Lake Toba: Need for an integrated management system: Fid-Bau Portal

Lake Toba: Need for an integrated management system

Saragih, Bungaran / Sunito, Satyawan

Lake Toba is the largest year‐round lake in South‐East Asia and the largest volcanic lake in the world. The Lake Toba catchment area faces an environmental crisis characterized by widespread deforestation, drought, decline of the water level, water quality degradation, invasive species and loss of biological diversity. More than half of the Lake Toba catchment area is classified as land at high erosion risk. Widespread poverty gives people little room to think beyond day‐to‐day needs and is an instrument for unsustainable methods of fishing and growing food. The Lake Toba catchment area is not managed as an integrated whole, but rather as four separate districts. Guidelines and orders tend to come from the government in Jakarta rather than being developed locally with stakeholder involvement. Differences in approach between government and non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) have resulted in friction and mistrust between the two. Local, national and international NGOs have been the biggest contributors to increasing the awareness of the need for an integrated approach to managing the lake. Technical exchanges with Lake Champlain have facilitated an exchange of experience of managing a large lake watershed, the transfer of low‐cost alternative technologies for managing waste water in small communities and development of new approaches to pulp and paper mills on both lakes. The Lake Toba Heritage Foundation’s priorities include establishing a research and monitoring programme, creating a science and education centre, and developing better coordination among central, provincial and district levels of government.