https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9755-2650
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Abstract
Integrative transdisciplinary approaches to watershed management are critical for addressing intersecting social, economic, and ecological processes that shape planetary health outcomes for humans, animals, and ecosystems. These challenges are acute in watersheds like the Citarum River in West Java, Indonesia, which suffers from severe pollution due to inadequate waste management infrastructure, and is worsened by rapid urbanisation and a changing climate, which further degrades the river ecosystem and threatens lives and livelihoods. Developing a unified approach to addressing these complex problems, and responding to real world social, governance, and biophysical conditions through integrated water management, is difficult to achieve in practice. Responding to this challenge, living labs have emerged as a mode of transdisciplinary research and implementation that incorporates the expertise of diverse stakeholders in real-world settings to learn and develop solutions to complex challenges, like those faced in the Citarum River. While living lab approaches have been used widely in Western cities, there is little research that investigates its usefulness in informal peri-urban settlements. This paper presents a case study of the Citarum Living Lab, a live action research program that aims to co-develop, test, and learn from socio-technical experiments in real-world settings in collaboration with an interdisciplinary international research consortium, government, NGOs, businesses, community leaders, and residents. With the ultimate aim of revitalising the Citarum river and its surrounding environments and communities, the program engages with community experiences, existing institutional frameworks, and changing environmental conditions. This paper identifies the conditions and factors that enable and constrain a living lab approach in a vulnerable peri-urban watershed from the perspective of the research team by employing a reflexive participatory action research methodology. Place-based, transdisciplinary responses to planetary health imperatives in this context require navigation of complex, multi-level governance contexts and novel resourcing models to support applied research, implementation, and learning.
Citation: Hadfield P, Prescott M, Holden J, Novalia W, Suwarso R, Marthanty DR, et al. (2024) Citarum Living Lab: Co-creating visions for sustainable river revitalisation. PLOS Water 3(8): e0000200. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pwat.0000200
Editor: Venkatramanan Senapathi, National College (Autonomous), INDIA
Received: October 3, 2023; Accepted: May 30, 2024; Published: August 23, 2024
Copyright: © 2024 Hadfield et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: In accordance with our human research ethics protocols approved by Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee [Project ID: 31261], the qualitative data referenced in this study (including project meeting minutes, community workshop outputs, and researcher reflections) must remain private / confidential. Specifically, raw data is not permitted to be published or shared with external parties; publications can reference the organisation and role of participants in research activities, and where relevant, anonymised quotes from recorded interviews and workshops can be included. Otherwise, qualitative data is paraphrased and referenced in aggregate. The Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee can be contacted at muhrec@monash.edu +61 3 990 52052. For enquiries about access to internal project reports referenced in the paper, please contact the corresponding author.
Funding: This work was funded by Monash Art, Design and Architecture (internal, to Diego Ramirez-Lovering), Indonesian Education Ministry through Directorate Higher Education Grant for International Research Collaboration (NKB-1957/UN2.R3.1/HKP.05.00/2019 to Dwinanti Rika Marthanty), Asia Pacific Network for Global Change Research (CRECS2020-04MY-Novalia to Wikke Novalia), the Study Melbourne Research Partnerships (SMRP) grant through veski (3005 to Diego Ramirez-Lovering), Monash Data Futures Institute Seed Grant (internal, to Michaela Prescott), Monash Sustainable Development Institute Collaboration Fund (internal, to Jane Holden), and Monash-Warwick Alliance Catalyst Scheme Fund (internal, to Rob Raven). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
1. Introduction
Many of societies’ problems with natural resource management are a consequence of the mismatch between the scale of resource governance and the functional scale(s) of the ecological systems being managed [1]. This has led to calls for a more integrated and systematic approach to address these problems by bringing together the social and economic dimensions alongside the biophysical dimensions [2]. Interest in integrative transdisciplinary approaches is increasing, and requires collaboration across scales—from local to global [3–5]. Planetary Health, amongst other integrated and interdisciplinary concepts such as One Health and EcoHealth, frames the interdependence of humans, animals and the environment and advocates for integrative goals and aspirations [6]. Researchers have even advocated for the development of a discipline of ‘watershed epidemiology’, recognising the watershed as a socio-ecologically relevant unit of investigation which contributes to our understanding of the water-land-human health nexus [7]. “The definition of healthy ecosystems is […] necessarily a place-based process, likely to emerge from a transdisciplinary definition with disciplinary experts (medical doctors, veterinarians, ecologists, epidemiologists, social scientists), and decision makers, local communities and stakeholders” [8]. Within an urban or peri-urban setting, there are often biophysical disciplinary experts involved in water management, notably engineering, technological sciences, urban planners and designers, and build and landscape architects. Yet, in practice, solving complex water and health problems arguably requires developing a unified approach to integrate social, governance, and biophysical perspectives.
Typically, at a policy level, the watershed is considered the most appropriate scale for water management, [9] where basin-level planning and local implementation strategies are guided by an organising framework and principles of practice that respond to site-specific contexts. Since the 1990’s there have been many proponents of the ’integrated’ approach in the field of river basin and water resource management. Broadly, Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) aims to promote coordinated development and management of water, land, and related resources in watersheds, to maximise equitable socioeconomic benefits without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems. At a finer city-scale, this approach has translated to Integrated Urban Water Management, and in Australia, Water Sensitive Urban Design. IWRM focuses on delivering a triple bottom line of economic, social, and environmental benefits as a result of an integrated approach.
