Abandon ship: Can scale solve both climate adaptation and mitigation?
Climate adaptation is too often treated as a problem of defending cities against an uncertain future. But as rising seas, sinking land and rapid urbanisation reshape Africa's coastal economies, the bigger question is whether managed retreat can become a catalyst for new cities, industries and domestic construction capacity. The challenge is not simply who pays for adaptation, but who builds the…
Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, is sinking due to a combination of political short-sightedness and natural forces. 40% of the city lies below sea level, and its groundwater extraction is causing it to sink at a rate of 25 centimeters per year. In 2019, Jakarta was abandoned as a national capital and reclassified as the political capital.
However, funding for the new city, Nusantara, has drastically decreased from $2 billion in 2024 to $300 million in 2026. As a result, the new city now only houses ten thousand people, while the original city continues to submerge.
The issue of climate adaptation and mitigation is a complex one, with many unknowns and uncertainties. Climate tipping points are difficult to predict, making it challenging to mathematically model a solution. Instead, a new approach to financing and policy decision-making is needed. This approach should harness the scale of one policy problem to fund the solution to another, rather than treating adaptation and migration as separate issues.
In the past, mitigation efforts have faced similar challenges. China's response to decarbonisation was to identify a simultaneity between renewable deployment and domestic industrial policy. By using the scale of one to fund the other, China was able to achieve the fastest manufacturing cost-curve descent in history. This approach could be applied to adaptation economics as well.
Many have criticized adaptation economics for being incomplete or unknowable due to the deep uncertainty surrounding climate tipping points. However, adaptation finance is currently focused on piecemeal solutions, such as seawalls and resilience bonds, which are built on the assumption that the population will stay and assets will be defended.
This approach does not account for the possibility of managed retreat, which could generate a fiscal and developmental catalyst. By transitioning from defense to retreat, new settlements can create demand for modular construction, climate-adapted urban design, and distributed energy, ultimately leading to a more sustainable future.
Written by urgent.news from Africa Business's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
