Early last year, the World Bank issued an “urgent flood mitigation report” about the Indonesian capital city of Jakarta, along with a $189 million flood mitigation plan. The action was precipitated by a series of bad floods that hit every year in the monsoon season, and reached a peak in 2007. That year, rising waters which forced at least 350,000 of the city’s 10 million inhabitants from their homes, killed 70, caused a massive outbreak of disease, and resulted in some $900 million in damage. Such inundations, the World Bank report suggests, are going to become routine events in Asia’s 13th-largest city. Read More