Yet, IWRM has also been criticised for being difficult to apply, in part due to its perception as a “universal solution” [10]. A range of challenges of integrating various scales and dimensions of problems and solutions have been acknowledged. In fact, local demonstrations in the literature on community-based wastewater and waste services [11] show how a village-level approach can better respond to the particular dynamics of local material-social contexts with the potential for replication across the basin. Despite these local demonstrations, an important question remains in terms of how to effectively implement local demonstrations in a way that they are both attuned to local circumstances, while being anchored in broader policies and institutions, and driven by ambition to contribute to scaling solutions beyond the village. We argue that place-based interventions in living labs are particularly promising and can activate participation, enhance community connectedness to solutions, whilst embedding them into existing socio-material fabrics. To identify opportunities for local demonstrations it is important for solution pathways to be co-produced in an iterative learning process, which not only brings multidisciplinary perspectives together but also draws on local knowledge and lived experiences. However, so far, living lab approaches have predominantly been applied in Western urban contexts, with limited evidence of how a living lab approach can be successfully implemented in an informal peri-urban settlement.
This paper presents an exploratory case study of the Citarum Living Lab, a program of place-based action research and implementation in the Citarum watershed in West Java, Indonesia that applies integrated principles at the village scale. The paper asks: what are the enabling conditions for co-creating transdisciplinary living lab experiments in vulnerable peri-urban watersheds with diverse stakeholders to advance sustainable environment and health outcomes? In doing so, the paper aims to contribute to better understanding effective implementation of a living lab approach at the village scale in the context of a tropical upstream watershed with complex and entrenched ecological problems.
2. Living labs as a pathway for integrated solutions at the watershed scale towards planetary health
2.1 Linking watershed and health
The relationship between public health and watershed conditions has to date received little attention, even though clear links exist [12]. A number of recent studies have made connections between specific health consequences and watershed conditions [13]. A study across 25 developing countries revealed that increased tree cover upstream reduces the likelihood of childhood diarrhoeal disease downstream. Rural areas benefit most, emphasising the importance of preserving natural resources for public health, especially in underdeveloped regions [14]. Another study from Fiji inferred relationships between environmental conditions of sub-catchments—such as erosion and flooding—and incidence and recurrence of typhoid fever [15]. Both of these studies highlighted the association between cleaner water and prevalence of water-related disease.
River pollution has demonstrated detrimental effects on human and environmental health, as well as economic consequences. For example, polluted water can lower the yield and quality of agricultural produce, [16] and poor health from water-borne illnesses hinders access to education and employment [17]. Water system degradation has inequitable impacts on poor and vulnerable communities. For example, a study from India found that sewage leaking into lakes through stormwater drains is a significant pollution source, harming water quality, biodiversity, and posing health risks for nearby low-income communities due to contact with contaminated water [18]. While the threat to freshwater ecosystems can be mitigated at local and regional scales, management is rarely purely a technical challenge and often more a social, political and financial one [2]. For watersheds like the Citarum River, direct disposal of plastic and other solid waste into the river is an acute challenge [19]. Insufficient local waste management infrastructure and services limit local capacities to prevent, recover, recycle, repair, and reuse waste like single use plastics at sufficient scale to prevent environmental harm. Public health implications of improved solid waste management in Global South contexts stem from the potential for reduced exposure to environmental hazards associated with waste dumps and other sites where waste accumulates [20]. Waste recovery and reuse also has the potential for poverty reduction outcomes through new or more secure employment and income opportunities, including for informal waste pickers, women, and other vulnerable groups [21, 22].
Transdisciplinary research and implementation projects demonstrate the potential for environmental and human health and wellbeing improvements through interventions in hydrological systems [12, 23, 24]. Moreover, Parkes and colleagues have suggested that integrated watershed governance is more likely to be achieved “when different perspectives, including health and well-being, are explicitly understood, communicated, and sought as co-benefits of watershed management” [25]. For example, the Revitalising Informal Settlements and their Environments (RISE) program has adopted an explicit transdisciplinary research approach to investigate health-environment links in informal settlements in Indonesia and Fiji [24]. It includes interventions like water infrastructure upgrades (drainage, rainwater tanks, wastewater treatment) to reduce faecal contamination and gastrointestinal disease risks caused by local flooding and sewage issues [26].
These initiatives require effective engagement and collaboration between engineers, hydrologists, ecologists, spatial designers (such as architects, landscape architects and planners) and social scientists [2] and the involvement of medical disciplines and epidemiologists, [8] as well as decision makers, local communities and other stakeholders. However, such holistic implementation of river and watershed rehabilitation will be challenging if funding is fragmented or siloed or if governance is not supportive of a coordinated and targeted approach [2].
2.2 Living labs for place-based integration
Originally developed at MIT, and later on expanding particularly in Europe, living labs have emerged over the past two decades in universities and urban settings as an approach to problem-solving and knowledge generation for impact in response to global challenges such as climate change and sustainable development. Living labs are defined as a place-based approach to applied research and innovation involving development, testing, and learning from socio-technical experiments in real-world settings [27–30]. Underpinned by learning and co-production processes, living labs are typically solutions oriented. Living lab experiments involve the co-production of knowledge—including defining and evaluating problems and solutions—by academics across disciplines, public and private stakeholders (i.e. governments, businesses, NGOs), and other ‘end-users’ such as community groups and residents. We consider how a living lab approach can enable co-production of solution pathways that bridge the socio-technical dimensions for tackling watershed challenges.
