In September 2021, an Indonesian court found the Central and Greater Jakarta governments guilty of not doing enough to protect people from air pollution and ordered them to install monitoring stations and other measures to improve the capital’s air. The landmark court case was filed by residents of Greater Jakarta in 2019, who used data from the Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) as evidence that air pollution in the region was cutting short the lives of residents. 

The ruling came just days after the AQLI released its latest data showing that in Jakarta, a city that is home to more than 11 million people, the average resident will live 5.5 years less if the situation remains unchanged. Media reporting on the court case amplified this data, including several top Indonesian outlets such as Bisnis Indonesia, which shares its content with Bloomberg and the Chinese news agency Xinhua. The AQLI’s director, Ken Lee, appeared on BBC to speak on the importance of action in Indonesia. And, an editorial in the Jakarta Post, the largest English daily, used the AQLI data to further emphasize a call for change.