The workshop was held in hybrid setting from 7th – 8th May 2024 led by Alluvium, an Australian partner of the Water Scarcity Program (WSP). In this two-day workshop, 55 people from official staff from related ministries attended offline also online. This event was following the previous Water Accounting Roadmap (WARM) II workshop early this year.
Day 1 – Technical Guidelines and Data Platform and Suitability.
To open WARM III officially, Mr. Ewin Sofian Winata, ST, MEM, from the Ministry of National Development Planning/National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) gave his word to explain the strategic issues on water resources such as unequal water resources, and water shortages in certain areas and water demand is increasing rapidly.
It is projected by 2045, 60% of Indonesia's population will be in river areas with high water pressure and 24 out of 128 river areas will not be able to meet water needs. In his remark, he hopes that the WSP can help the national government in developing a Water Scarcity Action Plan together with the National Multidisciplinary Team (NMT).
Then it continued to session 1 when the Alluvium team, which was led by Mr Adyn stimulated the participants' energy by giving the update on progress through key takeaways from the first to second WARM, along with the WSP Regional Technical Workshop in Bangkok. Further from Mr Tony, this WARM III is in the hope of identifying the trend and forecasting what will be happening in the future along with the gap identified between the required knowledge and data availability, and how this water accounting can be implemented beyond the project location.
Next in session 2 several representatives from related ministries talked about technical guidelines, such as from the Directorate of Operation & Maintenance, Directorate General of Water Resources – Ministry of Public Works and Housing, discussing Catchment Water Balance (Water Accounting) and Allocation Technical Guideline content and future updates. It explained the importance of water accounting to allocate water fairly and on an efficient target, paying attention to environmental protection, and sustainability. Moreover, there are a few steps in the water allocation planning process: Pola PSDA (Pola Pengelolaan Sumber Daya Air or the Water Resources Management Pattern is the basic framework for planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating Water Resources Conservation, Water Resources Utilization and Water Destruction Control activities) → RENCANA (one of the references in preparing the Strategic Plan (Renstra) of the Directorate General (Ditjen) of Natural Resources which is the basis for annual programming and budgeting) → RAAT (Annual Water Allocation Plan) → RAAR (Detailed Water Allocation Plan).
Followed by the presentation from the Center for Applied Climate Information Services Deputy of Climatology (BMKG)’s presentation on the Hydrology Hydrometeorology and Hydrogeology Information System (SIH3) platform & challenges faced with discussion, which the discussion topic emphasises data platform and suitability. Through Hydrology Hydrometeorology and Hydrogeology Information System (SIH3), SIH3 aims to support water resource management in Indonesia, to reduce negative impacts caused by extreme natural conditions and to support local government policymakers on water resource management. SIH3 has three ministries as a role to handle and collaborate on the system, they are BMKG, Ministry of Public Works, and Geological Agency.
Lastly, the Ministry of Public Works and Housing discussed the Water Resource Data Platform development and the challenges faced. it was explained about the Water Resources Data Center (WRDC) application, a web-based information system that can be utilized to facilitate the fulfilment of information needs related to water resources throughout Indonesia. Its integration with applications in the water resources Directorate General environment with expected to increase the role of information system services and water resources data, which can be useful for disseminating information to internal and external directorates later.
To conclude the day, it can be agreed on the need to consider FAIR for data platforms.
- F, findable: where data should be easy to find for computers and humans.
- A, accessible: when people find the data, they need to know how the data can be accessed.
- I, interoperable: data needs to be easy to integrate with other data for analysis, processing and storage.
- R, reusable: Data needs to be well-described, and thus can be reused and replicable in different ways.
Day 2 – Institutional arrangements, setting of a showcase, policy and SMART next steps.
Presented by Mr. Ewin Sofian Winata, ST, MEM, from the Ministry of National Development Planning/National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) on the institutional arrangement for the water accounting to basin planning. There are 20 Super Priority Transformative Efforts in 2025-2045 in RPJPN, which are included in the categories of social transformation, trans-governance, trans-economic transformation, the foundation for rule of law, stability and toughness of diplomacy, socio-cultural and ecological resilience. Since we are now entering the first 5 years, what has been achieved in the 2045 vision is the provision of a sustainable raw water supply for various economic activities (ensuring the water balance in each WS) that is not in a deficit/stressed condition along with the responsibility for managing and protecting natural resources is integrated among several institutions.
It was followed by some discussion on the commitment to increasing the capacity, where there is a need for technical skills in all levels, coordination and integration to clarify responsibilities, strengthen the framework coordination, and align planning, data and information with ‘One Data Policy' or called ‘Kebijakan Satu Data’ and the derivative regulations2019 natural resources law to increase institutional framework and implementation of calculations and water allocation.
Next on the discussion on the showcase, Alluvium team was explaining the goal is to have a showcase water account to present to decision makers, and behind the important reason. It can be followed by the law, incentives for funding, leverage economic growth, justifies permit values of water supply, supports inter-basin transfers and provides a goal for river basion organisation to implement accounting.
It also needs some points for the showcase such as a simple communication picture, conceptual process diagram, detailed model kind of level the account to be placed and types of the accounts, whether it is highly technical, moderate or poor data. There is also an input on the need to map who gets the benefits
The important discussion before closing the day was on the Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely (SMART) next steps. These include workshops with technical experts with PUPR and Cimanuk Cisanggarung watershed to understand and note what assumptions and limitations exist in the current water accounting process. Moreover, the technical guidance provided by PUPR aligns with the BBWS for the guidelines and adds scenarios on an extreme day for forecasting in the water accounting, which will be put into the technical guideline and finalisation by the end of 2024 or early 2025.
This Water Accounting Roadmap (WARM) Workshop III is the last part of the Workshop series, and it will be followed up by phase III of WSP, they are to prepare the showcase and NMT presentation with the national action plan.
For more information, please contact (Mr) Fany Wedahuditama: fany@ws-indonesia.org and/or fany.wedahuditama@gwpsea.org
This Water Accounting Roadmap (WARM) III Workshop is supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Water Partnership and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.