Abstract:
As Indonesia’s most strategic river, the Citarum is the source of water for the Jatiluhur Reservoir, which is Indonesia’s largest reservoir at 3 billion cubic meters of storage capacity. The reservoir not only supplies clean water for Bandung but also provides 80 percent of the water supply for the capital. It also irrigates 400,000 hectares of rice fields and is a source of energy for three hydroelectric power stations serving three cities. Over the past twenty years, the Indonesian government and international development agencies have ranked the Citarum River among the most polluted rivers in the world. Pollution, flooding, sedimentation, deforestation and over-pumping of ground water, combined with inadequate policy enforcement and poor coordination between government agencies are compromising Indonesian livelihoods. In 2007, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) loaned Indonesia $500 million to implement “Integrated Water Resources Management” (IWRM) as a “best practices” management intervention to solve the “crisis” by “making decisions at the lowest appropriate level.”
