standards for cars and industry; fa

standards for cars and industry; facilitate the transfer to
condensed natural gas (CNG); and make space for bicycles
and pedestrians have significantly reduced poisonous
emissions in previously notorious bad-air cities such as
Bangkok, Delhi, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Tokyo, for
example. Both car-dependent and car-saturated cities thus
need a combination of transportation and land use that
is more favourable to greener modes.11 Jakarta is
implementing some new ideas but the positive impact has
yet to be felt.
“Without proper control of traffic emissions put in place, the
rapid increase in motor vehicles […] will cause air quality
to worsen and incur enormous damage costs in health,
productivity and the economy,”12 concluded a 2006
government-led study in Indonesia. The good news is that
with the right vision and government commitment cities can
grow without the environmental damage that we have
become used to. Today some feel Jakarta has already gone
too far and are calling for the nation’s capital to be moved
altogether to another location. That idea has yet to catch
on, but it has raised the very real question of whether Jakarta
is sustainable as a functioning capital for a nation of 220
million people when issues of development, corruption,
natural phenomena and cheap cars keep on colliding. In the
meantime, the urban penalty of pollution continues to fall
most heavily on the lives of the urban poor.
For the many thousands of people who work outside, exposure to
city air pollution is a major hazard. According to a World Bank
report, cases of respiratory ailments in Indonesia are unusually
high, and in Jakarta respiratory inflammation accounts for 12.5
percent of all deaths – double the rate for all Indonesia. For the
urban poor with less access to health facilities, less money to
afford medicine and few alternative employment strategies, the
urban penalty is most severe.
Images: (Above) Swisscontact / Clean Air Project
(Below) Tody Maulifa