World Resource Institute

All other countries on the list belong to the arid and semi-arid regions of Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, receive almost half of India’s annual rainfall and have fewer natural water sources.

Even within India, all nine states and union territories that report the worst water stress lie in the Indo-Gangetic plain, which has a web of big and small rivers and lakes.

Chandigarh tops this list, as per the WRI, followed by Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.

Why is India water-stressed despite widespread rainfall and a large number of water sources? “Overexploitation and mismanagement of water is the reason for this water stress,” said Shashi Shekhar, former secretary, ministry of water resources and Ganga rejuvenation, and a senior fellow with WRI India.

Inefficient agriculture, that uses up to 80% of all water resources in the country, is one of the primary reasons for India’s water stress, said Shekhar. Groundwater extraction–which provides for 40% of the country’s water needs–is significantly more than recharge.

The 17 countries dealing with acute water stress are home to nearly a quarter of the world’s population (1.75 billion). India ranks 13th on the list but at 1.36 billion, its population is more than triple that of the aggregate of the other 16 countries grappling with a water crisis, the study said.

About 600 million Indians are dealing with high-to-extreme water stress wherein over 40% of the annually available surface water is used every year, according to a 2018 study by government think-tank Niti Aayog 2018, reported by IndiaSpend on June 25, 2018.

About 200,000 people die every year due to inadequate access to safe water. The situation is likely to worsen as the demand for water exceeds supply by 2050, and India will face a 6% loss in its gross domestic product by 2050, the Aayog study said.

It is important for countries to address water stress because it can exacerbate conflict and migration, endanger water-dependent industries (mining, thermoelectric power generation, and manufacturing) and threaten food security, said the WRI study.

Climate change is also exacerbating this crisis leading to erratic rainfall, we further explain.

Qatar leads the list
Over a third (2.572 billion) of the world’s population lives in the 44 countries with “high” to “extremely high” water stress, said the WRI study.

Qatar, Israel and Lebanon are ranked first, second and third in the list of countries dealing with the worst water stress. India, as we earlier said, is ranked 13th, while neighbouring Pakistan stands at 14th, according to the study which uses data from 1960 to 2014, excluding anomaly events.
 

Source: Water Stress Rankings: World Resource Institute, Annual Rainfall: World Bank
Note: Annual Rainfall figures have been added by the correspondent to analyze the aridity of the countries. San Marino’s rainfall figures have been taken from this source.

Indian States Facing Extreme to Low Level of Water Stress

 Source: World Resource Institute

 
In India, nine states and union territories (UTs) have been categorised as regions of “extremely high” water stress. Chandigarh tops the list that also includes Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.

Crisis-ridden states mismanage water
Except for Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, other water-stressed Indian states have mismanaged their water, according to the Niti Aayog report.

Water Management Scores, By State

Source: Composite Water Management Index, NITI Aayog

The Aayog analysed and scored 24 states on nine broad sectors and 28 indicators, including groundwater, irrigation, farm practices and drinking water. Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand scored below 60% on all the indicators.

The Aayog report did not have scores for Jammu and Kashmir, Puducherry and Chandigarh.

Irrigation is a critical factor
The historic exploitation of water for agriculture is responsible for the crisis in the states in the Indo-Gangetic plain, as we said earlier.

Punjab, Haryana and West-Uttar Pradesh are the worst-affected Indo-Gangetic states in terms of water stress and the main reason for this is their 40-year-old cropping pattern in which paddy, sugarcane, and wheat dominate — all water-guzzlers, as per Shekhar.

Since the government ensures the procurement of these water-intensive crops, their acreage grew in the past decades. But so did the depletion rate of level of groundwater, the primary source of irrigation.

All these states have alluvial soil (known to absorb the water), receive sufficient rainfall and have a number of rivers crisscrossing the region — factors that should have protected them from water stress, Shekhar pointed out. But the groundwater in these regions has reached a level that it will now take decades to recharge, he added, and that too only if no extraction takes place.

Govt research is flawed: expert
Shekhar also has reservations about the WRI study, because it uses historical government data along with other indicators. In India, the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) collects data with just one question in mind: is the extraction of water faster than its percolation? This, Shekhar said, presents an incorrect picture as CGWB data does not reflect water stress faced by states such as Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

“In fact, the government data has not been updated for the last five to 10 years, because there is a lot of pressure on the CGWB not to update any new region as water-stressed,” Shekhar said.

