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Time for Indonesia to wage war on air pollution
It is long past time that Indonesia declared war on the critical public health issue of air pollution, which reduces the quality of breathable air and thus threatens lives across the country.
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Smog blankets the Jakarta skyline on Aug. 19, 2019. According to IQAir, the nation's capital registere a particulate matter (PM) 2.5 concentration three times above the WHO annual air quality guideline value on Sept. 10, 2021. (JP/Donny Fernando)
O
n Sept. 7 each year, the world marks the International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies. Today, I am reminded of what my friend Nathan Roestandy and fellow cofounder of Nafas told me years ago as he sat on the back of a Gojek motorcycle taxi, riding through the great Sudirman strip: “The trees are green, skies are blue, clouds are white, but the air monitor is red.”
Nathan’s words perfectly capture the illusion Jakartans (and most Indonesians elsewhere) see every day but don’t realize: The picturesque juxtaposition of nature and skyscrapers laced with an invisible threat to our health – air pollution.
Globally, air pollution kills an estimated 7 million people annually according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Jakarta ranks ninth among the most polluted cities in the world and first as the most polluted city in Southeast Asia, according to IQAir.
The air pollution level in Jakarta, home to over 11 million people, is six times the WHO standard. If this pollution persists, its residents will lose 5.5 years of life expectancy relative to if the air quality complied with the WHO guideline.
In Greater Jakarta, people in Bogor, Bekasi, South Tangerang and even Bandung are at risk of losing about 5 years of life expectancy relative to if the air quality complied with the WHO guideline, according to the Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) developed by the Energy Policy Institute at The University of Chicago (EPIC).
This begs all of us to question, why is this not on everyone’s radar? Why is the government not taking huge strides to solve this life-threatening problem? Indonesians are losing years off their life expectancy just by doing the most essential bodily function: breathing.
Granted, we do have an ongoing global pandemic. But air pollution has great persistence and will stay comfortably in our lungs and our children’s bloodstreams for decades beyond the pandemic, unless we start doing something now.
