Water, Ecosystems and Society: A Confluence of Disciplines

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Author: Jayanta Bandyopadhyay

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Water, Ecosystems and Society

ii

WATER, ECOSYSTEMS AND SOCIETY

Water, Ecosystems and Society A Confluence of Disciplines

Jayanta Bandyopadhyay

Copyright © Indian Council of Social Science Research North Eastern Regional Centre, 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. First published in 2009 by SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B1/I-1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 044, India www.sagepub.in SAGE Publications Inc 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320, USA SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard, 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP, United Kingdom SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd 33 Pekin Street #02-01 Far East Square Singapore 048763 Published by Vivek Mehra for SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd, typeset in 10.5/12.5 pt Adobe Caslon Pro by Tantla Composition Services Private Limited, Chandigarh and printed at Chaman Enterprises, New Delhi. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bandyopadhyay, J. Water, ecosystems and society: a confluence of disciplines/Jayanta Bandhyopadhyay. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Water resources development—India. 2. Water resources development. I. Title. HD1698.I4B36

333.91—dc22

2009

2009007157

ISBN: 978-81-7829-933-4 (HB) The SAGE Team: Rekha Natarajan, Sushmita Banerjee, Amrita Saha and Trinankur Banerjee

For Vimla Behn and Bahugunaji

Contents List of Tables List of Figures Foreword by Promod Tandon Preface 1. Interdisciplinary Knowledge on Water Systems 2. Eco-hydrological Perspective on Floods

viii ix x xi 1 49

3. Valuation of Water and Its Policy Implications

101

4. The River-link Project: Where are Equity and Sustainability!

147

Index About the Author

184 192

List of Tables

1.1 Annual Availability and Projected Requirements for Water in India till 2050

22

2.1 History of Embankment Breaches and Losses 2.2 Some Himalayan Rivers and their Sediment Yield

64 72

3.1 Some Notable Studies on Valuation of Ecosystem Services of Water 3.2 Studies on the Multifunctional Attributes of Agriculture and Ecosystems Valuation

125 127

List of Figures

1.1 1.2

Precipitation Isohyets over India River Basins Draining India

2.1a River–Floodplain Ecosystem Interactions (Longitudinal and Lateral) 2.1b Groundwater–Surface Water Interaction (Vertical) 2.2 Flood-affected Area in the State of Bihar, 1953–2004 2.3 Illustrating Network Parameters 2.4 Some of the Eco-hydrological Processes Related to Flooding 2.5 Spatial Variation in Extreme Rainfall Intensity 2.6 Landslide Blocking River Flow 2.7 Recorded Shift in Courses of Kosi, Tista, Brahmaputra, Bhagirathi and Padma 2.8 Plan for Dams in the Himalayan Watershed of the GBM Basin 2.9 Flood-prone Areas in Bihar 2.10 Map of the Kosi Basin in Bihar Showing the Infrastructural Impediments Leading to Drainage Congestion 2.11 Comparative Annual Hydrographs of Two European and Indian Rivers 4.1 4.2 4.3

Precipitation Isohyets over India Links Envisaged as per the National Perspective Plan of NWDA Country-wise Yield of Cereals (in kg/ha)

5 7

53 53 54 63 66 67 70 72 78 82

83 91 152 159 170

Foreword

This publication is based on the text of three lectures entitled ‘Knowledge for Water Systems Sustainability: A Confluence of Natural and Social Sciences’ delivered by Professor Jayanta Bandyopadhyay at the North Eastern Regional Centre of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) located in the North Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong. The ICSSR-NERC, in collaboration with the NEHU, has instituted an annual lecture series on the broad theme of ‘Development and Social Change’. The lectures delivered by Professor Bandyopadhyay are 11th in the series. We are thankful to him for kindly accepting our invitation to deliver these lectures. Professor Bandyopadhyay is one of the foremost professionals in the field of environmental science and policy and heads the Centre for Development and Environment Policy at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. The scholarship, erudition, fresh insights and concern for interdisciplinary knowledge for the management of the environment, and water systems in particular, that have come to be associated with Professor Bandyopadhyay’s work are all evident in these lectures. This book now makes them available for a wider public. It is our privilege and pleasure to bring together these lectures in the form of this book and we do hope it will attract the attention of a much wider section of students, scholars, enlightened public and the policy makers. Promod Tandon Vice-Chancellor, NEHU Chairman, ICSSR-NERC, Shillong

Preface

The Earth is known as the Blue Planet for the abundance of water it enjoys. However, it is equally well-known that on our planet, much needed freshwater exists as a tiny fraction of its total water reserve. The critical supplies of freshwater for meeting human needs and demands come mainly from lakes, river flows and dynamic groundwater aquifers. Put together, they account for only about 0.2972 per cent of the total water on the planet. The largest part of the water on Earth belongs to the oceans which account for about 96.5 per cent of the total. Furthermore, the small and most useful amount of freshwater should not be seen as a mere stock to be extracted from nature, and transported and used by humans. More basically, these water systems are flows that perform numerous ecosystem services and support a great variety of ecosystem productivity. These are crucial for the sustenance of millions of people all over the world, whether they are farmers, fisher folks, boat people, water vendors, terracotta craftspeople or others. The Second UN World Water Development Report (UNESCO, 2006) describes water as an essential life-sustaining element. In the global exercise called the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (Aylward et al., 2005), the compulsions humans face for internalising the ecosystem services in the making of water policies have been well established. The imperatives for changing the traditional and reductionist perception of water as a stock to a holistic one as a flow is clear. Hence, water systems need an appropriate management strategy that protects and promotes this new description of water. This book is aimed at being a tool for realising this conceptual shift among water professionals. In the last two centuries or so, building upon the availability of the strength of reinforced concrete structures, humans have extracted great volumes of freshwater from the limited sources in river flows and lakes. The extractions have reached such great amounts that, in numerous cases, the flows needed for satisfying the basic needs of the ecosystems are not available. Widespread damages to the ecosystems

xii


and their services have thus resulted. The areas downstream of major water projects, in particular the fishing economies, have suffered as a result. The death of the Aral Sea is a widely cited example. No less obvious is the decline in the lean flows of rivers in India. The demand-side story is disturbing. The projected demand for water in many parts of the planet now is crossing the respective annual availabilities. The traditional approach of structural interventions and water supplies has proven inadequate for addressing the emerging challenges. In this background, the absence of a comprehensive and interdisciplinary knowledge base on water systems has been recognised by experts as the most important gap facing water management. Right from the Dublin Statement of 1992 on Water and the Environment till today, humanity has been trying to find an approach to water management that sustains the natural ecosystems, while making water available for human requirements. The well-known Swedish water scientist Malin Falkenmark (2003: 7) has identified the ultimate challenge as ‘to find a proper balance between humans and the impacts caused to the environment’. This book tries to provide an approach to the generation of interdisciplinary knowledge to move water management a step closer to the much needed interdisciplinarity. Truly, water systems management needs inputs from so many diverse stakeholders that it can be called a confluence of disciplines. The first chapter is an elaboration of the disciplinary diversity in the knowledge gaps that need to be addressed by researchers in water science and policy today and an analysis of why water management in India, which has largely remained with government agencies, has functioned with disciplinary excellence but could not transcend the disciplinary boundaries. The same is the state of water systems research in various institutions dealing with education and research in water engineering. The chapter outlines the scope of research in a new paradigm and the diverse aspects of water systems, their allocation and governance. The chapter provides a list of nine areas for research. These include, for example, creation of deeper ecological understanding of the various parts of the hydrological cycle, especially the flowing streams as well as groundwater; ecological understanding of flood and drought events; economics and valuation of water systems; institutions for water systems management at various spatial and administrative units; assessment of environmental flows requirements; and relation of climate change and water management.

PREFACE

xiii

The next three chapters provide indicative examples of research that can fill the gaps in water systems knowledge. Chapter 2 articulates the need for an eco-hydrological perspective on extreme events like floods and droughts that are essential for the generation of a more realistic picture of such processes, their categories, positive contributions and potential for damages. Such research activities would help the replacement of the traditional engineering perception of floods as ‘disasters to be controlled’, which is so dominant in the present approach to the management of extreme events. Once the floods are seen in their ecological contexts, many ecosystem services provided by floods and their contribution to human societies and economies would become evident—for the contribution of floods in the transportation and deposition of silts, spreading of aquatic biodiversity, recharge of surface and groundwater sources in the floodplains, and so on—thus providing a new framework for a benefit-cost analysis of flood management projects. Chapter 3 describes how the emerging role of economics has the potential of enlarging the framework for the management of water systems. This emerging role of economics is divided into two channels. First, the expanding role of traditional economics in valuation of water is discussed. This relates to issues like valuation and pricing of water, economically efficient use of it, principles of allocation among competing demands, and so on. Second, and probably more important, the chapter relates to the ecological economics of water. In this process, the reader is exposed to the recent advances in ecological economics of water systems. The emergence of the new paradigm for water systems management is critically related to these emerging frontiers in water and economics, which will help assess the role of water in economic development more realistically. Chapter 4 is an exercise in the possible application of new interdisciplinary knowledge in decision making with respect to the much advertised and debated river-link project in India. With the publicised objectives of ending the floods and providing increased water supply to the drier areas of western and southern India, the river-link project has been designed by India’s National Water Development Agency as the largest civil engineering project in the world. A closer look from an interdisciplinary viewpoint, however, leads one to question the economic viability, social acceptability and ecological sustainability of the project. This exemplifies the potential of the new paradigm for

xiv


water systems management in providing a new perspective to water use in India. In order to analyse large water projects, like India’s riverlink, this chapter opens avenues for a more comprehensive project assessment and appraisal. It is hoped that the present book will be only an early input to the promotion of interdisciplinary water systems knowledge and tools for comprehensive project assessment. In the coming days, the cognitive process would probably catch greater momentum with contributions from researchers from a variety of disciplines.

References Aylward, B., J. Bandyopadhyay and J-C Belausteguigotia. 2005. ‘Freshwater Ecosystem Services’, in Kanchan Chopra, R. Leemans, P. Kumar and H. Simons (eds), Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Policy Responses, Vol. 3, pp. 213–56. New York: Island Press. Falkenmark, M. 2003. Water Management and Ecosystems: Living with Change. Stockholm: Global Water Partnership. UNESCO. 2006. Water a Shared Responsibility the United Nations World Water Development Report 2. Paris: UNESCO; New York: Berghahn Books.

Chapter 1 Interdisciplinary Knowledge on Water Systems* Introduction Water is an essential requirement for the sustenance of all life forms. This product of nature has remained a vital requirement for all human societies, independent of their technological status. People in technologically advanced societies like the Silicon Valley, in the state of California in USA, as well as those living in the less advanced Doon Valley, in the state of Uttarakhand in India look up to secure supplies of water with equally intense expectations. Water offers a basis for rapid creation of economic value, for example, in agriculture. Through the provisioning of water for irrigation, the economics of farming in dry areas can undergo magical transformations. Many industries, like the pulp-based ones or thermal power plants, require great volumes of water for their processes or for the dilution of the pollutants they create. This is why, with the advancement of technology, human dependence on water has grown, not reduced. Availability of water in an area for meeting human needs and demands is governed by the terrestrial parts of the natural hydrological cycle and the level of human ability to use the water that comes as a gift of nature. Although the whole planet has a large volume of water (1338 million BCM), the volume of traditionally accessible freshwater, in lakes and river flows, amounts to a mere 0.093 million BCM. In the case of India, rainfall accounts for most of the available freshwater resources. The average annual precipitation over India is about 4,000 BCM and, when the precipitation is considered on the basis of availability per unit *This is an updated and modified version of the paper published in Economic & Political Weekly 42(10): 863–73, 10–16 March 2007.

