Over the past 20 years, water quality in Indonesia has deteriorated due to an increase of water pollution. Research and analysis is needed to identify pollution sources and assess contamination in Indonesian water resources. Water quality management is not yet sufficiently integrated in river basin management in Indonesia, which mainly focuses on water quantity. Women are comparatively highly impacted by failing water resources management, but theirinvolvement in decision making processes is limited. Water quality deterioration continues to increase socio-economic inequality, as it are the most poor communities who live on and along the river. The uneven water quality related disease burden in Brantas River Basin widens the socio-economic gap between societal groups. In the Brantas region, cooperation and intention between stakeholders to tackle these issues is growing, but is fragile as well due to overlapping institutional mandates, poor status of water quality monitoring networks, and limited commitment of industries to treat their waste water streams. The existing group of Indonesian change makers will be supported by this project. Three Indonesian and three Dutch organisations have teamed up to support negotiation platforms in order to deal with institutional challenges, to increase water quality monitoring capacity, to build an enabling environment facilitating sustainable industrial change, and to develop an enabling environment in support of community concerns and civil society initiatives. The project builds on integrated water quality monitoring and modelling within a framework of social learning. The strong consortium will be able to build links with civil society groups (including women, farmer and fisher unions) in close cooperation with local, regional and national Indonesian governmentinstitutions to clean the Brantas river and secure income and health for East Java’s population, in particular the most vulnerable groups.
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The research group ‘Community resilience, participation and social learning’ of theprofessorship Sustainable River Management at Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences, in the Netherlands explores the contribution of community art and visual arts in relation to complex public participation processes in a context of sustainability.
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Integrated river basin management (IRBM) calls for participatory practices involving stakeholders along transnational river landscapes. Understanding the complex and diverse views regarding participation is a prerequisite for meaningful involvement of civil actors, especially in a transnational context. In a case study along the Lower Rhine river, we assessed and compared cognitive perceptions towards IRBM of citizen initiatives and nature organizations from Germany and the Netherlands and their previous experiences with participation processes.We found large differences between the four actor groups in motivations to participate as well as in levels of trust towards institutions. This study also showed different views on participation between the two countries with regard to the problem definition, nature images and the perceived relationships between government organisations on the one hand and citizen initiatives and nature organisations on the other hand.The findings suggest that views vary between citizen initiatives and nature organizations within a country and that cultural notions add to the complexity of transnational participation. In transnational participation processes, the varying views between actor groups should be taken into account, as well as the complexities among countries even within actor groups.
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Worldwide, rivers face challenges due to human and climatic pressures. Floods, droughts, pollution, damming and hydropeaking are only a few examples of these pressures, and influence the way rivers flow. Climate change adaptation projects increase the incentive to domesticate rivers, often legitimised through expert views on (future) vulnerability and risk. This emerging river imaginary dominates current debates in many rivers in our world. River imaginaries reflect spatially bound hydrosocial territories in which multiple actors on multiple scales from multiples sectors operate to reach varying objectives. They include water flows, ecological systems, climate conditions, hydraulic infrastructure, financial means, institutional arrangements, legal frameworks and information/knowledge hubs. In the context of climate change adaptation, river imaginaries are strongly dependent on the extent to which climate change is expected to influence rivers through a mixture of probable, possible, desirable or preferable versions of a (future) river. As such, knowledge-structures of future making are scrutinised in this research by emphasising on the role of change, the role of futures and the role of experts. This presentation aims to elucidate how river imaginaries have influenced river management under climate change adaptation that resulted in large infrastructural projects. Through a study of the Meuse river, a concrete case of a imaginary came into being in the Dutch-Belgian Border-Meuse trajectory. Moreover, preliminary result from adaptation projects in the marshlands of the lower Magdalena in Colombia strengthen the dominate imaginary of technocratic and ecocentric approaches to climate change adaptation where an expert view on local knowledge dominates.
