Water Management

Uday Shankar from water.org welcomed the audience and introduced the issue of access to safe water and sanitation. Gary White, water.org, set the tone of the seminar by explaining his organisation’s vision of ‘getting safe water’ for everyone.

Water rights are being discussed today as a possibility. This will lead to civil war in this country. Rights are meaningless without paying attention to duties. It is our constitutional duty to preserve and heal our environment. 

If we pay attention to freeing our waters:

the drought situation in Maharashtra, the traditional rainwater harvesting system in Rajasthan. Besides this, the news also includes reports on the campaign to save the Loktak lake in Assam and mangroves in Sundarbans, the water supply schemes in Kerala and the dropping of groundwater levels in India

New bill to control groundwater exploitation

Human excreta is loaded with nutrients, which when disposed off discriminately, increases pollution and leads to a loss of resources. On an average a human being produces some 500 litres of urine and 50 kilograms of faeces a year, sufficient to fertilise plants that would produce more than 200 kilograms of cereals!

There is a palpable sense of a looming water crisis in India. Conflicts across competing users and uses are on the rise. In the irrigation sector, it is widely felt that “paucity of resources and poor performance of existing major and medium irrigation systems are the two main problems”(1).

This three day national seminar was jointly organised by the Kerala State Council for Science, Technology and Environment (KSCSTE), Thiruvananthapuram, and the C Achutha Menon Foundation (AMF), Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala and included presentations and discussions on a range of water related themes such as water scarcity, water conservation, commercialisation of water, water conflicts and water management.

The seminar aimed at creating awareness and triggering a dialogue among scientists, academicians, researchers, activists, as well as lay people on the emerging challenges related to water resources, water quality and water conservation in the state of Kerala. The seminar was inaugurated by Shri V M Sudheeran, Ex MP and former speaker, while Dr Rajasekaran Pillai, Executive Vice President KSCSTE, delivered the keynote address with the felicitation by Shri M P Achuthan, MP.

The seminar included discussions under five different themes related to water issues that included water scarcity, water conservation, commercialisation of water, water as an new area for conflicts and water management.

The three day seminar on water management at the Achuta Menon Foundation, Trivandrum, Kerala

A close examination of these two issues shows that the water and sewage challenge is already grave and could get worse. With this as the backdrop, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a public interest research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, organised a two day conference called the Anil Agarwal Dialogue on “Excreta does matter”. The conference took place at the Jacaranda Hall, India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi on 4 and 5 March 2013.

The dialogue aimed at furthering the agenda of CSE’s seventh State of India’s Environment report titled Excreta Matters. This report is a comprehensive survey of the situation of water and wastewater management in 71 Indian cities. The study found that most cities lack a basic policy direction on how best to tackle issues of demand, supply and treatment of water, and of management of sewage. 

The Dialogue being the first of its kind brought together a wide range of professionals, activists, practitioners, policy makers, academicians, researchers and administrators from the water sector. The event was aimed at drawing attention on the critical issues of how cities will get affordable and sustainable water and waste systems that can supply to all and take back and treat the sewage of all.