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geographical area, the country can be described as reasonably endowed with respect to water. However, the picture becomes quite different from the demand-side perspective. When one considers this availability on the basis of per capita availability, the annual amount of utilisable water for the satisfaction of needs and requirements of a population of more than 1.1 billion and an equally large number of cattle comes to about 1,100 CBM. The wide spatial and temporal variations in the precipitation further add to the problems and characterise the main challenge in water systems management in India. As India progresses towards wideranging socio-economic transitions in the coming decades, characterised by rapid economic growth, industrialisation and urbanisation, there is an urgent need for water governance to face the challenges by ecologically sustainable and socially equitable measures. Pushed by the need for food self-sufficiency, India has made very large investments in water projects, especially for irrigation and later in hydropower dams. Irrigation gets about 80 per cent of the water withdrawals in India. On the other hand, according to the UNDP (2006: 307), 14 per cent of the Indian population does not have access to improved water sources and 67 per cent do not have adequate sanitation. The demands from a farming sector that is increasingly becoming export oriented and the industrial sector, which has a rapidly growing water requirement, have become large enough to compete with the domestic needs and between themselves to generate conflict situations. The conflict over access to water in Plachimada (Kerala), where a soft drink factory has now been closed by a court order, is a case in point (Iyer, 2007: 135). Indications are clear that in the coming years, the issue of the availability of water as a human right (Gleick, 1998) has emerged as a sensitive political issue in India. All this indicates that only a highly interdisciplinary approach can address the challenges in water management in India. In contrast, the governance of water systems has remained rather stagnant in its style and limited within disciplinary bounds (Bandyopadhyay, 2007). Conflicts over sharing water are not new and have existed for a long time at all spatial levels, from among individual landholders sharing a canal outlet to countries sharing a river basin. The dream of irrigation drives all farmers to seek more water and, this more often than not, generates conflicts that are guided by economic interests and not scarcity (Ghosh and Bandyopadhyay, forthcoming). However, the nature of the conflicts is overshadowed by the politicians in their respective provincial

INTERDISCIPLINARY KNOWLEDGE ON WATER SYSTEMS

3

states who become the champion of their respective farmer communities. This situation is best exemplified by the disputes between the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over the Cauvery waters. Such conflicts, over water allocation in most large river basins in peninsular India, are intense and have reached the Supreme Court. Yet, their early solution does not seem feasible within the existing institutional framework. In addition to this, in the past several years, the growth of the environmental movement has highlighted the significance of the provisioning of water for maintaining the ecosystem services provided by the flow of rivers, creating an increasingly assertive new water demand that was not recognised in the past. However, with the development of the concept of ecosystem services and tools of ecological economics, the issue of water allocation for the ecosystem has started to gain considerable attention in policy. This is particularly true for many industrially advanced countries. For water systems management in the future decades, this new demand acts like a wake-up call for ensuring sustainability of water systems and providing a mechanism for its allocation through ecologically sustainable measures. The other issues related to water systems management relate to property rights and availability of domestic water supplies as a human right (Sangameswaran, 2007). During the last 100 years or so, with the help of structural engineering that flourished after steel and concrete became available, engineering has dramatically enhanced water availability all over the world. This ability of the engineers had made water management almost an exclusive area for themselves, marginalising other aspects of water supply and use. However, water is socially and ecologically related to almost all aspects of human activities. The growing understanding of the social and ecological dimensions of water development has expanded the domain of water systems management. Accordingly, comprehensive management of water systems can no longer be kept as an exclusive domain of engineering. The new framework has to be interdisciplinary with inputs from social, natural and engineering sciences. Various disciplines in the natural sciences and the social sciences, including sociology, history and economics, have become equally important in the research agenda of water. Thus, the knowledge for sustainability of water systems and equity in its use has rapidly emerged as the confluence of disciplines related to water. It is imperative that this confluence of knowledge is understood and advanced in the long-term interest of water systems and their users.

4


India’s Water Systems: Unique Features As the per capita availability of water in India falls below the 1,000 CBM level, the intensity of problems that India would face in the coming decades in ensuring water allocation to the diverse demands, including the environmental flow requirements, will be immense. In order to develop a comprehensive and informed framework for sustainable utilisation of the water systems in India, a huge volume of new interdisciplinary knowledge is needed. Traditional and disciplinary research on water in India, especially on hydrology and irrigation engineering, has a good and creditable record. The crucial gaps in knowledge, mainly belonging to the domain of transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research, are the focus of this chapter. Towards that end, this chapter provides a description of the research agenda that needs to be taken up, if India has to address the challenges in water systems management with social equity and ecological sustainability. From that point, a brief review of the characteristic features of the water systems in India and the threats to their sustainability is a convenient starting point. The precipitation pattern over India is largely influenced by the south-west monsoon. Isohyets and the river basins draining the country are shown in Figures 1.1 and 1.2, respectively. The wide spatial and temporal variations that are characteristic of the monsoonal precipitation pattern make the use of average data quite unrealistic. The distribution of precipitation over India is governed largely by the interaction of the south-west monsoon with the uplands and the mountains, for example, the Western Ghats, the central highlands, the Meghalaya hills and the Himalayas. About 80 per cent of the annual precipitation over India occurs during the three monsoon months, from June to September. The monsoon precipitation on the western aspect of the Western Ghats and the southern aspect of the Himalayas generate the most significant run-off in the country. This temporal variation in precipitation has a special significance in the river basins that do not drain the Himalayas, which provide snow and ice-melt contributions. These flows increase greatly with the onset of the spring, extending to the Himalayan rivers the advantage of the provision of critical pre-monsoon flows. This is not the case with the rivers not draining the Himalayas. As a result, in most areas in western and southern India, which are arid or semi-arid, the availability of water in the pre-monsoon months becomes very low


5

or even non-existent in some parts. This results in scarcity of water and has traditionally encouraged the widespread extraction of groundwater to meet the domestic water needs. Thus, in the low rainfall areas of western and southern India, groundwater is virtually the lifeline for the population. In addition, across the lines of social divide, access to water is very much uneven and has caused chronic water insecurity for a great number of socially and economically backward people, even when water is available as a common property, in principle. Figure 1.1 Precipitation Isohyets over India

15 40 100

20 30 50 SRN

100 75

LEH 75

50

150

40 30

100

CHG

20

50

15

DBH

DLH 250 LKN

250

100

JDP

15 20

PTN

150

GHT 250 250

IMP

150 AGT

BHJ 30

BHP

AHM 40 50

150

150

JPR

CAL

RJK 75 100 150

50

NGP

75

150

BWN 150

AGD

MUM

250 250

RNC

JBP

100

50 VSK

AN

250

HYD

ANT

BNG

AMN 75

100 TRP

250 150

TRV 100 75

75

S

MNC

PBL

ND

LAKSHADWEEP

CNN MNG

AN AND NICOBAR ISLA

100

75

DAM

100 250 PNJ

Source: http://www.imd.ernet.in/section/climate/annual-rainfall.htm (downloaded in 2001).

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Due to the unconsolidated nature of the Himalayan watersheds on which the monsoonal rainfall occurs, a very large load of sediment is created, which offers serious complexities and challenges in the sustainable management of the Himalayan rivers (Bandyopadhyay and Gyawali, 1994). To accommodate the outflow of the intense monsoon rainfall and run-off, many areas in the region face regular annual inundations during the period concerned. With an increasing population, large areas in the floodplains have come under habitation or cultivation, increasing the damages from the monsoonal inundations. In large parts of western and southern India, water scarcity during the pre-monsoon weeks is usual. However, there is an apparent increase in instances of heavy precipitation during the summer monsoon in the drier western parts of India, causing floods in the generally semi-arid regions of the states of Gujarat and Rajasthan. In the post-monsoon months, drier areas in southern and western India traditionally face water stress, and sustaining domestic water supply, both in the urban and rural areas, becomes a major challenge. The heaviest recorded average annual precipitation in India is 11,873 mm recorded at Mawsynram, a small town near Shillong, in the Meghalaya Hills. In contrast, the Thar Desert of Rajasthan receives an average annual rainfall of less than 200 mm. Macro-level projections of demand and availability of water in India by the National Commission for Integrated Water Resource Development (NCIWRD) (1999: 69) indicate that by the middle of this century, total annual water demand in India will cross the total annual availability. This is an averaged out national level picture and surely does not reflect the reality in smaller areas, where scarcity of water has been a traditional feature creating the practice of seasonal migration. Under more sedentary conditions, such scarcities generate micro-level conflicts that are less widely known. The disputes on the sharing of the Cauvery or Ganga waters are more widely known, probably because of their political news value. In the last several decades, many large hydraulic structures have been successfully built in India to increase the storage capacity and water availability in the country by moderating the acute spatial and temporal inequities in the natural water endowment. These engineering interventions have provided water to the largest irrigation system in the world and helped India fight against hunger. With the passage of time, however, the amount of water diverted from the rivers has become very large. Also, the long-term social and environmental impacts of the various


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storage and diversion projects, which did not receive due consideration at the time of the project appraisal, have started to express themselves in the form of popular movements or observable degradation in the downstream ecosystems. These include declining fish production in the downstream areas, increased coastal erosion, ingress of salinity to groundwater, and so on. The ecological decline of the Sunderbans at the end of the Ganga–Brahmaputra–Meghna (GBM) basin, the largest mangrove forest in the world, has been frequently mentioned in the context of environmental impacts of upstream water diversion in the basin (Mirza, 2004). Many rivers in India now discharge a very small fraction of their total flow at the confluence with the sea. However, only in the past few years, the assessment of environmental flow requirements of rivers in India have got attention and been written about. The water requirements for sustaining the ecosystem services provided by water are hopefully going to receive their due recognition in policy formulations. Figure 1.2 River Basins Draining India A of N Ladakh ND in Indus

Indus

Ganga-Brahm-Meghna WFR of Kach-Saur and Luni Sabarmati Mahi

Subarnarekha

Narmada Mahanadi

Tapi Godavari

Krishna WFR south of Tapi

Brahmani-Baitarani

EFR b Mahanadi and Godavari

EFR b Godavari and Krishna EFR b Krishna and Pennar Pennar EFR b Pennar and Cauvery

Cauvery

EFR south of Cauvery

Source: http://www.india-water.com/index.asp (downloaded on 10 November 2008).

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Sooner or later, the conflicts between and among the various economic demands on the water and environmental flow requirements for the continuation of related ecosystem services need to be internalised in the actual management of water systems (Bandyopadhyay, 2006; Molden and de Fraiture, 2004; Mollinga et al., 2006). Disciplinary research on hydrology or economics of irrigation in India has a rich and credible history. However, they are not adequate for effectively addressing the emerging challenges in water systems management. In this chapter, no attempt is made to identify research gaps in the disciplinary research. This chapter addresses what has remained marginal in the research agenda for long and aims at providing a framework to design research programmes, which need to be interdisciplinary in nature, to fill the critical gaps in knowledge.

