CASE STUDY - Indonesia Flashcards
Indonesia is a country made up of thousands of islands. What is its population?
240 million.
It has the 4th largest population of any country of the world.
What issue do Indonesia have?
The population is not distributed evenly. Most people (around 130 million) live on the island of Java. This leads to social and economic impatcs (eg lack of adequate services and housing, unemployment and poverty).
How have the Indonesian Government tried to overcome this problem?
They started a transmigration policy in the 1960s called the transmigration policy, which aims to reduce the impacts of population growth.
Define transmigration.
To migrate from one place to live in another, in this case it was the same country.
Millions of people were moved from Java to Sumatra. Why?
Because Java was more densely populated but Sumatra was less densely populated.
What were some effects of this policy. Name 3.
- Millions of people were relocated but the population still isn’t that evenly distributed
- Not all the people who moved managed to escape poverty - either they didn’t have the skills to farm the land or the soil was too infertile to be farmed on
- Lots of peoople were moved to land that was already occupied by native people. This caused conflict between the natives and the migrants.
Has Indonesia’s policy helped towards sustainable development? Why?
No it hasn’t. This is because the population size hasn’t decreased so the impacts of growth have not been avoided.
