# **_1. Background and Introduction_**

Integrated water resources management (IWRM) and organizing it primarily at the river basin level are two of the most common and widely repeated recommendations in the water resources literature of the last decade if not longer (Allee 1988; Galloway 1997; McDonald and Kay 1988; World Bank 1993). Basin management, which was previously assumed to be best undertaken through centralized arrangements, has come to be associated with the concept of decentralization, of managing water resources at the “lowest appropriate level.” (See, e.g., International Conference on Water and the Environment 1992; Mody 2001.) Several conceptual arguments have been presented in favor of decentralization in water resources management, and basin-level management in particular, including that the entire array of resources and use patterns in the basin will be taken into account, management decisions will be based on better knowledge of local conditions, and public participation will be greater and broader.

Empirical studies of river basin management systems provide opportunities to examine the claims made for basin-level water resources management, and to explore factors that influence its implementation and outcomes. In this research project those factors and their relationships to river basin management have been explored in two ways: with a survey of river basin organizations throughout the world, and with case studies of eight river basins analyzed in greater detail. Some of those eight cases have long histories of basin-scale institutions for water resource management, such as the Guadalquivir river basin in Spain and the Murray-Darling river basin in Australia. Others were established more recently, as in the Brantas basin of Indonesia, where a river basin corporation, the Brantas River Basin Public Corporation, the subject of this study, was established in 1990.

Indonesia shares the problems and issues of many developing countries pursuing a path of rapid economic growth. While Indonesia is rich in resources and has plentiful water supply at the outset, on a number of islands of the archipelago water resources have come under increasing pressure in recent years and are facing deterioration in quality and quantity due to the socioeconomic forces causing this deterioration. Indonesia is among many developing countries to face water shortage due to degrading water quality (United Nations 1997). Industrialized countries have faced such water resource issues as pollution, eutrophication, toxicity development, ecosystem dysfunction and acidification over a long period of time and in sequence. Indonesia, like other developing countries, is facing these problems simultaneously, and has recognized the need to develop a program to manage water resources at the river basin level to address water quality and scarcity issues in the next 25 years.

The Brantas River Basin area of East Java is an economically developed region of Indonesia of great national interest. Central government line agencies have been involved with water infrastructure development in the Brantas basin for over three decades for purposes of flood control and regularization of supply for irrigation, industry, and power generation. The establishment of the Brantas River Basin Management Corporation, or Perum Jasa Tirta I (PJT I), in 1990 placed emphasis on the management aspects of water resources at the river basin level, rather than primarily on water and infrastructure development.

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