The living lab concept has to some degree been applied in Indonesia including initiatives focused on smart city development [31] and community development [32]. These studies highlight the value of a living lab approach for overcoming institutional silos, connecting social and technical interventions, and fostering community participation and communication. Living Labs have transformative potential because of their emphasis on problematising assumptions and norms, and promoting social learning across sectors through ongoing feedback loops. Research increasingly highlights the need to overcome governance challenges and short-termism to effectively implement living labs and drive systems change [33–35].
In emphasising place, the living lab approach aims to embed knowledge co-production processes within given socio-material contexts, where locations are not merely physically bounded areas but are imbued with meanings [36] based on what values, norms, knowledge and experiences are brought to bear by those involved. Thus, active participation, deliberation and articulation of collective problems, aspirations and visions, involving a diversity of viewpoints, are core to the living lab approach. From an urban planning lens, for example, co-production can increase synergy and collaboration between governments and the public with regards to improving public services [37]. Furthermore, co-production that involves progressive state actors and urban communities, has also been shown to increase transformative potential through political ownerships, social movements, and activation of neighbourhoods in mobilising generative place-based solutions to tackle development challenges [38].
Importantly, living labs drive the search for solutions by employing an exploratory and experimental mode, which acknowledges uncertainties and unintended consequences that arise from complex human-environmental relationships. Thus, answers cannot be found through linear thinking and narrow technocratic approach alone, rather the focus is on bridging the technical and social divide to develop place-based solution pathways [39]. Crucial to this process is the development of tangible projects to test and trial solutions, while adapting them to suit local contexts. Experiments provide mechanisms to put knowledge into action through direct interventions, [40] generate evidence to influence policy decisions, [41] and foster social learning for transformative outcomes [42]. Research has shown that local-scale experiments in the urban water sector can facilitate mutual learning and enhance collaboration [42].
Evaluation of living lab activities, including establishing learning platforms, ongoing collaborative processes and project-based outputs and outcomes, is critical. Transition researchers argue that reflexive evaluation undertaken periodically can offer valuable insights to inform adaptation of experiments and revision of envisioned pathways [43]. There are a few ways evaluation may be incorporated into a living lab. First, an ex-ante evaluation, performed prior to implementation, to inform design of experiments. Second, formative evaluation conducted to adjust and improve ongoing experiments and processes. Third, ex-post evaluation to assess the outcomes and contributions of experiments after completion. Given the complexities of socio-ecological processes in the context of watershed management, evaluation of a living lab likely involves emergent data and baseline information—to be updated as learning evolves—and fluidity in goals setting and determination of future pathways as changing conditions and new understandings come to light [44]. Implicit to this process is the pragmatist orientation towards making a difference in action and the contingent nature of evaluation that “brings problems to the surface, promotes readiness for change and lays the groundwork for reorganization” [45].
Through the living lab approach, the integration of social and biophysical disciplines and multistakeholder perspectives at the intersection of watershed and human health, can thus be operationalised in terms of place-based research and innovation deploying an iterative process of co-creation of visions and solution pathways, exploration of usable knowledge, tools and solutions, implementation of tangible and action-oriented experiments, and reflexive evaluation to foster learning. Whilst promising, living labs are no panacea to solving complex problems as there are risks involved in experimenting within the real-world [46]. Conflicting learning priorities, navigating network tensions, and the inherent uncertainties of living lab processes may present significant challenges [47]. Thus, we propose to test and reflect on this integrative living lab approach for identifying solutions pathways at the village level to help address watershed problems. Whilst scaling up local solutions is explicitly considered in the living lab approach, the focus of our paper is on the early phases of co-creation, exploration, and experimentation. Anticipating the requirements to scale the interventions, it is pertinent for living labs to adequately bring in policy actors at every step of the process and to identify replicable models.
3. Research design: Enabling reflexivity in participatory action research
Consistent with the overall approach of the Citarum Living Lab, this paper employs participatory action research (PAR) methods of researcher reflection through collaborative writing [48, 49]. Following Olmos-Vega et al. [50], we define reflexivity as “a set of continuous, collaborative, and multifaceted practices through which researchers self-consciously critique, appraise, and evaluate how their subjectivity and context influence the research processes.” This method is well suited to reflect on the processes, challenges, complexities, and potential benefits of transdisciplinary living lab experiments in vulnerable peri-urban watersheds, and examines how stakeholders navigate these challenges to promote sustainable environmental and health outcomes. Reflection is an integral process in PAR in which participants co-design and implement interventions in real-life settings, while simultaneously observing and thinking critically about their practice and positionality, in order to learn from, through, and for action [51].
Deliberative collaborative writing enables reflection by extending knowledge co-production to include collaborative knowledge dissemination, as well as contributing to relationship building, shared understanding, and social learning in project work, [48, 49] all the while connecting, comparing, and contrasting empirical observations with existing scholarly work and concepts. This process is generally considered valuable for exploratory applied research to guide reflexive and applied research practice in real-world settings as part of a living lab [52] to capture tacit knowledge of researchers who are themselves stakeholders in the project and who have in-depth content and contextual expertise [53]. This process is equally important for generating conceptually relevant insights with potential for replication elsewhere; “without unpacking the process of collaboration and inquiring into stakeholder interactions and dynamics, the design and context of [transdisciplinary] collaboration remains a black box and risks failure to deliver the outcomes and aspirations of system transformations” [54].
