Jakartans continue to hold breath in air pollution case

Judges say they need extra time to read additional documents

Jakartans will have to wait longer for a ruling in an air pollution case after the court delayed it for the second time, with reports showing that air quality in the capital has returned to pre-pandemic levels.

The citizen lawsuit is the first of its kind aiming to hold authorities accountable for air pollution in the country. It was filed with the Central Jakarta District Court in July 2019 by 32 residents of Greater Jakarta against seven public officials: the President, the environment minister, the health minister, the home minister and the governors of Jakarta, Banten and West Java. The plaintiffs demanded that they devise policies to improve air quality in Jakarta.

The panel of three judges was supposed to read the ruling on May 20 but postponed it until June 10, saying that documents from the plaintiffs and defendants were incomplete for cross-examination. On Thursday, the judges delayed their decision once again, claiming they needed extra time to read through all the documents they had received.

“We are very sorry that we cannot deliver the verdict just yet,” presiding judge Saifuddin Zuhri said during the hearing on Thursday.

The case hearings have also been plagued with delays, with representatives of the Banten

administration failing to attend several times. Mediation meetings between the plaintiffs and the defendants failed to lead to an agreement, pushing the lawsuit into the realm of the court.

Expressing her clients’ disappointment, Ayu Eza Tiara from the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta) who represents the petitioners in this case, said the delays in delivering the ruling were against the principles of quick, simple and inexpensive trials, as stipulated in a 2009 law on judicial powers.

“People who want cleaner air not only have to face the government but also the court’s bad management,” Ayu told The Jakarta Post after Thursday’s hearing.

She added the judges were playing a part in denying Jakartans their right to cleaner air by allowing the case to remain in limbo for two years.

Plaintiff Yuyun Ismawati, the cofounder of environmental health group Nexus3 Foundation, said it should have been easy for the judges to rule in favor of the plaintiffs, considering testimonies presented by their expert witnesses all pointing to the harm air pollution brought to public health.

Experts had verified the plaintiffs’ findings of more than 5.5 million air pollution-related sicknesses being reported in Jakarta. They also cited the Jakarta administration’s estimation that in 2020 alone, the city spent at least Rp 60.8 trillion (US$4.2 billion) on health expenses for air pollution-related illnesses, she added.

“Delaying the verdict will eventually delay [efforts to] improve [Jakarta’s] air quality, which in turn will increase health spending [on air pollution-related sicknesses],” Yuyun said in a statement.

Also commenting on the issue was Ahmad Safruddin of the Committee for the Phasing Out of Leaded Fuel (KPBB), who is not part of the lawsuit. He said even government data showed that air quality in Jakarta had not been up to standards.

Air quality monitoring stations (AQMS) managed by the environment ministry and the Jakarta administration, he said, generally recorded moderate or unhealthy levels of air quality based on PM10, or coarse particle matters, PM2.5 or fine particle matters, sulfur dioxide (SO2) and ozone (O3) from 2011 to 2020.

“Prolonged delays in the verdict can discourage the government from demonstrating a greater political will to control air pollution,” Ahmad said.

The latest delay came after Greenpeace Southeast Asia released a report about the return of pre-pandemic air pollution levels in Jakarta, after signs of improvement shown during the early weeks of COVID -19 curbs.

The report analyzed satellite images of nitrogen dioxide (NO )

2 — a common byproduct of internal combustion engines using fossil fuels — obtained by the European Space Agency.

Greenpeace found that Jakarta’s NO2 levels had dropped by around 30 percent in April 2020, from the same period in 2018 and 2019. However, in April this year, the NO2 level rebounded back to 2019 levels.

The Jakarta administration first ordered physical distancing, closed schools and offices, and limited public transportation on March 23, 2020, as part of emergency COVID-19 measures, the introduced stricter large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) on April 10, 2020. The PSBB were extended several times before authorities implemented more lenient COVID -19 curbs.

Citing Greenpeace Southeast Asia’s report, Greenpeace Indonesia campaigner Bondan Andriyanu said air quality could improve if the government introduced policies that would limit fossil fuel-reliant transportation and industrial activities.

“We should not have to wait for a pandemic for air quality to improve.”

Air quality monitor website IQAir showed that Jakarta’s Air Quality Index (AQI) was at 92 on Sunday afternoon, or a moderate level of air pollution, with a PM2.5 concentration of 31.8 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3). The figure is higher than the World Health Organization’s standards for maximum daily exposure, which is a PM2.5 concentration of 25 μg/m3.