Pantoro Tri Kuswardono Pengarang I Wayan Mudita Dosen Pembimbing 1 Philiphi De Rozari Penguji 2 Laurensius P. Sayrani Ketua Penguji I Wayan Mudita Ketua Penguji

Freshwater is the most fundamental issues in small islands because small islands have a very small catchment area and also a low capacity of water retention. To ensure the availability of water for domestic and agriculture purposes, Government of Indonesia (GoI) has built hundreds of retention basins in all islands in East Nusa Tenggara Province since 1985 until recent times. In the small island of Semau where the study is undertaken, the availability of more than 24 retention basins did not solve fresh water problem. Inequality of distribution and usage of water from retention basin has become latent issues for more than 20 years. Under water provision program of GoI, all of small retention basin management were handed over to a local community with an expectation to becoma common pool resources (CPR) of the community. The study was done in 7 micro-basin in northern part of Semau Island that laid in 4 villages. However, retention basin as CPR is not happening. Using the Social Ecological System Framework (SESF), the study found that one of the Governance components of SESF, property-rights, is problematic in achieving CPR. Successful CPR will likely to happen where existing property rights regime of developed retention-basin historically is considered as CPR by users. When users has different perception on property-rights of retention basin, power contestation among different users would exists as action situation creating the winner and losers. The winner of power contest usually are the landlords who has the traditional rights as a land custodian of not just the retention basin but also all resources on his lands. In the absence of government as proponent of infrastructure, a new retention basins could transform the roles of a landlord from a land custodian into a land-owner and transform common-pool resources into private goods. An intervention is needed to ensure institutional retention-basin as CPR if the existing property-rights regime of micro-basin historically is not a CPR.