Two Universitas Indonesia (UI) researchers, Dr. Rr. Dwinanti Rika Marthanty, ST, MT. from the Faculty of Engineering (FEng UI) and Dr. Reni Suwarso from the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences (FSPS UI) received a grant of IDR 1.8 billion (AUD 180,000) from the state government of Victoria, Australia as part of the Citarum Program to address heavy pollution in the Citarum River, West Java. This grant was awarded through the Study Melbourne Research Partnerships program, which is channeled through veski.
“As we all know, the Citarum River in West Java is the most polluted river in the world. The grant we received will enable the Citarum Program to form an international consortium to develop and test new and scalable approaches to transform wastewater and solid waste into new resources, by combining innovative technologies with new business models, institutions, and behaviors to address river pollution,” said Dwinanti.
“The program also aims to create a River Transformation Framework (RTF) through combining urban design principles with insights from the urban sustainability transition and circular economy. The Citarum Program will also develop a living laboratory pilot site on the Citarum River and will collaborate with the government, local residents, and agricultural industry players, to find solutions that can be run in a decentralized manner, and in the future will be locally owned, managed, and operated by the local community,” said Reni.
Project Director and Director of the Informal Cities Lab, Monash University, Professor Diego Ramirez-Lovering said, “The Citarum river basin living lab is a form of place-based research initiative, where we collaborate with our partners and local villages to co-design an integrated urban model that addresses river pollution caused by a lack of waste and sanitation infrastructure. The goal of this program is to co-create solutions to sewage and water pollution that will encourage new behaviors and practices. Going forward, this will help restore and protect rivers, and improve the lives and livelihoods of vulnerable river communities.”
At the invitation of the West Java Government, the consortium will develop a pilot site on a 2.6 km section of the Citarik River, an upstream tributary of the Citarum. Over the next 12 months, feasibility studies for circular wastewater and sewage systems will inform the selection of sustainable technologies and social solutions that will be demonstrated in a village in the Citarum watershed.
Met on a separate occasion, UI Secretary, Dr. Agustin Kusumayati, M.Sc., Ph.D. expressed her appreciation for this grant. “International collaboration is something that Universitas Indonesia strongly supports. Through this Citarum grant program, UI brings local knowledge in governance and social sciences related to the behavioral change of surrounding communities as well as engineering sciences related to hydrological and spatial modeling in the development of living laboratories. We hope that this research will generate context-specific evidence that can be developed as solutions to be applied across rivers in Indonesia and the Asia-Pacific.”
The Citarum project has started on October 15, 2021 and is expected to be completed on October 14, 2022. The project, co-led by Monash University and Universitas Indonesia, involves several international research institutions, including Padjadjaran University (UNPAD), CSIRO, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (EAWAG) in Switzerland, and the West Java Environment and R&D Agency, and will be a multi-year learning and innovation program.
The Citarum Program is one of 15 research projects that have received grants totaling AUD 2.8 million from the Government of Victoria, Australia. These research projects span mining, advanced manufacturing, healthcare and education, including the use of virtual reality to train remote healthcare professionals in 12 countries, including South Korea, Japan, Indonesia and Vietnam.
