Water bill pays scant heed to conservation

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Experts criticized the contents of the water resources bill on Wednesday for not paying enough attention to water conservation and giving too much weight to the commercial aspects.

Budi Widianarko, a senior lecturer at Soegijapranata Catholic University in the Central Java capital of Semarang, said that only articles 19 to 24 -- six out of a total of 97 articles -- touched on water conservation compared to 32 articles on the economic aspects of water.

Apart from a lack of attention to water conservation, the bill required the issuance of executory regulations, which meant it would take a long time before it would become fully effective, Budi said.

"The economic aspects clearly top the bill's list of priorities, while the environment is at the bottom of the list," he said during a discussion on water organized by the International NGOs Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID).

"We are putting our environment at risk with this bill," he added.

Harry Suryadi, a senior environmental journalist, shared Budi's view.

"The spirit of the bill is exploitation instead of conservation," he said.

Citing an example, the bill stipulates that water conservation charges are obligatory, but fails to say whether some of the money will be used to improve environmental conditions.

"These charges may end up the same as the reforestation dues collected from forest concession holders. We all know that the position and use of these funds is unclear," he said.

Under the bill, water management is defined as covering river water and groundwater, but no mention is made of forests in upstream and downstream areas.

He also said the bill failed to require environmental impact analyses (Amdal) and social impact analyses regarding water resource management.

The environmental critics have been intensifying their opposition to the water resources bill, submitted by the government to the House of Representatives (DPR) late last year.

Earlier, a number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) had voiced opposition to the bill for focusing too much on privatization.

They feared that as a result of the bill, farmers would be required to pay for irrigation water, while tap water consumers would have to pay more for their water despite poor water quality and service.

However, under the bill the government has ensured that small- scale farmers will not have to pay for their water, although large-scale farmers with export-orientated businesses will have to pay.

The bill says the involvement of the private sector will be limited to areas such as the supply of tap water and bottled drinking water, areas where there is at present a lack of clear regulation.