Social Impacts on Development of Rural River Transportation in Indonesia

Indonesia is a maritime country that consists of thousands islands connected by seas and other type of inland water such as rivers, lakes, swamps and canals. Basically, water transportation particularly river transportation becomes one of the most important transportation modes to connect one area to another area because the absence of the availability of land transport infrastructure. Besides that, river transportation is the major transport mode in rural area where there is no a feasible transport mode to support their daily activities. However, the development of river transportationin rural area gives social impacts not only for people who live in rural area, but also for the area development itself as a whole. Those impactsinfluence people's life in many aspects such as education, health, environment, culture and even political system. Then, this paper presents social impacts caused by the development of rural river transportation that case study in Indonesia. Furthermore, the integrated and participatory approach is required to optimize the development of rural river transportation in Indonesia