The Peninsula Foundation

Tag: water stress

  • Winds of Climate Change Blow across South Asia

    Winds of Climate Change Blow across South Asia

    The India-Pakistan enmity is possibly the world’s most intractable and obdurate, with a mutual misreading of history made extremely volatile with the brandishing of nuclear weapons. Despite having two giant militaries at each others’ throats, the more immediate existential challenges that India and Pakistan face are related to how climate change and misuse of common natural resources have combined to confront both together. It is not the militaries which will determine our fates, but the degree of cooperation the two nations can summon. Our problems are common and perhaps India and Pakistan will find the good sense to act together?

    Looking at the climate change challenges Pakistan and India face together, collective action — as unlikely as it seems — may just be what is needed to secure the lives and livelihoods of future generations.

    According to climate researchers at Germanwatch, Pakistan ranks eighth on the Global Climate Risk Index, with over 145 catastrophic events — heat waves, droughts and floods — reported in the past 20 years. On the other hand, India ranks among the top 20 vulnerable countries in terms of climate risk. Pakistan is home to around 47 per cent of the Indus Basin, and India to around 39 per cent. The Indus Waters Treaty has been in effect since 1960. The recent political bickering aside, the Indus Waters Treaty has managed to survive the test of time, yet fails to comprehensively address climate change. Then again, at the time it was enacted, many of the stark realities we know today were not understood.

    According to the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources, Pakistan officially crossed the water scarcity line in 2005. The United Nations Development Programme and the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources have issued warnings about the upcoming scarcity of groundwater in just six years.

    According to some estimates, Pakistan is the fourth-largest user of its groundwater and over 70 per cent of drinking requirements and 50 per cent of irrigation needs are met through groundwater extraction. Due to excessive pumping, it is estimated that water tables could fall by as much as 20 per cent by 2025.

    South Asia is drained by the Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra river basins, which collectively form the Indo-Gangetic Basin (IGB) and include some of the highest-yielding aquifers of the world. The aquifers associated with these river basins cross the international borders of the contiguous South Asian countries, forming numerous trans-boundary aquifers, including the Indus basin aquifers (between India and Pakistan), Ganga and Brahmaputra basin aquifers (between Bangladesh and India), the aquifers of the tributaries to the Ganga (between Nepal and India), the aquifers of the tributaries to the Brahmaputra (between Bhutan and India, and between India and Bangladesh).

    At the beginning of every hydrologic year, 4,000 billion cubic meters (bcm) water enters the South Asian hydrological systems, of which almost half is lost by poorly understood and un-quantified processes (such as overland flow, surface discharge through rivers to the oceans, submarine groundwater discharge and evaporation). The annual groundwater withdrawals in the region are estimated to exceed 340 bcm, and represent the most voluminous use of groundwater in the world. South Asia faces an acute shortage of drinking water and other usable waters in many areas, as it is seeing a rapid rise in water demand and change in societal water use pattern because of accelerated urbanisation and changes in lifestyle. In many urban and rural areas of the region, surface waters have been historically used as receptacles of sewage and industrial waste, rendering them unfit for domestic use, prompting a switch to groundwater and rainwater sources to meet drinking and agricultural water needs. At present, about 60–80 per cen
    t of the domestic water supplies across South Asia are met by groundwater.

    Irrigation accounts for 85 per cent of groundwater withdrawals and is considered to be the main contributor to groundwater depletion with the maximum possible groundwater footprint seen in the Gangetic aquifers.

    Among the main contributors to water stress in India and Pakistan are poor water resource management and poor water service delivery, including irrigation and drainage services. Moreover, the lack of reliable water data, subsequent analysis and consequent poor planning and allocation is leading to environmentally unviable methods of water withdrawal, causing an alarming reduction in groundwater.

    In both countries, water stress is attributed first and foremost to the massive population growth. Another cause is the lack of sufficient urban water treatment facilities, which prevent the usability of river water for drinking and irrigation.

    Air pollution contributes substantially to premature mortality and disease burden globally, with a greater impact in low-income and middle-income countries than in high-income countries. The northern plains of South Asia has one of the highest exposure levels to air pollution globally.

    The major components of air pollution are ambient particulate matter pollution, household air pollution, and to a smaller extent ozone in the troposphere, the lowest layer of atmosphere. The major sources of ambient particulate matter pollution are coal burning for thermal power production, industry emissions, construction activity and brick kilns, transport vehicles, road dust, residential and commercial biomass burning, waste burning, agricultural stubble burning, and diesel generators.

