BreatheLife welcomes Jambi City, Indonesia:

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Jambi City, the capital of the Indonesian province of Jambi on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, has joined the BreatheLife campaign.

The city of just 169 square kilometres is prioritizing boosting waste segregation and management, improving public transport, and increasing green urban spaces as part of efforts to improve air quality.

The city’s emissions mitigation plan includes reducing and capturing methane from waste, local regulations that ban waste burning, the promotion of composting, and planting trees to make the city greener.

Jambi City considers addressing waste management as its first priority and is guided by a master plan for waste management.

While the city is working with the Ministry of Public Works on the building of a sanitary landfill with a grant from the German KfW Development Bank, it is focused on keeping as much as of the 400 tonnes of waste produced daily by its 735,000 citizens out of landfill and into a circular economy.

Currently, pilot programs are in progress in several urban village areas to segregate waste at source, which see the city working together with the community, college students and a local non-governmental organization to boost segregation of waste at source.

Since 2014, Jambi City has worked together with the Minister of the Environment at national level to run a Waste-to-Energy program with UNESCAP, which turns two tonnes of organic waste into cooking gas for users in the neighbouring area.

“We promote waste segregation and ban the use of plastic containers,” said Vice-Mayor of Jambi City, Dr dr H Maulana, MKM.

“
We are small city, but we contribute to what we can to reduce the emission to the world, and we believe every little thing we do will count,” he continued.

The growing city is also facing challenges in meeting rising demand for public infrastructure and services, including sustainable transportation, while being affected by traffic-related problems such as congestion, air and noise pollution, and traffic accidents.

Many areas of the city lack access to public transportation, prompting residents to use private vehicles or alternatives such as ride-sharing apps Grab and GOjek, which aggravate traffic congestion.

To reduce traffic density, the City plans to provide residents with reliable public transportation and add bicycle and pedestrian lanes to encourage active mobility.

“Jambi City will develop a Master Plan for sustainable green urban transportation over the next 25 years, and we will shortly be launching a fleet of ‘smart’ mini buses that will fit into our city’s small streets and provide the public with safe and reliable transportation,” said the Vice-Mayor.

Public street lighting has already been switched to LED bulbs, as has most households’ lighting.

“LED lights help communities cut down on electricity bills, with the co-benefit of reduced air pollution, so using this energy efficient light has been an obvious choice for Jambi City’s households,” the Vice Mayor remarked.

The city is creating small parks on public land around the city, both to act as urban lungs and for residents to connect and spend time in, and is also greening street medians.

While only one per cent of Jambi City is used for agriculture, the city focuses on sustainable approaches, and urban farmers use organic fertilizers in response to a growing demand for organic agriculture products.

As a member of the Global Covenant of Mayors, Jambi was one of the alliance’s 10,000 cities to commit to safe air quality at the 2019 Climate Action Summit, though the city would like technical assistance to develop systems to quantify the emissions reductions achieved from its green and sustainable activities and plans.

Jambi has an air quality monitoring system, which picks up on the seasonal haze and smoke from forest burning in its surrounds. The city takes adaptive action to deal with this, including preparing hospitals to treat an increase in relevant impacts and patient cases, while working on areas of pollution within its control.

Follow Jambi City’s clean air journey here.