The History of Formal Water Management in India Human interventions in the water systems in India have a reasonably long history. The human societies in this part of the world have been described as belonging to a ‘Hydraulic Civilisation’. Local knowledge and management institutions for water management existed prior to the beginning of the British rule. While the East India Company made little effort to intervene in the water systems of India, the beginnings of the British rule in India saw extensive and organised interventions. The basic objective of the British approach to water management had been to enhance the productivity of land by increased provision of water for irrigation in regions with less rainfall or located away from the rivers. The structural interventions that were used by the British were rooted in the knowledge base of the European engineering tradition that was introduced in India in the mid-nineteenth century. The establishment of early engineering colleges, like the Thompson College in Roorkee, set the direction of water resource education. In this regard, the Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR) of the Government of India has mentioned that the following: Irrigation development under British rule began with the renovation, improvement and extension of existing works… When enough experience and confidence had been gained, the Government ventured on new major works, like the Upper Ganga Canal, the Upper Bari Doab Canal and Krishna and Godavari Delta Systems, which were all river-diversion works of considerable


9

size. The period from 1836 to 1866 marked the investigation, development and completion of these four major works… Thereafter, a number of projects were taken up. These included major canal works like the Sirhind, the Lower Ganga, the Agra and the Mutha Canals, and the Periyar Dam and canals. Some other major canal projects were also completed on the Indus system during this period. These included the Lower Swat, the Lower Sohag and Para, the Lower Chenab and the Sidhnai Canals. (http://wrmin.nic.in/development/ default6.htm)

These interventions brought large economic benefits to the farmers in the areas receiving irrigation, bringing prosperity that was unthinkable earlier. This is why British engineers like Sir Arthur Cotton and Colonel John Pennyquick are remembered in the Godavari and Vaigai basins of south India as saints (Briscoe and Malik, 2006: 1). Although the British rule in India came to an end in 1947, no fundamental changes in the nature of the institutions for water management or the knowledge base needed for it accompanied independence. The knowledge base and institutions that existed prior to the onset of the British rule had decayed by then and the knowledge and institutions built by the British rulers continued to function without any moderation. The large number of engineering interventions made in water systems in independent India was made with that knowledge base of traditional European engineering. Political requirements of poverty alleviation and economic growth in a newly independent country with a large population of poor people rapidly created crucial and additional demands on water. Highest priority was given to water storage and supply for irrigation that slowly became synonymous with food security in the 1960s. The net irrigated area in India, which was 19.4 mha at the time of independence in 1947, grew to an irrigation potential of more than 100 mha by 2002. This has been achieved, first, by the application of engineering for storage and diversion of river flows and, then, by the extraction of groundwater, mainly from the 1960s onwards. Thus, in addition to surface water, groundwater also became an equally important source for irrigation, providing about 210 BCM of water per year. As India is striving for a 10 per cent growth rate for its economy and a 5 per cent growth rate in agriculture, the demands for water is growing further and getting diversified. In the background of competing demands, the availability of water is now being seen as a possible obstacle to rapid economic growth in the country (Mohindru, 2006). Irrigation being by far the

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largest user of water, the low efficiency of the use of water in irrigation is being blamed for agriculture raiding the water supplies of the country (Wilson, 2001). An important feature of the water situation in India is that the level of poverty in various parts of the country cannot be explained away with its traditional relation to water scarcity and the occurrence of droughts. Areas like Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh receive a good amount of rainfall and are known to be flood-prone. However, these areas are also home to a very large number of poor people. Thus, there is a need for an India-specific framework to correlate water availability and poverty. The matrix of regional diversity in precipitation, the diversity of conflicting needs and demands for water, and an institutional structure that has remained rather stagnant make the challenges in water systems management in India very complex. In addition to the quantitative aspects of management, the aspect of quality of water in the extensively polluted rivers and groundwater has added to the level of physical scarcity and has grown to be a health hazard of national dimension. The complexities of future water management in India have been analysed recently by Briscoe and Malik (2006). Commenting on the water availability and requirement data for India, they have observed that ‘these figures are stark and unequivocal portrayal of a country about to enter an era of severe water scarcity. And there are a host of realities that make the situation far worse than depicted.’ Similar concerns about the quantitative challenge have been expressed by others who also stress the need for adopting fundamentally new approaches to water systems management (for example, Ghosh-Bobba et al., 1997; Iyer, 2007; Niemczynowicz et al., 1998). In addressing these challenges, the urgent need for creating a transdisciplinary knowledge base (Bandyopadhyay, 2006) and a radically transformed institutional framework (Saleth, 2004) emerge as two main challenges. Considering that the pressure of population in countries like China and India would be the most significant push for new policies for water systems management in these two countries, Cai and Rosegrant (2005) have made a useful distinction between the available options in these two large countries with rapidly growing economies. Although the institutional challenges have been addressed by Briscoe and Malik (2006) and Iyer (2007), among others, this chapter aims to stress the need for filling gaps in interdisciplinary knowledge, which is a pre-requisite for facilitating


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the emergence of the much needed new paradigm for water systems management in India. In many countries, the process of an effective reorientation in policy for water systems management has already been initiated. Among these new policy frameworks, one of the most comprehensive and transdisciplinary one is the Water Framework Directive (WFD) of the European Union (European Community, 2000). The directive has ambitious aims of establishing ‘a framework for the protection of inland surface waters, transitional waters, coastal waters and groundwaters’ and of achieving a ‘good status’ for them. The aim is not to maximise supplies, and it clearly exemplifies an ecosystem perspective, rather than that of a commitment to the perspective of traditional engineering interventions aimed at supply augmentation. The present National Water Policy in India was approved in 2002 (MoWR, 2002). This was two years after the WFD was adopted by the European Union. This new policy document for India mentions that ‘planning, management and development of water resources need to be governed by national perspective’. The ‘National Perspective’ was developed by the MoWR as far back in August 1980 and the plan based on it, comprising of Peninsular River Development and Himalayan River Development, constitutes what has now become the hotly debated proposed project of Interlinking of Rivers (ILR). The ‘National Perspective’ gives in great detail a description of the perceived gains from these projects, like the additional irrigation for 35 mha of land and additional hydropower generation of 34,000 MW from the Peninsular and the Himalayan components of river development. In addition, under the irrigation component of Bharat Nirman, another 10 mha of irrigation potential may be made available by 2009 through the expeditious completion of identified ongoing projects. In terms of their conceptual framework, both the National Perspective and the National Water Policy of 2002 are based on the traditional paradigm of European water engineering, which was introduced by the British. Indian professionals have excelled in that paradigm of knowledge and, undoubtedly, many engineering interventions in the water systems of India have made important contributions to the national economy. These interventions, in the years following independence, have helped the country in the fight against hunger and food scarcity. These have also supported the process of the rapid growth of urbanisation and provided water for a

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large industrial system. All this goes to the credit of the exclusively supply-side solutions of the traditional engineering perspective of water management. The recent years, however, have started to expose serious drawbacks in the traditional approach. Thus, notwithstanding such successes as described earlier, it seems that the governmental approach to the challenges of water systems management in India has remained traditional and indicates the lack of a dynamic link with the rapidly expanding front of interdisciplinary knowledge on water systems. More precisely, the shift of the knowledge of water systems from hydrology to eco-hydrology does not get reflected in the governmental approach, nor do the new ideas of property rights and institutions for water management find any place. This transition, resulting from a constant interaction and engagement between the practitioners of water development and the creators of interdisciplinary knowledge, is not apparent from the water development plans and projects. As a result, the contributions from this rapidly expanding interdisciplinary knowledge base have remained quite externalised in the knowledge base with which the governmental departments are designing and undertaking the projects. The continuation of the traditional and reductionist paradigm of water engineering, developed and left by the British, and the absence of an interdisciplinary perspective are the results of an important disconnect seen in most governance processes in the ex-colonies. The scenario of water resource development in India is no exception. It is important to note that while the European Commission has overcome the limits of its own traditional concepts, and advanced towards the creation and adoption of the WFD by recognising the role of new interdisciplinary knowledge in a holistic knowledge base for engineering, water development in India is still not able to grow out of the traditional European perspective of engineering. It is important to understand this and find out why it is so. It may be that the internal creativity and innovative capacity of the professionals in water management has remained suppressed and marginalised from the practice of water resource development. As a result, while the traditional European perspective evolved over the decades and led to the adoption of the WFD, the same old perspective has remained unchanged in India and in the erstwhile colonies. It is important to


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understand the nature of this disconnect in order to make the necessary move forward towards a more interdisciplinary and updated conceptual framework for water systems management. Otherwise, the agenda for change in the water sector of India will become another mechanical ritual of ‘reform’ guided by financial institutions like the World Bank (Briscoe and Malik, 2006: 62–72). In the following section, this important disconnect will be analysed.

The Disconnect between Water Systems Knowledge and Water Resource Development in India When the British rule ended in India, water management institutions that were left behind were guided by the traditional reductionist concepts of European engineering. The steering idea was the construction of hydraulic structures aimed at storage and transfer of surface water. In the past decades, human knowledge on water systems all over the world has been constantly growing with close links with theoretical and applied research in many disciplines. These recent developments in water systems science and the changes in the conceptual framework for its management are so fundamental that the transformation has received the status of an emerging ‘paradigm shift’. Several new topics, many of which are not related to hydrology or hydraulics, have become central features of this interdisciplinary water systems management. The growing awareness of water as a human right, changes in the property rights on water, the importance of the ecosystem services provided by water, the emergence of tools for their valuation and the recognition of environmental flow requirements in surface and groundwater, and so on, are important identities of the new paradigm (Dyson et al., 2003; Falkenmark and Rockstrom, 2005). Water resource development is no longer a matter of merely addressing competing consumptive needs and demands created by human societies alone. The issues of social equity in access to water and sustainability of the ecosystem services are emerging as very important factors. Recognition of these new parameters and availability of necessary knowledge on them have led to significant changes in the policy framework for water in Australia, USA, the European Union and South Africa.

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In the case of India, as in most former colonies, such transformation based on new knowledge is not conspicuous. The strategies for management and design of the projects continue to be made with a knowledge base and assessed with a framework that has not grown with time or addressed criticisms. A look at the citation pattern of important governmental publications would indicate the continuation of the traditional paradigm and the absence of indications of the use of recent interdisciplinary knowledge. The non-recognition of critical observations has protected the traditional paradigm from being questioned and helped the uncontested continuation of the traditional engineering paradigm, dominated by the objectives of structural interventions for greater storage and distribution for provisioning. The National Perspective for Water is a good example in this respect. This section attempts to enquire into why the governmental approach to water development in India, as in most of the erstwhile colonies, has not transcended to a more holistic paradigm of engineering. It may be that in the institutional set-up for water management inherited from the colonial period, by design or otherwise, open professional criticisms, much needed for the growth of independent water science anywhere, and ideas for institutional innovations were compromised by the continued existence of the colonial culture of obedience to authority. Thus, vital professional criticisms may not have often got the articulation that was necessary for registering them. In the context of Pakistan, which was part of British India, Wescoat et al. (2000: 394) have observed how important dimensions in water management remained marginalised after independence: ‘Cultural and ecological dimensions of water management fell outside the formerly colonial and new international research paradigms, both of which focused on irrigation systems, hydropower and public health to the relative neglect of fisheries, flood control and watershed management.’ The obvious results of this have been serious restrictions on the functioning of mechanisms for the growth of knowledge through criticism, or the independent ability to locate or discover knowledge related to the diverse dimensions of the role played by water. Even when the knowledge front has been pushed forward by independent non-governmental scientific research, the inevitable critical elements involved face official dislike, being construed as a challenge to hierarchy.


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Thus, no engagements are made with critical viewpoints, obstructing the process of the growth of knowledge. One important example of this type of cognitive stagnation is the relative absence of fundamental refinements in the official process for the appraisal and assessment of water-related projects. It is particularly hoped for in national platforms like the Planning Commission that independent and critical professional knowledge would be internalised to develop more comprehensive and robust methods for the appraisal and approval of water-related projects. The gap in the knowledge base is particularly large in the areas of social dimensions of water projects and their impacts on the ecosystem services. Accordingly, there is a need for strengthening the process of examining the social acceptability and ecological sustainability of the planned interventions in the water systems. The role of water in human societies has become more diverse and complex. In addition to this are the water needs for achieving the Millennium Development Goals, which are globally accepted and have a high priority in India. Moreover, it is simply not possible to ignore the fact that water is already a multi-billion dollar business at the global level. In the absence of such dimensions, the projects are assessed and approved through an old and partial process, resulting in truncated benefits and costs. Such incompleteness, in due course of time, has encouraged opposition to the water projects by the affected people—the involuntarily displaced people or those whose livelihoods are damaged by the ecological impacts of the projects. The scope of such approval processes is in need of substantial refinement, for which the engagement between the governmental structure and the independent professionals is a necessity. Of equal importance for the advancement of scientific knowledge is the openness of and access to data on water systems. Comprehensive knowledge cannot emerge when the database is incomplete or inaccessible. The difficulties in the access to or official restrictions imposed on the availability of detailed hydrological data, particularly on international rivers like the Brahmaputra, Ganga and Indus, have acted as obstructions to research and the growth of high quality scientific knowledge on these important rivers. The NCIWRD (1999: 370) also suffered from non-availability of data and observed that ‘the secrecy maintained about water resources data for some of the basins is not only highly detrimental but is also counter productive. Hydrological data of all the basins need to be made available to the public on demand.’

