India’s rapid urban growth is putting pressure on its already crumbling base of public service arrangements — especially its management of water and sanitation services, whose safe and reliable availability proved to be the first line of defence against the scourges of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). It holds potential to support the country’s preparedness against the incipient challenges of changing climate.
An appalling confusion grips our policy makers and planners. While the supply-demand gap is expected to widen by 50 per cent by 2030, many are still left without access to safe and sustainable water and sanitation services.
At least five Indian cities are already reported to have joined the list of world’s 20 largest water-stressed cities. A case in point is the metropolitan regions of Bangalore and Chennai, which source their waters from a distance of 95 kilometres and 200 km, respectively.
This organisation of infrastructural arrangement not only puts a heavy burden on the states’ exchequers by demanding exorbitant amount of funds for their design, installation and operation, but also languishes the residents of these cities dependent on a single source of water for a bulk of their daily demands to the whims of inter-regional conflicts over water sharing as well climate-related shocks.
If we look at the present portfolio of water resources management for other cities, it will not be wrong to claim that many more will soon become qualified for joining this infamous list.
Exploring the complex problems
Water availability in India remains on the mercy of erratic patterns of precipitation. The southwest monsoon alone accounts for 70-75 per cent of the total precipitation falling in India, especially in regions along the west coast, the north-eastern states, West Bengal and Odisha, which are characterised by patterns of heavy rainfall events within limited time duration.
It is estimated that India receives its total precipitation within a limited time duration of 100 hours out of 8,760 annual hours in total.
With temperatures postulated to rise owing to changing climate, precipitation patterns can only be expected to become more capricious in their operation. Nowhere will these uncertainties and incidental challenges be more pronounced than in our burgeoning towns and cities, which are already facing water shortages during the summer months and at time, experiencing floods during monsoon.
A World Bank (2018) study expounded that by 2050, annual average precipitation will increase to 1-20C under climate-sensitive scenario and 1.5-30C under carbon-intensive scenario.
Such changes are expected to increase precipitation, which will come in the form of reduced rainy days but more days of extreme precipitation events.
Combined with this peculiarity in the evolving unpredictability of precipitation patterns over the Indian subcontinent, the way Indian cities have sprung and continues to develop also pose a risk to their future sustainability.
Concretisation of urban landscapes, symbolic of modern town planning imaginaries as to what an exercise in urban development should produce, is found to be increasing flood peaks from 1.8-8 times and volume of flood by up to six times.
Storm water drainage systems, installed to allay the threats of urban deluge, are still designed for rainfall intensity of 20-25 millimetre per hour duration. It is, therefore, not unnatural that the carrying capacities of these drains easily get overwhelmed during the incidences of heavy precipitation.
Illegal encroachment along storm water drains and urban rivers also aggravates the situation, not least by opening up spaces of active political contestation and negotiations.
A paradigm shift needed
As an extension of India’s colonial history, management of water, not unlike other key services, was bundled as part of the prerogative claims of post-independent public institutions with public participation programs designed later on to serve only a placatory function.
While this lead to systematic exclusion of public’s opinions in informing the design and implementation protocols of large public schemes, water management had, as a discipline, become a constituency building tool. It allowed public authorities to appropriate the commissioning and management of large-scale and costly engineering arrangements to maximise control and legitimacy of their rule over its subjects.
Guided by the underpinnings of this hydraulic paradigm, an inevitable boost in the development of behemoth engineering projects was witnessed in the 20th century. It took the form of multi-purpose dams, irrigation canals, public water distribution systems, etc.
Despite such an extended spree of building large dams and infrastructures, India has now become a ‘water-stressed’ country, with only about 6-8 per cent of installed water storage capacity, growing incidences of water pollution, falling freshwater biodiversity and prevailing inequities in water supply and sanitation services distribution.
To make matters worse for the proponents of supply side management approach, their arguments lobbying for continuing with this strategy are quickly losing credence in the wake of growing concerns over environmental degradation, involuntary displacement of local population, stringent land acquisition policies, complexity of transboundary negotiations for risks and benefits sharing, and huge cost escalation and time lags that are characteristic of these projects.
