Jakarta (The Jakarta Post/ANN) - A population overload has put Java at risk of suffering a water shortage, a scientist at the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) said on Saturday.
According to BNPB spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, Java holds around 128 million people, which is equal to 59 percent of the national population.
"The increase in population has brought consequences related to changes in land use to support life," he said, adding that more and more forests have been converted into farming areas.
"Currently, the environmental carrying capacity based on the ecological footprint method shows that the environmental carrying capacity has been surpassed," he said.
Separately, the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) has predicted that the average rainfall in the 2010-2020 period would be less than the 1978-2007 period.
"Water resource management in the future will face a tougher challenge. Conflicts between various water necessities will occur more often, in addition to the effects of pollution, due to the surpassed carrying capacity in the available water resources," he added.
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