not alleviate its urban problems.
Nusantara's governance structure raises questions about democratic representation.

What the video covers

Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, is sinking rapidly due to ground subsidence caused by excessive groundwater extraction and weak swampy foundations.
About 40% of Jakarta lies below sea level, with some areas sinking up to 30 cm per year, exacerbating climate change risks.
To address these issues, Indonesia plans to build a new capital city, Nusantara, located over 1,200 km away in East Kalimantan on Borneo island.
Nusantara aims to be a sustainable, green metropolis and a symbol of national identity, hosting government institutions and civil servants.
The government targets inaugurating phase one of Nusantara by August 17, 2024, with full completion expected by 2045.
The project is controversial due to rushed legislation, financial difficulties, lack of foreign investment, and concerns about environmental impact.
Critics argue moving the capital won't solve Jakarta's problems, as the city will remain Indonesia’s economic and business hub.
There are concerns about democratic governance since Nusantara will be governed by presidential appointees rather than elected officials.
Environmental and social issues include potential displacement of indigenous communities like the Balik people.
Indonesia joins other countries building new capitals, but Nusantara will be President Jokowi's defining legacy.

Chapters

Why is Jakarta sinking?

Jakarta is sinking primarily because it is built on swampy land and relies heavily on groundwater extraction through unauthorized wells, which depletes aquifers and weakens the ground beneath the city.

What is the purpose of building Nusantara?

Nusantara is planned to be a new, sustainable capital city to reduce Jakarta's political centrality, spur regional economic growth, and avoid the environmental and infrastructural problems facing Jakarta.

What are the main controversies surrounding the new capital project?

The project faces criticism for rushed legislation, financial challenges, lack of foreign investment, environmental impact concerns, displacement of indigenous communities, and questions about democratic governance.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

Speaker A

This video was brought to you by Nebula. Jakarta, Indonesia's capital and home to 10 million people, is sinking. And we don't just mean relative to rising sea levels. The ground that Jakarta sits on is literally dropping, and at a fast rate.

Speaker A

In the past 25 years, the worst-hit parts of the capital have sunk nearly 5 meters. Around 40% of Jakarta lies below sea level, and some areas are currently sinking at a rate of up to 30 cm per year.

Speaker A

In the face of this and other challenges, Indonesia's government has decided to build a brand new capital city from scratch, more than 1,200 km away in the forested hills of Borneo. So in this video, we'll explain the logic

Speaker A

behind this move, the vision and plan for the new capital, and why it's proving [Music] controversial. Before we start, if you haven't already, please consider subscribing and ringing the bell to stay in the loop and be notified when we

Speaker A

release new videos. Firstly then, why is Jakarta sinking? Jakarta is a city effectively built on top of a swamp, meaning that the ground below the concrete isn't the strongest of foundations. In addition to this, a significant proportion of Jakartans, one

Speaker A

in three according to Bloomberg, don't have access to clean piped water. So instead, they rely on thousands of unauthorized wells across the city that tap into aquifers below the ground. As these aquifers are depleted and the rainwater that usually replenishes them

Speaker A

struggles to find a way through the concrete, the ground is weakened and the city sinks. And the lower the city gets, the more threatened it is by climate change, with rising sea levels and increasingly severe weather events. On

Speaker A

top of the sinking threat, Jakarta, with its 10 million strong population, also struggles with heavy congestion and pollution, on its worst days being ranked among the most air polluted cities globally. With this in mind, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, a former governor of

Speaker A

Jakarta who's better known as Jokowi, announced in 2019 that Indonesia would build a brand new capital city more than 1,200 km away in the lush hills of East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. The location of Eastern Borneo means that

Speaker A

the new capital of Nusantara will be closer to Indonesia's geographical center than Jakarta is. And proponents of the new city argue that it will spur economic development in the region and drive the government to be less Jakarta

Speaker A

centric and less Java centric, Java being the highly populated island on which Jakarta sits. And by building a new capital from scratch, the problems facing Jakarta should hopefully be avoided. The new city of Nusantara would be a green

Speaker A

metropolis, sustainable, well-connected, and purpose-built. It would also be a global city, a symbol of national identity, a driver of economic growth, and a model of modern urban planning. It will be home to the presidential and vice presidential

Speaker A

palaces, the legislature and judiciary, government departments and offices, residents for civil servants, a huge national mosque, plus places of worship for all faiths in the country, as well as many other buildings. Now, these plans do sound great, and the artist's impressions

Speaker A

look utopian, but it's evidently a massive project and one with a pretty tight timeline. The goal is to inaugurate Nusantara as the new capital by August 17th, 2024, coinciding with Indonesia's Independence Day. Now, obviously the government isn't planning on building

Speaker A

the entire new city by then, but it's hoping to have completed phase one, which includes the presidential palace, a number of ministries, and basic infrastructure for the city's initial residents. If all goes to plan, then thousands of civil servants, military and