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In the same direction, Briscoe and Malik (2006: 53) have urged for ‘Ending the Culture of Secrecy and Making Transparency the Rule’. It may be said that as a result of such confidentiality of data built into the administrative system for water, the scientific basis of practical management of water systems has remained detached from the ongoing forward march of interdisciplinary knowledge. This leads to sub-optimal use of the water systems. The growth of interdisciplinary knowledge, so urgently needed, has two dimensions. First, is the integration of knowledge from the various disciplines of the natural science and engineering, related to water. This, by itself, is a very complex process. Falkenmark (2004) has described this in connection with the initiative called ‘Hydrology for Environment, Life and Policy’ (HELP). Second, is the process of induction of such interdisciplinary knowledge into the development and management of water systems. The progress of this process becomes even more difficult when the institutional culture is unwilling to promote and gain from scientific engagement with critics. The situation with the independent water professionals is, however, quite different. Independent water professionals in India can and have published their work. Some of them subscribe to the traditional disciplinary framework, while others to the new and emerging interdisciplinary one. Among the various non-governmental research publications on water systems management in India that have depended on the emerging interdisciplinary knowledge in analysing water projects, some examples are the systematic review of the proposed ILR by Alagh et al. (2006), the cautionary research on the conflicts latent in the Polavaram irrigation project (Gujja et al., 2006) and the studies on the gaps in interdisciplinary knowledge (Bandyopadhyay, 2007; Iyer, 2007). A serious engagement of the official policy makers and the independent water professionals on these issues would surely have led to the transfer of useful new knowledge between the independent professionals and officials. However, such a process, despite its significance for the advancement of water systems science in India and consequent water systems development, has not progressed much. What is also interesting is that many research papers, pushing the traditional line of supply augmentation, avoid giving citations and, as a result, do not engage with the critical publications, thus contributing to the stagnancy of the conceptual framework for water development. Examples of such papers are available in a special issue


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of the journal World Affairs: The Journal of International Issues (2007, Vol. 10, No. 4). The situation with knowledge related to the management of other segments of the natural environment may not be very different. It is amply clear that there is a disconnect between the ongoing transformations in the conceptual frameworks on water systems management at the level of independent professionals and the actual practices in departmental water governance in India. In this background the approach to a research agenda for the generation of necessary interdisciplinary knowledge and the filling of vital gaps therein needs to be seen. It is important to recognise that the continued practices based on the older paradigm will not only be unable to ensure a socially equitable and ecologically sustainable management of India’s water systems but also surely enhance the scope of potential conflicts over water among diverse demands and stakeholders. It is not an understatement that the emergence of such an interdisciplinary framework for water systems management should be a top priority for the country, if it is serious about realising the high rate of growth of the economy.

Research Agenda for an Interdisciplinary Framework for Water Systems Management The articulation of the emerging interdisciplinary framework for water systems management constitutes an important task for the country to address the challenges in water systems management successfully in the coming decades. The main objective of this chapter is to contribute towards that direction. Wolff and Gleick (2002: 1) have stressed that ‘the world is in the midst of a major transition in the way we think about—and manage—our vital and limited freshwater resources.’ Such statements emerge from the fundamental changes that are being advocated by an increasing number of professionals (Postel, 1997; Reddy, 2002; Seckler, 1996) towards an interdisciplinary definition of water systems management. The term Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) has been in wide circulation in recent years. In this respect, a brief review of the current interpretations of and the discourse on what has commonly emerged under the umbrella identity of IWRM may be a convenient starting point. Describing the wide

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multi-dimensionality of the issues, the UN World Water Assessment Programme (2003) has observed that: Of all the social and natural crises we humans face, the water crisis is the one that lies at the heart of our survival and that of planet Earth…No region will be spared from the impact of this crisis which touches every facet of life, from the health of children to the ability of the nations to secure food for their citizens…Water supplies are falling while the demand is dramatically growing at an unsustainable rate. Over the next twenty years the average supply of water worldwide per person is expected to drop by one third.

In governmental publications, the need for integration of inputs from diverse disciplines or stakeholders does get mentioned, but the problem arises in the process of practising it. This has led to situations where the practices of water resource management have, in fact, acted as an obstacle to sustainable development of water systems. The emerging new framework for water systems management got an early name in IWRM much before the term got a clear description. It may be that the urgency of developing a new approach to the management of water systems at the global level made the creation of such a term convenient. What is accepted as the bottom line is that the traditional paradigm of water engineering needs to integrate many other aspects of water systems and their uses, thus emerging as a new paradigm. These aspects are related to both the natural and social scientific aspects of water systems. Several recent publications have made useful attempts to identify the elements that need to be integrated in such a new approach to water systems management (Falkenmark and Rockstrom, 2005; Hunt, 2004; Iyer, 2007). There is also an ongoing debate on the nature of the integration that is necessary. In a critical comment on the very concept of IWRM, Biswas (2004) takes the following view: A comprehensive and objective assessment of the recent writings of the individuals and institutions that are vigorously promoting integrated water resource management indicates that not only no one has a clear idea as to what exactly this concept means in operational terms, but also their views of it in terms of what it actually means and involves vary very widely.

It needs to be remembered that what is needed is a fundamental transformation in the concepts and such things do not come as a


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package. They evolve over time in a non-linear manner. In response to the comments by Biswas, Mitchell (2004) points out that there is a need for a gradual development of the details of IWRM. Disagreeing with Biswas on his evaluation IWRM only through operational considerations, Mitchell stresses that ‘the value of IWRM may be greater at the normative and strategic levels, to provide context or a framework for different types of approaches at an operational level.’ Responding to the same critique by Biswas (2004) of the definition of IWRM as made by the Global Water Partnership (GWP), Lamoree (2004) wrote: …the IWRM concept has led to various developments that were very desirable: a wave of awareness raising at both the political and the grassroots level about the importance of water to life; a move away from single-sector institutional responsibilities and decision making towards more integrated and multi-sector decision making processes at the government level; the renewed focus on stakeholder participation, the broadening of the water profession to increasingly include non-technical disciplines and multidisciplinary research.

In addition to the debate on the scope and expanse of the concept of IWRM, a great deal of research and analysis has also gone into the identification of the new interdisciplinary knowledge needed for its successful implementation. A number of important publications have emerged as a result, both from the UN and other independent professionals. An important segment of such publications can be described as an exploration of ecological sustainability of water systems. Rogers (2006) has presented a detailed analysis of the factors related to water sustainability. Faruqui (2005) has examined the water sustainability issue in the perspective of the processes of economic globalisation. Mondello (2006) has examined the policy settings in the context of the General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS) of the World Trade Organization (WTO), within which privatisation and introduction of competition into the water services industry is a complex undertaking. The emerging ecological approach to integrated water management has been highlighted by Ghetti and Giupponi (2006). Among the various areas that are merging to establish the interdisciplinary area of integrated water systems studies, economics of water and valuation of its ecosystem services is relatively new but have high potential for application in policy. A more detailed analysis of the diverse challenges facing the emergence of an integrated

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water systems management, in the context of India, is available in Mollinga et al. (2006). Briscoe and Malik (2006), in their report on India, have clearly cautioned that following the ‘business as usual’ path for water management in India will lead to serious problems and conflicts. There is a need to make it clear that even with all the diverse knowledge being made available, a new process of water governance that would ensure sustainability and social acceptability may not be easily achievable in India. This is because of the corruption that has the ability to puncture the successful operation of the best of the policies. It may be noted that India is one of the two nations receiving special coverage on corruption in the World Water Development Report of the UNESCO (2006). No amount of scientific knowledge, however much interdisciplinary it may be, can guard against the damages of a system plagued with corruption. It is in this background of intellectual dynamism and institutional obstacles that the challenges associated with the articulation of the concept of integrated water systems management in India and the elements for an interdisciplinary research agenda need to be seen. The diversity of topics to be taken up for research to fill the gaps in interdisciplinary knowledge is very vast. These are spread over various areas in social, natural and engineering sciences. This, indeed, makes water systems the confluence of all these disciplines. Based on a review of the available literature and a need for grouping together the diverse topics for practical reasons, a number of themes for research have been suggested subsequently. In order to prepare the country for effectively addressing the challenges in water systems management with sustainability and equity, detailed research programmes on these elements need to be developed on a priority basis. It is to be stressed again that interdisciplinary research on these topics is to be taken up as a complement to the ongoing research in the disciplines like hydraulics, hydrology, geo-hydrology, meteorology, agricultural economics, and so on. Within the scope of this chapter, a detailed elaboration of the interdisciplinary themes will be difficult, but the themes listed here will be taken up for an introductory description. 1. Generation of eco-hydrological knowledge on the surface water systems, in particular on the meteorology, ecosystem services and environmental flow requirements.


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2. Generation of eco-hydrological knowledge on groundwater systems, recharge mechanisms, institution for sustainable use and protection from pollution. 3. Comprehensive assessment of water-related projects on social, economic and ecological implications with the aim of protecting water security for the poor. 4. Wider application of economics in water policy and governance; valuation of ecosystem services for sustainable and efficient use of water. 5. Promotion of ecological perspectives of extreme hydrological events, like floods and droughts, and regional mechanisms for the mitigation of their impacts. 6. Social dimensions of water systems use, role of communities and local institutions. 7. Emerging water technologies and options in water systems management. 8. Global change and water systems in India: impacts, adaptation and mitigation. 9. Water laws and entitlements: conflicts and their resolution.

Brief Description of the Themes for Water Systems Research in India Water systems management plays a crucial role in the promotion of and support for economic advancement and poverty alleviation. In India, the official projections of demands on water (see Table 1.1) indicate that in the next 15 years or so, the will equal the annual availability, reaching the limits of supply side solutions. Thus, water needs of the people, economic demands on water for irrigation and industry, water needed for the prevention of pollution, and so on, will conflict and compete with each other. The country is not ready with a knowledge system that would be useful in the promotion of sustainable use, in addressing floods and droughts with an ecologically informed approach, recognition and assessment of the services provided by the water based ecosystems (Warner et al., 2006). In order that the growing complexity in the social and political dimensions of water access and use in India and the legal instruments for ensuring equitable and sustainable use of water are available as steps to prevent chaos, an

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Table 1.1 Annual Availability and Projected Requirements for Water in India till 2050* Annual Requirements in BCM on Year as per OECD Outlook Sector Domestic Irrigation Industry Energy Others** Total

2000

2010

2025

2050

42 541 08 02 41 634

56 688 12 05 52 813

73 910 23 15 72 1093

102 1072 63 130 80 1447

Notes: *Annual availability = 1,122 BCM as per Ministry of Waters Resources. **Includes requirements of navigation and the ‘environment’. This is very different from what is known as Environmental Flow in rivers.

agenda for interdisciplinary research on water systems in India needs to be designed. This necessitates the availability of even a small volume of comprehensive and interdisciplinary knowledge base. This should be backed by institutional mechanisms for facilitating continued flow of newly generated interdisciplinary knowledge into the practical world of water management. Poverty alleviation being the most important development priority for India, the place of water as the focal point for the promotion of human well-being cannot be underestimated. There is a need to redefine the socio-economic possibilities and ecological priorities for the sustainable use of water systems in the interest of the people in general, but the poorer ones in particular. In the next section, the diverse topics for research as identified earlier will be described in brief.

