Assessing Bandung's governance challenges of water, waste and climate change. Lessons from urban Indonesia.

This study assesses the gaps, opportunities and priorities of Bandung in managing its water and waste challenges. The City Blueprint Approach is used to identify pressures, to measure the city's Integrated Water Resources Management performance, and to assess its governance. Based on the analyses of Bandung four topics are discussed in more detail: (a) the transferability of the lessons from Bandung, (b) the challenges of solid waste management in Indonesian cities, (c) community-based sanitation, and d) implications for informal settlements. The assessment reveals that Bandung's basic water services are largely met but flood risks are high and waste water treatment is poorly covered leading to large scale pollution. This is amplified by extensive land use change and poor solid waste collection and treatment as waste is almost completely dumped in landfills. Proper solid waste handling will reduce landfills dependency. Slum areas are disproportionately affected by climate-related hazards and continuously under-recognized in the discussion of cities' risk and vulnerability while its dwellers are the most vulnerable members of the society. Bandung has started with slum area legalization which provides slum dwellers with legal security that protects their right to live as well as access to basic public infrastructures. Inadequate monitoring and uncoordinated financial source allocations are among the governance gaps. Governance is reactive and community involvement is low. Yet, Bandung exhibits characteristics of a collaborative city with potential to maximize its cross-stakeholder learning with supportive leadership. Bandung and other cities in Indonesia face multi-level governance gaps. Bandung is recommended to expand the co-operation of private, civil and public actors, to implement network governance and decentralized management approaches focusing on improving the implementing capacity, better monitoring, co-creation and, better exploration of the options for financial support. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.