Climate change threats to India's water resources and emerging policy responses - From the book 'Indian climate policy: Choices and challenges', by the Henry Stimson Centre.

This book published by Henry L. Stimson Centre highlights the richly diverse nature of India's views on climate change through its range of essays. These essays demonstrate and challenge the international perception of India as a monolithic actor with a single set of opinions and views in the climate change negotiations.

In this chapter, the author discusses the strengths and the weaknesses of India's climate policy in the context of the increasing threats that have been identified to the water resources in the country. The author states that India's climate policy is still in its emerging state and argues that though the policy does highlight many important areas related to climate change, it does not give adequate attention to a very crucial area of water management.

The chapter goes on to highlight the water situation in the country and of the urgent need for devising water storage mechanisms that involve the bottom up approach involving grassroot level communities in the planning and decision-making processes that can then inform the state and the national level decisions.

The author argues that mechanisms to improve the water resources in the country through successful implementation of the water policy would need to involve more efforts at generation of a comprehensive database and monitoring mechanisms, setting up legal and organisational structures to ensure integrated water management for climate change, establishing regulatory mechanisms to monitor water use efficiency and developing bottom-up water resource governance structures.