Generation of Eco-hydrological Knowledge on the Surface Water Systems The role played by water in promoting rapid economic development in India has been highlighted in many publications on this subject. Verghese (1990), Biswas et al. (2004) and Bhatia and Bhatia (2006) have described the role of water projects, irrigation and hydropower dams in the economic development of India. This has been made possible by the construction of hydraulic infrastructures in great numbers to store and provide water for irrigated agriculture. This helped


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the country avoid widespread food scarcity during the 1950s and 1960s. More recently, dams are also increasingly meeting the demand for water from the rapidly growing urban–industrial sector. An impressive record exists as far as disciplinary research on the engineering aspects related to hydraulics, the structural engineering for dams and barrages, and the economic analysis of the income generation from irrigation projects are concerned. However, in spite of the great achievements in the promotion of irrigation, India’s record of water supply and sanitation for the common people has remained unimpressive (Locussol, 2005). Developments in ecological sciences and economics have now strengthened the point that water systems do not make economic contributions only after they are stored and diverted by engineering interventions. From an ecosystemic viewpoint, the contributions of water to human well-being start from the moment water gets precipitated on the surface of the Earth and continues along the terrestrial parts of the hydrological cycle. The recent report of the Parthasarathi Committee (GoI, 2006) has highlighted such needs in watershed development. Internalisation of such parameters necessitates the availability of eco-hydrological knowledge on water, right from the point of time of its precipitation to its flow back to the oceans or evaporation back to the atmosphere. The ecological processes in various parts of the river basins offer mechanisms to sustain and promote human well-being. They take diverse forms in various parts of the basin, for example, the mountain uplands, the flat lands, floodplains, dry lands and, finally, the estuaries. In such situations, knowledge of the ecological processes associated with water is as important as the hydraulic information applied in the case of dams, barrages and irrigation. Diversions of flows by hydraulic structures while providing valuable additional water for economic activities, inevitably also alter the downstream flow characteristics of rivers. Examples of the Indus, Ganges and almost all the rivers in peninsular India can be taken in this regard. During the initial period of dam construction in the 1950s, these ecosystem services were not given due consideration. However, as the long-term environmental impacts associated with the altered flow regimes in the river systems started to express themselves through serious degradations of the ecosystem services, the negative contributions started to become apparent. With the emergence of holistic considerations spread all over the river basins, even in the

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country of origin of large dams, USA, fundamental changes in the policy towards large dams have come up. Such concepts are not being easily internalised in the formal water governance institutions in India. In the absence of a comprehensive eco-hydrological knowledge base, there is also the risk that simplistic and sensational media reports or views could create incorrect public perceptions and even distort public policies. An example of such a case is available in the perceived links between the deforestation in Nepal and Uttarakhand in India and the annual monsoon floods in the plains in the GBM basin (Eckholm, 1975). It needed a painstaking eco-hydrological correlation of rainfall events in these catchments and flood events in Bangladesh to delink such perceived correlations of upland–lowland relations (Hofer and Messerli 2006). Interdisciplinary and in-depth analyses are particularly important in India where the environmental impacts of projects need to be studied more clearly and openly (Bandyopadhyay, 2006). Accordingly, understanding of the ecological processes and valuation of the ecosystem services associated with the movement of water in river basins constitutes a very useful topic for arriving at a more informed approach to river basin management. Such activities can begin with, for example, the strengthening of the much needed hydrometeorological data base for the mountains and upland watersheds of the rivers. This step will allow a more accurate assessment of the flow in the rivers. This needs to be followed by more detailed hydrological studies on the river basins, for example, to assess the generation, transportation and deposition of sediments, or to understand the ecosystem services provided by the flows of water starting from the watersheds up to the estuaries. There are many important questions waiting for such information. An example can be taken of the questions related to the hydrological role of tropical forests as described by Bruijnzeel (2004). Another important object of such a research programme would be to understand and assess the environmental flow requirements of rivers. A recent publication on the environmental flow requirements in Indian rivers has been made by Smakhtin and Anputhas (2006). Jiang et al. (2006) have reviewed the progress in ecological and environmental water requirement research in China, providing useful directions for similar work in India. New interdisciplinary knowledge would offer the basis for a more comprehensive policy framework for sustainable water


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systems management as well for project assessment and approval. The disciplines that may be involved in such a research programme are wide, spanning from meteorology to human geography to hydrometeorology to Geographical Information System (GIS) to structural engineering.

Generation of Eco-hydrological Knowledge on Groundwater Systems Rain and surface water systems are by far the most easily visible identity of water for humans. Large rivers and wide media coverage of river water conflicts, like the one between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu on the Cauvery waters, may have created such an image. It will, however, be realistic to recognise the critical importance of groundwater for the Indian people. This situation had been described as the stage of Hydroschizophrenia by the American hydrologist Raymond Nace, in order to describe the attitude of many water decision makers who deal with surface and groundwater resources separately, often playing down the role of the latter (Llamas and Martinez-Santos, 2006). In the case of India, such a situation prevailed till the 1960s when the use of groundwater for irrigation to support the Green Revolution started to grow very rapidly with liberal financial support from the government. The Indo-Gangetic plains are very rich in groundwater, both static and dynamic. In peninsular India, groundwater is the most dependable source for water round the year. No surprise that a very large part of India has been depending for a long time on groundwater as the main source for domestic water supply and irrigation. The present assessment of available dynamic groundwater in India is 468 BCM per year. More than half of the country’s irrigated area depends on supplies from groundwater. In the Bharat Nirman programme of the Government of India, another 2.8 mha are to be brought under groundwater based irrigation. Although, traditionally, groundwater had been used for domestic water supplies, rapid decline in the water table in many areas has resulted from its unsustainable use in irrigation. It is expected that conflicts over groundwater will be on the rise in the future years, as much as its damage due to pollution. In this regard, Singh and Singh (2002) have made the following observation:

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Overexploitation of groundwater in several parts of the country has resulted in declining groundwater levels, a reduction in supply, saline water encroachment, drying of the spring and shallow aquifers, increased cost of lifting, reduction in free flow and even local subsidence in some places. In several parts of India, declining water levels are in the order of 1–2 m/year. It has been reported that declining water levels can reduce India’s harvest by 25 percent or more. (Seckler et al., 1998)

This decline in the sustainable availability and quality of groundwater is a problem being faced in most parts of the world (Baba et al., 2006). Since the property rights status of groundwater in India is very different from that of surface water, such conflicts are more localised and involve individuals and not provinces or sovereign states. As Chadha (2006: 24) has observed: The continuous and sustained development of groundwater resources resulted in decline of water levels, and in many areas or blocks, the development exceeded the annual replenishment. It is observed that the number of dark (development) blocks has increased to 445 (1997–98) from 253 (1984–85) and the situation has assumed dimensions requiring immediate remedial measures to be undertaken.

This observation has, however, not stopped the unsustainable use of groundwater in India, where groundwater administration has been suffering from obstacles to institutional innovation similar to those related to surface water. With surface water storage not having much significant scope for expansion in India, the efforts for obtaining additional water supplies will heavily depend on groundwater sources. ‘The main issues in groundwater as envisaged by many experts are protection, restoration, development of groundwater supplies as well as remediation of contaminated aquifers’ (Sharma and Ghosh, 2006: 4). This calls for long-term research on the socio-hydrology and ecohydrology of groundwater, its link with surface sources, recharge and sustainable use and institutions that can protect it from pollution and overexploitation (Kumar, 2007; Romani et al., 2006). The environmental flow requirements in rivers are also closely related to the status of aquifers, and hydrogeologists have been encouraged to recognise the dual dependence and work on this area (Sophocleous, 2007). There is another aspect of challenges in eco-hydrological research associated with groundwater. This is regarding the ecological linkages between groundwater and surface flows. Under natural conditions,


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groundwater and surface flows are related by flows that recharge groundwater or discharge into surface flows. In areas where irrigation is based on surface water, irrigation-induced water logging has resulted in the problem of rising groundwater levels (World Bank, 1998). Here, there are important gaps in knowledge on the ecology of groundwater systems. Groundwater is an economic input and research on accurate assessment of the annual sustainable groundwater availability and new technologies for rapid recharge in various parts of the region constitutes an important priority. Sharma and Ghosh (2006) have provided a detailed account of the groundwater hydrology in India that can be useful in making an agenda for research. Moench (1994) has analysed the political economy of groundwater use in India and exposed serious administrative and knowledge gaps. Indeed, introduction of institutional mechanisms needed for reorienting the use of groundwater towards sustainability has become a priority. The present property rights status of groundwater being private, this is a difficult task to control. As Shah (1993) has described, unlike surface water, groundwater has become a market commodity in large areas. Steps to ensure ecologically sustainable groundwater use will face many social and political hurdles, especially from the rich and politically powerful. Janakarajan and Moench (2006) have studied the socio-economic dimension of groundwater in India and concluded that groundwater depletion and degradation is a big factor for increasing rural poverty. Degradation of groundwater in large areas in eastern India resulting from the release of naturally occurring arsenic through geochemical processes is a very difficult issue. Bundschuh et al. (2005) have provided a very important collection of papers analysing this problem. In view of the widespread human suffering caused in the region by arsenic contamination of the groundwater that has been used for drinking by the local people for several years, understanding the associated geochemical processes, the impact of arsenic contamination in groundwater on health, and suitable technological options for the supply of arsenic-free drinking water is a priority. Groundwater in India needs appropriate institutions for its protection from overexploitation and pollution (Shah et al., 2000). Moreover, intensive use of groundwater is being seen as a solution to the water problems of the world but serious technical questions have been raised on such ideas (Mukherji, 2006). Although India’s dependence on groundwater is clearly increasing, the necessary knowledge base

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on groundwater ecology, social dimensions of groundwater use and ecologically informed property rights regime is still very inadequate. It needs to be stressed that a clear policy, law and management strategy for groundwater systems to promote sustainability has emerged as a must for India. The need to limit groundwater exploitation within the limits of sustainability is omnipresent. The ability of the society and the polity to act on that need is equally conspicuous by its absence. Research would help the country taking these much needed steps. The related areas of research would be spread over to hydrogeology, soil sciences, sociology of local water institutions, environmental law, and so on.

Comprehensive Assessment of Water-related Projects In a densely populated country like India, characterised by great spatial and temporal variations in precipitation, demand for transfer of water from the better water endowed parts to the less endowed ones are frequently made. In post-independence India, major hydraulic interventions have been made for developing storage and making long distance transfer of water technically feasible. Such interventions have been seen as an instrument for the creation of a new rural prosperity based on irrigation. While traditionally farmers chose crops suiting the local water endowment pattern, this situation has changed with the increasing availability of water from large water transfer projects. Now, selection of crops has become based on their profitability. Demands are made for the necessary water for irrigation. The correlation between precipitation pattern and crop choice has been broken, paving the way for water intensive crops like paddy being cultivated in water scarce areas like the Cauvery delta in Tamil Nadu or Rajasthan. Thus, the farmers in all parts of the country are looking for large water transfer projects as the gateway to prosperity, not necessarily sustenance. The official mechanism for the appraisal and approval of such large projects has, however, remained quite traditional. It has thus remained limited in scope and applicability, as it has not internalised many aspects of water transfer and use, especially social and ecological. Such gaps have remained in the making of the pre-feasibility and feasibility reports or even the detailed project reports (Bandyopadhyay et al., 2002). The lack of official recognition to the changes caused to the ecosystems or the issue of inadequate rehabilitation of the people


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displaced by large water projects led to people’s resistance to projects in almost all parts of the country. The World Bank, for example, had withdrawn from the Sardar Sarovar Project on the Narmada River due to this drawback. Rectification of these shortcomings is particularly urgent in the case of compensation for the involuntarily displaced people and provision of appropriate resettlement and rehabilitation packages. The Land Acquisition Act of 1894 of the British period, modified in 1984, virtually remained the main but partisan instrument for this purpose. Materialisation of the recent indication by the prime minister of India coming out with a new policy for land acquisition is eagerly awaited by all. The traditional methodology for the appraisal and approval of projects by the Planning Commission also should be reformulated. This process is hindered by the absence of in-depth assessment of the social and ecological impacts of the transfer projects. The Planning Commission in India has been discussing the need for a wider framework for the assessment of water projects, but no clear decisions have so far been taken. Desai (Unpublished) has been working on the preparation of an extended framework for the appraisal of such projects in the Indian context. In many parts of India, similar nongovernmental initiatives for the recognition of social and ecological implications have been taken, albeit without much impact on the official policy. In the words of a former chairperson of the Central Water Commission: The nature of these discussions reflects a view of water that is embedded in the command and control view of the economy. The dialog within the water sector, with some important exceptions has not adjusted to either the broad liberalizing economic changes initiated in the Indian Economy in 1991, and has not internalised the lessons from water management professionals throughout the world. (Mohile, 2006: 42)

Water-related projects in India have mainly been taken up by the government departments, like irrigation and public health. However, the idea of public–private partnership and outright private sector participation in the water sector has slowly but steadily gained attention (Briscoe, 1999). In the era of liberalisation and globalisation, scarce water runs the risk of being cornered by the politically powerful if a balanced institutional structure ensuring stakeholder involvement is not put in place. Accordingly, there exists a need for every water transfer

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project to be painstakingly and openly assessed with the ultimate goal of promoting human well-being and sustaining the ecosystem services. In the absence of such a mechanism, big investments in water projects, like irrigation, may get approved through inadequate assessment, without due considerations of the agro-climatic appropriateness or proper rehabilitation of the displaced people. The Tawa project in the state of Madhya Pradesh in India is a well-known example of the first type. In more extreme cases, transfer projects may rob the poor of basic water needs to fuel the rapidly growing industrial sector. Such a policy vacuum on this subject is wasteful of the water available in the region and exposes the country to serious risks of extensive potential conflicts, as described by Gujja et al. (2006) in the case of the planned Polavaram project. Water as a human right should not be ignored when scarce water as an economic good fetches good price. The present situation reiterates the need for evolving a comprehensive assessment and approval mechanism based on interdisciplinary research spread over history, sociology, economics, political science, regional development, technology assessment and institutional studies.

