Minimizing pressure on forests for cleaner, cheaper water
Minimizing pressure on forests for cleaner, cheaper water
Fitrian Ardiansyah
and Israr A
Jakarta
During the past two months, many areas throughout the country
have faced the ever-worsening seasonal water crisis. Drought has
brought misery to many and clean water is still a luxury for some
people.
In big cities, people have had difficulty obtaining adequate
supplies of fresh water. Many farmers could not harvest their
crops because they could not irrigate them sufficiently. Cities
in Sumatra have also experienced electricity shortages due to
lack of water for hydro-power plants, while some areas in
Kalimantan have become isolated because decreasing river levels
affect river transportation. Meanwhile, people throughout the
archipelago suffer from flooding and landslides every rainy
season.
However, while many continue to suffer from water shortages, a
collaborative action -- between NGO activists in Lombok Island,
the local water enterprise (PDAM) of Menang and the West Lombok
regency and Mataram municipality administrations shows there is a
solution to this resource problem.
After a survey that found the island's water users were
willing to protect water sources, these stakeholders have been
designing schemes to link water users with Mount Rinjani
landscape conservation.
With the support of local people, government officials and
activists the protection of catchment areas could eventually
provide eight important water sources for the urban areas on the
island. These areas were originally only protected by forestry
officials.
This effort in Lombok to implement a "payment for
environmental services" is similar to what happened in Melbourne,
a good example of how to provide sustainable urban water.
Well-known as "Smellbourne" in the 18th century due to its
poor water quality, Melbourne officials ensured the protection
and restoration of the city's mountainous forest in the north and
east. To date, the city obtains 90 percent of its drinking water
supply from these areas, with the highest quality water of any
Australian city.
It has proven that implementing forest catchment area
management is cheaper than building a water treatment plant:
Saving upper-catchment forests is the best way to have cheap and
clean water.
Last year, the World Bank and World Wildlife Fund released a
report entitled Running Pure showing one-third of 105 big cities,
including New York, Tokyo, Barcelona and Melbourne, obtained much
of their water through protected forests. It explained that
preserving forests -- which reduce landslides, erosion and
sediment, improve water purity, and store water -- is a cost-
effective way of providing clean drinking water.
David Cassells, a World Bank environmental specialist, said
protecting forest water catchment areas was no longer a luxury
but a necessity. The costs of providing clean and safe drinking
water to urban areas, said Cassels, would increase dramatically
if forests disappeared.
However, managing these forests should not only be the
responsibilities of forest-dependent people, he said.
At the moment, the water supply imbalance in Indonesia has
caused problems and hardship.
Although it has 10 percent of the world's remaining tropical
forests, the annual deforestation rate -- through destructive
logging and forest conversion to pulp wood, agriculture (oil palm
and other commodities), mining, fires, human settlements and
other infrastructure -- reaching up to 3.8 million hectares
annually, has left Indonesia ever-fewer natural resources and
caused significant environmental damage, including the loss of
forest functions to regulate water.
The degradation results in loss of high conservation values
(including biodiversity), soil erosion, water pollution,
increasingly dramatic fluctuations between water shortages and
flooding, siltation, health problems, reduced potential for
tourism and loss of income and employment, particularly for
forest-dependent people.
Looking at the criteria from the Ministry of Forestry and the
Ministry of Settlements and Regional Infrastructure, a growing
number of catchment areas can now be considered as critical,
including Asahan (North Sumatra), Cisadane and Ciliwung
(Banten/West Java/Jakarta).
This degradation is likely to inflate the numbers of people
who will lack access to clean water for drinking and other
domestic use. At the moment, about 77 million Indonesian people
(about one-third of the population) do not have access to clean
water and only depend on self-provisioning systems (i.e. 50
percent of urban households and most rural households are served
by wells or small-water supply systems).
With dramatic disturbance to water supply and quality, people
throughout the archipelago may have to continue living in poverty
while suffering from limited availability of water -- which many
countries consider a basic human right.
The government needs to develop good and participative spatial
planning taking into account landscape and ecosystem integration,
and making sure the planning is enforced. The restoration scheme
of the catchment areas needs to link end water users -- including
industries and PLN/electricity companies.
The private sectors, including logging, plantation, mining,
real estate companies, situated in the catchment areas should
actively participate in catchment management by implementing
better practices covering protecting, maintaining and
rehabilitating high conservation-value forests within their
concessions and put efforts to ensure their protection and
maintenance.
Meanwhile, the awareness about the interconnection between
cities and catchment areas needs to be increased in Indonesia,
especially in local governments that are now -- in the era of
decentralization -- seemingly thinking that one can exist without
the other.
It's time for water users to start actively conserving the
forests. If a local initiative in Lombok becomes a success story
of how water catchment areas can increase the supply of fresh
water, will cities like Jakarta and others follow?
Fitrian Ardiansyah is a program coordinator for World Wide
Fund For Nature (WWF) Indonesia, while Israr A. is a staff at
Indonesia Forest and Media Campaign (INFORM).