TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Clean water for healthy world
Safe drinking water and adequate sanitation are crucial for poverty reduction, crucial for sustainable development, and crucial for achieving any and every one of the Millennium Development Goals
Change Size
S
afe drinking water and adequate sanitation are crucial for poverty reduction, crucial for sustainable
development, and crucial for achieving any and every one of the Millennium Development Goals. (Ban Ki-moon Secretary-General of the United Nations)
International World Water Day is held annually on March 22 as a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources.
Each year, World Water Day emphasizes a specific aspect of freshwater and this year the United Nation is dedicating World Water Day 2010 to the theme of water quality: Clean Water for a Healthy World, reflecting its importance along with quantity of the resource in water management.
In Indonesia, water quality problems are attributed to many aspects. First, insufficient water management is accelerating the depletion of surface water and groundwater resources.
Second, water quality itself has been degraded by household and industrial contamination. In many places, water is withdrawn from the water resources, which have already become polluted due to a lack of sanitation infrastructure and services. Over-extraction of groundwater has also compounded water quality degradation caused by pesticides, and many other pollutants.
Tap water in the country is not potable; it is not healthy for direct individual use as the water in the distribution system is polluted by so many pollutants underground. Some studies by the Environmental Management Agency (BPLHD) in Jakarta shows that from time to time the percentage of groundwater contamination mostly by bacteria always increases.
In 2006, the percentage was 63 percent, which increased to 80 percent in 2006, and in 2008 the number reached 94 percent. This means that the percentage of qualified drinkable water in Jakarta is very low and most of the water is not safe as sources of drinking water. Officials from BPLHD even say that the groundwater in Jakarta has basically turned brackish.
The bacteria mostly polluting groundwater comes from individual private septic tanks since the city does not have an integrated water and sewerage system and many people obtain water from sources no farther than 10 meters from excreta disposal sites — a common standard for water safety. It is very embarrassing that the capital city of Indonesia does not have an integrated water and sanitation system like other big cities of the world where waste can be treated properly for the sake of people’s health.
According to Economic Impacts of Sanitation in Southeast Asia published in November 2007 by the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), Indonesia loses more than Rp 58 trillion or 2.3 percent of gross domestic product. The losses are from wasted productivity due to illness recovery costs and other aspects, such as quality of life.
The evidence confirms that poor water quality really affects the health of more than 180 million people in Indonesia and causes considerable financial and economic losses.
Unfortunately, the sector still does not get adequate attention from decision-makers; it has always been an issue at the periphery.
We can say that the provision of clean healthy drinking water has alas not yet been taken up as a serious development priority in Indonesia, both at the national and local government level.
Table below supports this statement. Each year from 2005-2010, the budget allocated for waste water management never even reached 0.1 percent of government spending. The highest was in 2005 when the government allocated 0.09 percent of the national budget for waste water management. Since then the number has stayed at 0.07 percent.
Even though the amount for clean water provision is better than for waste water, it is still less than the investment needed and is only about 3 percent of the budget for education. And in order to avoid further losses and gain economic benefit through better health, longer lives, increased productivity, less water treatment, improved inland fisheries and environment, and increased tourism, the government definitely needs to invest more in a water and sanitation program as well as immediately integrate water and sanitation with many of its programs, such as the poverty reduction program, healthcare and education.
Many studies clearly show that all water and sanitation improvements are cost-beneficial, and this applies to all regions in the world. In developing countries, the return on a US$1 investment is in the range of $5 to $28.
The main contributor to benefits is the saving of time associated with better access to water supply and sanitation services facilities, the gain in productive time due to less time spent in ill health, health sector and patients costs saved due to less treatment of water-borne diseases such as diarrhea, typhoid and the value of prevented deaths.
The writer is director of Amrta Institute for Water Literacy.
