Jakarta may have intermittently appeared on the list of cities with the worst air quality in the world, but, on average the Indonesian capital was among the worst cities in Southeast Asia for all of last year, while Indonesia as a country didn’t do that well either.
As shared by Greenpeace Indonesia recently, Jakarta’s average AQI (Air Quality Index) in terms of PM 2.5 pollutants (the level of fine particulate matter measuring 2.5 micrometers or less in the air) for all of 2018, according to air quality monitoring site AirVisual, was 45.3. While that is not especially high relative to the top range of recorded AQI in Jakarta (higher means more polluted), it’s still the highest among Southeast Asian cities.
Jakarta’s average AQI for 2018 falls under AirVisual’s “Unhealthy for sensitive groups” category, one below “Unhealthy”. According to Indonesian government standards, PM 2.5 reaches dangerous levels when the reading exceeds 65.
That’s not to say parts of Jakarta don’t exceed unhealthy AQI levels. For example, based on AirVisual’s live reading, as of this afternoon, Central Jakarta’s Kemayoran is showing an AQI of 168, while the city’s average is 66.
Internationally, Indonesia ranked 11th in the list of the world’s most polluted countries with an AQI average of 42.01. Though it’s nothing to be proud about, Indonesia is still some ways off from the worst polluter, Bangladesh, which had an average of 97.10. The fact that there have been no extremely major forest fires in Indonesia last year has probably helped (though it’s important to note that there were forest fires, regardless of what President Joko Widodo said in the last presidential debate).