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Integrated river basin management increases technical as well as management and governance complexity. In this multidisciplinary setting, actors, from their different backgrounds, frame both issues and solutions differently. To resolve conflicts, it is important to recognize – and to not ignore – the existence of contending social framings. A better understanding is needed of how actors frame issues and solutions in integrated river basin management. To gain this better understanding, semi-structured interviews were conducted with Dutch river basin management actors following Sense-making methodology. Three challenges were identified where respondents framed both the issue and solution differently: (1) creating flexibility in a controlled river system; (2) sustaining the integrated approach in the maintenance of floodplains; and (3) formulating future river basin management policies to adapt to climate change. Cultural Theory was subsequently used to analyse how respondents construct perspectives towards these challenges. The analysis showed how actors use different rationalities in constructing these perspectives. As an implication, it is important for actors to recognize and acknowledge these perspectives in integrated river basin management decision-making. New tools, embedded in learning environments, are needed to facilitate exchanging and understanding actors’ perspectives.
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In the field of climate change adaptation, the future matters. River futures influence the way adaptation projects are implemented in rivers. In this paper, we challenge the ways in which dominant paradigms and expert claims monopolise the truth concerning policies and designs of river futures, thereby sidelining and delegitimising alternative river futures. So far, limited work has been performed on the power of river futures in the context of climate change adaptation. We conceptualised the power of river futures through river imaginaries, i.e., collectively performed and publicly envisioned reproductions of riverine socionatures mobilised through truth claims of social life and order. Using the Border Meuse project as a case study, a climate change adaptation project in a stretch of the river Meuse in the south of the Netherlands, and a proclaimed success story of climate adaptation in Dutch water management, we elucidated how three river imaginaries (a modern river imaginary, a market-driven imaginary, and an eco-centric river imaginary) merged into an eco-modern river imaginary. Importantly, not only did the river futures merge, but their aligned truth regimes also merged. Thus, we argue that George Orwell’s famous quote, “who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past” can be extended to “who controls the future, controls how we see and act in the present, and how we rediscover the past”.
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Metropolitan Cebu, the third largest agglomeration in the Philippines with a population of approximately 3 million, faces significant challenges in managing domestic wastewater and solid waste. This mismanagement has led to the pollution of its water bodies, including the Mahiga Creek and the Butuanon River, the latter of which was declared dead in 1992 and can no longer support flora and fauna. Between 2017 and 2025, seven international River Challenge Climate Cafes were conducted by Dutch universities of Applied Sciences and Filipino universities . During these events, teams of young professionals assessed the upstream, midstream, and downstream stretches of Metro Cebu's rivers and evaluated the vulnerability of 12 urban poor communities living along these rivers. The primary aim of these rapid appraisals was to raise awareness among community members, local governments, and students, as well as to build capacity. Throughout the process, there was a shift from merely gathering data on pollution levels to engaging the community, identifying risks, and finding feasible solutions to mitigate these risks. Various methods were employed to measure water quality, river width, river discharge, flood heights, ecology, plastic waste pollution, and residents' perceptions. The results were shared online via Climatescan.org with the global climate adaptation community. The findings demonstrate that river challenges are effective tools for creating context-rich learning environments for students, with more than 250 participants. The River Challenge Climate Cafe enable young professionals, primarily with technical backgrounds, to gain firsthand field experience, exposure to environmental degradation, severe pollution, and vulnerable communities, thereby enhancing their environmental awareness. Additionally, the river scan challenge proves to be a valuable tool for increasing awareness of river pollution and promoting rehabilitation effortsHow to cite: Heikoop, R., Boogaard, F., Abrenica, B., Fornis, R., Borgonia, K., Ledesma, D., Nasara, J., Boer, E., and Oudendammer, T.: Enhancing Environmental Awareness Through River Challenges: A Case Study of Metropolitan Cebu, Philippines , 12th International Conference on Urban Climate, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 7–11 Jul 2025, ICUC12-1052, https://doi.org/10.5194/icuc12-1052, 2025.
