In Jakarta, a Family Weighs the House Against the Water

JAKARTA — The registered climate-migrant count climbed past 112 million this month, Hearth Relief International reported, and in a north Jakarta lane where the tide now reaches the doorstep twice a day, one of those numbers has a name: Sari Wulandari, 44, who has not yet decided to become it. Her family has lived four generations above a canal that the Oceanic & Atmospheric Assembly says has risen faster here than the global mean, itself holding at +2.8°C. "The house is paid," she said, standing on a step the brackish water had darkened. "The water is not asking about that." Passage Trust caseworkers walk the lane weekly now, logging who has left and who is calculating. Most, they say, leave last, not first — after the school floods, after the clinic moves, after the well turns salt. The 112 million are not a wave. They are a slow arithmetic of doorsteps, counted one reluctant family at a time.