A collapsed house, only its frame and roof tiles remaining, leans in a row of abandoned, partially submerged houses on July 30, 2025, in Bedono village, Demak regency, Central Java, where climate change has contributed to a massive loss of coastal land. - AFP
JAKARTA: As the northern coast of the world’s most populous island continues to sink steadily, President Prabowo Subianto has moved to realise a decades-old plan to build the so-called Giant Sea Wall on Java by establishing the Java North Coast Management Authority (BOP Pantura).
Yet doubts linger over whether a single body can manage one of the most ambitious construction projects in the country amid concerns that it might only add another bureaucratic layer to the continually expanding Prabowo administration.
