EU project provides water management training in Indonesia
As clean-up and relief operations get underway in the aftermath of the latest flash floods to hit Indonesia, an EU funded project is helping the archipelago's researchers develop water management techniques capable of tackling the environmental degradation which is causing such disasters. Seasonal downpours cause dozens of landslides and flash-floods each year in Indonesia. Over the years, islands such as East Kalimantan and West Sumatra have also seen increasing incidents of floods, fire and soil erosion. For many, the blame lies with the removal of Indonesia's mangrove forests, swamps, and peatlands, which acted like natural buffer zones against flooding, to make room for agriculture and settlements. A lack of knowledge and understanding of water management issues at the river basin scale has led to inadequate policy decision-making and further environmental degradation. It has also led to the impoverishment of local communities that relied on the mangroves and peatlands for their food and livelihoods. The EU funded Air-Co project (Asia-European collaboration in knowledge and research in integrated water resource management) will target a core group of Indonesian researchers, offering them skills training on key areas of integrated water resources management at the river basin scale. Using educational films, environmentalists from the UK and the Netherlands will highlight problems which are regionally specific. 'In Sumatra, we illustrate the problems that peatland development can bring for downstream communities, including increased likelihood of floods during the rainy season and fire during the dry season,' explains Dr Susan Page of the University of Leicester, one of the leading project partners. 'In East Kalimantan, the film footage focuses on the impacts that destruction of the coastal mangrove forests has on local livelihoods, through changes in coastal fish stocks.' The films will be supported by additional teaching materials, which address strategies for sustainable river basin management that can be used by the Indonesian universities in their teaching and outreach programmes.