Integrated Water Resources Management

Er. R.S. Tyagi, Former Member, WS Delhi Jal Board

Due to scarcity of water, most of the time, the residents have to waste their valuable time in fetching drinking water instead of utilizing that time contributing in development works and earning their livelihood. Many sub cities developed by the developing agencies are not occupied despite incurring billions of rupees in their development. The productivity of different crops, food grains, vegetables & fruits depends on availability and quality of water. In many cities industries have been shifted due to water problems resulting in incurring excess expenditure in shifting. Hence, to resolve this problem, every drop of water in any form available in nature such as lakes, Ponds, S.W. drains, River; grey or black water, treated effluent; storm water; ground water and/or ocean water must be harnessed by making it drinkable and usable for human consumption, agriculture or industrial use. In order to resolve the urban water crisis, it is inevitable to integrate water and sewer recycled water for human consumption depending upon their type of uses.

As per the Technical Committee of the Global Water Partnership (GWP); “IWRM is a process which promotes the coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources in order to maximize economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems”

All the different uses of water resources are considered together. Water allocations and management decisions consider the effects of each use on the others. They are able to take account of overall social and economic goals, including the achievement of sustainable development. IWRM is participatory decision making.

waterImportance of water:
2.1. Water is a key natural resource for human survival. Water plays a vital role in sanitation for our rural and urban communities.
2.2. Water is also an important economic resource. It is necessary for all forms of agriculture and most of the industrial production processes
2.3. Water also provides a wide range of ecosystem and environmental services
2.4. It is essential for assimilation of pollution caused by industrial effluents and domestic sewage.

Uses of water: There are a large number of types of water use(Consumptive & Non consumptive):
3.1. Rain fed agriculture
3.2. Irrigation
3.3. Domestic use in urban centres and in rural areas
3.4. Livestock
3.5. Industrial and commercial use
3.6. Institutions (e.g. schools, hospitals, government buildings, sports facilities)
3.7. Waste and wastewater disposal
3.8. Cooling (e.g. for thermal power generation)
3.9. Hydropower
3.10. Navigation
3.11. Recreation
3.12. Fisheries
3.13. The environment (wildlife, nature conservation etc.)

Need of Integrated Water Resource Management:

4.1. Scarcity of Water:
At the time of independence, per capita freshwater availability in the country was 6008 M3 per year. In 1997, it stood at approximately 2200 M3 per annum. The situation is already critical in 6 out of the 20 major river basins, with the per capita freshwater availability going below 1000 M3 per annum (World Bank 1998)

Today more than 2 billion people are affected by water shortages in over 40 countries.263 river basins are shared by two or more nations 2 million tonnes per day of human waste are deposited in water courses. Half the population of the developing world are exposed to polluted sources of water that increase disease incidence

4.2 . World Wide Distribution of Water:

World Wide Distribution of Water

4.3. Status of Sewage Treatment in India:

Sewage Treatment in India

5. Challenges in Water Sector:

considering the following challenges in water sector and by resolving at all levels with the help of all stakeholders, IWRM will be understood very well and easily implemented.

5.1. Water Resources
5.2. Fast Urbanization & Unplanned growth
5.3. Industrialization & Poor Enforcement of Environmental Laws
5.4. Institutional challenges
5.5. Political
5.6. Water Management
5.7. Change in Seasonal and Regional water demand.
5.8. Technological
5.9. Poor data collection and data management
5.10. Climate Change

5.1. Challenge in Water Resources:

Surface water (River, Lakes, ponds etc.): Fast growing population has increased water demand, resulting into less water availability and pollution in water bodies due to poor handling of sewage.

Dams:

  • Facing protest of environmentalists and social justice activists, uprooting greens and habitation, imbalance in ecology, reduce water recharge and siltation in storage
  • Non availability of funds for large water projects: 400 big and small dam projects in India held up due to lack of funds or opposition from the environmental lobby

2. Ground water: Overexploitation & absence of recharging resulted into depletion of water table and pollution of water due to infiltration of contaminants. Lowering down water table also increases the Power cost and reinstallation of tube wells

5.2. Fast Urbanization & Unplanned growth: The rise in demand for water for a given rise in urban population will be much higher than what will occur if the rural population grows by the same magnitude.

Fast urbanization has shrinked agricultural land, overstressed available resources and caused pollution in the available water resources due to poor handling of waste
In many cities, the migrants settle illegally for earning their livelihood due to failure in implementing the comprehensive development plan by the Govt.

Agencies plan water and sewer facilities for the planned development, but in surrounding illegal settlements are cropped up for which new facilities are difficult to lay and existing services are overstressed.

