About

Over the past 20 years, water quality in Indonesia has deteriorated due to an increase of water pollution. Research and analysis is needed to identify pollution sources and assess contamination in Indonesian water resources. Water quality management is not yet sufficiently integrated in river basin management in Indonesia, which mainly focuses on water quantity. Women are comparatively highly impacted by failing water resources management, but their involvement in decision making processes is limited. Water quality deterioration continue to increases socio-economic inequality, as it are the most poor communities who live on, and along the river. The uneven water quality related disease burden in Brantas River Basin widens the socio-economic gap between societal groups. In the Brantas region, cooperation and intention between stakeholders to tackle these issues is growing, but is fragile as well due to the overlap of institutional mandates , the poor status of water quality monitoring networks and the industries not easily committing themselves to process water before disposal. The existing group of Indonesian change makers will be supported by this project. Three Indonesian and three Dutch consortium partners will support negotiation platforms in order to deal with solve institutional challenges, to increase capacity to monitor water quality, build an enabling environment to allow sustainable industrial change, and develop an enabling environment in support of community concerns and civil society initiatives. The project builds on integrated water quality monitoring and modelling within a framework of social learning. The strong consortium will be able to build links with civil society groups (including women, farmer and fisher unions) in close cooperation with local, regional and national Indonesian government institutions to clean the Brantas river and secure income and health for East Java’s population, in particular the most vulnerable groups.