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Users and disappearing water
Indonesia has pledged to provide access to safe drinking water for 150 million citizens by 2015
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ndonesia has pledged to provide access to safe drinking water for 150 million citizens by 2015. Yet, the country is not experiencing mass rallies and demonstrations, where agitated consumers beat water pots and containers, demanding a clean and safe supply of piped drinking water. The water scarcity reality has not quite hit the country.
There is a vast segment of the population – shadow water consumers – that increasingly depends on alternative water sources. These consumers come in two categories: One constituency abstracts water from underground sources, while the other, poorer, group cannot afford to extract water and continues paying more for vendor water.
It is a sad truth that this segment is not included within accountable constitutional frameworks and public discourses. Corroboratively, people’s health and the environment are continually compromised with ensuing and unregulated water withdrawals.
For an aspiring low-middle income nation, Indonesia’s water data is nothing to be proud of. Statistics of access to piped-water supply fall behind that of Cambodia and Vietnam, indicating that only 18.4 percent of the population had access to piped-water in 2007.
This figure dropped to around 16.1 percent in 2008. Bringing the shadow water users within the mainstream political discourse, for access to safe water, is an economic and ecological imperative for the country.
The voices of the shadow water users are silent in public policy-making debates and civil society discourse.
Legal frameworks bypass these users.
As shadow users, a first category of free riders, continue to exploit groundwater for short-term gain, as water gradually continues to disappear – posing economic, ecological and social losses.
These externalities are bound to bring much long-term pain to the country. A second category succumb rationing their income, in-between limited tough choices of paying more for water or for other basic essential needs, endangering their health and safety.
There are three main reasons for the emergence of shadow users and the disappearance of water from the water table.
First, on face value, unlike countries that face water scarcity, Indonesia has abundant and easily accessible water resources.
Second, a small handful of non-state actors and activist organizations are not pluralistic by definition. These actors are politically driven, weak and sparse. Promoting a consensus based pluralistic dialogue and discourse is not their main agenda.
Third, both at the national and local levels, there are gaps in linking public policy-making with regulatory frameworks.
For the first reason, Indonesia is not a high-risk water deficit country, but ecologically a very high risk one. Landmass of Java, Nusa Tenggara and Bali islands were already facing water scarcity three decades ago.
Groundwater is disappearing fast, causing economic and ecological losses of vast proportions, which impact water regime and balance.
In the absence of safe piped-water services, consumers resort to accessing water from below the surface.
With the mere installation of a simple water extracting device, water is pumped directly to a house, a hotel or a business.
The cost of doing so for a consumer includes technology installation and minimal monthly electricity charges of pumping water. In aggregate terms, predictable damages are inevitable. Over 60 percent of the population depends on water sourced from below the ground for domestic and private consumption.
The cost for the country translates into vast withdrawal of volumes of untapped, non-revenue and unaccounted for water.
Indonesia cannot afford to ignore the piped-water supply needs of shadow users.
On top of this, the constituency that lobbies for safe piped-water services is polarized.
Discussions have not helped expand discourses toward a reconciliatory realm of promoting a plural public policy debate. Likewise, a realistic grasp of the water sector reform is not reflecting.
Whereas, water supply governance is now transferred to regional owned water supply companies or Perusahaan Daerah Air Minum (PDAM), activist institutions continue playing their one string harp.
These agencies are not contributing to constructive advocacy, but channel their energy in the redundant debate of anti-privatization by focusing on two specific Jakarta concessions. There are over 324 PDAMs in Indonesia that provide piped-water services to the citizens.
Lastly, there are gaps between national and local level reform processes.
However centralized the efforts have been, over the past year, the Government of Indonesia has introduced a series of regulations to reform the water sector.
Yet the linkages of these regulations with the umbrella 2004 Water Resources Law are unclear.
While the accountability onus of water governance is increasingly being assumed by the national government, linkages of these initiatives with the local frameworks and public utility services remain weak.
Equally ambiguous are the linkages between the 2004 law, groundwater regulations and drinking water supply.
In reversing the process of water extraction, discourses must maintain a focus of sustaining national level accountability, and in promoting local level accountability to regulate withdrawal amounts within the purview of piped-water systems.
This is where the activist institutions can contribute to effective and inclusive public policy-making debate and reform.
Indonesia must revisit the water resource law. In doing so, the shadow water users must be brought back to a level playing field of political discourse.
Depolarization of public debates must begin. Only then can a mutually enforcing and reinforcing water accountability framework be developed.
This framework must protect citizens’ right to access safe drinking water on the mainstream reform of the water sector. Developing a notion of accountability in sync with the national and local frameworks must be a shared value for the state, non-state institutions and water users.
Clearly, accountability then crosses various political boundaries and institutions. Indonesia must regulate groundwater withdrawals.
Indonesia must revisit the water resource law, with shadow water users being brought back to a level playing field of political discourse.
The writer holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences from Wageningen University,
the Netherlands, and a MBA from Brenau University, US.
