Collaborative Governance Framework for Cleaning Riverine Plastic Waste in Citarum River of Indonesia

Abstract

In the Asian region, rivers have been an undoubtedly strategic resource for human activities such as agriculture and transportation and as a water resource for everyday life. This has been true for the Citarum River of Indonesia for a long time. The river, however, has been endangered by pollution that harms its water quality to the extent that the river has been dubbed “the dirtiest river in the world” by the international media. Pollution sources include disposed plastic waste swept by runoff into the river. The Indonesian government has given serious attention to the issue, endorsing a presidential regulation in 2018 to tackle water pollution in the Citarum River. The “Citarum Harum” program is the vehicle for implementing this presidential regulation, involving multiple layers of government from the national to the village level. Aiming to clean-up and prevent pollution, including from different kinds of plastic waste that reach the river and eventually the ocean. This study has focused on observing the governance system of the Citarum Harum program, which includes plastic waste management and clean-up of the Citarum River, Indonesia by applying a collaborative governance framework (Emerson et al., 2022) to examine how the program has been implemented from a governance perspective. It offers policy and action recommendations to further enhance the sustained collaborative governance of Citarum River plastic waste management in the years to come.