The Sustainability Level of an EcoVillage in the Upper Citarum Watershed of West Java Province, Indonesia

Abstract

The Citarum watershed is the longest in West Java Province. It is used as a source of raw water for drinking water, irrigation water for hundreds of thousands of hectares of rice fields, fisheries, industrial raw water, and hydroelectric power plants. The high population and industry growth at the outskirts of the Citarum watershed, which is not accompanied by good waste management, also results in high pollution in the Citarum watershed. Various efforts to handle the issue have been carried out since 1989 until the present; however, this problem still needs to be solved. One of the approaches to overcome environmental pollution that has been conducted is to develop an environmentally-cultured village. This study aims to determine the sustainability level of environmentally-cultured villages in the Upper Citarum watershed viewed from ecological, economic, social, and cultural dimensions using a multidimensional scaling (MDS) approach with the Rapid Appraisal Technique for Ecovillage (RAPVIL) software (version 1.0). The result shows that the multidimensional sustainability of ecovillage development in the Upper Citarum watershed, West Java Province is “fairly sustainable” for the cultural dimension and “poorly sustainable” for the ecological, social, and economic dimensions. This result shows that ecovillage development still requires support from various stakeholders to improve its sustainability status. The cultural dimension has the highest value due to the local cultural values, including a value system, traditions, languages, norms, and customs that have grown in the community. Meanwhile, the social dimension has the lowest sustainability value, influenced by the low level of community participation in ecovillage development.