Wider Application of Economics in Water Policy and Governance In water systems management in India, economics has so far played a very traditional and restricted role. Many reputed institutions have undertaken extensive and excellent work on the detailed economic analysis of the contributions to economic growth from irrigation and related agricultural production. An impressive amount of literature is available on this subject, and Vaidyanathan (1999) has made a realistic review of the economics of irrigation in India. Nevertheless, many aspects of water systems management have remained outside the limits of such economic analysis. The water sector suffers from economic ills of under utilisation, inequitable distribution and heavy loss of stored water, and so on. The quantification and subsequent use of such parameters in changing policy and practice have not been very visible. Research on more advanced topics related to economics, for instance, pricing of water and allocation under conditions of physical scarcity, have not entered the decision support arena.


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Although water is a material input for all economic activities, it originally comes as a provisioning service of natural ecosystems, and not from the market. Among several researchers, Hanemann (2006) has presented a multi-dimensional economic conception of water. Urging for the recognition of water as an economic good, Ward et al. (2002) have stressed ‘the need to develop flexible institutions to maximize water’s beneficial use in the face of growing demands for scarce and variable supplies.’ This statement was made with reference to the people living in places with low levels of precipitation. In the context of India, with its wide spatial variation in the annual precipitation, the statement equally applies to flood-prone areas, where good quality water becomes scarce. What is more important is that when the dependence of the poor on the services provided free by water-related ecosystems is considered, ecological economics can become a very useful tool in arriving at some assessment of the dependence of the livelihoods of the poor on the ecosystem services. Furthermore, even an approximate valuation of non-provisioning ecosystem services offered by water can substantially alter the perspectives and priorities of water systems development. The application of natural resource or ecological economics in water system management in India is in a very nascent stage. At the governmental level, the technocracy and the politicians are interested to show economic growth in a short term. They are quite dismissive of the articulation and possible internalisation of the long-term social and environmental externalities of water resource projects. In addition, there are equally strong views held by many non-governmental social activists who see any expansion of the role of economics in water systems management as a backdoor entry for the market system. Thus, the extension of economic analyses to policy gets discouraged on the argument that they are anti-poor and against equitable use of water systems. Similarly, use of economics is perceived as the entry point for pricing and privatisation of water systems. On this aspect, many non-governmental social activists and the water technocracy hold very similar views. Efforts to increase the role of economics gets marked as against poor people, notwithstanding the fact that at present it is the urban poor who pay the most for their domestic water supplies, directly or indirectly. This is indeed a very difficult situation, but it also provides challenging options and new topics for interdisciplinary research on economics of water systems. Bhatia et al. (1994) have made a detailed report on the role of regulations, water tariffs and fiscal policy on water

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conservation and pollution control in India. Contrasting the points of view resisting the inclusion of economic analyses, Rogers et al. (2002: 1) have pointed out that ‘there are many different ways to promote equity, efficiency and sustainability in the water sector and water pricing is probably the simplest conceptually, but most difficult to implement politically.’ Cesano and Gustafsson (2000) have analysed the social, technical and environmental aspects of economic globalisation on water systems while Sullivan (2006) has raised the question of whether the investments and policy interventions reach the poor. The emergence of water markets, which have been analysed by Shah (1993) in the case of the states of Gujarat and Bihar, offer an interesting area for research. Commoditisation of water started with groundwater well before the arrival of bottled drinking water, which marked another step towards commoditisation of water. It needs to be pointed out that while there have been no serious protests on the first form of water markets, many NGOs take a critical stand against bottled water marketed by important MNCs though in terms of the amount of water used, irrigation uses much larger amounts than bottling factories. As the Indian economy exposes itself more and more to the processes of globalisation, it needs to make a more informed use of economics as input to water systems policy and management. Promotion of research on environmental and ecological economics can be of great help in this direction. Otherwise, growing demands, inefficient use in irrigation, official inability to control water pollution, dire neglect of the water based ecosystems and subsequent degradation will surely make the region a fertile ground for water-related corruption and conflicts. It must be noted that India is one of the two countries on which box items have been published in the World Water Development Report 2 (UN World Water Assessment Programme 2006: 68). Economic understanding of water needs of the natural ecosystems and valuation of the services provided by water systems is an important and urgent area for research. Bergkamp (2006) has strongly advocated the use of such economic analyses as a solution to the water management crisis. The subject is emerging and the tools are not yet clearly shaped. Research on this subject can start with the review of the work done in the recent years on the relation between economics and water. It needs to be followed by empirical work on the broad application of natural resource and ecological economics on small water systems and their


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services. In due course, such economic analyses can be extended to the larger river basins and groundwater aquifers. Economics can help in the clearer understanding of the contributions of water systems, assess virtual water and its economic role, and provide the tool for breaking new grounds in policy making for sustainable water systems management. Thus, it can throw important light on many areas of confusion in relation to water, including the very sensitive matters related to the sharing of river flows (Aylward et al., 2005). Research in this subject would involve many diverse disciplines and will surely generate many interesting policy guidelines. The research can be rooted in eco-hydrology, sociology, plant sciences, animal sciences, chemistry, ecological economics, environmental economics, and so on.

Promotion of an Ecological Perspective of Extreme Events The variability inherent in the monsoon-dominated climate of India frequently creates conditions of very intense precipitation as well as periods of scarce rainfall. Furthermore, scenarios of global climate change are expected to have their own share of additional influences on the intensity and distribution of the extreme events (subsequently discussed in the section on global change and water systems in India). In this section, the need for research to understand the ecological processes associated with the extreme events, and promotion of a holistic and ecologically informed response to these events, like floods and droughts, will be discussed. In the absence of such a knowledge base, the ‘relief-based’ approach to the extreme events has become the dominant preoccupation, in particular for the government and donor organisations. Annual inundations and periods of water stress are regular events expected to occur in a climatic condition dominated by the monsoons. Floods and droughts have specific hydrological descriptions and are different from events naturally expected due to variations in the climate. Areas in the state of Assam and Bihar have an image of being parts of the country where poverty and hunger is caused by devastating floods. Poverty in many other parts of India, especially Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh, is identified with frequent drought conditions. However, there

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is a clear and disturbing trend of viewing any event of inundation or scarcity of water as ‘disasters’—of floods and droughts, as the case may be—without giving due considerations to their ecological backgrounds. Drought is seen by scientists as a part of the normal climate, rather than a departure from it (Glantz, 2003). So is the case of floods in the monsoon conditions. Such extreme events do occur but their extents vary (Kattelmann, 1994). It may be advantageous from the viewpoint of governance to describe droughts or floods as unmixed ‘disasters’ and offer relief as the only solution. Such an approach ensures the inflow of large quantities or funds for relief together with its political advantages. Unfortunately, this tendency of blaming nature uncritically acts as a serious obstacle to the growth of holistic and scientific understanding of the processes behind the extreme events. Such knowledge gaps may restrict human ability to predict and mitigate the impacts of such events. These also act as hindrances to the identification of environmental indicators and water management approaches to floods and droughts. All this, at the end, obscures the task of the creation of scientifically robust mitigation plans or taking advantage of the positive ecological contributions of these events. Referring to the water scarcity in the states of Gujarat and Rajasthan in the drier part of India, Agarwal et al. (2001) observed that many will term what is happening in Gujarat and Rajasthan a ‘natural disaster’. This is really far from the truth. It is truly a ‘human-made’ or rather ‘government-made’ disaster. The inclination for avoiding an ecologically informed approach and finding ‘Virtual Disasters’ all the time presents a great challenge to the implementation of integrated water systems research in India. Such research activities would contribute significantly to the demystification of the virtual disasters and pave the way for an informed professional approach to the mitigation of the negative impacts of extreme events and maximisation of the positive contributions from them. Natural extreme events related to water are, by themselves, important objects for research in the fields of hydrology and geomorphology. The nature of the extreme events and their ecological contributions are quite specific to the regions where they occur. Hence, region specific research activities are needed for their understanding. Kale (1998) has made a very good contribution to the scientific understanding of floods in India. If effective mitigation of the impact of such extreme events is the objective, there is also a vital need to distinguish between the natural


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reasons behind floods and droughts and the human contributions to the accentuation of the impacts of climatic variability. Bandyopadhyay (1989), in the case of droughts in India, and Bandyopadhyay and Mallik (2005), in the case of floods in South Asia, have shown why such a separation requires a close understanding of the associated ecological processes and ecosystem services. More comprehensive ecological knowledge of the extreme events would work towards a replacement of the ‘disaster’ approach and would also articulate the positive ecosystem services offered by them. An example can be taken of the advantages of the annual monsoon inundations that are invariably seen as unwanted from the traditional engineering viewpoint. Ecological knowledge would also be helpful in the identification of the reasons for the events. In the last several years, strong non-governmental opinions have been expressed about the possible links of some of the floods in India with unscientific operation of dams (Dogra, 2006). New research should be able to answer questions like whether floods are increasingly becoming human induced disasters. In designing appropriate mitigation measures, it will be very important to view the extreme events from the perspective of the common people. By undertaking research on the ecology and sociology of drought and flood events, it will be possible to separate the natural and human-induced aspects of their occurrences, as well as the diverse impacts on various social groups and genders. At the level of international river basins, like the GBM, under which several countries fall, some cooperative efforts exist for advance warning on flood events. What is needed is, of course, an expansion and intensification of such collaborative mechanisms. This needs the initiation of eco-hydrological research on the flood and drought processes at the level of river basins. In the context of monsoon-fed rivers, the work of Levy, Gopalakrishnan and Lin (2005) on flood management in the Yangtze exemplifies the type of research that may be taken up. Such research would be useful in providing a mechanism to reduce their negative impacts and to enhance their positive impacts. This is particularly important in the case of the floods in the Gangetic plains where diverse ecosystem services are available from the floods. Interdisciplinary research on these events would need the involvement of meteorology, hydrology, sedimentology, fishery sciences, hydrogeology, sociology, regional studies, political science, and so on.

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Social Dimensions of Water Systems Use and Local Institutions Water is most intimately associated with human societies, yet the social dimensions of its management and use are not always fully recognised. Traditionally, water has been managed at the local levels by various types of community-based institutions. The nature of these institutions has been as diverse as are the climatic conditions, water endowments, physiographic characteristics of the specific areas and socio-economic characteristics of the people. During the British rule, the emergence of the department of canals and irrigation had gradually replaced these diverse local institutions depending on the engineering practices transplanted from Europe. This separated the local people from the decision making and day-to-day management of water systems. In the past few decades, community-based institutions were reborn in the form of many non-governmental initiatives, which have established diverse institutional structures aimed at equitable and sustainable water management at the local levels. In terms of social impacts, example can be taken of the large structural interventions in the rivers. With the introduction of such engineering interventions, a large number of local people had to bear the disproportionately high costs of such projects, in terms of accepting involuntary displacement. The gains from such projects usually go to other areas or stakeholders, while the displaced people contribute in many ways to the construction of the water development projects on which the economic strength of India partly rests. Patkar (2004) has aptly described the gravity of the unsatisfactory rehabilitation as a social challenge. There is no clear information available on the number of people displaced in India by water-related projects. Furthermore, the impacts of involuntary displacement are shared very unequally between the two genders. Thanks to researchers on social dimensions of water systems and their uses, some literature is available on this subject. The social dimensions became so important that the World Commission on Dams (WCD) was established to look at the complex linkages of dams and human societies. Bandyopadhyay et al. (2002) have outlined the basis for potential and present conflicts over dam building on the Himalayan rivers in the background of the report of the WCD. A compilation of experiences of traditional and local-level water management from various parts of South Asia has been made by


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Moench et al. (1999), establishing the agility of the communitybased organisations. It is well known that challenges in water systems management at the larger spatial levels cannot be effectively addressed either by a complete dependence on the local organisations or by a complete institutional monopoly of the governmental departments. This is a critical gap in institutional studies that needs to be filled by interdisciplinary research. As Biswas (2001) has observed: Over the past decade, it has become increasingly evident that the water problem in a country can no longer be resolved by the water professionals and/or the water ministries alone; the problem has simply become far too complex, interconnected and large to be handled by any one institution irrespective of the authority and resources given to it, or by one group of professionals, irrespective of their competence and good intentions.

