Wahyu Astuti - Jakarta Water Crisis

Wahyu Astuti - Jakarta Water Crisis

From Talking Indonesia by Talking Indonesia

January 8, 2026 · 36 min

About this episode

This episode discusses the complexities of Jakarta's water crisis with Wahyu Astuti, exploring various framings and governance challenges.

Jakarta is said to be in a water crisis. This is a familiar claim that has been repeated for years as parts of the city sink, groundwater is over-extracted, and access to clean water remains uneven. Yet what, precisely, is the crisis that Jakarta is facing? In this episode of Talking Indonesia, I speak with Wahyu Astuti, a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney, whose research shows that Jakarta’s water crisis is not singular, but defined in multiple and competing ways. She traces how certain framings of the crisis are sidelined, while others are actively promoted, and asks how the state narrates the water problem amid pressures to move away from privatization. Following UN-Habitat’s recent designation of Jakarta and the surrounding regions as the world’s largest city, with an estimated 42 million people across its metropolitan region, questions of how life is sustained at this scale become unavoidable. Water sits at the centre of these questions. This conversation unpacks the political and financial logics shaping water governance today, revealing how efforts to make water provision financially viable draw in different levels of government, new institutional arrangements…

People in this episode

Host: Talking Indonesia

Guest: Wahyu Astuti

Topics covered

  • water crisis
  • governance
  • privatization
  • politics
  • urban planning

Keywords

  • Jakarta
  • water crisis
  • groundwater
  • governance
  • privatization
  • urban population
  • UN-Habitat

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Sydney

Places: Jakarta, UN-Habitat

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