US President, Joe Biden: Prediction Jakarta will sink in the next 10 years

US President, Joe Biden: Prediction Jakarta will sink in the next 10 years

It turns out that the US President had predicted the sinking of Jakarta for a long time, was that one of the reasons why IKN was built? 

US President Joe Biden (YouTube)

 -- The issue of the sinking of the city of Jakarta is not something we have heard recently. This news has even been heard for several years. 

Even the President of the United States (US) Joe Biden made a prediction or prediction that the Republic of Indonesia would have to move its capital as a result of the sinking of Jakarta. 

United States President Joe Biden mentioned the projection of the possibility that the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, would sink in the next 10 years. 

Biden made the statement regarding Indonesia while visiting the office of the Director of National Intelligence. 

Quoted from the official White House website, this statement was made in his speech before the leaders of intelligence agencies in the US. 

Of course, this is in the spotlight when discussing the biggest threat facing America, namely climate change. 

Scientists also revealed that Jakarta has the potential to sink in a few years due to a combination of various factors, one of which is global warming and land subsidence. 

Talking about Jakarta going under is not the only time it has been widely discussed. There have even been a series of studies related to this matter. 

Biden said that if sea levels rise another 2.5 feet (76.2 cm), millions of people will migrate and fight for fertile land. 

"What happens in Indonesia if the (sea level rise) projections are correct that in the next 10 years they might have to move their capital because it will be under water?" Biden continued in his speech at the National Counterterrorism Center Liberty Crossing Intelligence Campus McLean event,Virginia, July 27 2021, quoted from the White House website. 

According to the US space agency (NASA), based on satellite backfilling, global sea level rise occurred from 1993 to May 2 2022 and reached 101.2 mm (10.1 cm), or 3.3 mm per year. The rise in sea level is exacerbated by the expansion of sea water when it warms which is also related to global warming. 

Even NASA has also revealed on its official website which was released in May 2021, that Jakarta is very risky and vulnerable to sinking, the cause is a combination of many factors such as climate change, the population continues to increase, as well as water exploitation in the Indonesian capital. 

Not only that, the decline in land levels in Jakarta is also accelerated by urbanization, changes in land use, and very rapid population growth. Narrowing or blockage of river channels and canals by sediment and rubbish is also one of the factors accelerating Jakarta's land subsidence. 

Apart from that, Jakarta also has the potential to sink due to extreme groundwater extraction. As a result, 40 percent of the land surface in Jakarta is currently below sea level. 

With these predictions and phenomena, is this one of the reasons for the construction of the Indonesian Capital City (IKN)? 

This is of course related to the climate change phenomenon which then prompted the Indonesian government to start realizing plans to move the capital city to Kalimantan. 

The government is increasingly taking the government seriously to move the capital of the Republic of Indonesia from Jakarta to Kalimantan. 

City Planning Observer Yayat Supriatna said that the study of Jakarta sinking has been around for a very long time. In fact, in some previous studies there was a drop of 11 cm every year, there were accumulations in several places every year that had reached up to 2 meters, such as in the Pluit area, Ancol. 

The water level on the coast is also rising as a result of climate change which is causing the ice in Antarctica to melt, so the urgency to overcome this is getting higher every year. 

So is moving the capital city the answer? 

Yayat said that moving the capital city was not the answer to dealing with the threat of sinking Jakarta. However, there are other solutions that must be implemented, including a large embankment project on the sea coast or the Giant Sea Wall. 

"Moving the capital is not the answer to this problem, it doesn't mean running away from Jakarta's problem of potentially sinking. If Joe Biden suddenly mentions Indonesia, it means there are American interests in Indonesia. What's behind that issue? "Why is Biden raising the issue of Jakarta," he said, quoted from cnbcindonesia.com. 

He also assumes that this is a fundamental issue of what our preparations should be like. Even though there are predictions of the sinking of Jakarta from various different studies, and some project it around 2035, 2040 to 2050, the sinking of Jakarta will ultimately be felt by the current millennial generation. 

"This is the basic issue of what our preparations are? The millennial generation will feel it. Don't let our generation be blamed because there were predictions that Jakarta would sink but didn't do anything," he explained. ***