ADB to fund clean up of Indonesia's Citarum River

NY Times reports that the Asian Development Bank has pledged half a billion dollars to clean up the Citarum River in Java.

The river, considered by many environmentalists to be among the world’s most polluted, is woven tightly into the lives of the West Javanese.

It provides 80 percent of household water for Jakarta’s 14 million people, irrigates farms that supply 5 percent of Indonesia’s rice and is a source of water for more than 2,000 factories, which are responsible for a fifth of the country’s industrial output, according to the Asian Development Bank.

The article continues:

The list of woes is worrying enough that the development bank committed this month to provide Indonesia with a $500 million, multiyear loan to finance a wide-ranging cleanup and rehabilitation plan devised by the bank and the government.

The money would be used clean the Citarum and the West Tarum Canal, which connects it to Jakarta, and to create a long-term plan for how to best use the river. A portion of the loan would go toward setting up an independent organization that would become the steward of the Citarum.

But even before the bank has begun to dole out the loan, it has opposition from local civic groups. They fear that the government is taking on too much debt and that there are inadequate protections to ensure that the poor see enough benefits and that the money is not lost to the corruption that is endemic in Indonesia

The article also notes the main point of contention:

The tricky part of the work will be getting the many people who rely on the river for their living, or simply to live, to agree to changes. Conflicts can arise over the allocation of water between farmers who use it for irrigation and city dwellers. And trying to get farmers to use more efficient irrigation methods, so there is more water for others, can be challenging.

The solution proposed by the Asian Development Bank and the Indonesian government is a “water council,” with half the representatives from government agencies and half from the communities involved and nongovernmental organizations.

What authority the council would have remains to be seen; different levels of government already disagree about water allocation.

Of particular concern to community activists is how this council might be manipulated, becoming yet another avenue for corrupt practices.

The question might be: will the river clean-up scheme not have the effect of transferring taxpayer money into the pockets of polluters who caused the damage to the river in the first place? Doing this thing right will be a real challenge, but it seems worth trying.

Why not start a pilot project on a smaller scale to figure out how best to orchestrate a river clean up? It does seem like $500 million is a lot to throw at a problem until you have worked out the best mechanism to spend the money effectively.