News and Articles

Dr G.D. Agrawal’s tapasya, his third fast-unto-death, has finally achieved the desired result.  Since 2008, Dr Agrawal has been trying to persuade the Government of Uttarakhand and the Government of India that R. (Bhagirathi) Ganga must be allowed to flow in its natural state in the uppermost reach between Gangotri and Uttarkashi.  The two governments had plans to construct three new large hydropower projects in this stretch.  Dr Agrawal’s fasts have led to the scrapping of all the three projects.

This paper published in the South Asian Journal of Tourism and Heritage describes the water quality status of Gundolav Lake in Rajasthan, which was once used for drinking water as well as for recreational activities under the tutelage of the princely state of Kishangarh. This has now become a site of wastewater disposal and facing a critical threat for its sustenance. 

Recent years have led to an increasing awareness of the importance of water bodies and  the need for conservation of water bodies, especially freshwater wetlands. The Ramsar Convention (2002) identifies wetlands as the starting point for integrated water management strategies. This is because they are the source of fresh water, maintain the health of the water course and water bodies, have the capacity to supply water to meet the human needs and are a key to future water security.

 News from Odia and English (Bhubaneswar internet editions)   news papers are put together at one place to provide an appreciation of Drought in Orissa periodically.

This Drought Update is being circulated among media, decision makers – legislatures, bureaucrats etc. with an aim to catalyze informed and expeditious decisions and actions.

In order to maintain the ecological goods and services of rivers and other hydrological regimes like wetlands, lakes, etc., environmental flow allocations (eflows) are a necessity. At the same time, water demands in India are increasing and will keep increasing and solutions like waste water treatment, pollution control, correction of leakages and wastage of water, efficient irrigation systems, efficient agricultural systems, etc., will take considerable time to evolve, even with our best efforts. So what should we do in the meantime? There are vulnerable ecological systems on the verge of collapse..How do we respond to these challenges?

How would we judge ecological sensitivity? Scientists view an ecologically sensitive area as an area whose ecological balance, once disturbed, is very hard to restore. Thus, steep Western slopes of Western Ghats, subject to heavy rains and winds, if deforested, are likely to be quickly stripped of soil cover and for ever lose their pristine vegetation. We do have a scientific understanding of the environmental attributes that render areas more sensitive; we also have insights into processes that have resulted in irreversible ecological damage.

The legislation is likely to be in the form of an upgrade to the AP Water Land and Trees Act (WALTA).

Click here for the current Act 

Attached are two working documents that are being used to frame the discussion for the new regulations.

PLEASE NOTE: These in no way represent final or official positions of the AP Government or other organisations and are not to be taken as such.

Midnight, August 6, 2010: "Link, wake up!  Water is coming in from the roof!"  My mother and I were in Leh, Ladakh, staying at "Eco-Homestay," the house of Mr. Sonam Gyatso and family, in Lower Sankar.  The house was made in a hybrid of traditional and modern construction techniques: the main hall in the house was concrete, while rooms surrounding it were made of sun-dried mud bricks, and roofed with Poplar beams, a mesh of willow branches, and a thick pad of fine clay-like mud.  The house incorporated passive solar building techniques, such as a direct-gain room, and a Trombe wall, and had solar-powered lighting.  It had been raining since evening, and by midnight the clay roof was saturated and began to leak.  

We were in Leh for the express purpose of meeting with Helena Norberg-Hodge, the founder of the International Society for Ecology and Culture, co-founder of the International Forum on Globalization, founder of the Ladakh Ecological Development Group, and founder of the Women's Alliance, Ladakh.  We had learned of her online, seeing an article of hers in CounterCurrents.org, and watching her video "Ancient Futures."  She is the only person who has critically witnessed the "development" of Ladakh, from complete self-sufficiency in an exceedingly fragile eco-system, to the disaster under which it writhes today.  She has seen how "development" pulls people into a money economy, increases the distance between production and consumption,  brings reliance on fossil fuels (especially apparent in Leh where fuel and commodities are trucked in over a hazardous two-day journey from lower altitudes), results in urbanization and rural-urban migration, and brings psychological impoverishment to the people it is inflicted upon.  For 35 years, she has been working to bring safe, stable, and ecologically sound development to the region through her organizations.  Her work today, no longer limited to Ladakh, is focussed on spreading economic literacy among people throughout the planet, educating about the deeper impacts of globalization and today's consumer mono-culture.  Garnered from her years of observation and research, she has an important message for humanity today, which is what prompted us to go and meet her.

This report by the World Commission on Dams begins by arguing that the debate about dams is a much broader issue and is important for everyone since it is a debate about the very meaning, purpose and pathways for achieving development. It is complex because the issues are not confined to the design, construction and operation of dams themselves, but include a range of social, environmental and political choices that define development.

Dams fundamentally alter rivers and the use of a natural resource, frequently entailing a reallocation of benefits from local riparian users to new groups of beneficiaries at a regional or national level. At the heart of the dams debate are fundamental issues of equity, governance, justice and power. The report argues that the main challenge lies in reconciling the competing needs between different groups of actors and provides a framework to deal with these fundamental issues in the dam debate.

The study by National Institute of Hydrology attempts to model seawater intrusion using FEFLOW, an interactive finite element simulation system in the coastal area of Bardez taluka in North Goa and evaluate the impact of increasing groundwater development on the phenomenon. Coastal tracts of Goa are rapidly being transformed into settlement areas and the poor water supply facilities have encouraged people to develop their own sources of water by digging or boring wells.

The recent UN General Assembly Resolution on declaring water and sanitation as human right is or can be a powerful impetus to securing universal access to water and sanitation for people everywhere. This is the most recent in a string of initiatives to advance the provision of these essential services. Beginning with the UN Decade of Water in the eighties, then the declaration of the Millennium Development Goals, and later the adoption of General Statement 15 by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations in 2002 the recognition of the fundamental importance of water (and more recently sanitation) to life, health and well being has been accepted at the international level. In India, while there is no specific mention of the right to water in the Constitution, the Supreme Court in its judgement(s)has upheld this as part of the right to life. Some organizations are working to make this a fundamental right, to remove any ambiguity.

Boy drinking water from handpump in Guna, Madhya Pradesh - Handpumps and wells are still one of the major source of drinking water in India.

Photo credits: Anil Gulati