Water is the basis for the production of crops and the question of access and allocation has been answered in diverse ways. In areas with good social leadership, human societies in many scarce water areas have evolved appropriate practices for the conservation and equitable use of water. Agarwal et al. (2001) provide interesting examples of water harvesting and use in arid and semi arid regions of India. The EPW (2006) provides a compendium on water conflicts through the series of articles on the social dimensions of water. This compendium refers to conflicts on both quantitative aspects of sharing and the qualitative aspects of degradation. The issue of local participation will become more complex with the increasing economic role being given to the private sector in the management of water. Conflicts at the local level are no less important for conflict research. Health issues are an important aspect of social dimensions of water and constitute an important area for research. So is the issue of corruption in the water sector in India. It does not make us proud that in the Second World Water Report (UN World Water Assessment Programme, 2006), two countries, India and Pakistan, have been specifically identified for the high level of corruption in the water sector. It needs to be stressed that efficiency of use and scientific advancement cannot compete with corruption. Furthermore, water conflicts are sure to increase in the future, with additional demands from the commercial farming sector, including biofuel cultivation. In view of the clearly emerging water conflicts in large parts of India and clear signs of decay of the riverine systems,

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social dimensions of water systems, local level governance and mechanisms for conflict resolution would be very critical research areas. The role of independent professionals is increasingly becoming visible through innovative approaches to resolving the well-known Cauvery water dispute, like the one reported by Iyer (2003) on a direct dialogue among farmers of the states in conflict. For conflict-free management of water systems, there is a need to continue to innovate towards greater dialogues among all stakeholders. Such research activities would be spread over disciplines of hydrology, public health, political science, economics, ecological economics, engineering, and so on.

Emerging Technological Options in Water Systems Management With diversification of its uses and enhancement in the quantity of its use, water has increasingly been sought after by competing needs and demands. In addition to the institutions for conflict resolution, technological innovations are other characteristic features of water use today. The area of provisioning as well as more efficient and multiple uses of water have seen some remarkable technological developments. The availability of freshwater can be enhanced by more efficient interventions in the hydrological cycle as well as short-cutting it, as in the case of desalinisation. On both fronts, important technological developments are taking place. India, with the largest irrigated area in the world, has been consuming a lot of water in a relatively lower efficiency irrigation system. An increase of the end-use efficiency in irrigation from the present 35 per cent to even 45 per cent will make available a great volume of water that could be used for meeting other needs and demands. Technological innovation towards increasing efficiency of irrigational water use and quicker transfer of technologies constitutes an important objective of research on this topic. There are many excellent universities of agricultural sciences and technology in the country and they are fully involved in the development of water efficient agricultural practices. It is important to make sure that the related technologies are transferred and used in the fields without delay. Another very promising research on technological option is technology for creating freshwater by the shortcut technology of


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desalination (International Business Strategies, 2005). This technology has the potential for bringing dramatic changes in the domestic water supply scenario along the long coastline of India, starting from West Bengal in the east to Gujarat in the west. With such a technology, Chennai, which is next to the Bay of Bengal or Saurashtra, always waiting for the waters of Narmada, would be able to satisfy their requirements without costly long-distance transfer projects. Uche et al. (2006) have given a detailed account of the potential of desalination technologies. Many large cities have planned their future water supplies on this technological option, while portable technologies, like the solar tents, can be of great potential for small villages. The other area in which research needs to be focused is the re-use of water and innovation of related technologies. With the rapid move towards urbanisation and industrialisation in India, these elements of research have become a high priority. On the other hand, lack of encouragement to innovation or institutional laxity towards the use of new technologies would prove to be very damaging to the prospects of sustainable development in the long run. Furthermore, in the assessment and monitoring of both ground and surface water, remote sensing technology provides important opportunities. Research on all these subjects would involve contributions from engineering sciences, law, economics, public administration, agriculture, membrane chemistry, and so on.

Global Change and Water Systems in India: Scenarios and Adaptation The impacts of global climate change on precipitation, stream flow and water availability have been a major area of research at the global level in the past decade (for example, Erda et al., 1996; Milli et al., 2005). That global climate change will have an important impact on South Asia is quite realistic. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report series has indicated that the warming of the Earth’s atmosphere will have significant effects on the climate and water systems. In addition to the melting of the ice caps in the high mountains, the possibility of greater frequency and intensity of the extreme events related to water like storms, floods and droughts, has been predicted (IPCC, 2007). Thus, on the usual

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variations characteristic of the monsoon, the additional impacts of global climate change will be superimposed. Preliminary indications do indicate that in addition to the reduction in the snow and ice cover in the Himalayas, water scarcity and extreme events in the region may be accentuated by the global climate change. Lozan et al. (2007) have cautioned that: Global climate change will probably intensify the water crisis…The global warming trend intensifies the water cycle and exacerbates the water problems on our planet. An alarming fact is that many dry regions will probably become even drier and precipitation rich regions will become more humid.

Such opinions open up three major areas of research—first, on the nature and extent of the human-induced climate change; second, on the mitigation measures through carbon sequestration; and third, the ways to adapt to these changes. Climate change research is of particular importance for India also from the point of possible rise of the sea level. All along the coastal areas in India that are vulnerable to the rise of sea level, there are several very large cities like Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai. In addition, all the coastal areas are the habitat of millions of rural people who depend on the ecosystem services provided by the estuaries. The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC, 2007) provides a more accurate assessment of the possible hydrological impacts of global climate change on India. This is a vast area of collaborative international research. It is suggested that collaborative research on all the aspects of climate change, especially on vulnerability and adaptation, be taken up on India in conjunction with other global centres. Moreover, in the coming decades, a lot of land and water may be in demand for commercial cultivation of biofuels. Such futuristic needs should be precisely assessed. The research on such topics would involve input from disciplines of meteorology, oceanography, atmospheric sciences, sociology, and so on.

Water Laws and Entitlements: Conflicts and their Resolution Indications are clear that India will soon enter a period of intense competition and resultant conflicts over water resources at all spatial


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and institutional levels. Although rivers in India connect people culturally and offer the largest share of the available water, they may also become the root causes for immense frictions and disputes at all levels, starting from the households to the international levels. The longdrawn conflicts on the waters of Godavari, Krishna and Cauvery rivers among the riparian states are well known. At the inter-governmental level, conflicts involving India and the neighbouring countries have been researched quite well (Abbas, 1982; Crow et al., 1995; Gyawali, 1999; Salman and Upreti, 2002). They offer a detailed picture of the conflicts and cooperation on international waters. Richards and Singh (2002) have also analysed the inter-provincial water disputes in India. At the other level of water use, important experiments have been made on the nature of participation of farmers in the management of irrigation projects. Identification of effective institutional mechanisms for conflict resolution at the local to the inter-governmental levels constitutes a very important area for research in social, political and institutional sciences. In the absence of home-grown ideas, suggestions from donor agencies may become the guiding principle for accepting a new approach to water laws.

Conclusions India, with its high level of poverty, rapid process of industrialisation and urbanisation, and larger than average water availability per unit terrestrial area, provides a real challenge to innovative research on water systems management. The challenges for water systems research are transdisciplinary in nature and need participation of professionals from diverse disciplines like engineering, environmental, social, political and medical sciences, and law. The country is rich in potential disciplinary expertise for undertaking such research activities, only if there are institutional incentives for crossing the disciplinary boundaries and daring to question the existing practices. The nine points identified earlier in this chapter for the development of research on water systems should be used as a framework for the creation of individual research programmes and projects. The topics outlined include eco-hydrological understanding of surface and groundwater, social aspects of water use (specifically access, gender and health), greater role for economics

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in policy making for water systems, and so on. Among the various topics suggested, professional research on future options for regional cooperation and conflict resolution has the potential of making the most important inputs to the challenge of the use of water systems for poverty alleviation and sustainable development in the country. Knowledge for water systems management in India, thus, as the title of this chapter identifies, constitutes a confluence for social and natural sciences and engineering. If this chapter can help in the promotion of such interdisciplinary research on water systems along with the topics described earlier and can help initiate formulation of appropriate new policies in the country, it will make a very humble contribution to promoting a sustainable future for the Indian people in the decade starting from 2005 to 2015, which is marked as the international decade on Water for Life.

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Chapter 2 Eco-hydrological Perspective on Floods* Introduction Floods, more often than not, are perceived as unusual events, frequently as a disaster. All rivers have a non-uniform hydrograph resulting in different levels of flow during various parts of the year. In the case of the climate in India, strongly influenced by the monsoon, the temporal variations are quite large, causing equally wide levels of flows in streams and rivers. These natural processes are very useful for the continuation of the ecosystem services offered by the rivers. In some rivers, the high flows become great enough to cause damage to human lives and properties. These are the times that floods are seen as disasters. From a generalised standpoint, when a body of water rises to overflow on land not normally submerged, the resulting condition is viewed as a flood (Ward, 1978: 5). However, with increasing human presence in the floodplains, the meaning of ‘not normally submerged’ has changed to ‘not expected by humans to be submerged’, as economic losses from inundations have mounted in the recent decades. Variations in precipitation, both in space and time, are natural and flows in streams and rivers follow that trend. Based on the natural flow regime, over evolutionary time periods, diverse aquatic ecosystems emerged from the origin in the uplands to the confluence with other rivers or the oceans (Poff et al., 1997). Although disciplinary hydrological studies on floods have a rich history, public policy on floods in India suffers from a lack of supporting interdisciplinary knowledge. This chapter aims at *The author is indebted to Bidisha Kumar for significant contributions to this chapter.

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describing the need for strengthening such a knowledge base for more informed and effective policy making on high flows or floods, and their mitigation. Floods or inundations may be caused by diverse natural mechanisms. To avoid confusions, inundations, naturally expected or otherwise, will be described as floods in this chapter. Among the various types of floods, riverine floods in the plains have the most visible and significant effects on the surrounding landscape, ecosystems and human societies. In the uplands and mountain areas of the river basins, some type of floods are triggered by factors not directly related to precipitation, just as floods in the coastal areas are caused by cyclonic storms or tsunamis. Coping with the natural variations in the flows in rivers has been an important and constant challenge for all human societies. In the traditional perception of engineers belonging to the European knowledge system, floods are considered to be unmixed hazards that are injurious to human life, property and economic activities. Thus, the dominant engineering responses to floods of the modern human societies have been guided by a perceived need for controlling floods. The present chapter views the traditional water resource engineering in India as based on a reductionist perspective. An attempt has been made in this chapter to present an ecological perspective that views floods as an essential element of the hydrological cycle and also as a mechanism for the delivery of important ecosystem services related to water. During some years, in which the inundations become exceptionally long or flood levels unusually high, floods are considered to be damaging. Such a perspective would help in the making of a more informed policy and approach to addressing floods in India.

The Popular View of Floods River floods, described in terms of the variable discharge pattern relative to channel morphology, occur when the flow in a river channel exceeds its bank-full capacity, expelling the excess flow over the banks. This causes inundation of the surrounding land. Floods or such regular annual inundations are common in India, but responses to them have been led by a narrow and politically profitable practice of doling out relief to the affected people. Within a river basin, the nature

ECO-HYDROLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON FLOODS

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of flood processes varies widely and depends on the locations of the event (Ward, 1978: 4). The variability in the magnitude of high river stages and the frequency of flood events along a particular river exert important influences on how humans perceive and respond to floods in that river basin. They occur when high flow or river stages spread floodwater over active and inactive floodplains. This may damage some economic activities, disrupt normal life in modern human settlements and may result in loss of human lives (Davar, 2001: 162).

