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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. \u201cThere are alternatives for energy, but no alternatives to water,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Fany, Indonesia\u2019s water challenges stem not from scarcity of natural resources but from unequal distribution, pollution, and weak management systems. \u201cIndonesia 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,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To address these challenges, Fany outlined two complementary frameworks: Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and Water Stewardship (WS).\u201cIWRM is a top down, government led approach relying on policy and institutional coordination,\u201d he said. \u201cWater 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.\u201dFor Fany, both approaches must work hand in hand to build adaptive, equitable, and sustainable water governance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u201cPrecarious Naga: Cosmopolitics, Capitalism, and the Ruins of Urban Water in Bangkok.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.\u201cThe naga\u2019s persistence in Bangkok reveals that the city is not just inhabited by humans it\u2019s also home to other beings that are part of the city\u2019s cosmological and ecological fabric,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Jakkrit, the rapid urbanization of Bangkok has erased much of the city\u2019s waterways rivers, canals, and wetlands that were once believed to be the naga\u2019s habitat. Yet, the naga endures as a metaphor for resistance against social inequality, capitalist exploitation, and ecological degradation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBangkok is not merely a human city; it is a city for many beings for water, for the naga, for the more-than-human world,\u201d he said. In facing the climate crisis and ecological collapse, Jakkrit urged for a kind of \u201ccosmopolitical diplomacy\u201d inspired by the naga one that rethinks coexistence between humans, spirits, and nature in shaping sustainable urban futures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bridging Knowledge and Worlds
The symposium\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under the theme \u201cBridging the Past, Present, and Future for Global Water Sustainability,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":16010,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unnes.ac.id\/fisip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unnes.ac.id\/fisip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unnes.ac.id\/fisip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unnes.ac.id\/fisip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unnes.ac.id\/fisip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16009"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/unnes.ac.id\/fisip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16015,"href":"https:\/\/unnes.ac.id\/fisip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16009\/revisions\/16015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unnes.ac.id\/fisip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unnes.ac.id\/fisip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unnes.ac.id\/fisip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unnes.ac.id\/fisip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}