Water security takes its place beside food and energy, and the next task is measuring what it is worth

Water security has moved into the front rank of Indonesia's development agenda. Opening Indo Water 2026 at Jakarta International Expo Kemayoran on Tuesday, 11 August 2026, Coordinating Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono placed water security at the same level as food security and energy security in President Prabowo Subianto's programme. That is a meaningful reordering. For most of the past two decades water has been treated as a service line inside public works budgets. Framing it as a security question puts it alongside the two sectors that already command dedicated financing instruments, dedicated data systems, and dedicated political attention.

The setting for the announcement matters as much as the wording. Indo Water 2026 is the twenty fifth edition of the exhibition, organised by PT Napindo Media Ashatama, and this year it runs from 11 to 13 August across more than 20,000 square metres of floor space. More than 700 exhibitors from 23 countries are taking part, including participants from Australia, China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Turkiye and the United States. Organisers expect over 17,000 trade visitors across the three days. Thirty ministries, agencies, associations and universities are listed as supporting institutions.

Six sectors in one hall, which is the point

Indo Water is no longer a standalone water show. It is co-located with Indo Waste and Recycling, Indo Renergy and Electric, Indo Security, Indo Firex, and the Indonesia International Smart City Expo and Forum. The programme includes more than 80 technical product presentations alongside the sector forums.

"The six co-located exhibitions provide an important platform for fostering innovation, technological advancement and cross-sector collaboration."

That is Lisa Rusli, project director at Napindo, describing the format. The structure reflects how these systems actually behave in an Indonesian city. A drinking water utility depends on a watershed whose condition is shaped by land use. A wastewater plant produces sludge that has to enter a waste management chain. Both consume electricity, which is why the renewable energy hall sits next door. Treating them as one procurement conversation rather than six is closer to how a regional government has to plan.

Alongside the exhibition, the Indonesian Water Association convened its forum on the Indonesia Roadmap for Water Resilience and Sustainability on the opening day, with a three day training programme running in parallel. Agus Umar Yasin, who chairs the association, has framed the priority as accelerating technology adoption through closer working between policymakers and industry. Sandhi Eko Bramono Poedjastanto, acting director of sanitation at the Ministry of Public Works, described the exhibition as a channel for both public communication of the ministry's drinking water and sanitation programme and for knowledge transfer. From the Ministry of Environment, Yayah Rodiana, who works on non hazardous waste management, linked circular economy delivery to stronger waste management systems and ran a three day coaching clinic on the floor.

The numbers behind the ambition

The national targets give the ambition its shape. Under RPJMN 2025-2029, access to safe drinking water is set to rise from 22 percent in 2025 to 43 percent in 2029, and access to safe sanitation from 12.5 percent in 2025 to 30 percent. Those are the figures Bappenas has presented through its Directorate of Housing and Settlement Infrastructure.

Two points of context are needed to read them correctly. First, "safe" is a much stricter standard than "adequate". Indonesia's adequate drinking water access reached 91.72 percent on the broader measure, which counts non piped sources. Piped service coverage sits far lower, in the range of 22 to 23 percent. Second, sources differ on the current safe drinking water figure depending on measurement year and methodology, with estimates circulating between roughly 22 percent and 28 percent. Sirkularium notes the discrepancy rather than choosing one silently. The direction of travel is not in dispute. The precise baseline is worth settling, because every financing model built on top of it inherits that number.

On financing, published estimates put the funding needed to accelerate safe drinking water provision at around Rp236.3 trillion for the 2025 to 2030 period. That is a figure large enough that it cannot be met from routine capital budgets alone, and it is the reason water resilience is now discussed as an investment class rather than a spending line.

The policy scaffolding is already in place. Minister of Public Works Regulation Number 6 of 2026, issued on 13 March 2026, sets the National Policy and Strategy for Drinking Water Supply Systems for 2026 to 2030. It carries the vision of sustainable safe drinking water access for all in support of Indonesia Emas 2045, and it directs central and regional government on service coverage, piped network development, water resource optimisation, and the institutional and financing arrangements that hold a system together.

From targets to bankable projects

The gap that remains is not ambition and it is not technology. Both were visible across 20,000 square metres in Kemayoran. The gap is valuation. A regional government that wants to move from 22 percent piped coverage to something closer to the national target needs to answer a specific question for a lender, a partner, or a national budget committee: what is this system worth, and what is the measurable value of the service it delivers.

That question has established answers in Indonesian practice, and they are underused. Ecosystem services valuation can price what an intact upstream watershed contributes to raw water quality, and therefore what a utility avoids spending on treatment chemicals and energy. Natural capital accounting can carry that value on a regional balance sheet rather than leaving it invisible. Environmental economics gives a methodology for pricing degradation and recovery, principally Permen LH Number 7 of 2014, which sets out how ecological damage, environmental economic loss, and recovery cost are calculated. Geographic information systems and remote sensing supply the spatial evidence base for all of it, mapping land cover change across a catchment year by year at a cost far below repeated ground survey.

Water resilience becomes financeable at the moment a watershed stops being a map and becomes a valued asset with a documented condition and a documented trend.

For a district planning agency, the practical version of that is a catchment condition baseline, updated annually, tied to a service delivery plan and an expenditure profile. It converts a policy target into a project with a number attached.

What to watch next

Three things are worth tracking through the rest of 2026. The first is how the Jakstranas SPAM 2026-2030 is translated into regional implementation plans, since the regulation sets direction and the district level documents set the actual pipeline. The second is whether the safe drinking water baseline is harmonised across agencies, which would remove a source of avoidable dispute in every subsequent business case. The third is whether the cross sector format on display at Kemayoran carries into procurement, so that water, wastewater, sludge, and the energy those systems consume are tendered as an integrated package rather than as separate contracts that later have to be reconciled.

Indonesia has also been working on the roadmap documents that sit behind these targets, including technocratic master plans for safe drinking water and safe sanitation prepared with development partner support. Those provide the sequencing. The financing instruments are the piece still being assembled.

Sirkularium's view

The reframing of water as a security question is the right one, and it opens a door that the sector should walk through deliberately. Security agendas attract sustained financing when they can demonstrate value, and water can demonstrate value more concretely than most public services once the measurement is done properly.

For government and public institutions, Sirkularium's read is that the immediate work is evidentiary rather than aspirational. Commission the catchment baselines. Use GIS and remote sensing to establish land cover and watershed condition, then verify a sample on the ground so the dataset can withstand scrutiny. Apply the valuation methodology Indonesia already recognises, so that the numbers in a proposal are defensible in front of a ministry, an auditor, or a court. Settle the baseline access figure so that every business case built on it starts from the same place.

For operators in water, and equally for mining companies whose concessions sit inside the same catchments, the case is the same one Sirkularium makes across the resource sector. Rigorous, independently verified economic valuation is most useful as ongoing practice, not as a response to a dispute. An operator that can show the condition of the water resources around its footprint, measured consistently over time and priced using standard methodology, is in a materially stronger position with the Ministry of Environment and with the communities it works alongside than one assembling that evidence after a problem emerges.

The exhibition halls close on 13 August. The targets run to 2029. The measurement work that connects the two is available now, and starting it early is what makes the difference between a target that is stated and a target that is financed.