Improving Population Dynamic and Interaction Resource On Promoting Sustainable River Basin

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink

(S. T. Coleridge, British poet)

Water is a crucial resource for all forms of life. There are a several water resources such as ocean, Ice, Glaser, water soil, lake, inland seas, soil moisture, atmospheres and river. But not all water resources can be used for human life directly. They need to be processed before, because each water resources contain a number of chemicals and minerals which is harmful for human body, so it needs to be filtered before we take for drinking and other needed.

The term ‘sustainable development’ refers to the effort to ensure that economic growth take place in a way that can be continued in the future, without exhausting resources or harming any section of society. This principle first seized the public imagination by the UN Earth Summit in Rio, 1992, setting the twin challenges of changing wasteful patterns of consumption in industrialized countries and combating poverty. Poverty itself can be a huge source of environmental damage, because very poor people have no option but to exploit natural resource (forest, river waters, wild animal, etc.) in order to survive and are excluded from systems fore managing waste. Sustainable development is now a principle of every country within implementation of public policy. This put forward appositive, long term vision of a more prosperous and more just society, and a cleaner, healthier environment; a society offering a better quality of life for us, our children and grandchildren. Above all, it recognizes that economic growth, social cohesion and environmental protection must go hand in hand. Related with the term of sustainable, in this case we will focus on water sustainable, especially for sustain river basin.

Indonesia is one of archipelagic country, which has five biggest islands and more than ten thousands of rivers. Rivers in Indonesia are major used for transportation, irrigation, market (floating market in Banjarmasin) and also can be an alternative places for living. Most people who live along river are lower economic class or poor people. What does it mean? As I told before, Poverty itself can be a huge source of environmental damage, because poor people have no option but to exploit natural resource, including river water. They wash, take a bath, throw household waste, and do other daily activities in one place, river. Although water can take these waste into some places we don’t know, but surely river water was polluted and it’s harmful to use. Of course, its can threat the sustainable of river water.

People will care to their environment after they think about and feel the effect, benefit or suffer, right? Although, economic pressure –even habitual- can make people think that environment is unimportant, just because they think that they live just for now on, not for their generation, so they can exploit environment. In other word, there’s no sense of belonging to environment. So that belonging to environment is urgently needed. If people realize that environment belongs to them -in the frame that environment need to be sustain, not to exploit- they will care to the environment. But it is not easy as we say. To improve people sense to environment, they should know about their environment, and what will happen if they destroy the environment.

What can be done is always promoting about sustainable environment, especially for sustain river water. Seems as classic as environment problem, but I believe on principal of “When Prevention Better than Clean Up”. For me, ensuring that environment related to quality of life is a fundamental obligation for government. It also makes economic sense. Environmental diseases cost money in health care, medicines, sick leave, lower productivity, invalidity, and early retirement. These costs often outweigh the cost of prevention.

Communication on promoting is very important task. That’s the power of socialization and promotion, communication –the way of human interact-. Communication is the way to get into people mind.  We can influence even can change what is inside human brain by communication. Considering that human is dynamic, different communities have different social language, values and surely need different way to tell. Learn about with whom we face before is very important related to effective delivering the messages. Within using their language whoever will get the acceptance and success with what they tell about. There are thousand ways to Roma, so that to promote sustainable environment. Take poster about environment in every place, talk about benefit and suffer on seminar are kind to promote, but improve and find innovative and interesting ways to promote is a must, such as using music, games, out bond, boy scout, and multimedia  -that’s IT are for, right?-.

To promote sustain river basin to people who live along river, that major of them are poor, is not an easy thing, because we face the battle between economic pressure versus sustainable environment. Giving those tips and tricks to manage and safeguard environment practically, is better as an alternative solution for them.

I don’t want to say that government must take responsible about environmental problem more than other, because all of us have the same responsibility to clean up our environment. Government, law officers, and also the people have same responsibility but in different terms. Togetherness in action is a must! We just have one world which belongs to all of people in the world. So safeguarding the world is our responsibility.

How to do it? Just start from a little thing, start from our self, and start from now on. Being a model is important things to do. Realizing that environment is not just a place where we live in, but environment is the place who gives us a life, not only for today but also for tomorrow, for our next generation.