An introduction of co-management approach into Babon River management in Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia.
The Babon River lies over three regions, i.e. Semarang District where the upstream is located while downstream it passes through Semarang Municipality and Demak District. This river has been used for many purposes by the neighbouring communities (e.g. water source, canal disposal, mining, etc). Thereafter many transboundary environmental problems have arisen here. The environmental management strategy (using a top-down approach) such as Program Kali Bersih (Clean River Program) on Babon River, which had been implemented by the Bapedalda of Semarang Municipality, is not successfully achieving the targets. In the past, most policies were formulated based on top-down orientation. Hence, the communities' participation was not paid enough attention. Co-management is a participative-management approach to empower the stakeholders (related parties) to achieve a certain goal. This study seeks answers to the research questions: (1) whether the co-management approach has good prospects for managing the Babon River; and (2) what kinds of strategy should be formulated to empower the stakeholders to manage the Babon River in the study area. The study employed a multistage sampling method to select the location of the study areas and key-persons sample. Rowosari, Penggaron Kidul and Karangtoro were selected to represent the upstream, middle stream and downstream areas, respectively. The descriptive statistics method had been used to describe the significance of river resource attributes' characters. Institutional analysis approach, introduced by Pomeroy and Williams, was adopted with necessary modification in this study. The results showed that the level of participation of the community in the three segments of the Babon River is different. The prospects for the co-management approach to manage the river resource in the study area are fairly good and in the upstream area are better than in the other two segments. The level of participation is far from complete; nevertheless the response from society towards development is quite good. There are five significant attributes in Babon River, which affect the community participation in river management, namely: (1) intensity of resource commercialisation; formal education of the community; and dependency of the community toward the resources, resource products distribution and resource damage. These variables could influence the pattern of participation of the community in the study area. The other stakeholders such as industrial or plant owners, academics, and the related institutions have not been explored in detail in this study. The co-management model that has been developed in this study has the prospect of encouraging the community and other stakeholders' empowerment in economic activities, natural resource conservation, and environmental law enforcement, as part of achieving the ultimate goal of sustainable environmental management.
Susilowati
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The Faculty of Economics, Diponegoro University, Jl. Erlangga Tengah 17 Semarang 50241, Indonesia. indah-susilowati@rocketmail.com
Budiati
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D003256:Community Participation; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D004777:Environment; D004779:Environment Design; D007214:Indonesia; D017146:Models, Organizational; D011050:Policy Making; D045483:Rivers