World Water Day

World Water Day is celebrated annually on March 22.  The event has served as a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources.

The Jakarta Post runs a supplement edition on water today to actively participate in the celebration.
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As Indonesia'€™s population continues to grow and the country develops its industry, improvements in water management and related infrastructure are important for future economic success.

Every year on March 22 people celebrate World Water Day. This year'€™s theme is '€œWater and Sustainable Development'€: how water links to all areas we need to create the future we want.

The United Nations is currently preparing to adopt a new post-2015 sustainable development agenda by September of this year, in line with this World Water Day celebration that highlights the essential and interconnected role of water. Water, a key element for public health, is essential for food and energy security and supports the functioning of industries.

Climate change, coupled with growing demand for water resources from agriculture, industry and cities, and increasing pollution in many areas, are accelerating a water crisis that can only be addressed by cross-sectoral, holistic planning and policies '€“ internationally, regionally and globally.

Indonesia'€™s water resources currently need exceptional attention from the government. The Constitutional Court last month revoked the 2004 Law on Water Resources and reinstated the previous 1974 Water Law, a regulation no longer relevant to the current challenges and situation. Today'€™s water resources have a higher level of complexity compared to that when the regulation was first introduced.

While scarcity of fresh water hits many areas in Indonesia, we also witness chronic mismanagement of water resources, with several parties overusing it and others using it for activities that pollute water.

In fact, water resources in Indonesia represent nearly six percent of the world'€™s water resources and about 21 percent of total water resources in the Asia-Pacific region, or more than two trillion cubic meters of natural renewable water per year. So, statistically speaking, Indonesia is not a water-scarce nation.

However, the availability of more than the above-mentioned amount of natural renewable water has its own challenge as the water resources are unequally distributed among the islands and the availability is not parallel with population distribution.

Java has less than 10 percent of the country'€™s water, whereas more than 140 million people live on the island, nearly 60 percent of the country'€™s population. Kalimantan has 30 percent of Indonesia'€™s water and only inhabited by six percent of Indonesia'€™s population.

With Java being most heavily populated but having a small percentage of the country'€™s water, the island is predicted to face a clean water crisis. The 2015 estimation by Robert Wahyudi Triweko, an expert on engineering and the management of water resources, disclosed that water demand on Java reached 164.672 million cubic meters per year, while the availability of water was only 30.569 million cubic meters per year, leaving a big deficit gap of 134.103 million cubic meters per year.

The renewable water is surface water, but this is often highly polluted and leads households and industry to consume more groundwater. This mostly happen in big cities where dependency on groundwater is widespread.

As Indonesia'€™s population continues to grow and its industries develop, improvements in water management and related infrastructure are important for future economic success. Water shortages are expected to be a constraint to Indonesia'€™s economic growth potential.

Educational programs

To cope with the Indonesian water crisis, it is important to enact educational programs for the public about how to conserve water and consume less water and about the need to recycle and reuse water and also to run education programs about proper hygiene and sanitation.

Water in Indonesia is largely used for irrigation, but the availability of water for irrigating agriculture is on the decrease. Water for agriculture irrigation accounts for more than 80 percent of water taken from surface and ground water.

Therefore education and infrastructure for agriculture should be provided to persuade farmers to use modern irrigation systems that need less water. Many industries are already working under smarter systems, using automated watering technology that allows farmers to irrigate with much more precision and less waste.

More than half of all paddy rice produced in Indonesia is harvested on Java. With the water scarcity hitting Java, production needs to be more equally distributed to other islands with more water, such as Sumatra, Kalimantan and Papua where withdrawal would use only a fairly small share of potentially available resources.

For domestic purposes, many countries have developed and issued technology that uses less water for toilets and the waterless toilet is on its way.

A United States research institute is developing a system that not only needs no water, but generates electricity as well. The toilet captures the waste and converts it into electricity that powers the water treatment process.

The almost waterless washing machine has already been introduced in Europe. A British company is transforming the automatic washing machine with technology that uses thousands of polymer beads to remove stains from clothes. The molecular structure of the beads combines with detergent to attract dirt. They can be used for hundreds of washings before being recycled. (Nila Ardhianie)