Breathing clean air
At long last, the Jakarta administration launched a campaign on Wednesday to bring the level of vehicle emission under control. Given that this is the first conscious effort to deal with the problem, it comes as no surprise that on the first day of the campaign nearly all of the 100 vehicles tested failed: 80 percent exceeded the tolerable limit set for hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and smoke. The only elements of surprise in the operation were that brand-new cars were among them, and that a car using liquefied natural gas, which is touted as being more environmentally friendly compared to gasoline, failed the test.
A clean air campaign for Jakarta that targets vehicles is long overdue. The United Nations Development Program ranks Jakarta as the world's third most polluted city after Mexico City and Bangkok. The World Bank puts the annual cost of air pollution in Jakarta at US$600 million. The city administration says exhaust emission contributes to 67 percent of Jakarta's air pollution, far above the 19 percent contributed by the industrial sector, 10 percent by household activities and 4 percent by garbage incineration.
The problem will continue to worsen by the day unless something drastic is done soon. Jakarta already has 2.5 million vehicles, including 700,000 public transportation vehicles. By 2010, the number is predicted to grow to 4.3 million vehicles.
If we find these figures staggering, the impact of air pollution on people's health is horrendous. Dust pollution in the air is reported to cause 449,000 cases of chronic bronchitis and asthma a year, while lead -- unleaded gasoline has not caught on yet in Indonesia -- causes some 62,500 cases of heart disease and high-blood pressure annually. Another World Bank study said acute respiratory infection is responsible for the deaths of 15 percent of Indonesian children under five, and for 6.2 percent of all deaths in Indonesia. In Jakarta, it accounts for 12.6 percent of all deaths.
These are not new facts. So much has been written about the dirty and poisonous air of Jakarta and its impact on the health of its citizens. The debate on the problem of air pollution has been reduced to the familiar "NATO" discourse: No Action, Talks Only. Problems and their urgency are recognized, but real action is rare. Granted, the city does not have a Clean Air Act, but it is not totally devoid of laws and rules. The 1992 Traffic Law makes a provision requiring people to control car exhaust; a 1990 gubernatorial decree sets the tolerable limits of emission of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, hydrocarbon and smoke from vehicles.
This week's campaign to control exhaust emission, while highly welcome, is but a very small first step. Its effectiveness is limited. The authorities are simply issuing green stickers to drivers whose cars pass the emission test, and red stickers to those who fail. Obviously this is far from sufficient. We need a campaign that makes the regulations stick.
Somewhere down the line the government intends to link exhaust emission tests with the annual renewal of vehicle registrations (STNK), enforce regulations, and mete out punishment. But, so far we have not heard their game plan to enforce this.
With the gravity of the problem widely accepted and the regulations in place, what seems to be lacking is political will. This has a familiar ring when dealing with environmental problems in the country.
The onus of a strict regulation on exhaust emission will fall on car manufacturers first, and on consumers through higher prices later. Similarly, the onus of phasing in unleaded gasoline will fall first on manufacturers and eventually on consumers who will have to pay more to run their cars. These are politically unpopular measures, and we suspect this is why little is being done.
The result of the first day of emission tests however makes the argument for the city to act now even more compelling. Carmakers and motorists have been given enough breathing space. It's now time to allow the rest of us to breath what we should be breathing in: clean air.