Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - January 27, 2022, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A15 THURSDAY, JANUARY 27, 2022 ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM NEWS I WORLD Follow us on A11 Indonesiamoving its capital to Borneo J AKARTA, Indonesia — Jakarta iscongested, polluted, prone to earth-quakes and rapidly sinking into the Java Sea. Now the government is leav- ing, and moving the country’s capital to the island of Borneo. President Joko Widodo envisions the construction of a new capital as a panacea for the problems plaguing Ja- karta, reducing its population while al- lowing the country to start fresh with a “sustainable city” that has good public transportation, is integrated with its natural environment and is in an area that’s not prone to natural disasters. “The construction of the new capital city is not merely a physical move of government offices,” Widodo said last week ahead of parliament’s approval of the plan. “The main goal is to build a smart new city, a new city that is com- petitive at the global level, to build a new locomotive for the transformation … toward an Indonesia based on innov- ation and technology based on a green economy.” Skeptics worry, however, about the environmental impact of plunking a sprawling 990-square-mile city down in Borneo’s East Kalimantan province, which is home to orangutans, leopards and a wide array of other wildlife, as well as committing US$34 billion to the ambitious project amid a pandemic. “The new capital city’s strategic en- vironmental study shows that there are at least three basic problems,” said Dwi Sawung, an official with theWALHI en- vironmental group. “There are threats to water systems and risks of climate change, threats to flora and fauna, and threats of pollution and environmental damage,” she said. First proposed in 2019, Widodo’s plan to establish the city of Nusantara — an old Javanese term meaning “archipel- ago” — will entail constructing gov- ernment buildings and housing from scratch. Initial estimates were that some 1.5 million civil servants would be relocated to the city, some 2,000 kilo- metres northeast of Jakarta, though ministries and government agencies are still working to finalize that num- ber. It will be located in the vicinity of Balikpapan, an East Kalimantan sea- port with a population of about 700,000. Indonesia is an archipelago nation of more than 17,000 islands, but currently 54 per cent of the country’s more than 270 million people live on Java, the country’smost densely populated island and where Jakarta is located. Jakarta itself is home to about 10 mil- lion people and three times that number in the greater metropolitan area. It has been described as the world’s most rapidly sinking city, and at the current rate, it is estimated that one- third of the city could be submerged by 2050. The main cause is uncontrolled groundwater extraction, but it has been exacerbated by the rising Java Sea due to climate change. Beyond that, its air and ground water are heavily polluted, it floods regularly and its streets are so clogged that it is estimated congestion costs the econ- omy US$4.5 billion a year. In constructing a purpose-built cap- ital, Indonesia will be taking a path that others have in the past, including Pak- istan, Brazil and Myanmar. The committee overseeing the con- struction is led by Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan — no stranger to ambitious building projects at home in the United Arab Emirates — and also includes Masayoshi Son, the billionaire founder and chief executive of Japanese holding company SoftBank, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who cur- rently runs the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. State funds will pay for 19 per cent of the project, with the rest coming from cooperation between the government and business entities and from direct investment by state-run companies and the private sector. Public Works and Housing Minister Basuki Hadimuljono said initial plan- ning had been carried out by clearing 138,800 acres of land to build the presi- dential palace, the national parliament and government offices, as well as roads linking the capital to other cities in East Kalimantan. The idea is to have the core govern- ment area done by 2024, Hadimulijono said. Current plans are for about 8,000 civil servants to have moved to the city by then. Widodo previously said he expected the Presidential Palace would be moved to the new capital city before he ends his second term in 2024, along with the Home, Foreign, and Defence Ministries and the State Secretariat. The whole relocation process is scheduled to be completed by 2045. What effect it will have on Jakarta and the people who stay behind is un- clear, said Agus Pambagio, a public policy expert from the University of Indonesia, who urged that anthropolo- gists be brought on to study the issue. “There will be very big social chan- ges, both for people who work as civil servants, society in general and local residents,” he said. —The Associated Press Jakarta sinking, congested, polluted, prone to earthquakes EDNA TARIGAN AND NINIEK KARMINI DITA ALANGKARA / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Motorists are stuck in morning rush hour traffic in Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday. The government says it is moving the country’s capital to the island of Borneo. Ghostlymonkey, succulent bamboo among new species inMekong BANGKOK — A monkey with ghostly white circles around its eyes is among 224 new species listed in the World Wildlife Fund’s latest update on the greater Mekong region. The conservation group’s report, re- leased Wednesday, highlights the need to protect the rich biodiversity and habi- tats in the region, which includes Viet- nam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar. The species listed were found in 2020 but last year’s report was delayed. The monkey is called the Popa langur, for it lives on the steep hillsides of the ex- tinct Mt. Popa volcano in Myanmar. It was the only new mammal. There are also dozens of newly identified reptiles, frogs and newts, fish and 155 plant spe- cies, including the only known succu- lent bamboo species, found in Laos. The Mekong region is a biodivers- ity hotspot and home to tigers, Asian elephants, saola — an extremely rare animal also called the Asian unicorn or spindlehorn — and thousands of other species. Including this latest list, scientists have identified more than 3,000 new species in the region since 1997, the WWF said. Scientists used measurements and samples from museum collections to compare and identify key differences with features of the newly discovered animals and plants, the report said. Studying such differences can help determine the range of species and threats to their survival, Thomas Ziegler, a curator at the University of Cologne’s Institute of Zoology, said in introducing the report. Identifying new species is tricky, though, and sometimes can only be de- termined using a variety of methods, such as frog calls and genetic data used to distinguish the Cardamom leaf little frog, found high up in the Cardamom mountains in a wildlife refuge. Some species are found in more than one country, including the bright or- ange twin slug snake, which consumes slugs. The Popa langur was identified based on genetic matching of recently gathered bones with specimens from Britain’s Natural History Museum col- lected more than a century ago, the report said. Two main distinguishing characteristics were the broad white rings around its eyes and its front-point- ing whiskers. The WWF, working with Fauna and Flora International, caught images of the monkeys using camera traps in 2018. FFI reported the discovery late last year. The monkey is a candidate to be listed as a critically endangered spe- cies on the Red List of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the report said, since only 200-250 are thought to survive in thewild, in a hand- ful of places. Underscoring the urgency of such work, more than 38,000 of the 138,000 species the IUCN tracks are threat- ened with extinction. A new type of begonia with reddish flowers and a berry-like fruit also was found in the uplands of Myanmar, where illegal mining and logging have become an increasingly dire threat in the country, which is in themidst of pol- itical turmoil following a military take- over a year ago. Despite human encroachments on tropical forests and other wild zones, much of the Greater Mekong is still little explored and each year dozens of new species are found — a glimmer of hope as so many species go extinct. Not all new species are found deep in jungles. One of the new plant species is a ginger plant called “stink bug” for its pungent odor similar to big beetles Thais use to make a kind of chili dip- ping paste served with rice, the report said. It was found in northeastern Thai- land, in a plant shop. —The Associated Press ELAINE KURTENBACH WORLD WILDLIFE FOUNDATION VIA AP The Popa langur lives on the steep hillsides of the extinct Mt. Popa volcano in Myanmar. A_15_Jan-27-22_FP_01.indd 15 2022-01-26 9:47 PM ;