KAS India
KAS India
KAS India
KAS India
KAS India
KAS India
KAS India
KAS India
KAS India
KAS India
Following welcome remarks by Mark Alexander Friedrich, Project Officer at the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, and Syamal Kumar Sarkar, Distinguished Fellow and Director at TERI, S. H. Nagarajaiah, Executive Engineer of WD XII of WRD, Government of Goa, delivered the Inaugural Address. He outlined the challenges of meeting developmental and environmental goals when dealing with water resources. In his keynote address, Professor S. Janakarajan, President of South Asia Consortium for Inter-disciplinary Water Resources Studies (SaciWATERs), pointed out that while India needs to prepare for its impact on water resources, climate change has too often been used as an excuse while damage occurred rather as a consequence of legal, legalised, and illegal actions by the government, economy, and population.
The first working session of the conference, titled „understanding the importance of water resources – economic, social and political“, was chaired by Parthasarathi Banerjee, Dean of the Goa Institute of Management. The socio-political and economic dimensions of water resources were at the centre of the presentation by Vibha Arora, Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Delhi. Somnath Bandyopadhyay, Associate Professor at Nalanda University, looked at the impact of the usage of ground water in combination with the seasonal changes in quality and quantity of available water. He emphasised the necessity of aligning governance with the natural circumstances, particularly river basins as the “natural water boundaries”. Lydia Powell, Head of the Centre for Resources Management at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), looked at the challenges to water resources in the context of energy production and usage. Sudhir Mishra, Founder & Managing Partner at Trust Legal, a leading environment, health, and infrastructure Law Firm, discussed the legal framework and the interplay of different levels of legal, political, and social actors in the protection of the environment.
How India's rivers and water bodies can be protected was discussed in the second session, chaired by Professor S. Janakarajan. Bhawna Tyagi, Research Associate at TERI, gave a detailed overview of river and groundwater conservation and protection efforts in India. Looking at a wide range of aspects, including domestic and trans-national issues, Chandan Mahanta, Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati, pointed out the importance of data. He criticised that some of the data had questionable reliability, emphasising on the importance of its verification. Nilanjan Ghosh, Senior Fellow and Head of Economics at ORF, criticised the lack of penalising power of river basin organisations. Suresh Babu, Director – River Basins & Water Policy at WWF India, discussed how the experiences and strategies applied in the Ganges basin can be transferred and improved for other ecosystems in other parts of the country. Narayan C. Ghosh from the National Institute of Hydrology in Roorkee, illustrated visually by way of presentation, the hydro-geological features, river systems, and rain patterns of India.
Suneel Pandey, Director at TERI, chaired the third session looking at the economic and trade challenges resulting from the changing availability of water resources. Nitish Arora, Research Associate at TERI, opened the session with a background presentation. Ashwini Pai Panandiker, Fellow at the Goa office of TERI, illustrated the importance of water to the economy of Goa on the basis of a study conducted by TERI. She illustrated how different scenarios of water availability could affect the economy of the state in the years to come. The next speaker, Sucharita Sen, Executive Director of SaciWATERS, presented the role of peri-urban spaces of large metropolises. She pointed out that climate change policies needed to be looked at in the context of urbanisation processes. Shilp Verma, Fellow at the IWMI-Tata Program, UNESCO-IHE, analysed inter-state water trade. Furthermore, he criticised the promotion of off-grid solar pumps as they would contribute to groundwater depletion. Nitya Nanda, Fellow at TERI, looked at the discrepancy between some advice given by the scientific community and the real-life challenges of farmers, for example when night-time watering is being recommended but the farmers cannot do so because of the danger of snake bites.
In the fourth session of the conference, chaired by Ambassador C. Dasgupta, Member of the Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change and of the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, (potential) conflicts and fields of cooperation between India and its neighbours with regard to water issues were dealt with. Following a background presentation by Swati Ganeshan, Fellow at TERI, during which she highlighted the system of global water governance, D. Suba Chandan, Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, analysed the influence of domestic issues on neighbouring countries, particularly with regard to the example of Pakistan. Uttam Kumar Sinha, Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), discussed the role of water treaties in framing the politics of inter-state relations in South Asia. With regard to the debate about the Indus Water-Treaty, he expressed his opinion that in the years to come, the “treaties remain solid but will be tested.” Sreeradha Dutta, Director of the Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies (MAKAIS), looked at Bangladesh-Nepal relations in regard to water resources. She pointed out how climate change changed existing circumstances and challenged existing cross-border water treaties. Ambika Vishwanath, Geopolitical and Strategic Consultant, presented a number of examples for cross-national water cooperation from other regions of the world, particularly of the Senegal river basin and the Mekong river. Drawing from this experience, she emphasised the importance of data-sharing, the creation of overarching institutions, and the advantages of a focus on equitable water distribution instead of equal water distribution.
Like the previous session, the fifth session, analysed conflicts of distribution and potentials for cooperation, while focusing on the inter-state and community level in India. The session was chaired by Syamal Kumar Sarkar. Following a background presentation by Nitish Arora of TERI, Pranab Mukhopadhyay, Professor at Goa University, gave an overview of the history and background of water disputes within India. Mary Abraham, Fellow at the TERI Bangalore office, presented the challenges south Indian states face with regard to cross-state border water distribution. Pragati Jain, Assistant Professor at Central University Rajasthan, presented a detailed examination of the developments in the state of Rajasthan. She illustrated how the formerly water-abundant state has come to face extended draughts, leading to decreased agricultural productivity in recent years. On this basis she presented a variety of potential remedies, such as setting up biofuel plantations.
The sixth and final session of the workshop looked back at the discussions and findings of the past days and aimed at the congregation of ideas and policy recommendations. Nitya Nanda gave a conference summary. In his concluding remarks, Syamal Kumar Sarkar thanked the participants and organisers. He pointed out that in the media water was only being discussed in terms of conflict but not solutions. This is why expert seminars discussing problems and solutions were needed in the future.
The outcomes of the conference would be presented as a joint publication by TERI and KAS later this year.
