Event
Global Discovery Series: The Divergent Climate Futures of Jakarta and Amsterdam
This event is presented by Penn Alumni and is part of the Global Discovery - A Faculty Lecture Series.
Jakarta and the Randstad (the metropolitan conglomerate of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and towns in between) have much in common. Both are built in river deltas with densely populated regions below sea level, protected by systems of levees and pumps. Ongoing subsidence in combination with accelerated sea level rise makes their climate futures precarious. In both cases, the water management infrastructure is of Dutch design—Jakarta, or Batavia, as it was known at the time, was the capital of the Dutch East Indies until 1942 and the national capital of Indonesia since 1950. Plans to climate proof Jakarta and the Netherlands depend on Dutch expertise and are often developed by the same research institutes and engineering firms. Yet, for all the similarities, their climate futures could hardly be more different. In the Netherlands, scientists, designers, media, and government welcome the opportunity to imagine a country transformed by inundation, while in Jakarta the government is actively planning to move to another island.
The Global Discovery webinar series is co-sponsored by Penn Alumni Travel and Penn Alumni Education. Explore the world virtually, both far and near, with Penn faculty members and your fellow alumni community. Each live, interactive lecture features Penn professors sharing new and innovative research on a variety of topics. Participants will have the opportunity to ask in-depth questions and are sure to learn something new in each one hour session.