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fter being denied by the Environment and Forestry Ministry, Jakarta Governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama has turned to President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo for help paring down environmental checks in order to encourage investment in construction projects in Jakarta.

Since late last year, the city administration has sought to scrap Environmental Impact Analysis (Amdal) documents, a step required before investors can obtain an environmental permit to begin construction. The city administration prepared a gubernatorial instruction intended to simplify the permit process, and planned to also shift responsibility for issuing environmental worthiness letters from the Jakarta Environmental Management Agency to the One-Stop Integrated Services Agency (BPTSP), responsible for issuing various permits and other documents.

However, after consultation and discussion, BPTSP head Edy Junaedi said that the ministry had turned down the city administration'€™s plan. '€œOn Dec. 30, the ministry sent us a letter giving a red light to our plan,'€ Edy told The Jakarta Post over the weekend.

Edy explained that in the city'€™s plan, developers would no longer need to submit an Amdal document to construct a building, only a simpler document called an environmental management scheme and environmental monitoring scheme (UKL-UPL). Development would refer to the 2014 Detailed Spatial Planning and Zoning Bylaw.

An Amdal is drafted after a thorough survey of a construction area and its surroundings, and consists of environmental, social and economic analysis. An environmental management and monitoring scheme document is similar to an Amdal, but simpler, and is meant for buildings that have a minimum impact on their surroundings.

However, Edy said that the Environment and Forestry Ministry had denied the city'€™s plan, stating that the proposed bylaw had yet to consider environmental capacity, which refers to the number of individuals an environment can support without causing a significant negative impact. The capacity of an area is calculated in terms of food and water supplies, waste disposal, carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles and other factors.

Ahok has since turned to Jokowi, a former superior and a good friend, for help. Ahok claimed that the 2014 bylaw had been drafted in consideration of the environment, and thus an Amdal was no longer necessary for developments in Jakarta.

'€œThe bylaw was drafted while already considering environmental impacts in Jakarta. Therefore, we can scrap the Amdal process,'€ Ahok told reporters at City Hall recently.

Ahok said that he had turned to Jokowi for help as his plan had been hampered by the Environment and Forestry Ministry'€™s regulation. He claimed that Jokowi had verbally permitted him to get rid of regulations that were complicated and no longer useful.

'€œPak Jokowi ordered me to get rid of unimportant [regulations]. Those regulations have existed since Dutch colonial era,'€ he said.

Environmental law expert Mas Achmad Santosa, also known as Ota, said that sustainable development was stipulated in Law No. 32/2009 on environmental protection and management.

The mechanism of sustainable development consists of four steps: a strategic environmental assessment considering economic, ecological and social aspects, which would be the base of a provincial spatial plan; drafting a spatial plan with full consideration of the assessment and full participation by stakeholders; drafting an Amdal based on the spatial plan; and drafting an environmental permit based on the Amdal.

'€œIf simplifying [those] steps meant getting rid of the essence of the protection of environmental capacity, then it would be a big mistake,'€ Ota said.

Protecting environmental capacity, he continued, should not be compromised by making shortcuts in the process itself. Shortcuts could be made only so long as they did not sacrifice the values of environmental protection.

The Indonesian Association of Urban & Regional Planners president Bernardus '€œBernie'€ Djonoputro said that an environmental impact analysis was an important part of a city'€™s development. Bernie said that the Detailed Spatial Planning and Zoning Bylaw was different to an Amdal.

'€œThe bylaw regulates spatial planning and zoning, and makes no mention of an environmental impact analysis. An Amdal is thus essential so we can see what kind of impact a project would have on the environment,'€ Bernie said.