The government data also take averages for very large areas, which does not yield a granular picture. “There are 30 million pump sets in this country, we don’t know how much water are these pumps exploiting. So, we don’t really know how much groundwater we are extracting,” said Shekhar.

Climate change is exacerbating the situation by causing longer dry spells and impacting the intensity of rainfall in India. Over 110 years to 2010, the number of heavy rainfall events in India has increased by 6% per decade. This is attributed to rising temperatures caused by climate change, as IndiaSpend reported on August 24, 2018. During heavy rainfall events, water does not percolate into the ground to recharge the aquifer and quickly runs off.

(Tripathi is a principal correspondent with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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Residents of Pandanad sit in a bus stop surrounded by flood waters, in Kerala, India. Manjunath Kiran/AFP

In the mountainous Coorg or Kodagu district in the neighbouring state of Karnataka, thousands of people have been marooned because of torrential rains. Exacerbated by landslides in hilly terrain, flooding has led to the destruction of homes, bridges, road networks and industries.

Far from being a surprise, the possibility of such devastation was highlighted several years ago.
 

The need to change our development approach

In 2011, the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel, chaired by the internationally renowned ecologist Madhav Gadgil, submitted a report to the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests. The report warned that an ill-thought focus on development was impacting the sustainability of the Western Ghats hill chain, one of the world’s most biodiverse areas that runs along the west coast of India. The expert report urged a number of states, including Karnataka and Kerala, to adopt an approach of thoughtful conservation, limiting activities such as quarrying, dams and construction near protected forests in hilly areas. The report was rejected by the Ministry as well as by both states.

With the experience of hindsight, it is clear that the worst flood damage took place in those regions where the Gadgil committee recommended protection.

The Nasa released the video of Kerala in South India hit by heavy rainfall.

In Kodagu, for instance, tens to hundreds of thousands of large trees were felled in 2015 to construct a high-tension electric wire line. Uncontrolled sand mining has constrained river flows, while the rapid spread of high-rise buildings on unstable hill slopes has weakened the soil. This unplanned development has left the area susceptible to flash floods and landslides, caused by a combination of tree felling on steep hillslopes and heavy rainfall.
 

Airports built on water bodies

The flooding of the Kochi airport is another example of poor planning leading to disastrous outcomes. The airport was built on the paddy fields and wetlands adjacent to the Periyar river, and extends up to the banks of the river on one side.

The longest river in Kerala, it has a number of dams – some of which had to be opened to release water during the rains. The airport was badly hit, with estimated economic costs of at least Rs 500 crores because of its forced closure for several days.

Kochi’s International airport apron is seen flooded following monsoon rains in the Indian state of Kerala on August 15, 2018. AFP

The Periyar river is not the only one that has been dammed. The state of Kerala has 44 rivers with a total of 61 dams. Many had to be opened across Kerala as they were dangerously full – a step that, while essential during a time of emergency, contributed to the heavy flooding. A 2017 report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India warned that not a single one of these dams had an emergency action plan in place for disaster management. Pre- and post-monsoon safety inspections had not been carried out for any of these dams either.

Given how likely it is that coastal and riverine cities will experience flooding in coming years, you would think we know better than to build airports near bodies of water. Yet Kochi airport is not an exception. The runways of the Mumbai airport have been built over the Mithi river, and the airport is located on a reclaimed pond. One of the runways of the Chennai airport extends over the Adyar river, affecting its long-term safety and stability.

It is no surprise that these airports, which are among the busiest in India, frequently flood when the rains are heavy – leading to large-scale economic losses. Yet the new Navi Mumbai airport is coming up in an equally unsuitable location on coastal wetlands.
 

Reversing the trend

In the era of climate change we have just entered, extreme rainfall events are going to become increasingly common. Uncontrolled growth at the expense of the environment will severely exacerbate the impacts of climate change. Our cities are simply not prepared for extreme weather events. The recent collapse of a bridge in Genoa, killing at least 43 people, is linked to poor maintenance, but also to heavy rainfall.

Rescuers work at the site where the Morandi motorway bridge collapsed in Genoa on August 14, 2018. At least 30 people were killed on August 14 when the giant motorway bridge collapsed in Genoa in north-western Italy. Valery Hache/AFP

Certain types of infrastructure may be less suitable to some contexts in a changing climate scenario. Wildfires in California cause extensive damage to private property because many cities are extending their boundaries into forest areas. As local climate becomes hotter and drier, with fires becoming more likely, new homes are being built in areas that are highly susceptible to fire instead of less exposed locations.

