Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the water infrastructure in the making by focusing on the efforts to restore the wetland, affecting agricultural activities and water-people relations. The paper explores the flows and changes in the waterscape at the crossroads of multiple scales of governance in Kalimantan.

Paper long abstract:

The paper discusses how human work produces wetland as an infrastructure in the swamp areas of Indonesia. Rivers are an important basis for the social and economic life of the Ngaju Dayak, an indigenous population inhabiting the swamp area of Southern Borneo. They engage with the small rivers crossing the swamp forest by fishing, collecting forest products, and gardening near their settlements located along the Kahayan River, one of the largest in the province. Today, large parts of the swamp forests have dried up due to canals made by regional and national development and extractive schemes and local environmental practices, thus producing agricultural or garden landscapes. Drawing from anthropology of water and infrastructure, the paper explores the water infrastructure in the making by focusing on the efforts of a recent restoration project to restore the land to wetland, thus affecting agricultural activities and water-people relations in the area. Thus, the paper explores the flows and changes in the waterscape at the crossroads of multiple scales of governance and commodification.