Jakarta's 'very bad' air pollution to persist due to government foot-dragging, green groups say

Indonesia's inability to tackle air pollution in Jakarta means the capital city's 10 million people will continue to confront smog for years to come, environmental activists said, blaming ineffective legislations, unreliable emission data and politicians' interests in coal plants for the worsening problem.

Last week, Jakarta was declared to have the world's worst air quality by Swiss tech firm IQAir - President Joko Widodo's monthlong cough was even attributed to the city's pollution level.

Widodo has convened ministers to deal with the pollution ahead of the Asean summit in Jakarta next month. Meanwhile, Minister for Tourism Sandiaga Uno suggested the city should learn from the clean-up efforts of Beijing, which spent US$100 billion in 2013 to remove old vehicles from the streets, cut factory emissions and replaced coal with natural gas to generate electricity.

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"The air quality in the Greater Jakarta Area has been very bad," Widodo said at a cabinet meeting last week. "The extended dry season spanning the past three months has intensified pollutant levels."

Despite the leaders' remarks, activists are sceptical that the government's proposed plans will lead to any notable improvement in the city's air quality, pointing to past official foot-dragging.

In September 2021, an Indonesian court ruled that several officials, including Widodo and Jakarta's former governor Anies Baswedan, had been negligent in handling the city's air pollution problem.

No penalties were imposed, the court merely urged the president and others to take action to improve the air quality including tightening regulations, improving oversight and testing vehicle emissions.

The government filed an appeal at the Jakarta High Court in September 2021. When the court struck that down in October 2022, the government launched a new appeal to the Supreme Court in December that year. The appeal is still ongoing.

"The highest level of government doesn't want to take vital action," said Irvan Pulungan, who served as Jakarta's Envoy for Climate Change under Baswedan.

Many campaigners have accused Indonesia's Ministry of Environment and Forestry of refusing to acknowledge the severity of the problem.

The air quality scale used by the ministry classifies much higher levels of air pollution as safe for humans than the standard used by the World Health Organization.

"We always ask them if they mean it's safe to breathe for humans or some other species," said one campaigner, who declined to be named.

Even getting accurate data on the main sources of Jakarta's air pollution is tricky. A report by Vital Strategies, an NGO in New York that focuses on global public health, suggested vehicle exhaust was the main issue. From 2018-19, it found that vehicle exhaust contributed 32-41 per cent of pollution in the dry season, and 42-57 per cent in the rainy season.

However, Lauri Myllyvirta, a lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Clean Energy (CREA) in Finland, said coal-fired power plants in provinces neighbouring Jakarta likely played a larger role in polluting the city's air. A CREA report in 2020 found that there were 136 highly-emitting industrial facilities, including 16 power plants, within a 100-kilometre radius of the city.

The same study found that pollution did not drop much when road traffic was reduced, but increased when the wind blew in from areas where large numbers of coal power plants were concentrated.

Myllyvirta said the environment ministry did not seem convinced about the problem. In an August 13 briefing, it cited satellite imagery showing winds blowing pollution produced by a cluster of plants in Banten on the western end of Java away from Jakarta. However, Myllyvirta criticised this, saying the ministry failed to look at plants upwind of Jakarta in the provinces of Central and Western Java.

According to Myllyvirta, political interests in Indonesian coal companies made it hard for the ministry to press the issue, with at least three Indonesian cabinet ministers and other politicians holding substantial stakes in these companies.

Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto is linked to the privately-held Nusantara Energy and its subsidiary Nusantara Kaltim Coal. Tourism and Creative Economy Minister Sandiaga Uno owns 21.51 per cent of an investment firm Saratoga Investama Sedaya, which is linked to coal miner Adaro Energy. Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment, Luhut Binsar Panjaitan has an 8 per cent stake in TBS Energi Utama.

Regardless of the source and level of emissions, Indonesia's lax environmental regulations and weak enforcement further compound the challenge in dealing with pollution.

The country's low fuel and emissions standards have led to vehicles burning dirtier engine fuels with lower capacity to filter out pollutants.

Two and three-wheeled vehicles, which make up some 80 per cent of Jakarta's 21.8 million vehicles, are subject to particularly low standards. Motorcycles in Indonesia can emit as much as four times more of certain pollutants than a car, according to Ahmad Safruddin, executive director of KPBB, an environmental organisation.

Current regulations are often weakly enforced. Vehicles over three years old in Jakarta are supposed to be subject to yearly emissions tests. In 2020, then Jakarta governor Anies announced plans for spot checks and fines for drivers of vehicles that failed emissions tests.

However, plans for the fines were dropped in December 2021, partly due to Jakarta police questioning the feasibility of imposing measures against millions of drivers that commute into the city every day, according to Irvan.

But data suggests regulatory measures would have encouraged motorists to comply. In 2021, when drivers expected the new rules to come into force, the number of vehicles which voluntarily underwent emission tests shot up by some 3,700 per cent, to 481,047. After plans for the fines were dropped, the number of such tests nearly halved.

The provincial government, having previously spoken of implementing the fines next year, is now promising that the fines against errant motorists will be implemented from August 26. Rule-breakers could face two months' jail or a maximum fine of 500,000 rupiah. Moped riders face fines of up to 250,000 rupiah.

The story is similar when it comes to coal power plants. Indonesian emission standards are significantly lower than in other coal-producing countries. An Indonesian coal plant can legally emit almost six times more nitrogen oxides - one of the "big three" air pollutants - than a counterpart in China, according to a study by the CREA.

The environment ministry had also proposed in 2019 stringent new emission standards for all power plants. But these standards were quickly watered down due to the exemption of existing power plants, and those that were being constructed under government contracts.

"The reason why Jakarta is getting called out so much more is that other cities, especially Chinese cities, have improved a lot [in tackling air pollution]," said Myllyvirta.

Still, there are signs things could change. An environment ministry task force focusing on tackling air pollution in the Greater Jakarta region has named four suspects accused of breaching air pollution regulations. The suspects include the director of an investment firm operating a copper smelter, and four operators burning electronic waste.

On August 18, the government also announced that emission standards would be tightened and that steam power stations and heavy industry in the Greater Jakarta area would have to start using scrubbers - equipment used to remove environment-harming substances. However, no timeline has been specified.

The tasks facing the authorities to clean up Jakarta's air standards are challenging due to its power and transport infrastructure, said Adhityani Putri, executive director of Yayasan Indonesia Cerah, a group that supports Indonesia's energy transition.

"Development is a little bit like a big oil tanker changing direction - it happens very slowly at first," Adhityani said.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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