    In India and Pakistan, farm residues are burnt after harvesting in October to November, which affects the air quality of the region. In Pakistan, most of the rice cultivation takes place in Punjab, and the same is true for India’s Punjab due to suitable climatic conditions for the crop. In both countries, stubble burning is the key cause of smog. According to India’s new and renewable energy sources ministry, India’s Punjab contributes 44-51 million tonnes of residue annually. According to the estimates, paddy areas burnt every year in Indian Punjab and Haryana are 12.68 million hectares and 2.08 million hectares respectively. According to a study, farmers burn 30-90 per cent of residue, which contributes to the smog formation, not just in the immediate region, but the entire Indo-Gangetic plain. With air pollution levels lurking in the “extremely poor” band for almost half the year, the northern regions of South Asia may not be able to host healthy populations for very long.

    The number of deaths attributable to ambient particulate matter pollution in India in 2017 was 0·67 million and the number attributable to household air pollution was 0·48 million. The number of deaths due to ambient particulate matter pollution in Pakistan in 2017 was 60,000.

    Climate change over 3,000 years ago destroyed the Indus Valley Civilisation and it went into oblivion, leaving behind traces of what befell the people here before. The next few decades are extremely critical. Can we summon some good sense to survive or go the way of the Meluhans? The verses of Allama Iqbal, albeit in another context, still hold true: Watan ki fiqr kar nadaan museebat aane wali hai/ Teri barbadiyon ke mashware hain aasmanon mein…/ Na samjhoge tou mit jaoge Hindustan walon/ Tumari daastan tak bhi na hoge daastanon mein. (Think of the homeland, O ignorant one! Hard times are coming./Conspiracies for your destruction are afoot in the heavens./You will be finished if you do not care to understand, O ye people of India!/Even the mention of your being will disappear from the world’s chronicles).

    The author is a prolific commentator on economic, security, and China issues. He is a Trustee/Governing Council member of TPF.

    This article was published earlier in Deccan Chronicle.

    Image source: www.pri.org

  • Chennai’s Water Stress: Urgent Need for Effective Water Security

    Chennai’s Water Stress: Urgent Need for Effective Water Security

    In Chennai, while the demand for water has been rising steeply with rapid urbanisation and growing population, water supply has been hit hard due to monsoon failures, over-exploitation of groundwater, heat waves and inadequate infrastructure. Following poor rainfall since 2018, all four major drinking water sources (four lakes) in the city dried up holding less than 1 percent of their capacities, aggravating the city’s water gap. The summer 2019 water crisis in Chennai has revealed the scale and magnitude of the water challenge, which can be viewed from two angles- one that is caused from a lack of safe water provisions and the other due to scarcity of available water resources.

    In Tamil Nadu, over 95 percent of surface water and 80 percent of groundwater have been utilised, with the per capita availability of water merely 900 cubic meters against a national average of 2200 cubic meters. Additionally, the state is, almost entirely, dependent on rainfall to restore its water resources. Erratic monsoon, therefore, create acute water shortage and droughts in the state. Further, Chennai being a coastal city, there is a high run off rate.

    Water Shortage – Man made Crisis

    Of the total water available, 75 percent of the available water is utilised for agriculture, leaving very little for industrial and personal consumption. The shortage has led to many unregulated private borewells and groundwater extraction. Others have resorted to private tankers who charge exorbitantly, in the absence of alternatives. While the coping costs is only 1 percent of the total income for high income groups, it is 15 percent for middle income groups and 40-50 percent for low income groups. To level the burden, state’s interventions are indispensable and all attempts towards regulating rates have failed due to tanker lobbies.

    In the absence of proper legislation, there has been an 85 percent decline of groundwater levels. Depleting groundwater level and intrusion of seawater have significantly reduced the water quality as well. Additionally, the state needs to build storage facilities and prevent water runoff, evident from the failure of at storing excessive water from 2015 flood which flowed back to the sea. The authorities have also ignored the illegal encroachment and excessive migration of people. An estimated 8,20,000 people live in slums, often without access to a consistent water supply. Poor infrastructure to retain water and low water holding capacity of soil have also affected green water within the soil that supports food and biomass production.

    The water shortage have spilled over to other dimensions as well. The unbalanced emphasis on the supply side issues has created water rage and incidents of local arguments over conservation methods, utilisation patterns, etc. Small businesses, schools, restaurants and others have evolved their own methods to tackle the crisis. Corporates encouraged work from home, many skipped daily wages waiting for water delivery and Chennai Metro temporarily stopped air conditioning in non-peak hours. The water disruptions also affected production, increased input costs and reduced investments in the city.

