Indonesia to send delegation to World Water Forum

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Minister of Resettlement and Regional Infrastructure Soenarno will lead an Indonesian delegation to the 3rd World Water Forum (WWF) in Kyoto, Japan from March 16 to 23.

State Minister for the Environment Nabiel Makarim, Minister of Agriculture Bungaran Saragih and Minister of Forestry M. Prakosa and a number of senior officials will accompany Soenarno, according to Director General for Water Resources Roestam Sjarief.

Roestam, who will also attend the WWF, said the government had prepared a country report containing its achievements and problems with water policy and planned to seek several partnerships with other countries in the WWF.

"WWF is a big forum equal to World Summit on Sustainable Development, so this is our chance to speak up," he told the Jakarta Post.

According to him, the country report would basically respond to seven challenges on water issues, including the provision of water for food security, water for various interests, managing floods, and reforming water policy.

For example, he said, the government would present to the WWF its success in developing some 7.2 million hectares of irrigated farming lands across the country out of the country's total farming land of 11 million hectares.

The government would also disclose to the forum about the ongoing water policy reform through the water resource bill and its derivative regulations that would allow wide participation of private firms in managing water, according to Roestam.

However, he did not elaborate on the partnership scheme to be sought by Indonesia at the forum.

The WWF, which will see around 8,000 people consisting of scientists, NGO activists, government officials, will focus on a global water crisis and related issues, for instance, water and gender, energy, food, agriculture, environment, poverty, sanitation, pollution, climate change and cultural diversity.

Of the participants, more than 100 ministers are expected to discuss water crises at the Forum, the World Bank said.

Issues on financing and participation of the private sector in the construction of water project infrastructure are expected to be discussed in a dialog between Forum participants and the ministers at Kyoto International Conference Hall, on March 21, 2003.

A United Nations report said earlier this month that world water reserves were drying up fast and booming populations, pollution and global warming would combine to cut the average person's water supply by a third in the next 20 years.

The report, compiled by the World Water Assessment Program of UNESCO, criticized political leaders for failing to take action and in some cases, disputing the very existence of a water crisis.

More than 2.2 million people die each year from diseases related to contaminated drinking water and poor sanitation, the report said, but evidence of the problem was being ignored.

By 2050, water scarcity will affect between two billion and seven billion people out of a projected total of 9.3 billion, depending in part on what measures political leaders take to tackle the crisis, the report said.

The United Nations has declared the year 2003 as the UN International Year of Freshwater.

Meanwhile, Nila Ardhiane of the Indonesian Forum on Globalization (INFOG), who will also attend the WWF, said the government should not name its report as the country report because its formulation had never included NGO input, and thus did not represent the country.

She also urged the government to strongly consider not privatizing water resources.