Some cities are seeking to reverse this trajectory of unplanned construction. Nairobi is in the midst of an extensive demolition drive, uprooting thousands of buildings built on riparian land that choke the flow of water and contribute to severe annual floods.
In Seoul, between 2002-2005, the city municipality tore up an elevated highway that had been built over the Cheonggyecheon stream. This internationally famous urban-renewal project reduced traffic, reduced air pollution and cut the urban heat-island effect. In Yonkers, New York, an ongoing project aims to restore the buried Saw Mill river.

Millions of dollars have been invested to rehabilitate the Saw Mill River in the state of New York and bring nature back in the city, August 2016. Jim Henderson/Wikimedia, CC BY-NC

Similar urban river daylighting projects are gaining traction in cities around the world. Zurich has been an early pioneer, developing the Bachkonzept (stream concept) to create, restore and uncover a number of streams and springs. London, which built over a number of famous rivers, has now uncovered and restored a number of these waterways, while Sheffield, having experimented with daylighting, is now considering uncovering sections of the local Sheaf river.

The demonstrated ecological and environmental benefits are clear – as are the social and economic returns. For example, Seoul’s iconic Cheonggyecheon stream restoration led to a more than six-fold increase in biodiversity, a 35% decrease in air pollution and a growth in property prices that is double of that in other parts of the city.

Investment in the Cheonggyecheon stream is amply repaid many times over in economic security and growth, local health and quality of life. riNux/Flickr, CC BY

The restored stream attracts tens of thousands of visitors daily who contribute significantly to local economy. Such ideas of restoration need to become more widespread, and embedded in routine climate change and disaster management planning. The investment made is amply repaid many times over in economic security and growth, biodiversity, local health and quality of life, and resilience against future disasters.

Once the emergency relief is attended to, Kochi and Kodagu would do well to use their recent experience as a warning of future disasters to come in a world of increasingly uncertain climate.

The focus must be on long-term restoration projects that can reverse some of the environmental and ecological damage that has led to the current situation. But such learning need not be confined to the areas that have experienced the worst. The rest of the world has much to learn as well.
 

Harini Nagendra, Professor of Sustainability, Azim Premji University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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A view of the Betwa river in Orchha, Madhya Pradesh. A new analysis of rainfall data reveals that monsoon shortages are growing in river basins with surplus water and falling in those with scarcities, raising questions about India’s Rs 11 lakh crore plan to transfer water from “surplus” to “deficit” basins. 

Now, a new analysis of rainfall data reveals that monsoon shortages are growing in river basins with surplus water and falling in those with scarcities, raising questions about India’s Rs 11 lakh crore ($165 billion) plan to transfer water from “surplus” to “deficit” basins.
 
Water in surplus basins—such as the Mahanadi and other major west-flowing rivers in western India—fell more than 10% over a quarter-century (the period between 1951-1975 and 1976-2000) and increased by more than 10% in the Indus, the Ganga and some east-flowing rivers down south, according to this study in PLOS One, an open-access global journal.
 

Source: PLOS One
 
“Narrowing disparities in the water yield of Indian river basins call for an immediate reassessment of inter-basin water transfer plans,” Sachin S Gunthe, corresponding author of the study and associate professor, department of civil engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, told IndiaSpend.
 
At 2001 prices, 30 inter-basin transfers—through a proposed network of canals, dams, aqueducts and pumping stations—were budgeted at Rs 560,000 crore ($124 billion at 2001 exchange rates). In April 2016, water resources minister Uma Bharati revised the estimate to Rs 11 lakh crore, almost double the estimate made 15 years ago—a sum equivalent to 44 times India’s agriculture budget or 1.6 times all government spending in 2015-16.
 

Source: Water Resources Department
 
The first river-linking project—meant to bring the waters of the Ken river 231 km from Daudhan in Madhya Pradesh to drought-ridden Bundelkhand in western Uttar Pradesh—was cleared in September 2016 amidst controversy, since it would mean submerging 100 sq km of central India’s Panna tiger reserve.
 
Despite the new evidence that changing monsoon patterns may require a review of the inter-basin water-transfer programme, a government spokesperson questioned the study’s interpretations, while India’s environment minister acknowledged to IndiaSpend that since there were “many conflicting opinions”, the Ken project would test the waters.
 