This paper and reflection process are embedded in extensive activities in the action research location, as described in the previous section, which informed the development of the final Masterplan for revitalising the Citarik river and its communities. We adapt a typical PAR process [55] to examine researcher experiences and perspectives on two overlapping action research cycles [56] (ARCs): a) the research design and approach (corresponding with ARC1), and b) co-production of outputs with local partners and communities (corresponding with ARC2) comprising the first four years of the Citarum Living Lab. Table 1 maps the different activities, outcomes and datasets against the two ARCs. The next phase of the program—research, monitoring, and evaluation activities to develop a proof of concept and pathways for replication and scaling—is outside of the scope of this paper.
During the action research activities, moments of reflection involved researchers deliberately and collectively making sense of and reflecting on aspects such as emerging issues, ongoing challenges, and new opportunities, including in joint project meetings, site visits, and workshop settings. Typical for PAR processes, data points reporting on these reflexive processes include both codified outcomes such as minutes and project reports, as well as individual, verbal recollections of the experiential realities as perceived by the research team members. Hence, the steps taken to analyse and document the implementation of the Citarum Living Lab by the research team involved:
- Collation of project documentation of internal and external meetings, seminars, workshops, and research and other project outcomes (in the form of reports) detailed in Table 1.
- Reporting on individual experiences and reflections of implementing the living lab by the research team. Via a brief, qualitative, online survey, the research team were provided the following guiding prompts:
- What factors shaped our ability and approach to:
- ○ Designing the Citarum Living Lab?
- ○ Adapting integrated water management concepts to the local context of the site?
- ○ Developing the Masterplan and demonstration site?
- What challenges did these processes present to you/the project (thinking about your role and theoretical perspective, and the project objectives) and how were they overcome?
- What lessons can be learned for subsequent phases of the project and the living lab approach to integrated water management more broadly?
- What factors shaped our ability and approach to:
- Inductive thematic analysis of project documentation and individual reflections on process challenges and lessons learned over time. The analysis sought to identify interpersonal, methodological, and contextual conditions affecting the conduct of the living lab [57]. Key insights were initially mapped against the ARCs (Table 1) and were subsequently consolidated into four overarching themes which represent the underlying enabling conditions for the living lab (detailed in Section 5): 1) blended funding strategy; 2) place-based adaptation of principles and concepts; 3) dialogue and trust-building; and 4) intermediation of stakeholder priorities.
- Following draft synthesis of key themes and empirical insights by lead authors, the broader authorship team engaged in critical reading and editing (a variation of “directed writing” as a reflective method [48]).
The participants in this process are all listed as co-authors on this paper and represent 12 different research departments/institutes, six institutions, and a range of disciplinary perspectives, including design, landscape architecture, political sciences, environmental engineering, hydrology, data science, materials and manufacturing, sustainability transitions, and interdisciplinary and applied research. The results and discussion presented below represent the outcomes of this reflective analysis.
4. Action research context
Living labs are place-based interventions in real-world circumstances. Therefore, a good understanding of the context in and processes through which the living lab was established is important. Hence, the next section first provides an elaborate description of the Citarum Living Lab, before turning to the outcomes of the analysis.
4.1 Government responses to pollution of the Citarum River
The Citarum River is the largest river in West Java province and passes through 10 districts and two cities, with more than 25 million people relying on it for their energy and livelihoods. Despite being designated as a National Strategic River Basin, [58] and the subject of numerous national and international remediation programs over the past 25 years, [59] the river is extremely polluted. Inadequate waste management infrastructure and insufficient coverage of solid waste and sanitation services, [60] as well as accelerating urbanisation, land-use change, and climate change, threaten the river ecosystem and quality of life for those living within the watershed. In response to the growing environmental and humanitarian crisis in the Citarum basin, the Indonesian government adopted an IWRM approach in 2008, and the Asian Development Bank funded a more than USD 500 million program of works to improve water availability and integrated water resources management. The extensive program, had eight expected outputs: (i) institutions and planning for IWRM; (ii) water resource development and management; (iii) water sharing; (iv) environmental protection; (v) disaster management; (vi) community empowerment; (vii) data and information; and (viii) project management. Parallel to this, then President Yudhoyono published the Cita Citarum (trans. Dream Citarum) 2009–2014 Roadmap, which was also guided by IWRM principles [61].
In 2015, the West Java Government (WJG) launched a Multiparty Implementation Action Plan, the Citarum Bestari (Clean, Healthy, Sustainable and Beautiful) Movement [62]. Four-years later, a Presidential Decree was issued alongside the launch of the Citarum Harum program (trans. Fragrant Citarum), to accelerate the revitalisation of the river basin. The program established the Citarum River Task Force (Satgas Citarum) for development and implementation of a seven-year Roadmap to 2025 and a 20-year Action Plan (Citarum Rencana Aksi, or Renaksi), in consultation with institutions/ministries, military, law enforcement, academics, students, communities, scholars, cultural experts, media and activists [63]. As of mid-2023, the Action Plan is delivering 12 programs focused on river clean up, critical land use practice, domestic and industrial waste, floating fish cages, education and policy enforcement through initiatives across the watershed. The military have played a significant role in program implementation, dividing the watershed into 21 sectors and overseeing activities, [64] and the approach is planned for replication across 12 other priority river watersheds in Indonesia. The ecological revitalisation objectives of the Citarum Harum have nonetheless been hindered by insufficient socialisation and dissemination of inaccurate information, a lack of synergy and integration among the program working groups (or Pokja) and stakeholders in the upper watershed, [65] poor coordination of the offices (Dinas) participating in the working groups—each with their own interest and programs, funding, human resources and authority—and limited human resources and funds [64].
