Thursday, September 15, 2016

Adaptation with respect to water resources




Java is being most heavily populated but having a small percentage of the Indonesia’s water, the island is predicted to face a clean water crisis. Java has less than 10 percent of the country's water, whereas more than 140 million people live on the island, nearly 60 percent of the country's population. The 2015 estimation by Robert Wahyudi Triweko, an expert on engineering and the management of water resources, disclosed that water demand on Java reached 164.672 million cubic meters per year, while the availability of water was only 30.569 million cubic meters per year, leaving a big deficit gap of 134.103 million cubic meters per year. Meanwhile, Kalimantan has 30 percent of Indonesia's water and only inhabited by six percent of Indonesia's population.

Water demand increase is triggered by urbanization. At the same time, it is also affected by climate change. It is started from sea level rise and increasing rainfall, as well as higher peak flood runoff which affected by urbanization. Those occurences increase flood volume in wider risk area. Finally, it becomes new problem which is increasing flood damage in more houses which builded due to urbanization. Therefore, improvements in water management and related infrastructure are important for solving the problems which threatening future economic success.