Water took center stage at the Symposium on Water Sustainability 2025: Bridging the Past, Present, and Future for Global Water Sustainability, held on Wednesday (Oct. 22, 2025). The event, FISIP, took place in a hybrid format with participants joining both onsite at the C7 Hall, Sekaran Campus, Gunungpati, Semarang, and online from various regions and countries.
Organized by the FISIP UNNES academic team, the symposium featured two keynote speakers, Fany Wedahuditama, Executive Director of Water Stewardship Indonesia (WSI), and Jakkrit Sangkhamanee from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. The event also drew 82 researchers from various institutions presenting their work on water related challenges and sustainability.
The Water Crisis Amid Abundance
In his presentation, Fany Wedahuditama emphasized that water is the ultimate driver of life and the foundation of all economic and social systems. “There are alternatives for energy, but no alternatives to water,” he asserted, underscoring the urgency of sustainable water management as global businesses face an estimated US$425 billion in risks from scarcity, inefficiency, and climate-related disruptions.
According to Fany, Indonesia’s water challenges stem not from scarcity of natural resources but from unequal distribution, pollution, and weak management systems. “Indonesia is rich in water, yet access remains unequal. On Java Island, for instance, per capita water availability dropped from 1,169 cubic meters in 2015 to a projected 500 cubic meters by 2040,” he noted.
He further explained that only 19 percent of Indonesian households have access to piped water, while 70 percent of rivers are heavily polluted, and 46 percent of irrigation networks are in poor condition.
To address these challenges, Fany outlined two complementary frameworks: Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and Water Stewardship (WS).“IWRM is a top down, government led approach relying on policy and institutional coordination,” he said. “Water Stewardship, on the other hand, is a voluntary, bottom-up movement initiated by businesses, communities, and civil society that recognize their water-related risks and responsibilities.”For Fany, both approaches must work hand in hand to build adaptive, equitable, and sustainable water governance.
The Naga and the Cosmopolitics of Urban Water
In a shift from governance to cosmology, Jakkrit Sangkhamanee offered a thought-provoking perspective in his presentation titled “Precarious Naga: Cosmopolitics, Capitalism, and the Ruins of Urban Water in Bangkok.”
He explored how the mythological naga, a serpent-like water deity in Southeast Asian belief systems, symbolizes resilience and coexistence between humans and nature in the midst of environmental and urban crises.“The naga’s persistence in Bangkok reveals that the city is not just inhabited by humans it’s also home to other beings that are part of the city’s cosmological and ecological fabric,” he explained.
According to Jakkrit, the rapid urbanization of Bangkok has erased much of the city’s waterways rivers, canals, and wetlands that were once believed to be the naga’s habitat. Yet, the naga endures as a metaphor for resistance against social inequality, capitalist exploitation, and ecological degradation.
“Bangkok is not merely a human city; it is a city for many beings for water, for the naga, for the more-than-human world,” he said. In facing the climate crisis and ecological collapse, Jakkrit urged for a kind of “cosmopolitical diplomacy” inspired by the naga one that rethinks coexistence between humans, spirits, and nature in shaping sustainable urban futures.
Bridging Knowledge and Worlds
The symposium’s discussions reflected a rich confluence of disciplines from policy and governance to philosophy, ecology, and culture. Both speakers highlighted that water sustainability cannot be achieved through infrastructure alone, but through reimagining values, relationships, and responsibilities toward the natural world.
Under the theme “Bridging the Past, Present, and Future for Global Water Sustainability,” the symposium served as a reminder that water lies at the heart of human survival and ecological balance a medium through which societies can rediscover their interconnectedness across science, policy, and cosmology.