In this context, the Citarum Living Lab arose in response to an invitation from the Governor of West Java, Ridwan Kamil in 2018 who proposed to develop a new approach to meet the Action Plan targets and support the aims of Presidential Decree No 15, 2018 ‘Acceleration of pollution control and damage of Citarum Watershed’. The program involves a collaboration between Monash University and Universitas Indonesia (UI), the Citarum Harum SATGAS, and West Java Provincial Environmental Agency (Dinas Lingkungan Hidup, DLH).
4.2 The Citarum Living Lab
The Citarum Living Lab adopts a place-based, transdisciplinary approach to river revitalisation at a village scale, building on the ‘Leapfrogging pathways for a water sensitive Bogor’ project [66] and the RISE program [26]. The program aims to design waste and sanitation systems that are tailored to the river and village landscapes; socially, culturally and economically appropriate; deliver improved environmental, social-economic, and health outcomes; and generate empirical evidence to transition village waste collection and reuse at scale. The Citarum Living Lab mobilises stakeholders across sectors and levels of government, and supports local capacity building for experimentation and implementation of integrated water management. In this project, the living lab concept is operationalised through four types of research activities (see Fig 1):
- Co-creation: listening to the community and stakeholders, informing communities of the science underpinning the biophysical conditions of the environment, articulating aspirations and ideas, and co-design of solutions.
- Exploration: translating these insights into designs for technical pilots and demonstrations, and informing ideas about social change, such as governance, behaviours, communication or training needs.
- Experimentation: testing the feasibility and desirability of these designs in real-life conditions, and in particular places, and to collect and analyse data.
- Evaluation: learning from the experiments through continuous monitoring, validation, and innovation, and ultimately to develop recommendations for policy and scaling.
This paper reports on two key phases (ARCs) of the program involving the establishment of the living lab, outlined next: ARC1: Relationship building and project conceptualisation (2018–2023), and ARC2: Masterplan and pilot development (2021-ongoing).
4.3 Relationship building and project conceptualisation (ARC1)
ARC1 comprises foundational activities for the program, namely partnership development, consultation, and site selection. Over a four-year period of consultation and exchange of expertise across academia, government, industry, community, and NGOs, the project consolidated the consortium’s understanding of the complex challenges surrounding watershed pollution control. This process culminated in a holistic vision for community and river revitalisation in the Citarum, distilled into five guiding principles linking people, places, and riverine landscapes (Fig 2):
- Improved sanitation services: apply nature-based sanitation management systems to clean wastewater prior to discharge into the environment and river.
- Improved solid waste services: create infrastructure and incentives for increasing waste recovery at the source, increasing managed waste and reducing waste in the environment.
- Development of sustainable local economies: create new business models and markets for start-up or small circular economy enterprises, that realise the value of waste and keeps this value in the community.
- Restore the riverine environment: mitigate site based and sub-catchment-based sources of pollution and environmental degradation while maintaining the hydraulic capacity for flood water conveyance. Aquatic habitats will be restored through flow regulation, modifications to waterway geomorphology, stream bank stabilisation and rehabilitation of ecological habitat in oxbows and the riparian corridor.
- Climate adaptation: regional flood and drought management, waterway rehabilitation and ecological restoration, as well as the delivery of climate resilient infrastructure and community-led climate adaptation practices.
Republished and adapted from Prescott et al. [67] under a CC BY license, with permission from Prescott, original copyright 2024.
The project consortium identified the village (desa) as a manageable unit (comprising approximately 1200 households and with administrative and budgetary independence) to test socio-technical solutions that may be replicated elsewhere in Indonesia. Through a series of workshops in 2020 with academic and government advisers in Depok and Bandung (Indonesia) and Melbourne (Australia), multi-criteria analysis was used to shortlist potential villages, spanning biophysical criteria (contamination, sanitation risk, settlement morphology and existing infrastructure), political criteria (alignment with existing government programs and priority sites), and social criteria (community readiness and community health and vulnerability). Further consultation with Satgas Citarum, DLH, the Directorate of State Assets (Direktorat Jenderal Kekayaan Negara, DJKN) and the Balai Besar Wilayah Sungai Citarum (BBWS, Citarum river basin organisation) led to selection of a site incorporating two desa bisected by a 2.5km stretch of the Citarik River in Bandung Regency, West Java, for the Citarum Living Lab (Fig 3). The selected site had existing plans for ecotourism developments on state-owned land (Desa Wisata or tourism village), as well as moderate wastewater and solid waste pollution of sufficient severity to enable measurable change through intervention.
4.4 Masterplan and pilot development (ARC2)
Based on the established program scope and approach, ARC2 comprises primary data collection and synthesis to establish baseline data, develop a site masterplan, and design a demonstration project. Baseline data collection and feasibility studies were undertaken to understand the social-economic contexts, biophysical characteristics of the river, surface water bodies and groundwater aquifers, the main sources of river pollution and contamination, and the potential of village-scale circular economy solutions for different types of waste. Extensive engagement with residents, industry groups and waste sector workers, and central, provincial and local government parties was undertaken through regular meetings, workshops, and research activities including focus group discussions (FGDs), surveys, and ethnographic interviews.
