Born and raised in the bustling megacity of Jakarta, Indonesia’s densely populated, traffic-choked capital, environmentalist Khalisah Khalid has long anguished over the city’s air.
Her young daughter has been plagued by ill health from birth, issues she believes are exacerbated by air pollution.
“Her health is increasingly being threatened with Jakarta’s increasingly dirty air quality,” Khalisah said of her daughter, now aged 10. “We want the government to make rules to ensure citizens have a good environment and air.”
Photo: AP
The 42-year-old mother is one of 32 plaintiffs in a citizen lawsuit against the Indonesian president, the ministers of health, environment and home affairs, and several regional leaders, demanding that they fix the air pollution problem.
The Central Jakarta District Court had been expected to rule on the 2019 lawsuit yesterday, but Khalisah said that this had been postponed because judges needed more time to consider their ruling.
Of the world’s cities with the worst air pollution last year, the top 148 are in the Asia-Pacific region, data from Swiss air quality technology company IQAir showed.
The plaintiffs’ legal team has said that Indonesian authorities have been environmentally negligent by failing to protect its citizens from the health effects of air pollution.
Scientific research shows that poor air quality can lead to asthma, coronary heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and decreased life expectancy, the team said.
Irvan Pulungan, the Jakarta governor’s special envoy on climate change, said that the city had passed new regulations since the suit was filed, including on installing solar panels in government buildings and encouraging emissions tests.
In 2019, Jakarta announced new curbs on use of private vehicles.
Air quality monitoring PM2.5 (fine particle matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers) by the US embassy in Jakarta in 2019 showed that there were 172 unhealthy days, more than half of the year.
Despite restrictions, Jakarta’s air quality did not significantly improve during the COVID-19 pandemic, with satellite imaging showing power plants in neighboring provinces operating as usual, the Center on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) said in a report in August last year, which analyzed transboundary air pollution in Jakarta and its surrounding areas.
CREA identified 136 registered industrial facilities, including power plants, in high-emitting sectors in Jakarta and within a 100km radius of the city borders.
Coal-fired power plants expose people to toxic particles, some microscopic, such as PM2.5, ozone, and from nitrogen oxides and heavy metals such as mercury, it said.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday declared martial law in an unannounced late night address broadcast live on YTN television. Yoon said he had no choice but to resort to such a measure in order to safeguard free and constitutional order, saying opposition parties have taken hostage of the parliamentary process to throw the country into a crisis. "I declare martial law to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korean communist forces, to eradicate the despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people, and to protect the free
A string of rape and assault allegations against the son of Norway’s future queen have plunged the royal family into its “biggest scandal” ever, wrapping up an annus horribilis for the monarchy. The legal troubles surrounding Marius Borg Hoiby, the 27-year-old son born of a relationship before Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s marriage to Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, have dominated the Scandinavian country’s headlines since August. The tall strapping blond with a “bad boy” look — often photographed in tuxedos, slicked back hair, earrings and tattoos — was arrested in Oslo on Aug. 4 suspected of assaulting his girlfriend the previous night. A photograph
The US deployed a reconnaissance aircraft while Japan and the Philippines sent navy ships in a joint patrol in the disputed South China Sea yesterday, two days after the allied forces condemned actions by China Coast Guard vessels against Philippine patrol ships. The US Indo-Pacific Command said the joint patrol was conducted in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone by allies and partners to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight “ and “other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace.” Those phrases are used by the US, Japan and the Philippines to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the
‘KAMPAI’: It is said that people in Japan began brewing rice about 2,000 years ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol Traditional Japanese knowledge and skills used in the production of sake and shochu distilled spirits were approved on Wednesday for addition to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, a committee of the UN cultural body said It is believed people in the archipelago began brewing rice in a simple way about two millennia ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol. By about 1000 AD, the imperial palace had a department to supervise the manufacturing of sake and its use in rituals, the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association said. The multi-staged brewing techniques still used today are
RSS