Surface Water

This document titled “From Policy to Practice” is a process documentation of Water and Energy Commission Secretariat (WECS) and World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) joint initiative for the first field piloting of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) approach as prioritized by the National Water Plan 2005 in Koshi River Basin, Nepal.

This pictoral document explains the effort to translate policy into practice by showcasing Koshi River Basin Management Program as a model for conservation and wise use of water and its resources to secure life and livelihoods of generations to come by addressing the impacts of climate change.

This report by ICIMOD contains an assessment of the threat facing the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region from the recent (post-1950s) and rapid formation of meltwater lakes on the surface or at the end of a large number of the region’s glaciers owing to current climate warming. Individual case studies of the catastrophic outburst (glacial lake outburst floods or GLOFs) from such glacial lakes are introduced.

Content and Image Courtesy: International Rivers

International Rivers is accepting applications for the position of Executive Director. International Rivers seeks a proven, passionate, and dynamic Executive Director who has a keen sense of the urgency of the threats to rivers and communities – as well as the need for sustainable solutions – and is ready to take on this challenge with enthusiasm, strategic vision, creativity, and bold tactics.

This document in Hindi prepared by the Gandhi Peace Foundation, is a blueprint of the Himalayan People's Manifesto. The manifesto has been brought out with the help of various documents prepared by various people and organisations at different times. It will be finalised by the next Himalayan Day on September 9, 2011.

This working paper by the University of Bonn attempts to give a spatial and temporal overview of water management in India. It traces how people and the successive regimes made choices across space and time from a wide range of water control and distribution technologies. The paper divides the water management in India into four periods –

• the traditional system of water management before colonial times;
• response from the colonial rulers to manage the complex socio-ecological system;
• large scale surface water development after independence; and
• finally, the small-scale community and market-led revolution.

Government of Nepal has asked the Government of India to compensate its citizens badly affected by embankments and other flood control measures taken on river Gandak. Will this not lead to a flood of demands for compensation by the victims of similar problems in other river basins like the Bagmati, the Kamala and the Kosi?

23rd November 2010, New Delhi

• Seeking a moratorium on clearances for large dams in Northeast India
• Withdrawal of clearances granted to 2000 MW Lower Subansiri, 1750 MW Demwe Lower & 1500 MW Tipaimukh dams
• Future steps on hydropower projects and dams only after full, prior and informed consent of people in the region
• Protect the Brahmaputra river basin as a cultural and ecological endowment

Lake 2010: Wetlands, Biodiversity and Climate Change

Theme: Wetlands Conservation and Management

Article and Image Courtesy: Ground Report

Many in India, perhaps, are not able to foresee how lack of governance, virtually, in every sphere is going to hit them in not too distant future. Take for instance mining. Illegal mining of mineral resources, with generous help of political and bureaucratic big wigs, is so rampant that not only are the country’s precious natural resources being purloined in a big way, its forests are being clean-felled, land degraded and its rivers threatened with extinction.

This report of the Working Group to advise Water Quality Assessment Authority (WQAA) on the minimum flows in the rivers outlines the principles behind environmental flow assessments, provides a description of methods that have been used to assist with such assessments, and highlights the features that will increase the chance of successful implementation of environmental flows.