A giant sea wall around the sinking capital of Indonesia must be built quickly to prevent swathes of the city being submerged, the country’s president warned on Friday.
Joko Widodo’s comments lent renewed urgency to a meandering and politically contested mega project, which the government first considered a decade ago and is expected to cost £34bn.Experts estimate one third of Jakarta, home to millions of people, could sink beneath the sea by 2050 – an unforgiving timeframe fuelled by longstanding structural problems and rising seas.inRead invented by Teads.
The existential crisis facing the city, parts of which are sinking by 20cm a year, is the culmination of decades of unfettered development of vast skyscrapers on swampy ground, almost nonexistent urban planning and misrule by city politicians serving private interests.Lacking a comprehensive water network, industry and homeowners have dug into the city’s natural underground water supplies, causing rapid collapse in the city’s north.
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