A Sinking City

Vocabulary Questions:

1. What does “torrential” mean, “Torrential rainfall in the monsoon season causes flooding on a regular basis.”? Give 2 synonyms and make your own sentences.
It means teeming, overflowing. In the text, it is raining with a huge amount of water. “The forest is teeming with life”. “An overflowing river destroyed a lot of houses”.

2. What does “densely” mean, “Jakarta is one of the most densely populated cities in the world – home to about 10 million people.”? Use this word in your own sentence.
It means with a lot of people living there by km2. “On the contrary, cities in Alaska or in the south of Argentina are the less densely cities in the world because of the hard weather”.

3. What does “draw something out” mean, “Many people draw water out of the ground for drinking and other purposes.”? Make a sentence with this phrase in this context.
It means to collect, to pull something, in this case water. “Draw out your handkerchief and help me clean what you dropped”.

Discussion Questions:

1. What is your reaction to this news?
It is an alarming situation, not just because the city is sinking, but also because people living there have not access to enough clean water. Furthermore, it is a densely city and according to the text, the city cannot afford such high amount of people. It is not prepared in terms of infrastructures regarding clean water.

2. According to the article, why is Jakarta sinking?
It is sinking because the sea level is increasing due to the climate change and the increase in its temperatures, but also because the city has not enough infrastructures to better redistribute water. Furthermore, in the raining season, rivers usually overflow worsening the situation.

3. In what ways can people contribute to slowing down the sinking of this city?
They should move to nearer cities in order to avoid overpopulation. But that is difficult because we humans tend to move to those cities that offer more opportunities (better, jobs, houses, and so on). Thus, it is difficult to take that decision.
As the text explains, other solutions could be improve the water infrastructures so as to avoid people taking water where they should not. But again, it is difficult if the authorities do not have enough resources to afford such an expensive building.

4. Do you think it’s possible to stop global warming? Why or why not?
I think it is possible if we take it seriously, but we are not even considering it. Global warming is not about what each individual does everyday, but it is something regarding the habits of the whole humanity. We can decide not to use our personal car anymore and move instead by bike or public transport, or avoid plastic objects. But plastics are being produced yet, even if we decide not to use them. The same goes for transport. Thus, as we are behaving right now, it is not possible. It will be if we collectively decide to change our habits, not only individuals, but also companies, whole countries, the market… That is the difficult part.

5. What other cities do you know are in danger of sinking?
Those that are near the see and/or that have rivers through them like Venice or Amsterdam.

6. Do you think your city will also be in danger of sinking? Why or why not?
Right now I am living in a small town that are in the mainland (not in an isle), in a dry region with a small river which remains dry almost the whole year. Thus, here the danger is not about sinking but on the contrary about drought. Before, I was living in a coastal city located in an island in the Mediterranean sea. There, the raining season is not so hard as the monsoons. It rains, but I would say, it only rains a little and thus flooding or sinking are not dangers we consider. Maybe the sea level is increasing and is gaining centimetres each year, but that city in the isle is not in danger because of the sea.