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Jakarta needs to step up efforts or environmental woes may get worse in 2020: activists
A restoration campaigner for the Jakarta chapter of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), Rehwinda Naibaho, raised concerns that with the current trend, Jakarta may face a worsening environmental crisis in 2020.
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Residents try to save their belongings amid the floods that struck Jl. Jatinegara Barat in Kampung Pulo, East Jakarta on Jan. 2. (Antara/Nova Wahyudi)
W
ith the persistent problems of air pollution, waste, lack of zoning plans for coastal areas, as well as massive flooding that hit the capital city at the beginning of this year, Jakarta is in the midst of an ecological crisis that will only get worse if stakeholders do little to improve the environment, a group of environmentalists has warned.
A restoration campaigner for the Jakarta chapter of the Indonesian Forum of the Environment (Walhi), Rehwinda Naibaho, raised concerns that with the current trend, Jakarta may face a worsening environmental crisis in 2020.
“We project that people in Jakarta will still have to deal with pollution,” Rehwinda said in a discussion on Wednesday.
She pointed out that water pollution remained a persistent problem in the city, citing data from Jakarta Environment Agency that found rivers and lakes in the city were consistently polluted. The data in 2017 showed that 61 percent of Jakarta rivers were heavily polluted, 27 percent were moderately polluted, while 12 percent were lightly polluted.
Groundwater, which millions of Jakartans rely on for their daily needs, is also not free from pollution as the same data recorded that only 32 percent of groundwater in the capital’s soil was clean from pollution.
“There have not been any efforts to reduce this pollution,” Rehwinda said.
Air pollution is also a persistent problem that has finally caught the public’s attention, as throughout 2018 and 2019 Jakarta was named among the most polluted cities in the world according to the Air Quality Index (AQI) by Airvisual.
