Mainstreaming water quality in River Basin Management in the Brantas River Basin, Indonesia: abstract submitted to the International Conference Water Science for Impact

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 continues to increase 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 overlapping institutional mandates, poor status of water quality monitoring networks, and limited commitment of industries to treat their waste water streams. The existing group of Indonesian change makers will be supported by this project. Three Indonesian and three Dutch organisations have teamed up to support negotiation platforms in order to deal with institutional challenges, to increase water quality monitoring capacity, to build an enabling environment facilitating sustainable industrial change, and to 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.