This baseline data, and existing government readiness criteria, informed the co-development of a 50-year River Transformation Vision and 20-year Landscape Masterplan [70] with local partners, conceived in three phases:
- Short-term (2–5 years): implementation and piloting of solutions for improved sanitation and solid waste services;
- Short to mid-term (2–20 years): development and piloting of solutions for sustainable local and circular economies and revitalisation of oxbows; and
- Mid-long term (20–50 years): delivery of climate adaptation solutions including revegetation and reforestation.
The research and implementation program was presented to Central and Provincial government agencies and endorsed by the Governor of West Java. The principles of the Landscape Masterplan and integrated model are now included in the Action Plan of the Task Force under Peraturan Gubernur No. 37/2021 (Governor Regulation), and are being referenced by the provincial and district governments to allocate budget for this project, including waste and sanitation infrastructure.
For the first phase of implementation, a demonstration pilot project was developed to design, build, and evaluate an integrated waste collection, processing, and recycling system founded on existing government-led community-based management programs for waste (known as TPS-3R or Tempat Penampungan Sementara Reduce, Reuse, Recycle). The waste pilot aims to:
- Demonstrate how a community-led approach can lead to improved and sustainable TPS 3R and SANIMAS systems in terms of their physical design, location, function, and business model, with a focus on inclusion and gender equality; and
- Improve solid waste recovery, processing, and repurposing (including by co-locating facilities), and develop new governance and business models for sustainable waste management that create value in the community.
Through real world experimentation and learning, the pilot seeks to rapidly translate lessons and innovations into practice.
5. Researcher reflection: Challenges and enablers of a living lab approach to watershed management at the village scale
Through a reflective and iterative collaborative writing process, we identified four enabling conditions through which the living lab concept was applied in a vulnerable peri-urban community as an integrated watershed management intervention.
5.1 Blended funding strategy
A key challenge for the Citarum Living Lab is the need for both research funding and technology and infrastructure investment to support place-based testing of socio-technical solutions to river pollution and in-country capacity building. The program faces a general lack of transdisciplinary research funding schemes in the Global South, compared with schemes such as the UK Global Challenges Research Fund and EU Horizon 2020 in the Global North. In the absence of a significant pool of funds at the outset, the Citarum Living Lab has employed a more entrepreneurial, blended funding approach (see Fig 4).
Modest seeding grants at project inception supported workshops and engagements between Australian and Indonesian academics and government officials to exchange knowledge and data on the challenge of river revitalisation and co-develop the concept for the living lab. Early stage funding included an International Research Grant from the Director General of Higher Education, Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia which was used to identify research sites and fund the Universitas Indonesia team visit to Australia; funding from the Asia Pacific Network used to build government engagement between the West Java Provincial Government, Bandung Regency Government and Cimahi City Government; and a Victorian Government (Australian) research partnership grant which expanded the interdisciplinary research consortium to include the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science (EAWAG) and the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). This was followed by external grants to conduct feasibility studies, build connections with potential industry collaborators on technologies for reusing plastic (Precious Plastics Bandung, Rebricks) and organic waste (proBSF), and secure funding pledges from the Indonesian Government for waste and sanitation infrastructure.
This blended funding approach creates some precarity for the project, such as funding limitations for international collaboration (including for travel and salaries for diverse personnel) and administrative challenges (such as the time it takes to disburse funds to project partners for a ~1-year grant). Working with a limited number of personnel and financial resources requires prioritisation and efficiency in use of resources and conduct of activities. Achieving this necessitated a phased research design and implementation to balance near-term resource constraints with the ambitious objectives of the program in the long-term.
5.2 Place-based adaptation of principles and concepts
Effective involvement of public, private, and community stakeholders in our preliminary engagement activities required review, clarification, revision, and translation of conceptual language with local research partners to establish shared understanding and respond to local experiences and capabilities. The living lab concept underpins the design of the Citarum research and implementation program (explained above), however it is not a straightforward idea to communicate and justify to project partners, who are less familiar with this language in the Indonesian context. Local stakeholders perceive the living lab concept as abstract and difficult to relate to practice and everyday language. Anecdotally, experimentation has been viewed negatively by government stakeholders due to connotations of risk and potential for failure, compared with business-as-usual linear implementation of technologies and infrastructures with seemingly known outcomes (notwithstanding the propensity for unintended consequences). Similarly, “circular economy” language—describing closed-loop material and energy flows and promoting waste as a resource to address its environmental impacts—was highlighted by local research partners in project meetings as abstract academic jargon that required simplification based on known and tangible practices and processes in the village setting.
In the conduct of focus group discussions (FGDs) with local community representatives in the project site, simplified and tangible prompts were more effective for eliciting responses in line with stakeholders’ lived experience and expertise. For example, initial diagrams illustrating the manufacture of biogas from livestock manure for energy consumption and the creation of homewares from plastic bottles were helpful for participants to understand circular waste systems, but less useful for discussing how to transition current waste disposal practices. Based on this feedback, our subsequent village workshop focused on how existing waste systems might be improved along the value chain (from depositing to selling) using images and prompts that illustrated current practices (e.g. Fig 5). Similarly, processing and analysing empirical data translated between English and Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian) benefited greatly from the contextual knowledge of local research partners and assistants who were able to interpret meaning in FGDs and facilitator notes more accurately.
