25 Chapter 3 - Environmental Assessment and Transport Planning In Indonesia Chapter 3 will describe the current condition of environmental assessment related to road transport infrastructure planning and the need of environmental assessment at the strategic level. In order to make clear that condition above, this chapter firstly will review current environmental assessment in Indonesia (Sub- chapter 3.1). Secondly, this chapter briefly explains the transport infrastructure Policy in Indonesia (Sub-chapter 3.2.). Thirdly, sub-chapter 3.3 describes the Indonesian planning of road transportation projects which take into account environmental consideration. Finally, this chapter ends up with concluding current Indonesia’s environmental assessment for transport planning and providing the potential factors of SEA for transport planning. 3.1 Current Transport Planning and Environmental Assessment Although road transport sector in Indonesia plays an important role for improving the economic and social life, this sector also hugely contributes to the reduction of the quality, availability and capacity of resources and environment. This sector, as one of the important elements of urban function, potentially could degrade the quality of life in certain areas. In Indonesia comprehensively unarranged transportation development with its services results in several impacts. Several main impacts are traffic problems such as traffic congestion, traffic accident; quality of life such as air pollution and traffic noise; treating the extinction of cultural heritages; barrier impact of other area such as housing and office place; the loss and the degradation of habitat; social impact such as dispute of land acquisition etc. As an illustration, JICA, in Jabodetabek’s Main Integrated Transport Plan (2003), stated that the economic lost in 2003 due to traffic congestion reached Rp. 3 trillion for vehicle operation cost and Rp. 2.5 trillion for vehicle travel time. In addition, economic lost due to air pollution in Jakarta was estimated Rp. 500 billion based on health impacts 26 The degradation of quality of life and other impacts above are caused by several factors which relate to each other. The numbers of motorized vehicles are increasing (Indonesia Infrastructure, 2003). According to, The Directorate of Traffic - Jakarta Police Office (2003), the numbers of motor cycle in 2003 reached 2.3 million units, 1.2 million car unit and 250 thousand buses. The increasing demand and needs for private motorized vehicles are encouraged with the poor qualities and lack of public transportation system along with increasing economic interests, population growth and urbanization. On the other hand, road infrastructure improvement solutions such as improving road capacity along with non-infrastructure solutions such as traffic management system have slowly improved and could not overcome properly those problems. Another crucial factor resulting in the transport problem is a lack of coordination among authorities who are responsible for dealing with transport sector and poor performance of those institutions. In fact, transport development responsibility and authorities in Indonesia, from national to local authorities, are divided into road infrastructure institution (Ministry of Public Works) and transportation or non-infrastructure development institution (Ministry of Transport). Although National, regional and local government arrange general transport policy and plan, both institutions have their own policies, plans and programs in which in practice, it is hard to match those strategies and tend not to complement each other (ego-sectoral). For example, on one hand, Public Works Agency focuses on how to deal with providing and improving road capacity with considering environmental impacts of infrastructure development. On the other hand, Transport Agency more focuses on dealing with improving accessibility, solving traffic congestion, reducing air pollution and noise as well as traffic safety. In practice, those two institutions have not been well coordinated. Furthermore, coordination beyond transport sector such as Landscape Agency, Health Agency has also been lacking. In the meantime, coordination with other agencies is important because transportation system will affect landscape, health etc. it means that transport plan is as an integral part of land use plan. Until now, in solving the traffic problems, the government is seemly focusing on individual project either infrastructure or non-infrastructure 27 development solutions. Besides, that solution tends to be more road-based development rather than area-based development, whereas, naturally certain roads are connected which other roads and also influence from other function such as residential, office, education center etc. As a result, the transportation system seems to be improperly managed either networking to inter modes or multi modes. This in turn generates negative impacts as mentioned above. For example, in 2006 Jakarta authorities intend to widen arterial road of Sudirman-Thamrin Street (Central Jakarta City, 2006). This project aimed at improving road capacity in order to cope with traffic congestion. On one side, this solution temporarily could reduce traffic congestion at that area. On the other side, it also can generated more increased environmental impacts especially air pollution and noise nuisance. It is because the wider the road capacity, the more vehicle traffic flows and the more pollutant is generated. This project claimed by several environmental NGOs will increase air pollution due to the increase of road capacity and also diminishing plant along the road side. In order to cope with such environmental impacts, actually the government through The Ministry of Environment has developed various instruments for environmental management, which has pre-emptive and preventive characteristic. Pre-emptive instruments comprise effort conducted at decision-making and planning level, especially land use plan and project EIAs. Over The last twenty five years, minimizing environmental impacts has been carrying out EIA, including for transport sector. As stated in Law No. 23/1997 on National Environmental Management, that every activity or project, which could result in huge and important impacts on environment, must be obliged to conduct EIA study in order to eventually gain permit and license for their activities or projects. Meanwhile, preventive instruments are efforts conducted at the production or source level of environmental impacts through applying environmental standard, environmental management system, the test of motorized vehicle gas emission etc (The Ministry of Environment, 2004). In addition, at the program level, The Ministry of Environment has formulated and conducted environmental management program. One of the most popular programs related to transport sector is “Langit Biru” (Blue Sky) issued by 28 The Ministry of Environment in Ministry of Environment Regulation. This program aims at improving air quality through controlling air pollutant either from moving sources such as motorized vehicle or unmoving-source such as industries. This guidance describe how to control air quality surrounding roads, how to measure air quality producing an accurate result of air quality control useful for evaluating air pollution management. However, although those programs had been applied, the degradation of environment and natural resources are still becoming important issues. In practice, those indicate that all programs seemed to have an incremental and technical approach. These instruments have failed and have been limited in dealing with a large scale and cumulative impact because that instrument is arranged just to deal with individual or project level (a reactive decision).