Jakarta's environment: Lessons from abroad<\/p>\n
Edward McMillan
\nJakarta<\/p>\n
Can you imagine paying a \"congestion charge\" every time you
\ndrive your car into the city centre? How about growing your own
\nvegetables? Or using solar energy to heat your tap-water? How
\ndoes paying for several dozen trees to be planted each year sound
\nto you? The World Cities Leadership Summit recently held in
\nLondon highlighted a range of innovative approaches cities are
\nturning to as they grapple with environmental deterioration and
\nunsustainable growth. And most of them beg the question: Why
\ncan't Jakarta do that too?<\/p>\n
That Jakarta is in desperate need of environmental restoration
\nis, of course, not news. After all, this is a city that is
\nregularly paralyzed by flooding and experiences just 26 days of
\n\"good\" air quality a year. But less well known is the sheer scale
\nof Jakarta's ecological impact, which extends well beyond the
\ncity's boundaries.<\/p>\n
If the city's use of natural resources, food and energy is
\ntaken fully into account, Jakarta's true \"ecological footprint\"
\nis enormous. Every man, woman and child in the city currently
\nrequires the equivalent of 1.2 hectares of land to provide the
\nresources they consume each year. That adds up to an area 165
\ntimes larger than the city itself -- an area the size of South
\nKorea.<\/p>\n
That isn't as large as some cities -- London's ecological
\nfootprint is equivalent in area to the entire United Kingdom,
\nwhilst Tokyo's is 85 percent larger still -- but it's clearly
\nunsustainable. With continuing population growth and growing
\ndemand for hitherto \"luxury\" items such as cars, refrigerators
\nand air conditioning by an expanding middle class, Jakarta's
\necological footprint could increase by as much as 40 percent over
\nthe next decade. That's larger than the Netherlands, Belgium,
\nSwitzerland and Albania combined.<\/p>\n
And that spells problems. For a start, there simply may not be
\nenough resources to go around. The World Wildlife Fund, an
\ninternational conservation group, estimates that mankind's total
\necological footprint is already the equivalent of 1.2 Earths:
\nThat we are using 20 percent more natural resources -- notably
\nfossil fuels -- each year than can be regenerated. In effect,
\nwe're running an enormous resource \"overdraft\".<\/p>\n
And it also represents further deterioration of an already-
\nfragile environment. Each new car -- and there are 267 of them
\nevery day in Jakarta -- adds to air pollution; each new house
\nadds to the city's energy burden and to its household waste.<\/p>\n
So what can be done? Unfortunately, the city authorities have
\na woeful record when it comes to managing the environment. Their
\ntraditional defense has always been that environmental fixes are
\nfor developed-world cities: Developing world cities like Jakarta
\nneed to focus on economic growth and job creation, and, anyway,
\ncannot afford expensive environmental projects.<\/p>\n
The World Cities Leadership Summit definitively challenged
\nthis line of complacent thinking. In the course of the summit, it
\nquickly became clear that in many ways it is developing-world
\ncities that are leading the ecological pack -- for the obvious
\nreason that theirs are the most pressing problems.<\/p>\n
Consider Mexico City, one of only two cities in the world with
\nair quality worse than Jakarta. As in Jakarta, buses and old
\ntaxis are major polluters. So Mexico City's response has been
\nstraightforward: It plans to replace 80,000 of its oldest taxis
\nby the end of 2006. It will offer $1,300 towards the price of
\neach replacement, with the owner paying the price difference for
\na new, lower-emissions vehicle. In Santiago, Chile, the city
\ngovernment has introduced a system of competitive tendering for
\nfirms wishing to operate bus services into the city centre. Only
\nfirms with modern, low-emission buses are able to win access to
\nsuch routes.<\/p>\n
With the 2008 Olympic games approaching, Beijing is adopting a
\nrange of measures to spruce up the city. By 2008, 43 percent of
\nthe city's total land area will be devoted to trees and
\nvegetation: That's more than most Western cities and four times
\nmore than Jakarta currently possesses. By next year, 90 percent
\nof public buses will run on clean fuels, and all of the city's
\ncoal-fired boilers will have been retrofitted to use natural gas.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Shanghai is moving forward with its \"100,000 Roofs\"
\nproject, in which solar panels fitted to private houses and
\noffices will be used to generate 430 million kilowatt-hours of
\nelectricity each year -- enough to supply the entire city for two
\ndays without any associated pollution.<\/p>\n
These cities are no strangers to rapid economic growth, nor to
\nthe social and housing issues that come with it. But they have
\nall realized that a healthy environment and a sustainable
\nconsumption model are preconditions to economic prosperity, not
\nantithetical to it. Let's hope that the Jakarta authorities
\nrealize this before it is too late.<\/p>\n
The writer is a British freelance writer based in Jakarta.<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/jakartas-environment-lessons-from-abroad-1447893297", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }