Water Literacy in Developing Country - A case study for Indonesia

Abstract: Public participation is vital to ensure sustainable water management, and providing education is one of the way to trigger participation. For decades, developed countries try to educate their citizen to be environmentally literate, and for the water sector, water-related knowledge has been introduced to the public by schools, municipalities and water utilities. The condition is harder for developing countries, especially in Indonesia, where government fund is insufficient to support both infrastructure and education development. Education on water- related knowledge is very limited and rarely executed by local government and water utilities, resulting in several water problems caused by people behaviour. Considering the limited information provision for the citizen, this study tried to assess water literacy of Indonesian citizen using on-line survey followed by an in-depth analysis. The survey was targeting at the middle-income individuals. The most important results are: 1) Mean score of water literacy among the women group is lower than men 2) Mean score of all respondents shows low level of water literacy 3) Products which has possibility to pollute the environment based on this study are cooking oil and personal care products which contain micro-plastic. The study results also confirm the need of better water education for household level and recommends several issues to be covered in the education material to prevent further water pollution problem caused by household.