National drive required to conserve water

By Asep Fathulrachman

Unfortunately, it is not a case of water, water everywhere for the world today. An estimated two billion people lack clean drinking water and many countries suffer acute water shortages. The articles on this page are published in conjunction with World Water Day, which fell on March 22.

JAKARTA (Antara): Some people, particularly those in the tropics, usually use water freely because they think of it as a natural resource which will always be available.

But the reality is different.

According to the Ministry of Public Work's Director General of Waterworks Soeparmono, Madura island in Java has an acute water shortage, as do a number of large cities on other islands.

He said that a survey conducted by his office in 1993 revealed that only 99.4 cubic kilometers of a potential 1,847 cubic kilometers of water, or 4.4 percent, had been utilized across the country.

Yet, the water-supply level in regions usually hit by water scarcity is alarmingly critical during the dry season.

"Large cities like Medan and Denpasar and most regions on Java, including Madura, have a water crisis during the dry season because there is a sharp drop in both the volume and quality of the water supply," he said.

"So, even in Indonesia, particularly in densely populated regions, water is no longer an unlimited natural resource. It is becoming a rare commodity with a high economic value," he said at the establishment of the Forum for the Development of National Water Resources in Yogyakarta early this year.

According to Soeparmono, the introduction of bottled mineral water several years ago marked the shift of the value of water from a generally valueless natural resource to one with a high economic value.

"This shift in the value of water is understandable because water of good quality, previously almost limitless, is now getting harder and harder to get. Even the water supplied by the city drinking water company is of an unsatisfactory quality," he said.

The economic value of water is naturally increasing because it is getting more and more difficult even to get good quality bath water, he added.

The head of the Center for Studies on Rural and Regional Development of Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Loekman Soetrisno, shared the same opinion as Soeparmono and said that unless serious attention was immediately paid to the problem, the water crisis in Indonesia would worsen.

Soetrisno, a sociologist, attributed the water crisis to the strong demands of population growth and a high development rate.

"In view of the uneven population spread, the assumption that Indonesia, famous as a fertile land, will never suffer a water crisis, hardly holds water any longer," he said.

The number of people consuming water on Java and in large cities on other islands far exceeds the normal capacity of the country's water resources, he said, adding that once the source was altered, a water crisis became more and more serious.

Another factor disrupting the balance of water resources is the conversion of agricultural land with technical irrigation into industrial estates, he said.

Things worsen, he added, because industrial estates on Java are usually concentrated in a particularly wide area with little consideration given to the natural balance of water sources.

To prevent the water crisis from worsening, Soetrisno said that a national drive should be launched to promote prudent and economical water usage.

This drive, he said, should be introduced as early as possible otherwise problems related to water shortages would become more and more difficult as there would be stronger demand due to population growth and urbanization.

"So, the water conservation that President Soeharto officially announced when the country embarked on its second long-term development period (1994/2019) must be immediately implemented," he said.

Meanwhile Soeparmono said the government had, in fact, formulated the drive in four stages, namely to promote understanding of the need to conserve water, improved attitudes, encouragement of participation of communities in water conservation and consolidation.

In general, he said, water conservation required greater participation from women because they were the first to feel the pinch of a water crisis in their households.

"It is expected that the whole thing will be implemented in April 1998 after the forum completes the drawing up of the formulation for the drive," he said.

Water conservation will be institutionalized this year, just like the poverty-eradication drive in least-developed villages, he added.