India Desperately Water-Challenged
"Global warming has destroyed the concept of the monsoon."
"We have to throw away the prose and poetry written over millennia and start writing new ones!"
Raghu Murtugudde, scientist, University of Maryland
"After 1990, cities in India have grown very rapidly."
"But they grew without considering where the resources are coming from."
"It's not that we are waiting for the future in terms of water challenges. We are already there."
Samrat Basak, director, World Resource Institution India's Urban Water Program
"It does not affect people the same way."
"Some people can still cope, if you can still afford to pay for it."
"...We're not going to survive solely on hope."
VK Madhavan, CEO, WaterAid India
"Climate change will have devastating consequences for people in poverty.""We risk a 'climate apartheid' scenario where the wealthy pay to escape overheating, hunger and conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer.""Human rights might not survive the coming upheaval."UN human rights report
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| Chennai residents line up to fill vessels with water from a tanker. |
India's monsoon arrival, responsible for the agricultural success of millions of farmers reliant on the rains for nourishment of their fields in the world's second largest-populated country is no longer as reliable as it has been traditionally, with climate change affecting the seasonal rains making them more intense and less predictable. That government policies are leaving millions in the population defenseless in the aggravated age of climate disruptions, particularly the vast demographics of the poor is an additional existential hazard.
Lakes once reliably holding rain deposits in the city of Bangalore are now clogged with plastic detritus and stinking sewage, leaving people to try to manage with the water they can find. In villages where all is desiccated and dry, residents use a fetid stream, since there is nothing else available. The sacred Yamuna river in Delhi is slathered with toxic foam runoff from local industries ("Yes, the Yamuna is polluted, but it has the power to liberate us") , while in Chennai, kitchen taps remain dry and women sprint with neon plastic pots when the sound of a water truck screeches to a halt on their block.
In the last 70 years, extreme rainfall has increased threefold in the region that stretches from western Maharashtra State to the Bay of Bengal in the east, the largely poor central Indian belt, according to a recent scientific paper -- even as total annual rainfall has declined measurably. The Himalayas, upon whose generosity of seasonal melt India has been reliant against droughts is also at risk where the mountains are projected to lose a third of their ice caps by century's end, should greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.
Greed and mismanagement is held to be more responsible by scientists, than climate change, as lush forests naturally able to hold the rains are continually cleared where developers pave over creeks and lakes, and government subsidies lead to the over-extraction of groundwater. The World Bank estimates that by 2050, erratic rainfall, along with rising temperatures will "depress the living standards of nearly half the country's [1.3 billion] population".
This year's rains failed to solve the drinking water shortage where even at the end of the monsoon wells were dry. Marathwada province saw a dam built to supply drinking water to some twenty villages, turned to scrubland. Women drink half a cup of water rather than a full one, going without so children can have what they require, including sending their children to school clean after showers that they deny themselves.
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| Residents line up to get drinking water from a distribution tanker in the outskirts of Chennai on May 29, 2019. |
Daily, four government trucks drive down the muddy lanes to fill village water tanks which manage to provide but a fraction of what village needs are realistically. Annual rainfall has declined by 15 percent across Marathwada since 1950, and in that same period cloudbursts capable of dumping huge amounts of rain in a short period, have shot up threefold in frequency. On land receiving water from an upstream dam, farmers planted hectares of sugar cane, and sugar mills appeared across the state, many owned by politicians.
Government subsidies for electricity encourages farmers to pump groundwater for sugarcane fields, and state-owned banks offer cheap loans sometimes written off, for politicians. Close to $880 million in export subsidies for sugar mills was approved by government this year. In an era of water shortages, subsidizing sugar cane which represents horrendously water-intensive farming. Yet sugar cane production has proliferated and increased more swiftly than any other crop, making India the globe's largest sugar producer.
As it winds through Mumbai, a city of 13 million people, the Mithi River has been blocked by sewage and rubbish that pours into the river. High rise buildings have been constructed on land reclaimed from the Mithi, where working class enclaves perch precariously on the edge of the river, and where floods first strike after heavy rains. Exceptionally heavy downpours several times this season, gave Mumbai more rain than in 65 years.
And each time the drains overflowed, lanes filled with muck, commuter trains were disrupted, flights were diverted and several times neighbourhood schools turned into storm shelters. As waters began to recede from each of these floodings, neighbours covered their noses and swept sludge out of their homes where mosquitoes can breed, threatening a dengue outbreak.
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| Indian school children walk on a water-logged road during heavy rain in Kolkata on Sept. 25, 2019. (Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP/Getty) |
Labels: Climate Change, Crisis Management, India, Monsoons, Water Shortage
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, December 18, 2019
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