Understanding Abundance of Litter on Urban Lake in Developing Country: a Systems-thinking Approach

An abundance of litter on urban lake environment has been an issue for decades. This complex issue involves many stakeholders and also couples human socio-economic and natural-environment systems. Understanding the interrelationships among stakeholders and between those two systems is important as a first step for looking the solutions. This paper aims to present a systems-thinking approach to illustrate the relationships among key factors contributing to the issue. We examined Kenanga Lake located on Campus of Universitas Indonesia, Depok City, Indonesia and some part of its catchment area as a pilot project. By conducting field observation and previous literature review, we identified that campus management, municipal government, and citizen are three major stakeholders in the systems. The results showed that lake cleanness contributes to campus image, thus it gives feedback to the city’s economic and population growth. In another side, those growths combined with some socio-cultural aspects have a pathway to perpetuate this problem. The interrelationships among those factors are further illustrated by a conceptual diagram. Finally, this holistic approach diagram can be used to inspire the development of dynamic models for helping decision making.