5.3. Industrialization & Poor Enforcement of Environmental Laws:

  • Increased human activities directly contaminate the groundwater. Pollution of groundwater due to indiscriminate disposal of industrial effluents and municipal waste in water bodies is a major concern in many cities and industrial clusters in India
  • Environmental laws are not followed in discharging the industrial effluent. Notices issued by the regulatory authorities are challenged in the Courts. Small industries do not have finance to install ETPs
  • To show no discharge industries, industrial waste is injected in ground water through borewells polluting ground water.
  • Intensive use of chemical fertilisers in farms and indiscriminate disposal of human and animal waste on land result in leaching of the residual nitrate and potassium causing high nitrate concentrations in groundwater.
  • Excessive withdrawal of groundwater from coastal aquifers has led to intrusion of seawater in the coastal aquifers rendering many thousands of drinking water and irrigation wells useless as in Kuchh, Saurashtra & Chennai.
  • India’s rapidly urbanizing and industrializing economy is bringing major new water demands while options for supply augmentation are few. Recent projections indicate that India’s water demand may be twice the available supply by 2030 without major reform and investment, although the scale and character of this challenge vary greatly between river basins. In response to ineffective surface water management there has been rapid and uncontrolled development of groundwater resources across India and many groundwater systems are now depleted and polluted. In the face of this growing crisis, the twelfth five-year plan of the Government of India calls for a “paradigm shift” in water resource management and outlines several necessary elements of a reform process including strengthening river basin management.

5.4. Institutional challenges:

The institutional challenge is analysed on the basis of these five core water management needs: effectiveness in responding to local water scarcity problems; competence to evolve comprehensive water management approaches to address regional problems; ability to design water management systems to alter social systems affecting water use; capability to ensure equitable and sustainable resource use; and, ability to implement water allocation plans effectively and resolve conflicts.

  • Multiplicity of authorities
  • Priority of need. Irrigation over drinking or vice versa.
  • Water tariff to be decided by Water regulators or by Govt.
  • Water Policies..?, Water Master Plan..?
  • Setting up water norms…?

5.5. Political:

  • Water has always been at the centre of political agenda in independent India. They use it as a tool for creating vote banks. Therefore, policies, laws, regulations and legislation and institutions that would restrict or redefine the rights of communities in accessing water is bound to become a politically sensitive issue. Elections are fought on water and power.
  • Forced Policies for doing water free for vote banks
  • Arrears are foregone..? Consumers have tendency to accumulate bills
  • Water being essential for life, one can not disconnect water connection even if consumers are at fault
  • Politicians encourage their voters to install water connections illegally
  • Unwarranted interference of politicians in day to day activities of water services even in technical matters.
  • Land for creating water infrastructures are given last priority.

5.6. Water Management: In India, the water sector is being maintained on the conventional practices, whereas; best management practices can be adopted to achieve the followings:

  • Convert intermittent supply into 24×7
  • Reduce NRW
  • Reduce power consumption by using latest technology
  • Increase collection efficiency
  • Improve water quality
  • Incentive and accountability
  • Encourage Community participation

5.7. Change in Seasonal and Regional water demand:

  • Water demand norms are set as an average, whereas; water supply demand varies from one place to another depending upon the weather and affordability of the consumers e.g. water demand is increased manifold in summer temporarily due to high temperature, evaporation loss and for cooling etc.
  • Even in the same season, pattern of water use differs from high class gentry Vs poor class, whereas; water infrastructures are designed on average demand basis
  • Within same country, water demand varies from one place to another depending upon the seasonal pattern

5.8. Technological:

  • In India, water problems have grown much faster than the advancements made in water conservation and management technologies. There is very limited understanding of the physical problems. The use of management information systems that can help understand the problems and evolve management decisions is extremely limited in India. The problems associated with this are absence of systematic and scientific data collection, compilation, processing and retrieval systems, highly segregated nature of information, and poor degree of access to the existing information.
  • Water utilities are not adapted to the latest technologies for construction and water management.
  • There may be fear in minds of implementing authorities to adopt new technologies as the technical specifications and reasonability of rates are not authenticated.
  • Sometimes proven technology in other countries may not be successful in India due to various constraints.
  • Mental block in handing over water management in private hands

5.9. Poor data collection and data management:

  • One of the biggest challenges facing the water management sector in the country is the non availability of adequate scientific data needed for water budgeting, allocation planning, and water management decision- making.
  • Reliable estimates of water supply and demand are one of the core needs for water management.
  • The methodology adopted for recharge estimation has weak scientific basis and hence the estimates are questionable.
  • As regards surface water, the most crucial data is dependable runoff. For scientific estimation of dependable run-off, adequate data on historical rainfall and stream-flows are essential for a substantial time period. In India, the runoff data for larger time horizons and for good number rain-gauge stations are available only for a few major river basins. For the rest, data are available for a limited number of gauging stations and for short time horizons.
  • Water use rates are important for analysing demand management interventions. But, no data are compiled by official agencies on the actual use of water in different sectors such as per capita water use in municipal areas, water use by livestock, crop water use, and industrial water use.

