By Reuters SEMBOJA, Indonesia- By day, the unforgiving sun glares off the road beside Ipah’s wooden home with blinding brightness as a passing motorbike stirs a swirl of dust. Fani, a 15-year-old orangutan hangs on a wood stick at Orangutan Rehabilitation and Reintroduction site of Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundationn (BOSF) Samboja Lestari in Kutai Kertanegara regency, East Kalimantan province, Indonesia, August 29, 2019. Picture taken August 29, 2019. (REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan/MANILA BULLETIN) By night, the beams of an occasional truck carrying coal or palm fruits pierce the darkness. This remote corner of Indonesia is set to be transformed from a forest backwater on the island of Borneo to a global city - a new capital of a country whose 260 million people make it the world’s fourth most populous. At her stall serving ice tea and instant noodles, Ipah, an 18-year-old single mother, worries about what the change will bring. “Cities in Kalimantan are peaceful and safe,” said Ipah, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, referring to the Indonesian part of Borneo island. “The capital is a city that never sleeps. Too much smoke, too much fuss.” The capital Jakarta’s reputation as a crowded, polluted mega city of more than 10 million people - one that is slowly sinking into the sea - is partly why Indonesia plans to move government offices to a “Forest City” in East Kalimantan province. The logic of the plan, first mooted nearly 70 years ago, is also to escape Java’s earthquake risk and to swing Indonesia’s political center nearer the middle of the archipelago and away from the politically dominant island. LAND WORRIES The region’s Tribun Kaltim newspaper said asking prices for land surged four times after the announcement. That said, Bagus Susetyo, local chairman of the Real Estate Indonesia property association, told Reuters major property companies were not acquiring land because they had large land banks in nearby Balikpapan. While some would gain from the rise in land prices, many Indonesians don’t own the land they live on. Among them is Ipah, who is already resigned to losing her dwelling, protected against bad luck by two diamond-shaped charms woven from young coconut leaves. “Mr Jokowi, can you give me free land, even just a square meter or a free house?” she asked. It is not only human homes at risk. East Kalimantan is known for forests inhabited by orangutans, sun bears and long-nosed monkeys. There will be no building in protected forest and the government plans to reforest abandoned mines and illegal palm oil plantations, Planning Minister Brodjonegoro said. He floated the idea of an orangutan conservation center similar to one for giant pandas in the Chinese city of Chengdu. The fate of the apes is particularly sensitive in Indonesia given that they have become symbols for campaigners targeting the world’s biggest palm oil industry over the destruction of forests for plantations. Conservationists said they were far from convinced that there would be no spillover effects from moving the capital to East Kalimantan. “The city center might be located quite far away,” said Aldrianto Priadjati, an executive of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, which is based in Kutai Kartanegara. “But the development will be everywhere, just like - sorry to say it - Jakarta.”