Rising national empathy for river rejuvenation, watershed conservation and active public participation has, on the other hand, already started scripting a new paradigm for India’s water management. It prompts decision-makers to look for solutions in the collective efforts of the citizens in managing their issues locally.
But is this really a new paradigm for us? Does the annals of Indian history provides another form of legacy that somehow can provide a moral thrust to this growing momentum?
Yes, indeed. Our Vedic ancestors, in their appreciation of the timeless bounty of water, always offered timely obeisance to water’s eternal gifts to mankind. Their reverence to water can be found in the hymns and prayers offered to Varuna and Indra — Vedic Gods associated with water — to riveting architectural gems and literary delights, each underscoring the centrality of water in our cultural revelries.
However, with the advent of modernist’s ideology of taming the nature, we did lend ourselves in to following an exploitative relationship with nature, weaning away from a reverential one which our ancestors had so meticulously developed over the course of history.
It is time our policies are re-designed to reflect these values.
Rooftop rainwater harvesting: A simple tool to empower people
Rooftop rainwater structures are perfectly poised to engender a transformative wave of public engagement in water management, thus, as a corollary, making water management an exercise in nurturing democratic routines.
To ensure that public enthusiastically purchases this concept, a country-wide behavior change campaign can be launched along the lines of Swachh Bharat Mission that can improve people’s ‘ability’ and ‘motivation’ to romantically welcome these structures in their private premises.
It is generally observed that the actual design, construction and maintenance of these structures are left with the individual households and local masons with little or no regulation and monitoring from the concerned urban local bodies.
This does not bode well for the quality and performance of these structures. Local authorities should, therefore, accord explicit attention to the designing and management criteria in their respective byelaws and work to strengthen the enforcement thereof.
Local non-profits and private stakeholders can be roped in to build area specific water conservation plans in partnership with local residents outlining what can work and what cannot according to the area based hydrogeological and prevailing social conditions.
There are several people who have been fervently advocating for the cause of water harvesting. They should be supported to build an arsenal of local champions who can then effectively mobilise the mood of communities in and around their regions for installing roof top rainwater harvesting systems.
They will be a key to promote a ‘do-it-yourself’ model of engagement.
The discipline of water management is now situated at the precipice of change; it has opened its traditionally closed and ‘elite’ routines to the democratic practices of dialogue, inclusion and transparency.
Adoption of rooftop rainwater harvesting practice provides just the right opportunity for our water managers to leverage this wave of change that is effectively about breaking the boundaries between experts and non-experts.
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- Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition, a collective of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway governments, came up with a $1 billion fund.
- LEAF is supported by transnational corporations (TNCs) like Unilever plc, Amazon.com, Inc, Nestle, Airbnb, Inc as well as Emergent, a US-based non-profit.
- The world lost more than 10 million hectares of primary tropical forest cover last year, an area roughly the size of Switzerland.
- Ending tropical and subtropical forest loss by 2030 is a crucial part of meeting global climate, biodiversity and sustainable development goals. Protecting tropical forests offers one of the biggest opportunities for climate action in the coming decade.
- Tropical forests are massive carbon sinks and by investing in their protection, public and private players are likely to stock up on their carbon credits.
- The LEAF coalition initiative is a step towards concretising the aims and objectives of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism.
- REDD+ was created by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It monetised the value of carbon locked up in the tropical forests of most developing countries, thereby propelling these countries to help mitigate climate change.
- It is a unique initiative as it seeks to help developing countries in battling the double-edged sword of development versus ecological commitment.
- The initiative comes at a crucial time. The tropics have lost close to 12.2 million hectares (mha) of tree cover last year according to global estimates released by Global Forest Watch.
- Of this, a loss of 4.2 mha occurred within humid tropical primary forests alone. It should come as no surprise that most of these lost forests were located in the developing countries of Latin America, Africa and South Asia.
