• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022 January 31, 2023
Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB January 31, 2023
Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty January 31, 2023
Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds January 31, 2023
Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing January 23, 2023
Next
Prev

Global Water Crisis Requires Local Solutions, Not More Megaprojects

July 24, 2019
Reading time: 3 minutes

LRBurdak/Wikimedia Commons

LRBurdak/Wikimedia Commons

1
SHARES
 

Human-scale water conservation methods, both ancient and modern, not big-budget, Delhi-directed megaprojects, will be critical to helping India survive and gain resilience as monsoon rains fail and temperatures rise, says journalist and environmental activist Meera Subramanian.

It was while reporting on environmental crises across India that Subramanian came across the small-scale earthen dams known as johads, she writes for the New York Times.

  • The climate news you need. Subscribe now to our engaging new weekly digest.
  • You’ll receive exclusive, never-before-seen-content, distilled and delivered to your inbox every weekend.
  • The Weekender: Succinct, solutions-focused, and designed with the discerning reader in mind.
New!
Subscribe

Thousands of these johads have been constructed by villagers across the northern state of Rajasthan, “strategically placed to capture fleeting monsoon rains” into cascades sufficient to replenish aquifers “that had been dry for a generation.”

In the Kumbharwadi watershed of the western state of Maharashtra, Subramanian observed how “groundwater levels rose, soil fertility improved, and agricultural income increased tenfold”, thanks to a program that had locals planting trees and sculpting land to better capture what water still falls from the sky.

In the face of the “terrifying water crisis” that has been afflicting the eight million citizens of the northeastern coastal city of Chennai since last year, Subramanian says that “to survive the climate emergency, India needs the collective power of small-scale, nature-based efforts.”

What the country does not need, she maintains, are more megaprojects. While “the story of water is global,” she writes, “the impact of too little (or too much) water is intimately local,” and “solutions need to be local, too.”

But India’s leaders have yet to heed such warnings, as “governments in Chennai and elsewhere keep turning unilaterally to major infrastructure projects such as desalination plants and other large-scale projects involving linking distant rivers and constructing mega-dams,” Subramanian writes. She flags desalination plants (Chennai is building its third) as particularly egregious given the huge amounts of energy required to transform seawater into fresh. “India is already struggling to get power to its people, even as the plants discharge toxic brine that is worsening already degraded coastlines,” she writes.

Recalling Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise to deliver piped water to all by 2024, Subramanian observes that the Indian government could indeed “meet that goal by looking beyond the grey confines of concrete to the green of powerful natural water systems that worked in the past and could work again.” But “Modi’s government’s focus on huge projects is flawed, because moving water works only if there is water to move.”

Subramanian acknowledges that South Asia “has always been vulnerable to the vagaries of the monsoons that provide 70% of its water in a few months, feeding its rivers, recharging its groundwater, and topping off the Himalayan peaks whose glacial meltwater sustains 1.65 billion people.”

But while that vulnerability has grown astronomically with the advent of climate change, she says one-size-fits-all megaprojects will not save India. What does stand a chance is “the collective power of abundant, small-scale, nature-based efforts to seize the seasonal bounty across the diverse landscape of South Asia.” That might mean johads in one village, land-sculpting in another.

She adds that cities like Chennai, whose suffering is redoubled by rampant development that has destroyed the spaces that were natural sponges for monsoon rains, should adopt rainwater harvesting from rooftops, thereby “compensating for the urban layer of concrete that now seals underground aquifers from monsoon abundance and contributes to flooding.” (The city made an attempt in that direction in 2003, she says, but the initiative died when a new party assumed power in the city.)

Noting that 90% of India’s “precious freshwater” goes to agriculture, she also urges that the country “support established conservation practices and reconsider exporting such water-intensive crops as rice and cotton.”

Finally, water metering “could help isolate and fix the leaks that waste a staggering one-third of all Indian water.”

Widening her lens, Subramanian notes that “water crises are now global and perennial”, with nearly half of the human population “living with water scarcity, inhabiting places unable to fully meet their drinking, cooking and sanitation needs.” The poor, without resources to buy water tankers or dig wells, are disproportionately affected. And as for water megaprojects, “when grand projects fail, they fail grandly.”



in Demographics, Drought, Famine & Wildfires, Environmental Justice, Food Security & Agriculture, Health & Safety, India, Sub-National Governments, Water

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

CONFENIAE
Ending Emissions

Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty

January 31, 2023
59
Ken Teegardin www.SeniorLiving.Org/flickr
Clean Electricity Grid

Virtual Power Plants Hit an ‘Inflection Point’

January 31, 2023
115
/snappy goat
Climate Denial & Greenwashing

Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds

January 31, 2023
92

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Mike Mozart/Flickr

BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022

January 31, 2023
314
Gina Dittmer/PublicDomainPictures

Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB

January 31, 2023
192
Doc Searls/Twitter

Guilbeault Could Intervene on Ontario Greenbelt Development

January 31, 2023
125
Ken Teegardin www.SeniorLiving.Org/flickr

Virtual Power Plants Hit an ‘Inflection Point’

January 31, 2023
115
RL0919/wikimedia commons

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
2.4k
/snappy goat

Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds

January 31, 2023
92

Recent Posts

CONFENIAE

Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty

January 31, 2023
59
Victorgrigas/wikimedia commons

World Bank Climate Reforms Too ‘Timid and Slow,’ Critics Warn

January 31, 2023
41
United Nations

Salvage of $20B ‘Floating Time Bomb’ Delayed by Rising Cost of Oil Tankers

January 27, 2023
120
@tongbingxue/Twitter

Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’

January 23, 2023
340
Rachel Notley/Facebook

Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom

January 23, 2023
312
EcoAnalytics

Albertans Want a Just Transition, Despite Premier’s Grumbling

January 23, 2023
321
Next Post
António Guterres

Guterres Asks Countries to Plan for Carbon Neutrality by 2050

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}