The Asian region continues to face serious water quality issues that contribute to freshwater scarcity, ill-health and even deaths. Rivers in Asia are Highly polluted with industrial waste and domestic waste. Many of the region’s rivers contain up to 3 times the world average of human waste derived bacteria (measured in faecal coliform). Industrial pollution levels, indicated by BOD (biological Oxygen demand) emissions per USD 1,000 of GDP, are highest in some Central and Northeast Asian Countries followed by south Asian Countries. Major sources of pollution are industries producing metals, paper and pulp, textilles and food and beverages. The mining industry is also a significant contributor. Agricultural production in the region increased 62% from 1990 to 2002 and consumtion of mineral fertilizer increased 15%. Exceedingly high level of nutrients were found in 50% of river in Asian region. High nutriens levels caused eutrophication, including algae blooms that severely damage freshwater ecosystems and hinder their provision of vital environmental services to people (
Alexander E.V. Evans, Munir A. Hanjar, Yunlu Jiang, Manzoor Qadir and Pay Drechsel. 2012 Water Pollution in Asia : The Urgent Need for Prevention and Monitoring. Global Water Forum - UNESCO).
In 2011, Indonesian Environmental Ministry monitored river water quality in 33 provinces. The result was shocking. Out of 51 major rivers in Indonesia, 32 rivers were heavily polluted and 16 rivers were moderately polluted. Only one river still met the quality standard, namely Lariang River in Central Sulawesi. One of the efforts made by the Environment Ministry of Indonesia is to alert the regional governments to improve the water quality measurement as a policy base in each region.
Dealing with the river pollution issue Ecological Observation and Wetlands Conservation (ecoton ) promote Incorporation of Habitat Assessment in Volunteer River Biomonitoring. River degradation is also caused by lack of environmental awareness and lack of community participation in river conservation. Most of people in the community are not aware of the river’s potential and its biodiversity, and with people not caring for the river they tend to treat the river without respect. To build community awareness and encourage community participation in river conservation, we need to bring people to touch the river waters and explore the wildlife. River health assessment through biomonitoring using macroinvertebrate animals is a way to introduce river wildlife and to know the food chains in river ecosystem. Biomonitoring is also a powerful and inexpensive tool to indicate water quality of the river. By knowing the river health and its water quality, we can develop river restoration plan appropriately according to the stressors and level of disturbances that involving community participation in the whole process.
The incorporation of habitat assessment in river biomonitoring gives more strength to the accuracy of river biomonitoring results and moves the organization forward to promote collaborative action on stream restoration to prevent environmental degradation in the watershed. More people now understand that the river is a continuum, where river degradation upstream will destroy the whole watershed that we need to maintain the continuous flow of water and flow of energy source in river, i.e. the leaves that fall into the stream from the vegetation along the riparian area. Ecoton involved more local community groups not only to reduce pollution loads into the river, but also to protect riparian area as wildlife habitat and energy source for the river ecosystem.
WATERBUGS CENSUS
Biomonitoring an evaluation of the condition of a water body using biological surveys and other direct measurements of the resident biota in surface waters, such as Benthic macroinvertebrates- organisms that inhabit bottom substrates for at least part of their life cycle and are retained by a 200µm to 500µm mesh. Commonly macroinvertebratae dominated by waterbugs. And Community around the rivers more familiar with waterbugs than Makroinvertebratae. So we called river biomonitoring as Waterbugs Census
Waterbugs Census has been widely used in many countries. Macroinvertebrate comprises various animals ranged from very sensitive to very tolerant to water pollution. Waterbugs Census is easy, cheap and accurate that can be done by anyone with various levels of education and age. ECOTON started river biomonitoring since 2002 through exploratory study to identify macroinvertebrate diversity, water pollution assessment in Brantas River, and published Guide Book to Macroinvertebrate for Brantas River. ECOTON trained government officers, teachers and students from more than 100 schools in East Java, Sumatera, Kalimantan and Sulawesi. Environmental authorities support ECOTON activity to introduce biomonitoring and encourage community participation in river conservation. This methode bring people to touch with the river, to assess river health using simple biomonitoring techniques, to build awareness on river condition and its recilience, and to promote empathy of the community to adjust consumption and waste disposal below the river carrying capacity.
Waterbugs Census objectives are:
(1) to promote awareness of community in watershed to participate in river monitoring and pollution prevention,
(2) to introduce biomonitoring principles and techniques to the community in watershed,
(3) to propose the provincial government to include macroinvertebrate as key parameter in regular river monitoring program.
WATER POLICE
This group is establish by junior high school student of Wonosalam state school in 2009 their activities are monitoring river quality using macroinvertebrata and put a red flag as sign that the water body is polluted, yellow flag for medium polluted and green flag for save water body or unpolluted. This activities held every month. Sometime they clean up the river with collect the garbage, plastic, solid waste and diapers that disposed at waterbody. At the beginning this activities is difficult and faced big challenge from parent, community live along the river, but after 3 years community realized that the water police action bring awareness among the people that community had responsibility to manage and preserve the river.
PARTNERSHIP WATER MONITORING
Group of Partnership for Water quality Monitoring (PWQM) promote by Municipal Environmental biro and community at up stream area. Recently This model adopted and become a model to conserve water spring by Environmental Protection Agencies (EPA) of East Java Province. This partnership involved student, local government at village and distric level, peasant groups, forestry biro and EPA of Jombang municipal. Every 2 month they monitoring the water quality using macroinvertebratae and habitat assessment. Dissucion among the PWQM member is become collaborative action on stream restoration to prevent environmental degradation in the watershed. Every month PWQM member planting tree sorounding the waterspring and promote to the community for wise used of water and every three month City major received water monitoring result and became guideline for water quality management.
