Jakarta On Track To Sink 40 - 60 Cm By 2025, Thanks To Pumping, Building, Construction - AFP

[hatrack]

Separated by a road and a viscous finger of black, garbage-choked water, the stilt-house slum of Muara Baru and the BMW car dealership that faces it appear as if from different worlds. But on December 6, 2025, these two extremes of the Indonesian capital will have something in common as a World Bank study shows that unless action is taken, they and much of the coastal city of 12 million will be submerged by seawater.

Experts have pinpointed that date as the next peak of an 18.6-year astronomical cycle, when sea levels will rise enough to engulf much of Indonesia's low-lying capital. Climate change is causing sea levels to rise, but the study's authors say the main problem is that Jakarta is sinking under the weight of out-of-control development. "The major reason for this is not climate change or whatever, but just the sinking of Jakarta," says JanJaap Brinkman, an engineer with Dutch consultancy Delft Hydraulics who worked with the World Bank on the study. "We can exactly predict to what extent the sea will come into Jakarta."

By 2025, estimates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show, sea levels will have risen by only about five centimetres (two inches). But Brinkman says Jakarta, which spans a flat plain between mountains and coast, will be between 40 and 60 centimetres lower than it is now.

The study shows that without better defences, in 2025 the sea will reach the presidential palace around five kilometres (three miles) inland as well as completely inundating Jakarta's historic old city to the north.

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/2007/080414021212.lcxswxgj.html

[napoleon_in_rags]

1. The article says its all about groundwater extraction.

Which makes sense, I wish they would say that first instead of talking about development compressing the earth, which wouldn't be happening if the groundwater were still there.