Lost homes, lost traditions, lost habitats: the cost of Indonesia’s brand new city

Lamale has spent more than two decades restoring stretches of mangrove trees near his home in Mentawir. Photograph: Fu'ad Muhammad/The Observer

In eastern Borneo, beyond the thick jungle forests, an epic building project is under way. Giant trucks, cement mixers and diggers lumber along battered roads. Cranes tower overhead. Yellow dust clouds the air, caking everything in reach: the leaves of eucalyptus trees, the sides of passing vehicles and the homes of nearby residents.

This site – a 2,560 sq km area encompassing industrial plantations, mines, Indigenous communities and agricultural land – is to form Nusantara, Indonesia’s new administrative capital.