Military in Watershed Restoration: A Multistakeholder Study on the Involvement the Indonesian Military in Citarum River Conservation

Abstract

The Citarum watershed, Indonesia, was notorious for being the most polluted and destroyed in Indonesia. In 2018, the Indonesian Government created a new policy to restore this watershed, named Citarum Harum, by putting together multiple actors to combat watershed degradation, including one unique actor, namely the Indonesian military. This anomaly had created a new pattern and dynamics in watershed restoration. Historically, Indonesia had a peculiar civil-military relationship with the past military government. This creates a unique framework for how actors currently react to military involvement. This article examines these phenomena and elucidates the effectiveness of military involvement in watershed restoration. The study was conducted by the Citarum Harum watershed restoration programme in West Java, Indonesia. This study used in-depth interviews and multi-level stakeholder influence mapping on multiple informants involved in the restoration. The findings indicate a good shift in actor relations that creates improvements in watershed restoration. However, several other conditions also arise from the military's involvement, such as overlapping authorities, incompetency on some technicalities, desynchronization, and a shift in public perception. These problems require some adjustment in the roles of both civil and military personnel in the restoration programme to optimise the military's involvement further.