Sharing the Cake towards Sustainability: Power-sharing in Wastewater Governance - The Case of IPAL Kartamantul

Abstract

Encouraged by resources differences or problems similarities, welfare disparity or larger area interests, interlocal collaboration links to numerous concepts brought by planning theorists. As collaboration means multi-party involvement on certain development subject, the term of power-sharing may well associated to the governance model used in the collaboration. This paper aims to explore the anomaly in Sekber Kartamantul governance, a well-known best practise of interlocal collaboration in Indonesia, by its well-known case of regional wastewater treatment plant. This paper argue that the anomaly in the governance brought a better sustainability index, based on the concept of Sustainable Governance Index. Early part of this paper resumes the theories of governance, sustainability and the index of Sustainable Governance Indicators. As theoritical foundation of the discussion laid out, the next part is centered on the decision making process, highlighting the powersharing model used in the decision making process. The discussion follows revealed the anomaly of the governance on the powersharing model used. Further discussion led to uncover that the collaboration performed hegemony powersharing in formal arrangement and simultaneously performed balanced of power powersharing model in informal arrangement. This anomaly affected the governance index in better efficiency and better domestic adaptability. The twist on the governance model in regional wastewater treatment project is a local innovation to ensure better service delivery towards sustainable greater urban infrastructure in Indonesia. Keywords— interlocal collaboration, wastewater governance, powersharing I. GOVERNANCE, SUSTAINABILITY AND SUSTAINABLE GOVERNANCE INDICATORS As [1] stated governance these days have shifted into something more adaptive and reflexive. Governance deals with processes, describes the entails of power interplay and produces institution arrangement. Reference [2] stressed the importance of adapting and transforming capability as the main outcome of governance. In two decades, we have seen the rise of good governance as mainstream in governance studies. Although various best practise were published (eg. in [3], [4], [5] and [6]), critics to good governance remain on the discussion. Reference [7] noted that the concept of good governance demands output that lacks on priority setting, while [8] stated that such global numbers should be embedded in a cultural context, allowing some adjustment in local context to be made. For the discussion in this paper, we argue that governance, differ from government, focus on the process of how decision being made. Sustainability has been defined in various ways, [9] classified sustainable definitions into two major mainstreams i.e. the macroeconomic totality and the 3E. The first group of scholars defined sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising those of the future” [10]. This mainstream focused on the macro level, top-down perspective as stated on its criteria. The last one came from a bottom-up perspective which focused on the micro level. 3E describes a broader concept of sustainability encompasses three major themes; economic prosperity, environmental quality, and social equality. The algorythm of those three is then considered as the formula of sustainable development. However, Wiener identified the existing gap between the two mainstream. The first perspective emphasizes too much on the aspect of meeting economic needs and is calculated on a macro scale. This perspective then gives rise to macrointerventions. In the last perspective, the intervention is expected to be comprehensive in all three aspects (economic, environmental and social). Interventions then are technical in nature which is difficult to see their impact in an integrated manner. Reference [9] found that governance is a middle tier that binds interventions on the scale of macro policies and technical projects supporting sustainable development. Reference [11] define the role of governance in sustainable development is to determine the rules of the game in development actions carried out by development stakeholders. Reference [12] stated a more important role that is as a key element in the implementation of sustainable development. In this understanding, governance is no longer known as an element beyond the concept of sustainability. Governance is an internal element in the framework of sustainable development. Reference [9] also emphasized that unsustainable governance can cause more severe impacts than unsustainable actions taken by stakeholders of sustainable development. The scale of damage caused by unsustainable governance is systemic with widespread damage. Sustainable governance is defined as a set of rules that assert the use of shared resources by various actors in order to ensure equal and efficient distribution of resources [1]. Some other literature confirms that sustainable governance is a continuous learning process in managing shared resources [13]. This learning process influences the interaction 18th International Conference on Sustainable Environment and Architecture (SENVAR 2018) Copyright © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Advances in Engineering Research, volume 156