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Sustainable management of the Citarum River is a complex problem due to climate challenges such as increase of extreme weather events, as well as by increased anthropogenic activities leading to water pollution, waterborne diseases and floods. To act on this, active engagement of diverse stakeholders in decision-making for integrated water management is needed to share knowledges and understand diverse perspectives. This research reflects on the potential of the Visual Problem Appraisal (VPA) methodology to facilitate stakeholders’ participation in the complexity of sustainable water management in Indonesia. A VPA consists of a series of filmed interviews allowing stakeholders to express their concerns and issues. The interviews are used in thematic workshops to enhance dialogue and stimulating social learning in complex multi-stakeholder settings, in order to enhance environmental governance. Using the VPA solves two well-known problems: shortage of time and means for stakeholders to participate (stakeholder fatigue) and the fact that often the same people participate in diverse arenas (the usual suspects). The VPA could be used at ITB for bachelor’s and master’s degrees regarding Environmental Engineering, at Dutch universities and as a method to facilitate mediated participation within the Living Lab Upper Citarum.
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The Living Lab approach has become popular and developed in the past decade. It could provide a configuration to pursue a shared vision of integrated water resources management of the Citarum River in West Java - Indonesia. The multi-stakeholder situation and the growing recognition of interdependencies among stakeholders foster the complexity of addressing sustainable river management for the Upper Citarum River. To gain insights on essential competencies and adaptations in higher education curricula, the Environmental Engineering Department of the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering-ITB, Telkom University Indonesia, and Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands, joined hands in a collaborative research project. This study aims to develop a socio-engineering aspect for sustainable river water quality management in the Environmental Engineering Field and Curricula. The methods used are social imaginaries of Participatory Mapping and a Poetry Route that allowed the involved river bank communities to activate their role and take positions in the living lab. Institutional stakeholders, acting in a facilitating role, learned to gain and share information from and with the community. The result concludes that social imaginaries methods enable a new perspective in developing community-based programs and advocate further exploring the socio-engineering competencies of environmental professionals.
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The meaningful participation of stakeholders in decision-making is now widely recognized as a crucial element of effective water resource management, particularly with regards to adapting to climate and environmental change. Social learning is increasingly being cited as an important component of engagement if meaningful participation is to be achieved. The exact definition of social learning is still a matter under debate, but is taken to be a process in which individuals experience a change in understanding that is brought about by social interaction. Social learning has been identified as particularly important in transboundary contexts, where it is necessary to reframe problems from a local to a basin-wide perspective. In this study, social learning is explored in the context of transboundary water resource management in the St. Lawrence River Basin. The overarching goal of this paper is to explore the potential role of serious games to improve social learning in the St. Lawrence River. To achieve this end, a two-pronged approach is followed: (1) Assessing whether social learning is currently occurring and identifying what the barriers to social learning are through interviews with the region's water resource managers; (2) Undertaking a literature review to understand the mechanisms through which serious games enhance social learning to understand which barriers serious games can break down. Interview questions were designed to explore the relevance of social learning in the St. Lawrence River basin context, and to identify the practices currently employed that impact on social learning. While examples of social learning that is occurring have been identified, preliminary results suggest that these examples are exceptions rather than the rule, and that on the whole, social learning is not occurring to its full potential. The literature review of serious games offers an assessment of such collaborative mechanisms in terms of design principles, modes of play, and their potential impact on social learning for transboundary watershed management. Serious game simulations provide new opportunities for multidirectional collaborative processes by bringing diverse stakeholders to the table, providing more equal access to a virtual negotiation or learning space to develop and share knowledge, integrating different knowledge domains, and providing opportunities to test and analyze the outcomes of novel management solutions. This paper concludes with a discussion of how serious games can address specific barriers and weaknesses to social learning in the transboundary watershed context of the St. Lawrence River Basin.
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