Images adapted under Unsplash Licence [74].
This experience reinforces the need for academics involved in interdisciplinary action research to be able to think and act academically, politically, and community-oriented simultaneously. Over time, the research team developed translation skills to communicate core ideas and engage more effectively with partners and the public. Moreover, villagers’ expectations for top-down government infrastructure provision and investment in education for uptake highlights the value of further exploring culturally appropriate pathways for greater community involvement in decision-making and delivery as a central principle of this program from a PAR perspective. Strong and active local partners develop shared understanding at the project level of local culture, language, knowledge and best practice, politics, and historical interventions and lessons learned and are critical for grounding international research in place.
5.3 Dialogue and trust-building
Multi-year relationship building is foundational to the Citarum Living Lab. This is a time-intensive but essential part of the program to build trust across disciplinary silos, sectors (public, private, civil, academic), and cultures (within and outside of Indonesia), and to navigate complexities and uncertainties in program co-design and implementation. Building strong relationships is challenging due to the breadth and number of project contributors located in different time zones (many at a distance from the project site), the conduct of multiple parallel workstreams, language barriers, and the budget limitations around responding to unanticipated engagement needs and opportunities.
Regular and open dialogue between project contributors and local stakeholders is key to fostering a collaborative environment, sharing information, making decisions, and addressing conflicts. Modes of exchange in the Citarum Living Lab include regular online project meetings and steering committee meetings (supported by email correspondence), day to day use of messaging apps (e.g. WhatsApp), in-person site visits and stakeholder consultations, and targeted workshops (both internal and external, on- and off-site). Dialogue is enabled by the researchers’ commitment to interdisciplinarity, listening, and mutual learning; dedicated project management to coordinate the breadth of partners, activities, and datasets; practical skills and protocols for communications; and responsiveness to norms and preferences of local stakeholders (such as use of messaging apps to aid scheduling of meetings). Ongoing communication and evolution of priorities in line with the overarching principles of the Masterplan, including in response to new research findings, policy developments, and funding opportunities, is important for maintaining shared understanding and program coherence. While online conferencing software provides a critical mode of communication across international borders, travel for in-person meetings and workshops is vital to build relationships and mutual understanding and for problem solving. In addition, strong program leadership establishes common ground amongst the varying interests and priorities of living lab contributors, and maintains clarity of purpose (discussed further below).
In the project site, local research partners (particularly the social team) play key roles in liaising with village and provincial government and community stakeholders and ensuring their continued participation in and goodwill towards the living lab. As part of this process, local champions were identified and organised to play a critical role in the local community from an engagement and public relations perspective. Known as “team seven” (tim tujuh), this group comprises village government, community, and women’s group representatives who are able to respond to day to day questions from residents, and aim to reduce the community’s anxiety and potential social conflicts in response to changes in their village in a timely manner. This work informs how the program responds to local needs, and contributes to ongoing capacity building, including understanding of watershed health. Moreover, working with research and industry partners based in Indonesia ensures that co-creation with diverse community stakeholders is culturally appropriate (in line with the place-based approach discussed above). Inclusion of vulnerable groups such as women, youth, elderly, disabled people, and informal waste workers require different engagement strategies, including house visits, and neighbourhood-level focus groups conducted in nearby community spaces. Altogether, this approach builds shared ownership of the program.
5.4 Intermediation of stakeholder priorities
In practice, developing sociotechnical solutions to river pollution in peri-urban communities involves negotiating a multilevel policy landscape, various government department interests, and diverse local needs and priorities expressed by the community. From the outset, the Citarum Living Lab was designed to respond to the West Java government mandate to address river pollution in the Citarum at the invitation of the West Java Governor, amidst various existing provincial, district, and village government initiatives. This partnership strengthened the legitimacy of the project enabled by Indonesian academic partners’ in-depth understanding of the political landscape and experienced international academic teams who have been working in Indonesia for over 10 years. Working with the West Java government also set expectations for the timing of project outputs in line with political cycles (the Governor’s term concluded in October 2023) including breaking ground at the new waste collection facility site, which accelerated the research process.
The Citarik Masterplan (a section of the Citarum river) established 20-30-year vision for river revitalisation and priorities for implementation, which integrates social and technical knowledge of the watershed (its geological characteristics, water patterns, river morphology, and history) and its inhabitants (land uses, livelihoods, experiences of the environment, and so on). Two key examples illustrate how the masterplan document responds to local stakeholder priorities. First, integrated water management principles were adapted to local policy priorities for ecotourism (understood in terms of ecology, economics, and tourism), building on an existing collaboration between village leaders, the DJKN and BBWS around the “Citarik Ekowisata” (Ecotourism). The ecotourism narrative has been popularised in village communities and was understood and recognised by both government and community leaders as a short-medium term goal that should be highlighted by the living lab to harness public support for river revitalisation, where addressing water pollution (on its own) was less salient.
