School of Water and Waste

In the last few months, we had both the World Water Day (22nd March) and the World Environment Day (June 5th).

The theme of the World Water Day this year was ‘GROUNDWATER - MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE’. It has drawn spotlight after a long time, on the importance of understanding groundwater. We all know that Indian agriculture is dependent on groundwater more than surface irrigation. Dependence on groundwater for urban water supply and industrial water remains critical and becomes critical in the pre monsoon time.Defining what is “invisible”, in a political economy, lithography and water management perspective is important. National missions – Jal Jeevan Mission and AMRUT – recognise water security as a basis for sustainable service delivery (water supply). City Water Balance Plan and Water Security plan – are integral to the JJM. What is important to define water security – is in its equity and justice realm, not just overall water security.

Secondly understanding the trajectory of groundwater recharge and extraction needs to be nuanced. Simply doing more water recharge measures but extracting more and more water, may ultimately impact the recharging potential of the aquifers. The research done by ACWADAM shows that groundwater recharge increases with watershed interventions may increase the storage of groundwater (dependent on the aquifer typology), but with increased extraction for irrigation or industry use, even recharge rate can fall. Thereby lowering the extractable groundwater from the previous levels.

Thirdly, Climate change adds to the crisis of groundwater extraction in India, the crisis is already there. Water is seen as the single most important factor in all climate change mitigation and adaptation measures. The recent IPCC report says that “About 60% of climate-change adaptations — such as irrigation and harvesting rain — address water-related hazards. Droughts, floods and rainfall variability have already reduced the rate of growth in crop and livestock yields. Changes to climate can be too fast and large for adaptations to work.”

World Environment Day theme – Only One Earth – draws attention to the urgency of action to reduce global warming, essentially through reduction of fossil fuel emissions leading to greenhouse gases. Despite visible impacts of extreme variation in climate, in heat waves, rainfall and droughts – not enough is being done to reduce emissions. Developing southern countries are demanding developed countries to pay southern countries to transition to fossil fuel use reduction. Neither willingness of developed countries to pay for this transition, nor a viable mechanism by developing global south countries to take this assistance and use it to promote decentralised green energy production, is visible.  Large corporations of developed northern countries and also in developing southern countries seem to be dictating policy, to ensure that the transition from fossil fuel to green energy (read as green hydrogen), does not impact their current business. In this scenario, raising awareness of decentralised renewable energy as a priority and not green hydrogen, reduction of total energy use and not simply replacing an the unsatiable energy demand from fossil fuel to green fuel – is important policy aim for all of us.

The Water and Waste Program is working on the following priorities this year: