Suresh Rohilla - Climate change and sanitation, water resources
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Transcript of Suresh Rohilla - Climate change and sanitation, water resources
Climate change and sanitation, water resources
Resilience in the face of Uncertainty: why cooperation is necessary
Suresh Kumar RohillaProgramme Director
Centre for Science and Environment, Delhi (India)
at STEPS Workshop
27 January 2016
Key Points for India :
Water security in the poor’s world:
The agenda for research, policy and cooperation to manage scarcity, plenty, pollution and waste in an
age of climate risk
The face of India’s farmer Grief, despair, desperation
Unseasonal rain, hail, freak storms have destroyed crops over millions of hectares
Not just normal variability
Is this climate change?
• Cannot say if this season of despair is linked to climate change
• But cannot say that these extreme weather events are not climate change
• Weird is now normal• Normal is now devastating – the poor not
responsible for climate change are worst impacted
Climate Negotiations on economyNot ecology
Climate change is about economic growth
No country has built a low carbon economy So action is little and too lateConvention signed in 1992
25 years later world is still talking; procrastinating; finding excuses not to act
Economic growth on line
Acceptable??? 1 US citizen =
107 Bangladeshis 134 Bhutanese 19 Indians 269 Nepalese
Unacceptable. Need to secure ecological space for growth
The age of climate risk• Monsoon is India’s finance minister
• Water insecurity already high and crippling
• In this situation, what do farmers do?
• How will they manage scarcity; unseasonal and variable rain events; and extreme rain, which leads to flooding?
• Agenda for water managers
Agenda for water future
• Management of competing demands – between agriculture, cities and industry
• Management of risk – untimely and deficient rain
• Management of pollution – ensuring water is not degraded and so unusable
India will not follow transition of rich world – people move to cities; economies move to service-industry; water moves with it
Secure water for growth
• Agriculture will remain critical for livelihoods – 60% dependence
• But cities-industries will grow. Will need water for growth
• Unless we manage competing needs; violence will grow
• Already cases of protest and police firing over water allocation to industry or city
Augment supply• Water for agriculture must be secured
• Recognise groundwater provides bulk of irrigation
• Recognise there are over 19 million well owners – they take decisions on water
• They are more efficient in use
• But crisis is growing – groundwater levels falling
Groundwater: needs recharge
• Recognise recharge is critical
• Large reservoirs centralize recharge
• But rain is decentralised…
Groundwater irrigates more land than surface water
But structures for decentralised recharge have gone
Water security in new age
• Build millions of water recharge structures to improve productivity
• India’s employment guarantee programme needs to be targeted to building durable assets
• But this is not enough
Link water with resilience
• Increase of productivity has to be low-cost
• Higher cost, higher risk, higher loss
• Need multiple crops; need crops that are water resilient; need systems of agriculture that can improve coping abilities of farmers
Resilience is not ‘technology’
• Water is about cropping pattern• Water is about food we eat• Diets are about food we are ‘sold’
• Need to make this link• Need to change nature of food industry in
climate risked world
Urban-industrial waterChallenges
• Need clean water supply for all• Need to take back the waste generated by water
use• Need to treat the waste so that it does not pollute• Need to do this in ways that it does not add to
water conflicts
• How?
The conventional way:
Bring water into the city – storage, diversion, pipe, pump, treat – from further and further away.
Flush and carry the waste out of the city – pipe, pump, divert, treat – further and further away.
The water-sewage connection
Agenda reinvent water-waste
Political economy of water supplyPolitical economy of defecation
Systems of water-waste management that are not affordable and equitable
If not equitable then not sustainable
Water: costly supply
Water sourced from farLeads to increasing cost of supplyLeads to high distribution lossesLess water to supply at end of pipelineLess water means more costly waterCities not able to recover costs of supply Cities have no money to invest in sewage
Capital intensity, Leads to inequity
• Indian cities have ‘enough’ water for supply• But water does not reach all• Intra-city inequity is huge and growing
• Challenge is about justice, but it is about technology – current system expensive, too expensive to supply to all
Groundwater: abused
Water supply does not reach all, only few. No alternative but to move to groundwater
But this is not accounted forCities only consider ‘official’ groundwater useMillions depend on private wells, tanker mafia, bottled water
No recognition of this water source; no respect for its management
Lakes: Present lost
Groundwater is not not considered as critical for water supply, recharge is neglected
Land is valued, water is not
No legal protection for city lakes, catchment and drainage systems
Sponges of our cities then get destroyed
Lakes: Future lost
• With climate change extreme rainfall events will grow
• More rain, fewer rainy days• Cities need sponges to capture rain,
recharge for scarcity• Need to consider in future planning
Water=waste
Cities spend on water, have no funds to spend on cleaning up waste
80% water leaves homes as sewageMore water=more waste
Interception of sewage expensiveTreatment of sewage also expensive
Sewage: more sums
• 30% of total sewage can be treated• But Delhi and Mumbai alone have 40 per cent
of sewage treatment capacity in the country
Cities do not have drains (Sewerage)New growth cities are growing without drainsBacklog and front-log impossible to fixAs cities fix one drain, another goes under
Example - Bengaluru: not reaching
• 3610 km of sewage pipes • 14 sewage treatment plants = 781 mld• Generates 800-1000 mld of sewage• But treats only 300 mld• Rest does not reach• Now plans to build 4000 km more • Builds, grows and more lines need repair• Catch-up that does not catch-up
Partial treatment = pollution
Cities cannot control pollution Cost of building system is high•City can build sewage system for few •Spend to pump, repair and treat waste of fewBut•Treated waste of few gets mixed with untreated waste of majority •The result is pollution
Full costs are not affordable
Privatization or not is not the question
Water-sewage-pollution costs are high and unaffordable by all
Cannot pay full costs
Re-invent water and waste
1. Plan deliberately to cut costs of supply2. Spend on sewage not on water 3. Cut costs on sewage systems4. Plan to recycle and reuse every drop5. Connect water conservation to sewage
management
Humble engineering for future
• Current technologies for sustainability are unaffordable. For rich when rich
• Need affordable and sustainable solutions
• Need to look for answers in past ways; in the knowledge of the very poor; in ‘unproductive’ systems we discount
• Need new engineering for future – Move from unraveling nature to imitating it for sustainable development.
The real water agenda
Catch water where it falls
Flush but do not forget
….Create local and distributed water infrastructure
…Water sensitive design and planning
The real water agenda• Water is starting point for the removal of poverty.
• Basis of food and livelihood security. Leading to local and distributed wealth generation
• This will require new forms of institutional management as current water bureaucracies will find it difficult to manage such vast and disparate systems
Resilience Building in face of uncertainty Why water cooperation is necessary ?
• Emerging science …all streams of concerns – health, climate change, energy security and local imperatives of sustainable development are converging.
• • Need is to reinvent the framework for global and regional cooperation to
find locally and globally appropriate solutions within co-benefit framework
• Need is to bring together best practices in different regions on adaptation and resilience to build a network of advocates for change in different countries
Way forward
… making water everybody’s business
Thank You.
email: [email protected]