Water

Promotion and Awareness
ADB National Media Workshop on Water - Indonesia

5-8 December 2004
Bogor, Indonesia

Session Descriptions

• Opening Session
• Water Sector Reform - IWRM and Keeping Up With A Demanding Population
• Water & Agriculture in Indonesia
• Urban Water Supply in Indonesia
• Floods in Indonesia

The opening series of presentations provided attendees with an overview of the workshop, its purpose and expected outputs. Among the topics covered were:

• role of the media
• overview of some of the key water issues affecting South East Asia

Top

Indonesia's water resources sector is under pressure like never before-- with competing pressures on what is becoming a scarce resource, and the lack of an institutional framework and allocation policy to act as an arbiter between the competing demands.

The food and drinking water demands of a population of 215 million and growing; the demands of the agricultural sector (80% of Indonesia's water is used for irrigation) and industry; the lack of clean drinking water (80% of the population lack access to piped water); the increased deforestation, particularly on the North Coast of Java Island; and the growing link between water and health (6.2 million Indonesians will suffer diarrhoea this year) have all contributed to an urgency for reform in the water sector.

To tackle this, the Indonesian Parliament passed the Water Resources Bill on 19th February 2004, with the principle that water could no longer be regarded as being free as well as establishing a right-based legal and institutional framework for the management of water resources and irrigation.

Proposals include the formation of a coordinating body for water, a national framework for the collection of hydrological data, the development of Provincial Basin Management Units in eight provinces and the development of autonomous and self-financing water user associations (WUAs) to manage Indonesia's vast irrigation networks.

The session highlighted the challenges facing Indonesia's water resources and examined to what extent the current Water Resources Bill will alleviate them. Focus was also given to Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) and how Indonesia is managing its water resources at a river basin level.

Top

Today, Indonesia' rural areas and production of agriculture is under severe pressure. Indonesia's agriculture sector is dominated by rice cultivation, of which 82% is grown under irrigation. And, yet it is becoming increasingly clear that a dilapidated and inadequate irrigation infrastructure, low levels of community participation and a lack of funding is reducing crop yields and increasing water inefficiencies. Many argue that sustainable irrigation can only be achieved if farmers and other water users (in particular, woman) are included in the management and operation of the schemes directly benefiting them.

In response to this, the government is looking to make district governments responsible for the planning, development, and management of irrigation and transfer irrigation management to water users associations (WUAs) and water users association federations (WUAFs).

This session looked at whether the decentralized management of Indonesia's irrigation systems is helping to increase crop yield and reduce water inefficiencies. Topics covered included

• the role of Water User Associations
• whether farmers should have to pay for their water
• how Indonesia is moving towards a participatory irrigation management approach in agriculture

Top

One of the key United Nations Millennium Development goals is to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. And, yet today, in Indonesia, up to 80% of the population lack access to safe, piped drinking water and piped water reaches only half of Jakarta's 12 million population. The remainder of the people relies on water vendors and wells.

One of the more contentious issues in the developing world today is the involvement of the private sector in urban water supply and sanitation and the related questions - Should city inhabitants, in particular the poor, have to pay for the full cost of their water? How can water supply be approved? How can an equitable and sustainable tariff policy be developed which will enable further investments in the water network? The recent Water Resources Bill, with its premise that water should have a cost attached to it, has only served to highlight these key issues.

For this session, participants examined the issues of urban water supply in Indonesia and, in particular, Jakarta where two private water companies, PT Pam Lyonnaise Jaya and PT Thames Pam Jaya are operating under a 25 year concession. Areas that were examined included:

• need for user charge reform - total revenue in 2001, for example, equalled only 1.3 times of operation and maintenance costs with only US$14 million available for capital expenditure
• how to reduce non-revenue water, which averaged 49% reduction in 2001
• need to go beyond conventional solutions in increasing the poor's access to water

Top

There are few water-related issues that have such a direct impact on the lives of Indonesians than flooding. The 2002 floods in Jakarta, the worst in 30 years, saw over 400,000 people made homeless. Other regions, such as Semarang and Surabaya, have also suffered regular floods. The recurrence of major floods on Java Island in recent years has also resulted in heavy losses to the economy.

A number of reasons have been brought forward for the increase of flooding-- from illegal developments to inadequate drainage, illegal logging and a lack of transparency amongst the agencies set up to tackle them. Furthermore, in Jakarta, the building of 11 dams in the surrounding region has failed to curtail the floods.

The session focused on a new approach to flood management - away from a crisis management approach to a more sustainable, long-term flood management strategy within river basins.