“Our preliminary analysis of the IIT faculty study suggests that while the data analysis may be correct, they have reached the wrong conclusion,” S Masood Husain, director general of the National Water Development Agency, told IndiaSpend.
 
Independent experts advocated caution before going ahead with a multi-billion-dollar effort that has led to ecological upheavals in other countries, and in one instance partially reversed in Australia with dams being retrofitted. Globally, linking rivers is now a contentious issue.
 
Clearly, “there is a need to better understand the hydrology of basins and collate more evidence to establish whether a basin is surplus or deficit,” said Suresh Babu S V, director (rivers, wetlands and water policy) at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) India, a global wildlife advocacy.
 
The controversy over river-linking begins with the financial costs.
 
With incomplete cost estimates, accurate cost-benefit analysis is difficult
 
The original $124 billion estimate of 30 inter-basin transfers excluded key expenses, such as the cost of dams, relief and rehabilitation and electricity need to pump water, according to this July 2016 report (co-written by former Planning Commission member Mihir Shah) on restructuring the Central Water Commission and the Central Ground Water Board.
 
Several cost estimates were missing.
 
Consider the Ken-Betwa link, which water resources minister Uma Bharti called a “model project”, which sets aside a third of its Rs 15,000 crore ($2.2 billion) budget for environmental management and rehabilitation. But estimates of the “ecosystem services”—including riverbed sand, winter fishing and ecotourism—that the river Ken provides, and may be affected when its waters are linked with the Betwa’s, find no mention in the project report, said experts.
 
For instance, sand worth Rs2,575 crore ($ 387 million) is extracted from the Ken riverbed near Banda, Bundelkhand’s easternmost district alone, according to this 2016 report of the ministry of environment, forest, and climate change and GIZ, a German agency working on sustainable development. Winter fishing at different sites is valued between Rs 3 lakh and Rs 17 lakh, and ecotourism across the 543–sq-km Panna Tiger Reserve—18%, or 100 sq km, will be lost to the project, as we said—Raneh falls and a crocodile sanctuary at Rs 7.69 crore.
 
“Changing the Ken’s course is likely to adversely impact these valuable ecosystem services, but these and similar losses have not been factored into the project cost,” said Brij Gopal, co-author of the 2016 environment ministry study and founder-coordinator of the Centre for Inland Waters in South Asia, a research organisation.
 
“Professor Gopal has made several representations to the environment ministry,” said Husain, the government spokesperson. “We have replied to all the issues and believe we have taken care of the environmentalist’s (sic) apprehensions.”
 
“We’ve been talking about inter-basin water transfers for 40 years,” environment minister Anil Madhav Dave told IndiaSpend. “Environmentalists and water resources experts have said a lot, the voice of local stakeholders has been least heard. We must ask their opinion too. With too many conflicting opinions, best is to implement one small link, assess the consequences over five to 10 years, and then decide further. I support balanced development. If we see adverse outcomes, we must stop talking about inter-basin transfers for good.”
 
The expensive outcomes of linking rivers: The lesson from Australia
 
Just as the Ken-Betwa project could adversely impact the ecosystem services of the Ken, other donor basins across India could suffer “significant losses of ecosystem goods and services as well as unacceptable social and economic impacts”, said the WWF-India’s Babu.
 
Environmentalists have predicted other possible adverse environmental outcomes of the proposed project—based on reason and/or global experiences—such as:
 

• Interlinking river basins could adversely impact the monsoon, V Rajamani, professor emeritus, Jawaharlal Nehru University, wrote in this 2006 comment in Current Science, an Indian scientific journal. If the water of India’s east-flowing rivers is diverted so that less water flows into the Bay of Bengal, it could set off a cascade of events—including low salinity, which keeps sea-surface temperature “high”, above 28 deg C and thus creates low-pressure areas—and intensifies the monsoon over much of the sub-continent.
• Damming India’s east-coast rivers to take their water westwards will curtail downstream flooding and thereby, the supply of sediment—a natural nutrient—destroying fragile coastal ecosystems and causing coastal and delta erosion, predicted the Mihir Shah committee report.

This observation recalls the failure of Australia’s Snowy River Scheme, a 145-km network of tunnels and 80 km of aqueducts transferring 1.1 cu km of water annually from the basin of the Snowy—a river flowing through mostly uninhabited mountainous region in eastern Australia into the Tasman Sea—to the basin of the Murray-Darling—an inland river developed for irrigation and water supply; construction began in 1949.
 
