Indonesia, like many fast-developing nations including India, is grappling with a deepening water crisis driven by both human pressures and climate-induced impacts. Despite being home to more than 1,000 river basins, a majority of Indonesian households continue to face serious challenges in accessing safe drinking water and sanitation. Water resource management remains constrained by high levels of contamination, excessive dependence on groundwater, declining water retention capacity, and inadequate wastewater management systems.
Water governance in Indonesia is formally anchored in Law No. 17 of 2019, which establishes the state’s responsibility to protect water rights and ensure that conservation, utilization, and water damage control serve public prosperity. This framework is reinforced by Law No. 30 of 2024, which strengthens provisions for surface and groundwater use, licensing, and sustainable management. Indonesia has adopted an Integrated Water Resources Management approach structured around River Basin Territories, intended to coordinate water allocation across agriculture, energy, and human consumption. The Ministry of National Development Planning leads water governance alongside the ministries responsible for public works, public housing, environment, and agriculture. Yet, despite the presence of an IWRM framework, persistent tensions between development priorities and hydrological realities reveal the limitations of implementation. The challenge lies not in the absence of policy, but in the fragmented and uneven execution of integrated approaches that must balance immediate food security needs with long-term environmental sustainability.
These challenges were explored in depth during a Wednesdays.for.Water session organised by the WforW Foundation, co-hosted with the International Association for the Study of the Commons (Asia Series). The session brought together Yanti Kusumanto and Dr Fransiscus X Suryadi to reflect on the opportunities and constraints of implementing IWRM in Indonesia, highlighting the complex intersections of governance, technology, food security, and sustainability within the country’s diverse ecological and institutional landscape. This essay draws from Kusumanto’s analysis of institutional and policy frameworks and Suryadi’s examination of on-the-ground implementation in Indonesia’s tidal lowlands. Alejandra Amor served as the discussant, while Dr Mansee Bal Bhargava moderated the session.
Kusumanto’s analysis traced the evolution of Indonesia’s water governance from infrastructure-driven approaches of the 1980s toward more ecologically informed frameworks that acknowledge green water and social-ecological systems. Despite this conceptual shift, governance practice continues to privilege blue water infrastructure, reflecting a siloed administrative culture that fragments policy implementation. Water governance remains disintegrated across departments and sectors that operate in isolation, withholding information and failing to cooperate, even though ecology, hydrology, and economics are intrinsically interconnected. This fragmentation undermines the very essence of integrated water management.
A second core challenge lies in the prioritisation of anthropogenic development goals over hydrological realities. Public decision-making consistently favours short-term economic considerations, producing institutional mismatches with ecosystem functioning. Environmental sustainability objectives are routinely subordinated to development imperatives, resulting in policies that address immediate gains while externalising long-term ecological costs. The consequences of this misalignment are particularly visible in water conservation, utilization, and quality management, where legal frameworks exist but remain weakly enforced.
Although Indonesia’s regulatory architecture includes Government Regulation 37 of 2012 on watershed management, Law 17 of 2019 on water resources, and Government Regulation 26 of 2008 on the national spatial plan, these instruments place limited emphasis on green water governance and community participation. The state retains centralized control over planning, administration, exploitation, and protection of water and forest resources, leaving little room for locally adaptive or participatory governance. Legal provisions for community rights exist largely in form rather than substance, and financial mechanisms remain insufficient to support forest rehabilitation, land restoration, and sustainable water management.
Coordination failures further compound these challenges. While Indonesia’s Constitution guarantees every citizen the right to clean, safe, and sufficient water, achieving this mandate requires synchronisation across numerous laws, policies, and institutions. The coexistence of multiple ministries with overlapping responsibilities creates persistent coordination gaps, reinforced by entrenched sectoral and regional rivalries. Although successive medium-term development plans between 2004 and 2024 show some adaptive shifts, institutional mandates remain poorly translated into operational practice, producing a disconnect between policy intent and outcomes on the ground.
These governance tensions are starkly illustrated in the development of Indonesia’s tidal lowlands, a focus of Suryadi’s contribution. Indonesia possesses approximately 20 million hectares of tidal lowlands, alongside extensive non-tidal lowlands and inland swamp areas. These landscapes offer significant potential for agricultural expansion and food security, but they are also ecologically fragile. Influenced by tidal fluctuations and salinity intrusion, tidal lowlands encompass peat soils, acid sulphate soils containing pyrite, and mineral soils, each presenting distinct management challenges.
Development has largely followed a drainage-based model, beginning with the construction of canals and followed by prolonged soil ripening processes. While this has enabled cultivation, it has also triggered severe environmental consequences. Drainage lowers groundwater tables and oxidises organic matter in peat soils, leading to land subsidence that creates a paradox of vulnerability. During dry seasons, drained peat becomes highly combustible and prone to fire; during wet seasons, subsided land becomes increasingly vulnerable to flooding. Acid sulphate soils require systematic leaching to address low pH and toxicity, further complicating water management. These cascading risks raise fundamental questions about the long-term sustainability of such development pathways.
Suryadi’s analysis underscored that successful tidal lowland management depends not only on hydraulic infrastructure but on integrated social, economic, and environmental approaches. Groundwater table control is essential to limit subsidence, prevent fires, and manage toxic materials. Experiences from South Sumatra demonstrate that community-led water management schemes, supported by clear operational protocols and technical capacity building, can significantly improve outcomes. These cases reveal that infrastructure alone is insufficient without local engagement, institutional support, and governance arrangements that empower communities.
The broader debate emerging from the session highlighted persistent tensions between knowledge and power in water governance. While research clearly diagnoses fragmentation and sectoral silos as systemic weaknesses, transforming entrenched institutional structures remains politically contested. Effective water governance ultimately hinges on who decides and who benefits. Current systems marginalise local communities and limit their influence over decisions that directly affect their livelihoods. Participation is often reduced to consultation without meaningful shifts in authority.
A central dilemma lies in balancing immediate food security needs against long-term environmental risks. Drainage enables cultivation but locks landscapes into trajectories of subsidence, fire, and flooding. This raises difficult questions about whether certain tidal lowlands should be developed at all, particularly when ecological costs outweigh potential benefits. Addressing such questions requires robust assessment tools, political will, and a willingness to prioritise sustainability over short-term gains.
The discussion also exposed the persistent gap between scientific expertise and political implementation. Bridging this divide demands more than improved communication; it requires institutional mechanisms that embed scientific knowledge into decision-making, align political incentives with long-term sustainability, and reconcile short electoral cycles with the extended timelines of water governance. Effective governance must balance local adaptation with national coordination, responding to place-based ecological realities while ensuring basin-wide water security.
Indonesia’s water governance challenges sit at the intersection of institutional fragmentation, competing development priorities, and environmental vulnerability. The insights from this dialogue make clear that technical solutions alone are insufficient. Progress will depend on dismantling sectoral silos, strengthening genuine community participation, harmonising regulatory frameworks, and making difficult choices about development in ecologically sensitive landscapes. Ultimately, Indonesia must shift away from anthropocentric, short-term frameworks toward integrated approaches that respect hydrological realities and ecological limits. As the country moves toward its 2045 water security goals, these lessons offer a critical pathway to ensuring clean, safe, and sufficient water for all Indonesians.
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Alejandra Amor works with Greater Cambridge City Council as a Policy Strategy and Economy Intern and is also a Senior Research Fellow with the WforW Foundation.
Dr Mansee Bal Bhargava is an entrepreneur, researcher, educator, speaker, and mentor associated with the WforW Foundation
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