Assessing Bandung's Governance Challenges of Water, Waste, and Climate Change: Lessons from Urban Indonesia.

This study assesses the gaps, opportunities, and priorities of Bandung in managing its water and waste challenges. The City Blueprint Approach is used to identify pressures, to measure the city's Integrated Water Resources Management performance, and to assess its governance. Based on the analyses of Bandung, 4 topics are discussed in more detail: 1) the transferability of the lessons from Bandung, 2) the challenges of solid waste management in Indonesian cities, 3) community-based sanitation, and 4) implications for informal settlements. The assessment reveals that Bandung's basic water services are largely met but flood risks are high and wastewater treatment is poorly covered, leading to large-scale pollution. This is amplified by extensive land-use change and poor solid waste collection and treatment, as waste is almost completely dumped in landfills. Proper solid waste handling will reduce landfill dependency. Slum areas are disproportionately affected by climate-related hazards and continuously under recognized in the discussion of cities' risk and vulnerability, while its dwellers are the most vulnerable members of the society. Bandung has started with slum area legalization which provides slum dwellers with legal security that protects their right to live as well as access to basic public infrastructures. Inadequate monitoring and uncoordinated financial source allocations are among the governance gaps. Governance is reactive and community involvement is low. Yet, Bandung exhibits the characteristics of a collaborative city with the potential to maximize its cross-stakeholder learning with supportive leadership. Bandung and other cities in Indonesia face multilevel governance gaps. Bandung is recommended to expand the cooperation of private, civil, and public actors and implement network governance and decentralized management approaches focusing on improving the implementing capacity, better monitoring, cocreation, and better exploration of the options for financial support. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2021;17:434-444. © 2020 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC).

The challenges of water governance in Ho Chi Minh City.

Population growth, urbanization, pollution, and climate change pose urgent water challenges in cities. In this study, the sustainability of integrated water resources management in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) was evaluated using the City Blueprint approach. The City Blueprint is a set of 24 dedicated indicators divided over 8 categories (i.e., water security, water quality, drinking water, sanitation, infrastructure, climate robustness, biodiversity and attractiveness, and governance including public participation). The analysis showed that the rapid increase of water use for urban, industrial, and agricultural activities in HCMC has resulted in depletion of groundwater and severe pollution of both groundwater and surface water. Surface water quality, groundwater quality, biodiversity, and the sanitation of domestic and industrial wastewater are matters that need serious improvement. Current and future water supply in HCMC is at risk. HCMC can cope with it, but the 7 governance gaps as described by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are major obstacles for HCMC. Rainwater harvesting, pollution reduction, as well as wastewater reuse are among the practical options. Wastewater reuse could lower the water stress index to 10%. The window to do this is narrow and rapidly closing as a result of the unprecedented urbanization and economic growth of this region.

Trigger values for investigation of hormonal activity in drinking water and its sources using CALUX bioassays.

To screen for hormonal activity in water samples, highly sensitive in vitro CALUX bioassays are available which allow detection of estrogenic (ERα), androgenic (AR), progestagenic (PR), and glucocorticoid (GR) activities. This paper presents trigger values for the ERα, AR, PR, and GR CALUX bioassays for agonistic hormonal activities in (drinking) water, which define a level above which human health risk cannot be waived a priori and additional examination of specific endocrine activity may be warranted. The trigger values are based on 1) acceptable or tolerable daily intake (ADI/TDI) values of specific compounds, 2) pharmacokinetic factors defining their bioavailability, 3) estimations of the bioavailability of unknown compounds with equivalent hormonal activity, 4) relative endocrine potencies, and 5) physiological, and drinking water allocation factors. As a result, trigger values of 3.8ng 17ß-estradiol (E2)-equivalents (eq)/L, 11ng dihydrotestosterone (DHT)-eq/L, 21ng dexamethasone (DEX)-eq/L, and 333ng Org2058-eq/L were derived. Benchmark Quotient (BQ) values were derived by dividing hormonal activity in water samples by the derived trigger using the highest concentrations detected in a recent, limited screening of Dutch water samples, and were in the order of (value) AR (0.41)>ERα (0.13)>GR (0.06)>PR (0.04). The application of trigger values derived in the present study can help to judge measured agonistic hormonal activities in water samples using the CALUX bioassays and help to decide whether further examination of specific endocrine activity followed by a subsequent safety evaluation may be warranted, or whether concentrations of such activity are of low priority with respect to health concerns in the human population. For instance, at one specific drinking water production site ERα and AR (but no GR and PR) activities were detected in drinking water, however, these levels are at least a factor 83 smaller than the respective trigger values, and therefore no human health risks are to be expected from hormonal activity in Dutch drinking water from this site.

Environmental quality criteria for organic chemicals predicted from internal effect concentrations and a food web model.

Environmental quality criteria (EQC) for hydrophobic organic chemicals were calculated with a model for bioaccumulation in food webs. The model was calibrated and verified using polychlorinated biphenyl concentrations in food webs of shallow lakes. The EQCs in water and sediment were derived based on internal effect concentrations (IECs) for several modes of toxic action. By reverse calculation with the food web model for each organism in the web, a different water or sediment concentration is calculated corresponding to the IEC in each organism. A statistical procedure with an acute-to-chronic value is used to derive chronic EQCs based on bioaccumulation. The model-based chronic EQCs were compared with previously established EQCs. The EQCs calculated with the food web model generally are within an order of magnitude of the previously derived EQCs based on toxicity data on individual chemicals. Some previously derived EQCs are much lower than model predictions and usually based on small samples of toxicity data such as no-observed-effect concentrations (NOECs) with large assessment factors. When faced with data gaps, it is proposed to use model-based chronic EQCs for (polar) narcotic chemicals. Other modes of action require a different model concept to account for receptor-based toxicity.