Atikah Nurhayati^1,, Titin Herawati¹, Isni Nurruhwati¹

Cirata is a fertile body of water covering an area of 6,200 Ha. It represents an important source of subsistent living households in the Cianjur District of West Java Province for generations. This body of water, however, is undergoing an alarming rate degradation, which threatens not only the life of the subsistent households but also the future of other potential services. The increasingly dominating role of external landlords and the overuse of fish feed in aquaculture in the water are the main cause of the problems. Efforts which adopt the principles of blue economy were then placed to save the lost potential benefits. These include empowering local people to improve their economic performance and bargaining power, development of local-material-based organic feed. Feed were formulated from an aquatic plant water hyacinth locally called enceng gondok; the choice over this plant was at the outset targeted two objectives: (1) to provide cheap raw material for feed formulation, and (2) to increase water area available for aquaculture. Local people were trained to formulate the feed and operate their own aquaculture cages. The results show that: (1) local people were increasingly able to improve their economic performance, (2) areal coverage available for aquaculture got wider, (3) the use of environmentally friendly feed increased. The project has been going on for only four years, but the outcome shows strong indications that the project’s approaches can be continually implemented and adopted elsewhere. This paper, however, suggests an implication which has to be taken care of by the government, wherein a complementing local government policy is needed to support such a project with a relevant effective regulation.

blue economy, cirata, Eichhornia crassipes, fish feed, zero waste