- Brazil has fared dismally on the parameter of ‘annual primary forest loss’ among all countries. It has lost 1.7 mha of primary forests that are rich storehouse of carbon. India’s estimated loss in 2020 stands at 20.8 kilo hectares.
- Between 2002-2020, Brazil’s total area of humid primary forest reduced by 7.7 per cent while India’s reduced by 3.4 per cent.
- Although the loss in India is not as drastic as in Brazil, its position is nevertheless precarious. For India, this loss is equivalent to 951 metric tonnes worth carbon dioxide emissions released in the atmosphere.
- It is important to draw comparisons between Brazil and India as both countries have adopted a rather lackadaisical attitude towards deforestation-induced climate change. The Brazilian government hardly did anything to control the massive fires that gutted the Amazon rainforest in 2019.
- It is mostly around May that forest fires peak in India. However, this year India, witnessed massive forest fires in early March in states like Odisha, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram among others.
- The European Union’s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service claimed that 0.2 metric tonnes of carbon was emitted in the Uttarakhand forest fires.
- Implementation of the LEAF Coalition plan will help pump in fresh rigour among developing countries like India, that are reluctant to recognise the contributions of their forest dwelling populations in mitigating climate change.
- With the deadline for proposal submission fast approaching, India needs to act swiftly on a revised strategy.
- Although India has pledged to carry out its REDD+ commitments, it is impossible to do so without seeking knowledge from its forest dwelling population.
Context:-
At the recently concluded Leaders’ Summit on Climate in April 2021, Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition, a collective of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway governments, came up with a $1 billion fund plan that shall be offered to countries committed to arrest the decline of their tropical forests by 2030.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]What is LEAF Coalition?
Why LEAF Coalition?
Brazil & India
According to the UN-REDD programme, after the energy sector, deforestation accounts for massive carbon emissions — close to 11 per cent — in the atmosphere. Rapid urbanisation and commercialisation of forest produce are the main causes behind rampant deforestation across tropical forests.
Tribes, Forests and Government
Disregarding climate change as a valid excuse for the fires, Indian government officials were quick to lay the blame for deforestation on activities of forest dwellers and even labelled them “mischievous elements” and “unwanted elements”.
Policy makers around the world have emphasised the role of indigenous tribes and local communities in checking deforestation. These communities depend on forests for their survival as well as livelihood. Hence, they understand the need to protect forests. However, by posing legitimate environmental concerns as obstacles to real development, governments of developing countries swiftly avoid protection of forests and rights of forest dwellers.
For instance, the Government of India has not been forthcoming in recognising the socio-economic, civil, political or even cultural rights of forest dwellers. According to data from the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs in December, 2020 over 55 per cent of this population has still not been granted either individual or community ownership of their lands.
To make matters worse, the government has undertaken systematic and sustained measures to render the landmark Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 ineffective in its implementation. The Act had sought to legitimise claims of forest dwellers on occupied forest land.
Various government decisions have seriously undermined the position of indigenous people within India. These include proposing amendments to the obsolete Indian Forest Act, 1927 that give forest officials the power to take away forest dwellers’ rights and to even use firearms with impunity.
There is also the Supreme Court’s order of February, 2019 directing state governments to evict illegal encroachers of forest land or millions of forest dwellers inhabiting forests since generations as a measure to conserve wildlife. Finally, there is the lack of data on novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) deaths among the forest dwelling population;
Tardy administration, insufficient supervision, apathetic attitude and a lack of political intent defeat the cause of forest dwelling populations in India, thereby directly affecting efforts at arresting deforestation.
Way Forward
Tuntiak Katan, a global indigenous leader from Ecuador and general coordinator of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, aptly indicated the next steps at the Climate Summit:
“The first step is recognition of land rights. The second step is the recognition of the contributions of local communities and indigenous communities, meaning the contributions of indigenous peoples.We also need recognition of traditional knowledge practices in order to fight climate change”
Perhaps India can begin by taking the first step.