    Need for Active State Intervention

    Since water is a state subject, its management remains the responsibility of state government. The evident and growing water scarcity immediately demanded policy interventions and action programmes from the Tamil Nadu government. To tackle the high prices charged by tankers, the Municipal Administration hired water tankers for supplying water to the public and demanded that people refuse services of those charging steep rates. However, the Chennai Metro Water Supply and Sewerage Board was delivering 500 million litres, less than half of the city’s needs. In such a scenario, authorities should instead actively regulate the prices and penalise defaulters.

    Water Supply Scheme in Chennai has been approved under JNNURM for improving and strengthening water supply within the city. However, leak detection and rectification is only part of Phase 6 of the scheme. This needs to be prioritised to prevent water wastage. Further, proposal to extend basic amenities to unserved areas under the scheme is still pending. To stop the complete dependence on rainwater, the administration has taken up the construction of a third desalination plant, financed through a KFW loan and AMRUT funds. A Request for Interest has also been issued for setting up three small scale Seawater Reverse Osmosis desalination plants of 10MLD each. However, many argue that desalination should be the last resort since it is expensive, energy intensive and environmentally damaging. Instead, the government should restore and rejuvenate water bodies in the city (currently there are over 100 such bodies each ranging between 2-50 acres), currently polluted with untreated waste, plastic and water hyacinths. There should also be regulations in place to prevent encroachment and pollution of water boundaries by humans.

    To have a sustainable system, rainwater harvesting was made mandatory since 2003, requiring buildings to install rooftop water catchment system and collect rainwater. However, poor implementation and maintenance have proved this measure ineffective. Local and state buildings should lead in rainwater harvesting. Following this, there should be regular checks and local bodies should provide assistance in maintaining these structures. The government is also engaging with NGOs and experts to desilt rivers to improve storage capacity in time for North East monsoons. While the measure is not an immediate fix, it is a long term measure. Though CMWSSB has pushed for desilting, many suggested plans are yet to be approved by the Water Resources Department. Even approved projects are prolonged and poorly managed. For instance, 1.93 lakhs cubic metres of silt are yet to be cleared in Porur lake, the process is yet to begin at Cholavaram lake, etc.

    On a careful observation, it can be established that most efforts currently employed address supply side issues like desalination, mismanagement, restoring water sources, etc. While supply oriented approaches are necessary, it is dependent on availability of water that is largely a product of nature and climate. The demand for water, however, is largely dependent on humans, directly impacted by the population size, industrial use patterns, water efficiency, etc. Hence, there is a need to equally focus on demand management measures, to formulate proper policies for water security.

    TN government has rejected the pricing of agricultural electricity consumption stating that it will burden the farmers and raise food prices. However, the state should actively try to reduce water consumption through irrigation, by measures like fixed timing for supply of power (used to pump groundwater), training farmers on water conservation methods, encouraging efficient irrigation techniques(drip irrigation or spray irrigation instead of flood irrigation), etc.

    Data intensive Analysis should guide Effective Policy Formulation and Implementation

    With wide spread experience of water scarcity and data projecting a situation normalising drought, it is the right time to adopt water conservation methods and push for change to limited water use lifestyle. Cape Town, that faced a similar situation, successfully implemented behavioural nudges to reduce water use. Most effective nudges included offering conservation feedback to users on their performance in relation to neighbours, and creating Water Maps that highlighted areas compliant with the targets. Further, reuse of water should be encouraged for landscaping, flushing toilets, etc.

    More importantly, to develop ideal policies and evolve schemes, there is a need for water accounting to track and understand the extent of water scarcity, check inter basin river transfers for better negotiations and make trade-offs with other states, improve preparedness for emergencies, etc. There should also be public water audits on institutions, laws, public and private usages, etc for transparency and accountability.

    Currently, water is managed by multiple agencies – one to handle encroachment, one for lake rejuvenation, another for pollution control, and so on- with overlapping responsibilities and little coordination between them. For responsible and accountable water governance, these bodies should be under an integrated agency. Overall, the demand side measures should equally be managed by the state. Towards this, the model of city’s development should be altered to distribute migration across the state, especially to areas that receive higher annual rainfall and have abundant water sources. In addition to reducing the water stress faced by the city, it will hinder the overcrowding in Chennai’s urban space and bring equitable development across the state.

    Renuka Paul is a Research Analyst with ‘The Peninsula Foundation’.

    Photo by Adhithya Srinivasan on Unsplash