The war for clean water

Nirwono Joga, Chairman, Indonesian Landscape Architecture Study Group, Jakarta

While the United States is given free rein in its ambition to take control of Iraq and its oil refineries, an even fiercer war is going on: The war for clean water.

March 22 is World Water Day as the world tries to cope with an increasingly greater clean water crisis. The World Water Forum (WWF) in Kyoto has revealed that a clean water shortage will hit some 50 percent of the world's population in 2025. Then, 10 years earlier, in 2015, countries with a wealth of clean water resources would begin to export clean water to drought-ridden countries.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has announced that over 1.6 million children a year, mostly in the school-age bracket will die as a result of consuming contaminated water. Meanwhile, in Asia and the Pacific, about 20 percent of the population faces a clean water crisis in urban areas.

About 1.7 billion people are expected to vie for clean water daily. One in three will not be able to get safe drinking water. One-fifth of the earnings among those of in middle income brackets will have to be spent on clean water. The poor will have to pay 10 times as much for the drinking water they purchase from a supplier.

Although two-thirds of the earth is made up of water, only 2 percent of this water is clean, mostly the icebergs in the North and South Poles. Environmentalists say non-sustainable development projects will turn 75 percent of the earth's land areas, including many parts of Java island, into seas.

As for Indonesia, the central and regional administrations have never been serious enough to manage clean water. The 1945 Constitution has decreed that the earth and the water as well as the natural riches contained therein shall be controlled by the state and shall be utilized for the maximum prosperity of the people.

Yet despite such high moral claims, clean water has become a rare and expensive commodity. One liter of mineral water is more expensive than 1 liter of fuel oil. The Jakarta administration has even planned to raise the drinking water rate as of April 1, 2003, evidence of the government's ignorance of the difficulty that residents experience to obtain clean water, which should be supplied to them at no cost.

In the case of Jakarta, clean water scarcity is worsened by a contamination of ground water that it is not safe to drink, while the ground water reserves are decreasing rapidly.

Water in the rivers, dams and lakes also needs to be purified, a process that requires a lot of money. In addition, water catchment areas like lakes and ponds continue to be filled with concrete as they are converted to housing or commercial buildings. If this condition is allowed to continue unchecked, Jakarta will no longer have clean water in a few years. So, how can we save our existing clean water reserves?

One factor that ensures a continued supply of ground water is the availability of adequate green areas which should measure at least 30 percent of the total area of the city. City forests, parks, botanical gardens, cemeteries, green belts along river banks, railway lines, areas crossed by high-voltage power cables, roads and spaces under overflies, dams, lakes and ponds constitute a city's green open space that must be conserved.

If such space diminishes, the water to be absorbed and accommodated as a clean water reserve will drop in quantity.

On record, Jakarta has a total area of 65,000 hectares but in the city's 2000 - 2010 special layout design plan, the target for the city's green open space accounts for only 13.94 percent. Meanwhile, the green open space in fields constitutes only 9 percent. Obviously, the Jakarta administration and the Jakarta legislative assembly do not really understand the role and function of green areas for the environment and health and welfare of residents, let alone, therefore, thinking about how to provide free drinking water to all Jakartans.

The city's vulnerability to floods and the glaring shortage of water needed during fires -- one of the recent noted cases being the fire that destroyed Tanah Abang market -- stands witness to the metropolitan's shortage of water.

The regional administration must prioritize the restoration of the functions of the green areas and the establishment of new city forests, city parks and green belts as well as the conservation of lakes, dams and ponds.

Based on Law No. 5/1992 on cultural preservation and the Instruction of the minister of home affairs No. 14/1988 on the provision of green space in urban areas, the regional administration should immediately draw up a regional regulation on landscape conservation (of green open space) to protect sustainability of urban green open space as a city asset.

Learning from other cities such as Melbourne, Tokyo, Osaka, London, Paris or New York, would provide insight into how residents can access potable water, at home and at public facilities.

(The writer is chairman of the Indonesian Landscape Architecture Study Group, Jakarta)