Speaker A

police personnel, construction workers, and families will begin moving to Nusantara by the end of 2024. For President Jokowi, the tight timeline for phase one is important as he wants to inaugurate the new capital before he leaves office

Speaker A

in October of this year. However, with less than 8 months to go until August 17th, much of the initial core of the city is still a building site, leading to many questions as to whether it will be completed on time. As for the rest of

Speaker A

the city, development will continue in phases over the coming decades, with a view for full completion by the centenary of Indonesian independence in 2045, by which the government hopes Nusantara will be home to some 1.9 million people. At this point, we should explain,

Speaker A

and you probably already guessed this, that the new capital project is controversial for a few reasons, including political, financial, and environmental ones. Now, political opponents said that the legislation on the new capital was rushed through Parliament in 2022 without time for proper oversight.

Speaker A

The project has also run into financial difficulties, though in order to prevent the project from becoming too big a burden on the state, the government said that the state would only cover 20% of the more than $30 billion estimated cost,

Speaker A

leaving the rest of the funding to public-private partnerships and investments. Now, the government is offering a raft of tax incentives and has brought in some domestic investment, but towards the end of last year, they admitted that

Speaker A

despite hundreds of letters of intent, no real foreign investment has yet materialized. Another major criticism is how the new capital project might not achieve what it's meant to in relation to Jakarta. The fact is that Jakarta itself isn't moving. It will continue to

Speaker A

grow and be a major city of 10 or so million people and will continue to be Indonesia's financial and business center. So moving political power out of Jakarta won't necessarily ease Jakarta's congestion, pollution, or sinking problems. In fact, it risks that politicians will

Speaker A

simply no longer feel any obligation to deal with them. Now, moving the government away from Jakarta could be celebrated for attempting to redistribute political power, or alternatively, it could be seen as the government detaching and

Speaker A

shifting itself from civil society. As Coou points out in Time Magazine, Jakarta has long been a stage for some of the most important moments in Indonesian politics, including the student-led protests that contributed to the fall of the authoritarian president Suharto in 1998, Islamist anti-blasphemy protests in 2016, and the anti-Omnibus law protests

Speaker A

in 2020. There are also concerns about the potentially undemocratic nature of Nusantara itself. The new city will not be run by an elected mayor or governor, but instead will be governed by the capital city authority chaired by

Speaker A

individuals appointed by the president. And despite the goal of building a sustainable green city 100% powered by renewable energy, concerns have been raised about the environmental impact of building a brand new city and all of the infrastructure that will be required to

Speaker A

sustain it. Alongside these environmental concerns are the warnings that the construction of Nusantara will lead to the displacement of the area's indigenous communities like the Balik people. But Indonesia isn't alone in constructing a new capital. Egypt is

Speaker A

currently building its so-called new administrative capital. South Korea is building Saong City, and plenty of countries in the past have done the same, including Brazil, the US, Australia, Myanmar, and Nigeria. For President Jokowi though, who will leave office later this year,

Speaker A

Nusantara, whether a success or failure, will be his legacy. You've no doubt been following along with the news from Israel and Gaza, but if you want a better understanding to dive deeper into the history of the region, then you should check out Real

Speaker A

Life Laws' Hourong documentary about the tensions and fighting between Israel and Gaza going back decades. It's a superb way to brush up on the history of this region, giving color and context to what's happening right now. That video, by the

Speaker A

way, is part of Real Life Laws' modern conflict series, where they regularly run through major ongoing conflicts from the Lebanon civil war to everything going on in Myanmar and the Turkish-Kurdish conflict. It's an incredible series and it's exclusively available on O.

Speaker A

streaming service nebula as you likely know nebula is the streaming service that we built with a bunch of our creator friends and is home to tons of smart educational content the best part is that by signing up you not only get

Speaker A

access to exclusive series like modern conflix China actually from poly matter or the logistics of x from Wendover Productions it also directly supports todr that's because you signing up contributes to the budgets of these big documentaries and helps us to grow and

Speaker A

expand our Ambitions so if you want to sign up use the link below because that not only supports us directly but it also gets you a nebula annual plan for 40% off that's less than 2 a month which

Speaker A

is an incredibly good price for an independent streaming service which not only supports creators but also provides you with tons of adree exclusive content anyway thanks for your support and for backing nebula

Topics:IndonesiaJakarta sinkingNusantaranew capital cityurban planningenvironmental impactpolitical controversyground subsidenceBorneoJokowi

Get More with the SozAI App

Transcribe recordings, audio files, and YouTube videos — with AI summaries, speaker detection, and unlimited transcriptions.

App Store Google Play

Or transcribe another YouTube video here →

Free tools: TXT to SRT · SRT Validator · Merge SRT · Subtitle to Text · All tools