Second, and relatedly, there is an ongoing need to balance short- and long-term objectives and outcomes for the community. The site has urgent sanitation and waste management infrastructure needs. However, the complexity of the demonstration program—embedding social and technical research and learning—means that these needs are addressed more slowly than local stakeholders anticipate. Nevertheless, the project maintains a focus on economic development outcomes associated with river revitalisation for the villages which has been identified as a central and immediate priority among community leaders. This focus is evidenced by the establishment of a waste collection facility (a TPS-3R) to enable household solid waste collection and processing in the short-term, while providing a site to explore opportunities for generating organic and plastic waste-based products to advance circular waste management and support the financial sustainability of the facility. Here, the integration of public health perspectives is established through government funding for waste management and sanitation projects, rather than medical disciplines or health agencies.
Compared with business-as-usual, top-down technical interventions, the living lab approach has thus been valuable for enabling a diverse range of perspectives and (local) voices to guide the development of a long-term vision and implementation pathway for the site, where researchers play a key intermediary role in adapting theory and best practice to local values.
6. Discussion
The Citarum Living Lab is a valuable case study of a place-based, collaborative approach to testing and learning from integrated watershed management solutions in real world contexts. Employing PAR methods of researcher reflection through collaborative writing and thematic analysis, we identify four enabling conditions supporting the Citarum Living Lab’s establishment and implementation of river revitalisation principles over a four-year period: 1) a blended funding strategy; 2) place-based adaptation of principles and concepts; 3) dialogue and trust-building; and 4) intermediation of stakeholder priorities. These enabling conditions shape the content and scope of the living lab processes (Section 4.2) in their application in an informal peri-urban settlement, including:
- Co-creation: how partner participation is resourced (1), and how knowledge and ideas are exchanged (3) and adapted to place (2) to cultivate shared understanding;
- Exploration: how policy settings, government department interests, and diverse local perspectives and needs for pilot development are elicited and understood in context through two-way communication (3);
- Experimentation: how local policy and economic development priorities are mediated by the research team to design socio-technical interventions (4), how the project liaises with the community (3), and how socio-technical solutions are resourced for implementation (1); and
- Evaluation: how ongoing transdisciplinary research activities are resourced (1) and managed (3).
These conditions are critical for enabling co-creation among diverse stakeholders in a challenging watershed governance context. In Indonesia, local authorities and communities lack the government mandate and resources to address watershed degradation independently, [75, 76] while top-down river basin management is characterised by insufficient coordination and incentives across multiple levels of government [77] resulting in complicated and slow implementation of strategic frameworks and plans. For the Citarum in particular, municipalities are under-resourced and often unable to meet targets passed down from national to provincial government, which are further inhibited by changes in leadership of key agencies [64]. In this context, strong institutional support of partner universities and the commitment of individuals involved in the Citarum Living Lab has helped to nurture relationships with government representatives at different levels of government and enable a transdisciplinary approach to research and implementation [78–81]. Moreover, a place-based approach enables close engagement with community stakeholders to understand and relate their priorities and needs to meaningful solution pathways supported by government.
A significant challenge to revitalising the Citarum River, and other rivers in crisis in the Global South, are the limited financial resources for establishing essential services and infrastructures to manage sanitation and solid waste in informal settlements [82]. Blended funding models that bring together public, private, and research funding have the potential to enable integrative approaches to global challenges [83]. However, there are few examples of such financing strategies being applied in practice to support transdisciplinary action research programs like the Citarum Living Lab. The blended funding model employed by the program has provided flexibility to enable new, interdisciplinary collaborations to emerge over time. Equally, this entrepreneurial model creates a more uncertain funding environment for implementation, monitoring, and evaluation over the long-term.
Whilst our case demonstrates the values of adopting the Living Lab concept for enabling integrative practices, we also identified challenges in overcoming structural and relational barriers in establishing such complex research and implementation programmes. Much of the lessons learned through the Citarum Living Lab relate to institutional norms and values, leadership, communication, and cultural skills, and willingness to collaborate which are not always all present in a single project across multiple institutions. As such, applying this approach to other similar programs and nurturing these integration conditions for watershed management at a collective level is likely to remain difficult and require a great deal of skills and capacity development beyond traditional academic training and conventional resource management approaches. Alongside ongoing monitoring and evaluation of the Citarum Living Lab, comparative analysis of similar cases would be beneficial for understanding the replicability and scalability of IWRM principles and processes for achieving improved planetary health outcomes for humans, animals, and ecosystems.
7. Conclusion
This paper documents a novel case study involving a living lab approach to collaborative, place-based development, testing, and learning from IWRM solutions at the village scale, applied in a demonstration site in the Citarum basin in West Java, Indonesia. The paper employs a reflexive PAR method to investigate the usefulness of the living lab concept to operationalise IWRM in a vulnerable peri-urban context, representing a key gap in existing literature. Thematic analysis reveals the methodological and interpersonal strategies that enable the living lab consortium to respond to complex multi-level governance settings, challenging funding landscapes, and local social and environmental conditions. This study contributes to emerging scholarship on modes of collaboration and reflexive practice to advance planetary health outcomes in response to river pollution and economic development imperatives.
Acknowledgments
In addition to project partners and funders, we acknowledge the work of the field team involved in the site assessments discussed in this paper, including Osha Ombasta, Farhan Dzakwan Taufik, Bagus Aditya, Ridwan Hakim, and Nanda Astuti. We thank Margot Parkes and Pierre Horwitz for their invitation to contribute to the ‘Health and watersheds Special Collection’ and for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. We thank the PLOS Water editors and four reviewers for their constructive feedback on the manuscript.
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