Not far from where rice paddies once stretched green and wide across Bali’s central highlands, a farmer now walks across cracked soil. The rainy season arrived late, the groundwater has dropped, and the village’s old spring now trickles weakly—if at all. No alarms were raised, and no urgent memos were dispatched. The crisis didn’t begin with a flood or a war, but with silence. A silence we failed to interpret.
Indonesia, an archipelago defined by water, now finds itself grappling with its scarcity. From urban centers like Jakarta to rural provinces in Nusa Tenggara, the signs are mounting: groundwater depletion, contaminated rivers, saltwater intrusion, and uneven…