As the Snowy passed through one of the largest of its 16 dams, its flow was cut by 99%, as its water was sent to towns and villages downstream, a design that completely ignored—and ended up destroying—the river’s wetland habitat in its lower reaches, according to this 2007 WWF report.
 
Efforts to restore the flow of the Snowy have cost Rs 2,381 crore ($358 million), 57% of the project’s Rs 4,191 crore ($630 million) cost.
 
The design of India’s inter-river-basin water transfer project may also be flawed. “Given the topography of India and the way links are envisaged, they might totally bypass the core dryland areas of Central and Western India, which are located on elevations of 300+ metres above mean sea level,” said the Mihir Shah committee report.
 
Spain’s 286-km Tagus-Segura link and South Africa’s 200-km Vaal-Orange-Senqu link are other examples of global river-water-transfer projects that have run into trouble.

 
 
What might it cost, asked experts, to take apart India’s project, which is 262 times larger by value, if it similarly goes wrong?
 
“Instead of repeating the mistakes of other countries, India must learn from failed river basin interlinks,” said Shah, economist and former Planning Commission member, also co-founder of Samaj Pragati Sahayog (Social Progress Cooperative), an advocacy for livelihoods security.
 
Expanding agriculture—an aim of linking rivers—is possible through better irrigation practices
 
Expanding agriculture by making more water available to existing farmers and hitherto non-cultivated land are key aims of inter-river-basin water transfers globally and in India. However, global experience indicates that improving efficiency of irrigation could be a better way of making more water available.
 
India’s efficiency in using water is among the lowest in the world: 25% to 35%, against 40% to 45% in Malaysia and Morocco, and 50% to 60% in Israel, Japan, China and Taiwan, according to the Mihir Shah report.
 
“Focusing on improved irrigation practices would help achieve har khet ko pani (water to every field) at a far lower cost,” said Shah.
 
In Bundelkhand, for instance, efficient irrigation practices and localised water-saving solutions would yield immediate returns, something farmers there need help in implementing, said Gopal.
 
Before constructing more new dams, India also needs to better manage existing dams, on which Rs 400,000 crore ($60 billion) has been spent since 1947. “Bringing one additional hectare under irrigation would cost Rs 1.5 lakh by the improved management of dams and underground water as against Rs 5 lakh by constructing more dams,” said Shah.
 
Promoting water-efficient crops such as millets and pulses would also help expand agriculture. Instead, phase two of the Ken-Betwa link, with four dams in the upper reaches of the Betwa, mostly across Madhya Pradesh and UP, to better irrigate surrounding land and bring to the lower reaches of the Betwa water from the Ken is likely to “prompt a needless shift from pulses and millets to sugarcane and rice”, said Gopal.
 
Sugarcane and rice consume roughly six times and three-and-a-half times the water that millets and pulses need, IndiaSpend reported in August 2016. Millets are also far more nutritious than rice, we reported.
 
Why linking river basins would reduce groundwater recharge
 
India meets 80% of its water needs through groundwater, which also waters 60% of irrigated area. Close to 60% of the urban water supply and 85% of the rural water supply is groundwater, said Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator, South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, an advocacy.
 
As a result, groundwater levels across India have plummeted and quality has deteriorated. In the decade ending in January 2016, water levels declined in 65% of the country’s wells, according to this 2016 Central Ground Water Board report.
 
“Inter-basin links would actually reduce groundwater recharge because forests would be destroyed, the river flow stopped and the local systems neglected,” said Thakkar. A better option would be to protect and enhance groundwater recharge systems and focus on community-driven groundwater regulation, said Thakkar.
 
Underground aquifers do not submerge land, displace people or reduce forests, and their water does not evaporate, as is inevitable with the river-basin interlinking project, said experts.
 
“Think of river basin interlinking only after exhausting the local potential for harvesting rain, recharging groundwater, watershed development, introducing better cropping patterns (non water-intensive crops) and methods (such as rice intensification), improving the soil moisture-holding capacity and saving and storing water,” said Thakkar. “We still haven’t done that.”
 
“We also believe in local solutions and watershed management,” said Husain, the government spokesman. “But this can happen side by side with other interventions, including inter-basin water transfers. Since India’s current dams are insufficient for its future needs, the earlier we make additional provision, the better, as resettlement and rehabilitation would become more challenging.”
 
(Bahri is a freelance writer and editor based in Mount Abu, Rajasthan.)

This article was first published on India Spend
 

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