Pollution? Climate Change? Jakarta? What's the Connection?

Pollution & Climate Change

In Jakarta by : Kaylee Annabelle 7.1 SDH

There are many types of pollution in this world. All these pollutions can be deadly to the world, especially since a decent amount of people are not really trying to reduce it. Some people in this world simply do whatever they want, without even looking or thinking about the consequences of their actions and they won't fix this consequence of theirs. This is one of the reasons this world is chaotic and it's also one of the causes of pollution. So, what is pollution in the first place?

Pollution is when waste and substances that are hazardous enter the environment around it. It harms the environment and can make the environment harmful to us. This is caused daily by people who are throwing their trash like plastic bottles or plastic bags into water, riding cars or motorcycles too much just for simple tasks if they can just walk or use bicycles.

Now what are and how many types of pollutions are there? The common ones are air pollution, water pollution, (Land pollution) soil pollution and, sound pollution. There is more pollution in this world, but it is not as common as these. For the first example, there is:

Sound pollution is a type of pollution that is basically invisible, it cannot be seen, but it can affect someone/somethings life. Sound is considered pollution when it is unwanted or disturbing the life around it. You can tell how harmful it is using decibels (dB). Noise usually over 70 dB over a long time can cause damage to your hearing, while loud noise over 120 dB (like a rock concert or an active jack hammer) will instantly harm your ears, it can cause headaches and other symptoms. Sound pollution is pretty common in areas with heavy traffic, you can hear all the cars beeping or even around your neighbourhood, that one guy with the loud motorcycle.

Water pollution is when harmful substance goes into water. It can be chemicals, or it can also be objects like plastic bags, plastic bottles, usually plastic items. The water after being affected by water pollution is now dirty, and it can harm living things if it consumes it or if aquatic animals live inside of it. So, if you see a river, full of plastic, which is from other people causing water pollution. Especially here in Indonesia, it's not that hard to see a river with plastic in it. The plastic can also become small and float around the sea, this type of plastic is called microplastic. Microplastic can be eaten by fish, which then gets caught by the fishermen, and ends up in our stomach. We end up indirectly eating plastic too at the end.

Soil pollution is a form of land pollution, soil pollution is when waste or substances enters the soil due to human causes, causing the area around it and the living things inside it to have a negative impact, which is: skin diseases, respiratory diseases, and other health problems to humans by direct contact or breathing it in and it can affect the soil's fertility, which can also effect the plants growing in that soil. If no one tries to reduce soil pollution, the soil might end up in one of the farms and affect the crops growing there and can make the consumer sick.

Air pollution is when gas / substance that is harmful enters the air, affecting the air we breathe in and harming us when we breathe. It can cause multiple health problems like: Increasing the risk of respiratory infections, heart disease and lung cancer. This problem is very common in most of the countries in this world, air pollution is also the largest environmental threat to humans, with annual death count of 7 million premature deaths. Air pollution is more likely to increase with the increase of humans, needing more vehicles in the world, producing more gasses which contributes to air pollution.

Now, have you ever just been walking around the city, but then you see someone smoking or, someone burning trash? This is common in Indonesia, many people burn trash instead of throwing it out to save space, and there's also 22,945,516 registered vehicles in Indonesia at 2022 Dec. How is it not high in the rankings? Oh, wait it is, it's ranked the 26th country with the worst air quality. 26th out of 195 countries in this world, and within this country there are four capital cities: Jakarta, Medan, Surabaya and, Makassar.

Within these cities, Jakarta is the largest city and the only megacity in Indonesia, it has a population of over 10.55 million people, but with many people comes with many problems. Jakarta has the worst case of air pollution, with an estimation of 160,000 deaths in 2020, and causing over 5 million illnesses yearly. The reason the air can get this bad is because of the amount of people using vehicles, the city using many coal-fired power plants and openly burning items (plastic, wood, trash).

Jakarta has partnered with Vital Strategies to try to launch Jakarta Clean Air Partnership, aiming to improve the availability and use of air quality data, analysing policy solutions and their effectiveness, and promoting public awareness on the health impacts of air pollution. Jakarta has also made MRTs and a lot of public transportation like busses to decrease private vehicles and decreasing vehicle emissions, and increased the length of the pedestrian route to support walking access to public transportation services, it has reached 337 kilometres, while they have also made a bicycle path as long as 103 km.

While these solutions are working well, Jakarta still has a lot of pollution, but with the electric cars rising, Jakarta will be decreasing air pollution quite a bit. The solution of Jakarta's air pollution will take a while, but it is still possible. If people can plant and grow more plants, reduce using private vehicles, and stop burning trash, it is possible.  When Jakarta stops air pollution, it will once again become a beautiful city.

But still, air pollution is a massive problem, and it is even contributing to climate change, more specifically global warming. The bad gases inside air pollution (Carbon Dioxide, Methane, Nitrous Oxide, CFC-12, HFC-23, Sulphur Hexafluoride, Nitrogen Trifluoride) is also going up to the atmosphere and making global warming worse, causing the icebergs & glaciers to melt and the earth to heat up. If this doesn't stop the earth will increase in water, which could result in many floods, and the earth going up to an unbearable temperature.

Global warming is already showing an effect on Jakarta too, all the ice melting is causing the water to slowly rise and Jakarta to slowly sink. In West Java, Indonesia, showed various areas in Jakarta were at risk of sinking between 1.8cm-10.7cm per year during 2019-2020. This problem slowly adds up every year and could end up sinking the entirety of earth. Indonesia is already thinking of switching up the capital city, now going to East Kalimantan, making a new capital city because of how overcrowded, polluted, and how fast it is sinking.

But is there really any solution to stop Jakarta sinking? I don't think there's any way to regain the land that has already sunk, unless someone can make a solution on how they can make the land rise again, but the only way they can really stop the sinking is by stopping global warming. Plant more plants, stop using so many vehicles that emits gas, and become.

Sources :

Sound Pollution
Registered Vehicles
Indonesia Ranking 26th
160,000 Deaths
5.5m Illness Yearly
Vital Strategies
Jakarta MRTs
Jakarta Sinking
New Capital City
Main Greenhouse Gases