5.10. Climate Change: Due to climate change,

  • Increase in average temperature, glaciers are melting at fast rates resulting into non uniform availability of raw water
  • Erratic rainfall patterns have caused a non uniform distribution of surface and groundwater.
  • High temperature causes high water demand.

6. Key Elements of IWRM:

  • An enabling environment of suitable policies, strategies and legislation for sustainable water resources development and management,
  • Institutional arrangements with the capacity to enable these policies, strategies and legislation to be operationalized,
  • Management instruments required for these institutions to be effective and
  • Data and tools to provide the knowledge and information for evidence-based management.

Enabling Environment:

  • The River Boards Act (1956) allows for the establishment of river boards by the Government of India in consultation with relevant state governments, for the purpose of enabling integrated water resources development and flood management. The Inter-state River Water Disputes Act (1956) was passed to resolve the water disputes that would arise in the use, control and distribution of interstate rivers. Although several river boards have been established using this legislation, these have largely focused on the delivery of specific development projects or a single water management problem, such as flooding. No river basin organizations exist in India with the mandate and resources for comprehensive planning and management of water resources at the basin-scale. The Government of India has drafted a River Basin Management Act (intended to replace the River Boards Act) that would require states to adopt cooperative, integrated and
    basin-scale approach to water resources planning and management through establishment of appropriately empowered River Basin Authorities for regulation and development of inter- state river basins. The proposed new legislation will require the support from state governments and thus progress will require strong relationships between the Centre and the states based on a shared understanding of the need for major reform to address India’s growing water challenges

Institution & Governance:

To strengthen adoption of a river basin management approach it is important to build a cooperative approach that builds shared understanding of each river basin based on a culture of open sharing of data and information and demonstration of the benefits of the approach to water users. Key benefits should include clarity for water users on supply reliability (in the face of multi-sector demands on the resource and supply variability) and opportunities for better risk management at both basin and local scale. Greater regulation and enforcement is often required once the “rules of the game” are clearly established and once the system-wide benefits are well understood. Regulation and enforcement help ensure equity and prevent inequitable individual gain at the expense of other users or at the expense of the environment.

Currently, there are a number of special purpose institutions for various river basins in India, but few have a comprehensive IWRM mandate. In many cases these bodies have been established under one-off pieces of legislation. Moving to a more nationally consistent approach, that enables relatively quick establishment of multiple river basin organisations with appropriate powers and responsibilities for inter-sectoral water allocation and environmental water management is urgently required.

Data & Tool:

A critical component of river basin management is having adequate data and information to represent, understand and simulate river basin dynamics. This should begin with hydrology and water resources but typically grow to encompass the environmental, economic and social outcomes from water resources management. This ensures river basin management is built on a foundation of facts and evidence and not myths and opinions. To ensure fairness, it is important to strive for open access to the data and information that guides river basin management. This allows for informed dialogue amongst stakeholders and encourages broad engagement in participatory management. River basin models help to assess the outcomes of different interventions (infrastructure or policies) and the impacts of externalities (e.g climate change).

This capability helps manage issues of equity (between states, sectors and users), sustainability (environment vs consumptive use) and efficiency (maximizing net economic benefits) and is important for demonstrating what issues require a basin-scale approach (and thus inter-state cooperation) for effective management. Recently the Central government has recognized the importance of high quality and consistent water data and the opportunities to build water information products and services based on these data.

The National Water Policy (2012) calls the establishment of a National Water Informatics Centre to collect, collate and process hydrologic data regularly from all over the country, conduct the preliminary processing, and maintain in open and transparent manner on a GIS platform and indicates that allhydrological data should be in the public domain (other than data classified on national security grounds). The National Water Policy calls for water related data to be integrated using well-defined procedures and formats to support informed decision making in water management. In response to these policy directions, the Ministry of Jal Shakti and the Indian Space Research Organization have jointly executed the India Water Resources Information System (India- WRIS) project.

