World Water Day: India’s water security at great risk in era of climate change, says CSE

Global warming and climate change has the potential to put water security in India at risk, Delhi-based non-profit, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), said in a statement March 22, celebrated globally as World Water Day.

India is witnessing a repeat of 2021 conditions, when temperatures touched 40 degrees Celsius as early as February in some parts of the country.

“What does this intense heat wave that has hit large parts of India so early this summer really mean? It means — especially today, as we mark the World Water Day — that this is the age of climate change; it also means that how we deal with our water in the coming days will determine whether we would survive such extreme climatic conditions,” Sunita Narain, director-general, CSE, said in a statement.

She added: “I am saying this because we all know that climate change impacts are about heat — increased and scorching temperatures — and about variable and extreme rain. Both have a direct correlation with the water cycle. Therefore, climate change mitigation has to be about water and its management.”

“And this was when 2021 was the year of the La Niña — the Pacific water currents that are known to bring cooler temperatures globally. Indian weather scientists have informed that global warming has offset this cooling effect of La Niña,” Avantika Goswami, deputy programme manager, climate change, CSE, said.

CSE researchers said the rising heat had severe implications for water security. First, it would mean greater evaporation from waterbodies.

“It means that we need to work not just on storing water in millions of structures, but also plan for reducing losses due to evaporation. It is not that evaporation losses did not happen in the past, but the rate of evaporation will now increase with the soaring temperatures,” Narain said.

One option is to work on underground water storage, or wells. According to CSE, India’s irrigation planners and bureaucracies have largely depended on canals and other surface water systems. But they should not discount the management of groundwater systems.

Increased heat can also lead to a drying up of moisture in soils. It will make the land dusty and will increase the need for irrigation. In a country like India, where the bulk of food is still grown in rain-fed regions, it will intensify land degradation and dust bowl formations.

This means water management must go hand-in-hand with vegetation planning to improve the ability of soils to hold water, even in times of intense and prolonged heat, the non-profit noted.

Third, heat will drive up the use of water — from drinking and irrigation, to fighting fires in forests or buildings. Already, devastating forest fires have been witnessed in many parts of the world and in the forests of India.

This will only increase as temperatures go up. The demand for water will increase with climate change, making it even more imperative that water as well as wastewater are not wasted, CSE said.

But this is not all, according to the thinktank. Climate change is already showing up in terms of the increasing number of extreme rain events. This means that one can expect rain to come as a flood, making the cycle of floods followed by droughts even more intense.

India already has fewer rainy days in a year. It is said that it rains for just 100 hours on average in a year. Now, the number of rainy days will further go down, but extreme rainy days will increase.

This will have a huge impact on India’s plans for water management. It means that the country needs to think more about flood management, not only to embank rivers but to optimise the floodwaters so that they can be stored in underground and overground aquifers — wells and ponds.

This also means that India needs to plan differently for capturing rainwater. Currently, the country’s water structures, many millions of which are being constructed under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, for instance, are designed for normal rainfall.

But now, as extreme rains become the normal, the structures will need to be redesigned so that they last over the seasons. The bottom-line is that every drop of water must be captured in this age of climate change, CSE said.

“Let’s then be clear; we needed to be obsessive about water and its management yesterday because water is the basis of health and wealth. But now we need to be more than obsessive — we need to be determined and deliberate. On this World Water Day in the age of climate change, we need to know that the water agenda is the real make or break of our future,” Narain said.   

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