Smartcitizen, let’s review your activities today. How much time did you spend in front of your gadgets? How many hours do you have your air conditioner (AC) on when you’re not in the room? How many clothes did you check out in your favorite marketplace today? At first glance, these personal activities may seem harmless. However, every choice you make in your activities will affect not only you but also the environment. This is because clothing, food, electronic equipment, and everything else that you consume or use can produce emissions, which are toxic substances that harm living things and the environment. The good news is, you can reduce emissions, starting by calculating them using the JakEmisi feature.

Increased emissions are the main reason for climate change, and this is also what is now happening in Jakarta. We can feel the erratic weather, floods, and the spread of the pandemic as a result of climate change in the capital. If you look at it from a bigger lens, our earth is indeed heating up. In fact, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) statesthat the earth has been at its hottest condition for the last seven years and sea levels have reached new heights.

Climate change cannot be completely stopped. However, we can slow it down by reducing greenhouse gas emissions into the air. Indonesia, together with 196 countries, have signed the Paris Agreement to reduce emissions by 45% by 2030 and 100% by 2050. On a provincial scale, the DKI Jakarta Provincial Government is now in collaboration with World Resources Institute (WRI) in Jakarta to reduce emissions as a form of maintaining the capital's climate resilience. One of these activities is JakEmisi. Remember JakEmisi?JakEmisi is the latest feature in the JAKIapplication that can help you calculate the amount of emissions you produce in your daily activities. Through this article, we will take a look at JakEmisi as well as the collaboration between Jakarta and WRI in promoting emission reductions.

WRI Collaboration with Jakarta Government to Reduce City Emissions

WRI Indonesia, which was founded under the name of the Yayasan Institut Sumber Daya Dunia (World Resources Institute Foundation), is an independent research institution that initiates and takes action to create a balance between environmental protection, economic growth, and human welfare. The actions carried out by WRI are various, ranging from publishing scientific articles, publishing methodologies in the Emisiapplication, to campaigning through social media and webinars, and many others. WRI is now collaborating with the DKI Jakarta Provincial Government with a focus on climate change, flooding, and air pollution.

This collaboration also touches upon issues related to emissions, which began with WRI's assessment that emissions produced by humans from daily activities make a big contribution to climate change. Therefore, WRI wants to find solutions that are nature-based, can be implemented by the community, and can make Jakarta more resilient to the climate crisis. In collaboration with the DKI Jakarta Provincial Government, which has a similar vision and mission, WRI developed the JakEmisi feature to meet the three solution criteria, and as a result the JakEmisi feature was released for public use in December 2021.

“JakEmisi's goal is to educate the people that climate change is real and is a result of everyday emissions, which makes it necessary for us to calculate emissions,” said WRI Mobility and Transport Specialist, Muhammad Rizki. He said that in the long term, once the public has gained the awareness about emissions, JakEmisi is also intended to contribute to reducing emissions. For example, by campaigning for an efficient lifestyle or switching to technologies that can reduce emissions.

How JAKI Help Users Calculate Emissions

You already know that JakEmisi can help people calculate emissions. But how does the calculation process take place in the app? Rizki explained that the user first needs to select the activity that they want to calculate the emission for. Currently, there are four activities at JakEmisi, namely electronic equipment, clothes buying, food, and waste disposal. Then, the user needs to enter the required data. This data may vary depending on the selected activity. For example, in the category of electronic equipment, you are asked to enter the type of electronic equipment, the number of units used per day, the duration of use per day, and the number of days in a week the equipment is used. Next, the total emissions generated will appear and the results have been accumulated in 3 months of use. The types of emissions shown are further broken down into CO2 emissions, NOx emissions, and SO2 emissions, each in 3 months calculation. From these results, the users can evaluate the emissions generated from a particular activity or make comparisons with other activities.
 

Although the focus is on calculating feature user emissions, JakEmisi has so much more benefits. "This feature can also be used for research purposes as well as pilot projects for business entities, government agencies, and so on," said Rizki. Regarding research, the development team of JakEmisi prioritises users’ data safety. The data used in the research is not the user's personal data, but only the data related to emissions.

JakEmisi's Future

For the current state, the DKI Jakarta Provincial Government and WRI are focusing JakEmisi on calculating emissions for reduction purposes first. However, after the reduction is successful, the team wants to shift JakEmisi’s focus to emission absorption actions. “In the future, there are several innovations that we want to do, such as adding the number of activities to the emission calculation and the emission reduction education feature. Entering the emission absorption phase, we also want to provide services for people to plant trees in their homes or Jakarta parks as well as communicative features with users that allow interaction and collaboration with the community, and so on," added Rizki.

This goal cannot be achieved alone. Various parties must work together to show commitment to maintaining the climate, for example the DKI Jakarta Provincial Government by formulating related policies as have been carried out so far. Or you, with the awareness and efforts to reduce emissions resulting from your daily activities. Starting from counting, evaluating, then slowly reducing it. If you want to be part of the journey to maintain Jakarta's climate resilience, you can take advantage of the JakEmisi feature on JAKI. Don't have the app yet? Don't worry, you can download it anytime on the Google Play Storeor Apple App Store.

Reducing emissions is only one of the many ways we can protect the earth. So far, the DKI Jakarta Provincial Government has also carried out various other innovations to maximize these efforts. If you want to know what the efforts to maintain climate resilience in Jakarta are, read this article. Happy reading and let's continue to care for the earth by reducing emissions!