Indonesia: Calls for National Leadership on Java's Ciliwung River

Fidelis E. Satriastanti Jakarta Globe 18 Apr 12;

Policies and initiatives by four ministries, three regional administrations and various civil society groups to try to clean up the Ciliwung River will prove meaningless without strong leadership from the highest authority in the country, an expert said on Wednesday.

Firdaus Ali, an environmental engineering lecturer at the University of Indonesia’s School of Engineering, said it would ultimately take “strong leadership from the president of this country and strong commitment” to restore the Ciliwung, which originates in the Bogor highlands before running through Jakarta and emptying out into Jakarta Bay.

He cited cases of heavily polluted rivers in Canada, South Korea and Singapore that were successfully restored thanks to the commitments of their leaders.

“I think the leadership that we’re looking for is for the president to be fully aware that water is the source of life for the country,” he said at a forum on improving the Ciliwung River.

One way to underscore such commitment, he said, would be for the president to set up a ministry of water resources, dedicated to cleaning up the country’s rivers.

“Other countries nearby already have such an institution, for instance in Papua New Guinea,” Firdaus said.

He also said that without high-level leadership any effort, however well intended, would only get bogged down in bureaucracy.

“As long as the effort to restore the Ciliwung is led from the level of a directorate general, it will not work,” he said.

“Why? Because bureaucracy is expensive. They can invite mayors to attend initiatives on saving rivers, but afterward they just go home and forget about it.”

Environment Minister Balthasar Kambuaya acknowledged that programs to save the Ciliwung had shown little progress to date, but was optimistic that a new policy to divide the 120-kilometer-long river into six segments for different local authorities to manage would work.

“It’s a bit strange that we have all these programs and everyone is trying to do something, but nothing has happened. There’s got to be something wrong,” the minister said at the discussion.

“That’s why we’ve decided to divide the river into six segments so that we know which parts need what kind of attention.”

Under the plan, the Banten, Jakarta and West Java administrations will take charge of the various segments of the river and work with the ministries of environment, public works, forestry and agriculture to improve water quality.

The three main problems to be tackled are domestic, industrial and farming waste.

“We will deal with water quality,” Balthasar said.

“If it’s a matter of domestic waste, we’ll find ways to address it. Meanwhile, the other ministries will work on different areas, such as the Forestry Ministry, which will be focused on re-greening the riverbanks.”

However, he said that because of population pressures, it would be “impossible to restore the Ciliwung” to the same condition it was in 300 years ago, at its most pristine. But he was optimistic that the new policy, to be administered until 2030 at a total cost of Rp 5 trillion ($545 million), would succeed in significantly improving the quality of the water.