7. Principles of IWRM: Three key policy principles are known as the three ‘E’s: Equity: Water is a basic need. No human being can live without a basic volume of fresh water of sufficient quality. Humans have a basic human right of access to water resources. This policy principle is related to the fact that water is often considered a public good. Water is such a basic requirement for human life and survival that society has to defend the uses of the water resources in the public interest.

Ecological integrity: Water resources can only persist in a natural environment capable of regenerating (fresh) water of sufficient quality. Only sustainable water use can be allowed such that future generations will be able to use it in similar ways as the present generation.

Efficiency: Water is a scarce resource. It should be used efficiently; therefore, institutional arrangements should be such that cost recovery of the water services should be attained. This will ensure sustainability of infrastructure and institutions, but should not jeopardise the equity principle. Here comes the issue of water pricing, and whether or not water should be priced according to its economic value.

8. Implementation: IWRM aims to create sustainable water security within the present constraints and to improve the conditions in the catchment basin. Some important conditions for implementing IWRM are presented below (Source: UN World Water
Development Report 3):

8.1. Political will and commitment: “Political will” at all levels can help unite all stakeholders and move the process forward. It is especially needed if the resulting plan or arrangement would create or require changes in legal and institutional structures, or if controversies and conflicts among stakeholders exist. Access to actors outside the water box is essential to move political will, gain sectoral support and ease public pressure for IWRM implementation.

8.2. Basin management plan and clear vision: Water resources development coordinated among various sectors and users is facilitated by the preparation of a master plan that reflects the individual sector plans and offers the most effective and efficient utilization of the resource.

8.3. Participation and coordination mechanisms, fostering information- sharing and exchange: The identification of key stakeholders can be facilitated through interviews and meetings. Stakeholder involvement can be defined appropriately for local conditions and improved gradually. Initial sharing of general basin-wide data and information, and further sharing of more specific information, will assist the self-sustaining system.

8.4. Capacity development: Capacity development and training priorities should be expressed at all levels, including that of decentralized local government. Participants who may be adversely impacted and/or socially marginalized may be stimulated to participate within a consensus-building strategy.

8.5. Well-defined flexible and enforceable legal frameworks and regulation: It is necessary to assemble and review the full range of existing laws and regulations that apply to water-related activities and determine how existing legislation adapts or can be better adapted to accommodate sustainability and integration with regard to water resources management.

8.6. Water allocation plans: As water is a shared resource, water rights should be flexible in terms of allocation in order to accommodate changes. Preparing a master plan that reflects individual sector plans facilitates the coordination among various sectors and advocates the most appropriate utilization of a basin’s resource.

8.7. Adequate investment, financial stability and sustainable cost recovery: Coordination for IWRM implementation needs financial sustainability – such as the promotion of cost recovery – and must consider long-term management. Various combinations and roles of international financing and donors such as government grants, public resources, user charges and taxes, donor funds, basin environmental trust funds can be considered as funding options.

8.8. Good knowledge of the natural resources present in the basin: Adequate knowledge and information on the water resources inventory and human resources of the basin is desirable. Including scientists as water resource managers can help maintain and accrue sound knowledge of the natural resources.

8.9. Comprehensive monitoring and evaluation: Monitoring and evaluation are essential for ensuring that the current management of water resources is properly implemented, and to identify the needs for adjusting management strategies. Upgrading new technologies is vital for effective performance both of local and central water management.

8.10. Equal focus on waste Management to preserve water

Resource: In order to preserve the water resources, each state/ Govt. must give priority to waste management.

8.11. Enactments on Reduce, Recycle and Reuse of water: Instead of recommending recycling of water, every state must formulate the policy and enforce using recycled water to the extent of more than 50% for nonportable purposes. Every state may not be allowed to use natural resources
i.e. ground or surface water more than 40% of their total demand

9. Conclusion/ Recommendations:

  • In order to ensure sustainable water resources for the next generation in the manner we have, economical and social development and growth, implementation of IWRM is needed in coordinated manner in consultation with all stakeholders without having gender inequality without compromising the sustainability of the vital ecosystem.
  • In order to have better management of water resources for domestic, agricultural, industrial and environmental needs, and to overcome the current problems in water sharing due to increasing water stress, River Boards Act 1956 should be revisited and revised in the current scenario of the water demand of the basin states. (derived from the International conference held by Ministry of Water Resources on 2nd February 2015)
  • It would be expedient in the public interest that the Central Government takes under its control the regulation and development of inter-state rivers and river valleys to the extent required, to enable optimal water management. (derived from the International conference held by Ministry of Water Resources on 2nd February 2015).

Views expressed by – Er. R.S. Tyagi, Former Member (WS), Delhi Jal Board

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