Horrifying parallels
As the sinking city of Jakarta has forced Indonesia to shift its capital to Nusantara, cities that may face similar threats, including Kolkata, need to rethink their future plans
The urgency of climate change is impressing itself on some countries far more than on others. Take, for instance, the case of Jakarta in Indonesia, which is perhaps the fastest sinking city in the world. In 2022, when world leaders gathered at the climate summit in Egypt, Antonio Guterres had a message for them: “It is either a Climate Solidarity Pact or a Collective Suicide Pact.” The case of Jakarta is particularly pertinent here as an example of how climate change is already causing enormous change in the lives of people living in the Global South.
It is perhaps this urgency and the lack of any chances of real progress resulting from the multilateral COP summits over the years that has led Jakarta to find its own solutions. Instead of letting the fortunes of a city rely on help or international cooperation that may not come, the Indonesians have decided to move the Indonesian capital away from the island of Java, where Jakarta is located, to the island of Borneo in East Kalimantan province. The new capital of Indonesia will be Nusantara and this year marked the first time when independence day celebrations were held there.
While Jakarta has a different climate than Kolkata’s, some of the factors that have affected that city threaten Kolkata as well. In recent years, Kolkata has also reeled from heavy flooding after unexpected torrential rains. Like many other megacities, the city’s urban sprawl led to an increase in flooding following torrential rainfalls. Even more problematic is the fact that the most built-up areas with the least amount of vegetation are often also the poorest ones. The poorest areas in turn are the ones least likely to be able to afford electricity or to have other means of cooling their environs. Not only that, Kolkata also experiences the urban heat island effect.
As has been the case in such discussions in the past, the gulf between the experts in the Western countries who make climate policy and the people in the Global South who face the actual heat and the deluge seems too wide to bridge. In Jakarta’s case, the problems were not always so intractable but the inability to arrive at solutions owing to corruption and lack of political will created a situation where moving the capital was the band-aid that was passed off as a solution. Similarly, Kolkata’s issues can be solved if there is proper zoning and a commitment to adopt policies that somehow address the issues faced by the city. However, this is unlikely to come about, given the rampant greed, corruption and the lack of motivation and political will that prevail. But then as Tagore wrote “To lose faith in mankind is a sin”.
Views expressed are personal
