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WATER EDUCATION AND INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENTImage: Putrajaya CorporationPutrajaya Lake has attracted recreational, sports and tourism activitiesIn preparation for ILBM implementation, the development of a lakebrief began in 2009, comprising data on the basic features and environmentalstate of the lakes and information on management and governancechallenges. The lake brief was developed based on the template and questionnaireintroduced by the International Lake Environment Committee(ILEC) in 2008. To ensure the successful development of lake briefs,NAHRIM conducted meetings where lake managers were identified inconsultation with the stakeholders, and were subsequently guided ontemplate and lake brief requirements. Suitable avenues for discussionand presentation in the form of meetings and seminars were held toenable the lake managers to present their lake brief. A total of 26 lakebriefs – covering 28 lakes across the country – have been prepared todate by various stakeholders and compiled by NAHRIM. The lake briefs,which provide an analysis of the state of basin governance for the respectivelake, have become an important component of the ILBM platformprocess, which addresses the six pillars of lake basin governance:• institution• finance• policies• stakeholder participation• technology• information.The lake brief assessment not only provides baseline informationon the health of the water bodies, but also enables lake managers toimprove their management approach by prescribing effective managementsolutions to overcome lake issues and monitor their health.Stakeholder participation is crucial for the success of a managementapproach in any type of water body. Lake communities are an essentialpart of many lakes as they inhabit many of these natural or man-madesystems. In natural lakes, native communities have been living in andaround the lakes for a long time and are thus dependent on the lakefor their livelihoods. In man-made lakes, especially inurban areas, most of the lakes have been developed asrecreational areas where surrounding communities canspend their leisure time. Understanding the importanceof community participation, stakeholders including NGOshave been engaged in the colloquium and included inmany of the workshops, and their role has been incorporatedas one of the national strategies for sustainablelake management. In some lakes, community stakeholdercommittees such as ‘friends of the lake’ (also known as‘rakan tasik’ in Malay) have been established by NGOs.These committees should be promoted to assist in themanagement of the lakes and their landscape.Sustainable management action requires sound andscientifically-based information. In order to enhancethe management of lake data, a central National LakesInventory (NLI) was developed by NAHRIM in 2007based on inputs and recommendations from workshops.The inventory comprises summary information and datafor each lake, and assessments based on the preliminaryeutrophication study. The structure of the NLI was adaptedfrom the World Lakes Database developed by ILEC. Anintroduction to this lake inventory, which is known as theNational Lake Information Database (NLID), was presentedto stakeholders – mainly lake managers and researchers– so they could make contributions to the database. Thelake inventory has been enhanced to become a lake databasewhich applies spatial data in geographical informationsystem format to support non-spatial data storage. Thisenhanced NLID involves cooperation, with data input andupdates performed by various lake managers while the databaseis manned by NAHRIM. The database will eventually[ 150 ]