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StrikingNASAimages entrance the birth of Indonesia ’s new jungle metropolis on Borneo as the land looks to move its slide down capital .
The orbiter shots from April 2022 and February 2024 show a mesh of raw roads on the landscape and the structure of buildings in eastern Kalimantan , where Indonesia is creating its new capital city , Nusantara .
A view from space of Nusantara in February 2024. We see a vast green jungle with spider-like webs of roads and a city in the middle.
NASA’sEarth Observatoryshared the images , taken by the Operational Land Imager 2 ( OLI-2 ) on theLandsat9 satellite and the OLI on Landsat 8 , as part of its Image of the Day series on Feb. 23 . They play up the progress outgoing President Joko Widodo has made with his ambitious plan tomove Indonesia ’s capitalas well as the environmental shock of construction on Borneo .
A driving force behind the move is that Jakarta , Indonesia ’s current capital on the island of Java , is sinking below sea level . A 2011 bailiwick publish in the journalNatural Hazardsfound that Jakarta typically sink at a rate of between 0.4 and 6 column inch ( 1 and 15 centimetre ) per year , with some surface area sinking by as much as 11 inches ( 28 cm ) per year . That steady drop andrising ocean levelsdue to climate change put the metropolis ’s future at risk .
Study co - authorHeri Andreas , a research worker at the Bandung Institute of Technology in Indonesia who studies Jakarta ’s land subsidence , told BBC Newsin 2018 that region of the city will be subaqueous by 2050 .
Before image showing Nusantara in April 2022. Captured by the OLI-2 on Landsat 9.
" The electric potential for Jakarta to be deluge is n’t a laughing thing , " Andreas said . " If we calculate at our models , by 2050 about 95 % of North Jakarta will be submerge . "
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There ’s evidence that the sinking in Jakarta is get by excessive groundwater origin . Jakarta swear on groundwater from underground aquifers , and as the groundwater horizontal surface cut down , it do the land above to settle , concord to the field .
Image taken in February, 2024, shows the development of Nusantara from space. Captured by the OLI on Landsat 8.
The city is also densely populated and lose from overcrowding , traffic congestion , hazardousair pollutionand drinking - water shortages , according to NASA . Widodo has project for Indonesia ’s raw chapiter on Borneo to be all dissimilar .
Nusantara will be a sustainable city power by renewable get-up-and-go , according to thecity ’s website , which also states that residential and commercial edifice will be constructed using " strict environmentally well-disposed construction methods . "
Borneo is the third - large non - continental island in the world and far less populated than Java . The island is split among Indonesia , Malaysia and Brunei . But Kalimantan — Indonesia ’s part — makes up most of the landmass , and there ’s plenty of elbow room to build a brand new , mod city from scratch . There ’s also , however , a lot of nature .
Borneo is a biodiversity hotspot that ’s home to rich ecosystems and many unique species , which could be threaten by the fresh growing even if the urban center ends up sustainable . Building a city produces emissions and requires brook base stretching beyond its border .
Mongabay , a nonprofit news website for environmental science and preservation , has reported that the metropolis ’s construction has led to theclearing of mangrovehabitats and forested orbit ofhigh preservation value , as well as conflict with Indigenous communities and the potential for human displacement reaction .
" If you ask me , I say no , because , first of all , the regulatory framework and development preparation understandably state that the building of the new cap is aimed to rehabilitate the location ’s surround that has already been damaged , " Safitri said .
Much of the urban center is being build on expiring logging concessions and settlements , and the government wants toreforest barren landsaround the new capital .
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The New York Timesreported in May 2023 that Widodo has had success in slenderize the destruction of Indonesian rainforest for palm oil . However , local leaders have the autonomy to follow the origin of raw resources , and ember minelaying has a presence in the state surrounding the new capital , the Times report noted .
" Indonesia is notorious for having good laws that are poorly implemented,“Eka Permanasari , an associate professor of urban design at Monash University , Indonesia , told the Times . " There is the hypothesis that Nusantara can be a citation for future cities , but that depends on what ’s on paper being implement in the field . "
The city is expected to becompletedby 2045 .
