WHILE we look to Copenhagen and Cancun and Durban for the world
powers to save the planet from global warming, time is, quite literally,
slipping beneath our feet. If the United Nations’ World Water Development
Report 2012 is anything to go by, “India faces an unprecedented crisis in the
next two decades” which “threatens the country’s food and water security”. It
is the biggest crisis of our lifetime.
Water, though, is everywhere.
Nearly 70% of the earth is covered by oceans and much of its land in permanent
ice. But only 3% of it is freshwater, no more than a few drops that we can drink.
Groundwater is the largest volume of the unfrozen freshwater but accounts for just
1% of earth’s total water. It is a scarce, invisible resource, always taken for
granted.
In an age obsessed with
greenhouse gases, water emerges as the biggest victim of human growth. In the
two and half centuries since the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide
formulations in the atmosphere have gone up by approximately 36%, methane by
150%, and nitrous oxide by 16%. In the 20th
century alone, human population increased by 300% and the use of water by 700%.
But this is not about numbers.
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When I grew up in Calcutta, half
the city bathed in its numerous ponds and the Ganga. My family belonged to the other
half that looked down on public bathing as subaltern. Never allowed to take the
plunge despite living by an expansive pond, I soon stopped longing for the
adventure.
More than two decades later, when
Calcutta has lost most of its water bodies to a real estate boom, the
significance of those bathing ponds dawned on me. Even today, few Asian cities have waste water
treatment plants. As a result, huge quantities of wastewater keep polluting our
freshwater systems. Ponds are a low-cost, natural wastewater reuse and
treatment system that also supports local fishermen.
Public bathing in ponds may not appear a
pleasant or even practical urban solution in 2012, but the sheer presence of
these water bodies is absolutely vital for replenishing the groundwater stock,
particularly in cities where impervious surfaces such as paved streets, parking
lots and roofs restrict rainwater percolation.
But
this is not about an urban crisis.
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Across
India, the mean rate of drop in the water table is one metre in every three
years. In a list of six hot spots identified by the United Nation’s World Water
Development Report 2012, India comes first. But
merely turning off bathroom taps may not save the day.
Today,
72% of water use is for agriculture and another 22% for industry, leaving out
only 6% to meet the domestic demand. Since Independence, subsequent governments
have offered subsidised electricity to farmers for pumping out groundwater. During 1970–94, groundwater-irrigated lands in India
have increased by 105%.
As
a result, the UN report notes, “aquifer depletion and inefficient water use are
now endemic” in India. The International Water Management Institute describes
this as “the anarchy of uncontrolled groundwater exploitation”. By 2020, severe groundwater shortage will hit several
Indian states (Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana) and cities (Delhi and Mumbai). By
2025, many parts of India could simply run out of groundwater.
But the crisis is not India’s alone.
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Globally, 1.7 billion people lack
access to safe water and more than 3 million people die from water-borne
diseases each year in developing countries. About
245,000 sq km of marine ecosystems feature ‘dead zones’ caused by the discharge
of untreated wastewater, which affects fisheries, livelihoods and the food
chain. The poor are the first and worst victims.
The major water pollutants
produced by us include microbial pathogens, nutrients, pesticides,
oxygen-consuming substances, heavy metals, and persistent organic matter that
enter water systems through agricultural run-off, domestic and industrial
effluents, wastewater discharge, mine and landfill leachate and so on.
Approximately 2 million
tonnes of human waste are released into rivers and streams every year. Water
contaminated by microbes is the biggest single cause of human death. In the US, industries produce more than 36
billion kg of hazardous organic chemical-based pollutants every year. In India,
it took a Supreme Court order to ban the use of endosulfan
after decades of abuse.
Studies indicate that a population over 500
million in 569 749 sq km of the Ganga-Meghna-Brahmaputra plain may be at risk
from arsenic contamination. Also, 17 states in India are endemic for fluorosis with an
estimated 62 million people already affected.
Global warming may or may not
end the world in the near future, but the water catastrophe is already upon us.
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The UN World Water Development Report 2009 noted that impacts of
climate change “are likely to be small (and possibly negligible) compared with
the stresses placed on groundwater systems by current socio-economic drivers”. The
same UN declared 2005–15 as the International Decade for Action (Water for
Life) “to enhance international cooperation in addressing the exploitation and
degradation of water resources”.
Yet, there is little effort
to move towards binding regulations that will protect trans-boundary freshwater
systems. At home, there is no policy
shift to treat groundwater as a community resource, instead of an individual
asset, or to discourage subsidies for inefficient harvesting.
From Kolkata, I shifted to Delhi and watched
the capital surrender its water bodies that nurtured champion swimmers like
Khajan Singh, one by one. By 2025, Delhi’s demand for groundwater will touch 0.57 billion cubic metres (BCM). At present, only 0.28 BCM is available annually
and the rate of replenishment is 170% in the negative.
This has long ceased to be
about a green cause, it’s about survival. Now is our
very last chance.
1 comment:
Scary and sad.
When will it be taken up on priority?
Only when it becomes a disaster?
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