On clean environment

On clean environment

I refer to your front page article on June 7 titled Susilo
wants public to shame dirty cities. It is encouraging to see
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono take up such issues and to
press for better education as that's an important part of the
long term solution. Hopefully it is not a one-off because it
happens to be World Environment Day.

There's one major pollution factor however that Susilo has
missed. Apart from the pollution that is visible, he also needs
to talk about the issue of air pollution. This is an issue that
cannot be solved by education and people's actions alone. This
requires action by the government to reduce the amount of traffic
on the roads and to reduce journey times.

Building new toll roads only solves part of the problem and
additionally it is counterproductive as it encourages more people
to travel by car.

The underlying issue here is that Jakarta lacks an extensive
public transport system. OK, so the busway is a start and also
the planned monorail which is already under construction. But
this is moving too slowly and I doubt if this is enough to stem
the growth in volume of traffic and average journey times.

What is at stake here is the damage to the environment, the
effect on people's health of being caught up for so long in the
pollution, and the economic effect on people's productivity due
to wasting so much time.

Had the prize for cleanest mayoralty also included air quality
as one of the criteria, I wonder if Central Jakarta would still
have won.

CIARAN HARRON, Jakarta