Flood Varieties in the World In almost all rivers in the world, inundation of land, which is not usually inundated, can occur. The occurrences of floods tend to vary according to the different hydrologic regimes in diverse geographical locations (Gupta, 1998: 144). For instance, Alpine rivers in the temperate regions, which are to a large extent fed by melting snow and ice, experience extensive floods with the initiation of warmer climate in the early spring, which may stay for several months. Long northward flowing rivers in the freezing arctic and sub-arctic Europe, for example, Ob, Lena and Yenisei, tend to flood regularly in the spring due to another mechanism. When the areas in the upper catchments of these rivers generate a great deal of snowmelt, their flows often get obstructed by the northern reaches downstream that may still remain frozen. Rain-fed streams in the tropical latitudes have a propensity to flood during the summer monsoon period (Monkhouse, 1988: 137). Larger rivers in Asia, like the Brahmaputra, Ganga and Yangtze, have quite a low flow during the pre-monsoon months. Their flows start to increase rapidly with the onset of the snowmelt in the spring and monsoon precipitation in the summer. Intense downpours or cloudbursts occasionally trigger flash floods in short-lived torrents or ephemeral streams in the arid and semi-arid regions. Although these floods are mostly beneficial, at times they can be very destructive because such events occur very rarely. Squalls, cyclonic storms and tsunamis (geologically triggered tidal waves) occur mostly in the tropics and frequent the coastal tracks, bays and estuaries, affecting contiguous river stretches, thus unleashing flood waves. Rivers or streams in the equatorial regimes, such as the Amazon and Congo, maintain considerable flow volume throughout the year, with peak flows occurring

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as a consequence of the periods of maximum rainfall following the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes (Monkhouse, 1988: 138).

Ecological Perspective of Floods The aim of this chapter is to develop an eco-hydrological perspective of floods. This viewpoint, developed in the background of the totality of the hydrological cycle, may help enrich and transform the growing but unrealistic perception of floods as unmixed disasters and the urgent need for human societies to control them. In the absence of an eco-hydrological perspective, floods get imagined in the public mind only as catastrophic events, causing large-scale damages to life and property. The ecology of floods is, however, complex and intimately related to the rainfall-runoff and surface–subsurface hydrologic linkages. As an integral part of the land–water interactive cycle, the importance of soil moisture and groundwater can, in particular, have variable influence on the nature and extent of flooding when coupled with rainfall (Hirschboeck et al., 2000: 53). This subsurface water exists in the more extensive hyporheic zone (see section on Lowland Floods) of the river reaches where they mix with surface water (Mertes, 2000: 149). The underground and subsurface storage of water and moisture thus plays a vital role in moderating and modulating the surface water regime and surface ecosystems (Newson, 1997: 72). The close and complex interactive pathways of river–floodplain ecosystems, viz. lateral (river–floodplain–riparian zone), longitudinal (headwater–river– estuary), vertical (surface water–groundwater) and temporal (time scale), emphasise the ongoing exchanges that make the continuation of ecosystem services possible. They are critical for long-term sustainability of landscape heterogeneity, biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services (Wohl, 2000a: 10) (see Figures 2.1a and 2.1b).

Human-induced Floods and Impacts on Floodplains In recent times, in densely populated countries like India, increasing number of people have moved into and started economic activities in areas that are traditionally prone to natural inundation for part


Figure 2.1a River–Floodplain Ecosystem Interactions (Longitudinal and Lateral) S O U R C E

Drainage Basin

Rain, snow, glacial melt water

T R A N S P O R T

Headwater-River-Estuary (Longitudinl)

Alluvial Fans

River-Floodplain-Riparian Zone (Lateral)

R E S P O N S E

Sea

Source: Adapted from Wohl 2000a.

Figure 2.1b Groundwater–Surface Water Interactions (Vertical) Catchment Area

Water Table

Aquiclude

Movement of Water

Source: Adapted from Wohl, 2000a.

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of the year. The impact of direct and indirect human land use activities have significantly altered the landscape heterogeneity, productivity and biodiversity of both the upland watersheds and the floodplains (Wydoski and Wick, 2000: 247). Such human-induced changes have mainly contributed to increased flood velocities and stages within the encroached reach and increased downstream peak flows (Wohl, 2000b: 104, 130), leading to substantial increase in the economic damages from floods. The last decade of the twentieth century witnessed about two-dozen flood disasters, which resulted in the loss of more than 1,000 human lives or material losses exceeding US$ 1 billion or both (Kundzewicz and Menzel, 2003: 2). The majority of these flood hazards were observed in Asia (Kundzewicz and Kaczmarek, 2000: 68). Bangladesh has become almost synonymous with floods, while in India, the annual debility of floods claims an average of Rs 7.7 billion (Dhar and Nandargi, 1998: 1). The magnitude of the scourge owing to the annual floods is better evinced in the extent of loss in land (agricultural and non-agricultural) in the Indian state of Bihar, one of the worst flood-hit states in the country (see Figure 2.2). Figure 2.2 Flood-affected Area in the State of Bihar, 1953–2004

Area in Lakh Hectares

3,000,000 2,500,000 2,000,000 1,500,000 1,000,000 500,000 0

1953 1958 1963 1968 1973 1978 1983 1988 1993 1998 2004 Years

Source: Government of Bihar, 2004 and RBA, 1980.


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Many human interventions have profoundly altered the natural patterns of water storage and movement and quality of the water itself on the floodplains. The net result of such large-scale alterations is that, spatial and temporal patterns of water levels and volume, rate of flow and quality are changing quite rapidly. This renders many traditional strategies for water management and modern flood control devices relatively ineffective. Both direct and indirect anthropogenic activities have also led to reduction in the naturally available water storage capacity in the catchments that encourage delayed run-off.

Floods Offer Benefits and also Cause Damage Natural inundations, an integral part of the flow regimes, are neither unmixed disasters nor do they offer only gains for humans. They have both nurturing as well as destructive potentials for affecting human life and economy. Flows in rivers, including those categorised as floods, offer diverse ecosystem services that are vital for the related natural environment. Human societies have evolved by benefiting from the ecosystem services and adapting to the damaging ability of floods. In the case of most Indian rivers, short periods of inundation caused by average seasonal floods deliver valuable silt to the farmlands, thus enriching them both physically and chemically. They recharge the soil, ponds, lakes and groundwater aquifers. They transport fish population over large distances. Such ecosystem services have instilled both life and prosperity to the otherwise infertile regions of the world such as the Nile basin (Marlowe, 1966: 110, 223). Ancient Egyptians planned their agricultural timings around the summer flooding of the Nile, which deposits a thin and even veneer of black mud along the banks, leaving the soil enriched. In the extensive floodplains of north-eastern India, annual deluges deposit 88.3 million tonnes of soil along with a provisioning of 10.61, 0.37 and 6.05 thousand tonnes of fertiliser N, P and K, respectively (Sharma, 2002: 239). Big floods are also essential for keeping the river channel free of silt, in the absence of which the carrying capacity of the rivers would get reduced and the basin would become flood-prone. Floods recharge water storage areas, thus helping sustain riparian plants and animals in areas away from the river. The role of annual floodwaters in sustaining the constantly changing, complex physical

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and biological processes on the floodplains has been utilised in the traditional agricultural practices. The intensity and extent of flooding vary from year to year. Thus, in the years with catastrophic flooding and long periods of inundations, economic damages are inflicted. Such major floods in the plains, for instance, with a return period of more than 100 years, together with flash floods in upland watersheds have been responsible for more deaths and devastations than tornadoes or hurricanes.

Holistic Perspective on Floods Many aspects of floods in India, which are not unusual and even salutary at times, are not recognised adequately from the perspective of traditional engineering. A look into the various governmental and inter-governmental documents and project proposals addressing the issue of floods will make it clear that floods are meant to be controlled by engineering (Anonymous, 1990). This chapter goes beyond the disciplinary limits and tries to articulate the diverse and gainful social linkages between the hydrosphere, economy and natural environment of the river basins. The living and non-living parts of any drainage basin are parts of larger ecosystems, whilst the ebb and peak flow of river discharge denotes the flow regime. Understanding flow-related links between the riparian ecosystems and the hydrological cycle is necessary for the evolution of such a perspective. Identification of the key spatial and temporal exchanges between the upstream and downstream, surface and subsurface, floodplain and channel of a drainage system is an essential component of such a knowledge base (Bandyopadhyay, 2004; Thoms and Parsons, 2002: 115). Dunbar and Acreman (2001) have defined this evolving science of eco-hydrology as one that brings freshwater meteorologists, hydrologists, ecologists and geomorphologists together on one rostrum, thus exemplifying a confluence of disciplines. The ecological knowledge can be largely expanded to find bottom lines for ecosystem health, local protection needs, flood episode dependence, securing long-term resilience and robustness of the whole life support system on earth, and so on (Falkenmark, 2002: 2). The remainder of this chapter delves briefly into the various mechanisms of flooding in general with


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particular reference to floods in India, thus exploring the cognitive aspects of the eco-hydrology of the flood processes.

The Causes and Conditions of Flooding In the traditional engineering perspective, the process of river flooding is often identified and characterised in terms of peak discharge and stage (Papp, 2002: 373). However, the processes that generate flood flows are diverse and vary across spatial and temporal scales depending on complex interactions between the climate and the landscape, moderated by human interventions (Mertes, 2000: 146). In order to understand floods ecologically, the diverse factors causing and accentuating floods, both natural and human induced, need to be seen in the background of the associated ecological processes. Some of these common factors are described in the following sections.

Hydrometeorological Factors for Floods Rain, Snowmelt and Rain-on-Snow

The most important meteorological and climatic factors inducing runoff is precipitation in the form of rain and melting of snow, propelled by large-scale (macro and synoptic scale) and small-scale (meso and storm scale) processes (Hirschboeck et al., 2000: 42). Intense, shortduration convective storms or high-intensity rain cells of small-scale weather systems often deliver heavy rain spells over small areas, which are potential sources of flash floods at local levels. Slow moving or near stationary tropical storms like hurricanes and tropical cyclones can yield very large amounts of rain over a matter of few hours. Individual cyclonic storms and disturbances and low-pressure cells often accompany the larger meteorological processes as the monsoon circulations. This results in heavy rains lasting 2–3 days and producing severe, single flood peak flows in many rivers as in the Ganga or the Narmada river basins in India. Heavy rains that produce floods are extreme and regionally extensive and are usually associated with synoptic and macro-scale weather systems, like the monsoonal flow regime. Multiple flood events, common in the Gangetic plains and central Indian regions,

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are caused by such synoptic upper air circulations and low-pressure cells originating in the Bay of Bengal (Dhar and Nandargi, 1999: 3; 2003). Glaciers and seasonal snow packs serve as a prime source of melt water floods. Floods resulting from the melting of glaciers and snow packs are complex processes in which climatic factors and snow pack characteristics (porosity and permeability) orchestrate collectively to produce substantial melt water outputs (Ward, 1978: 33). The glacier melt water cycle in the upper reaches of the mountain catchments often dominates the seasonal discharge regime as in the Himalayan rivers. The steady melting of snow packs and glaciers usually begets a period of high flows maintained over several weeks in many of the alpine watersheds. Surges in snowmelt, with the arrival of the warm weather, are common in the Himalayan parts of the Indus basin where the influence of westerly-driven, high elevation, heavy winter snowfall is predominant (Bandyopadhyay, 1992: 103). However, snowmelt dominated floods in the Himalayan rivers are relatively less devastating compared to the intense monsoonal floods. It is because the former tend to have a broader hydrograph, lower rates of sediment transport and are less likely to disturb channel morphology (Wohl and Cenderelli, 1998: 82). Rainfall can be stored for a brief period within dry sub-freezing snow packs before they collapse to cause high flood peaks in streams. On the other hand, falling rain on an ablating and decaying glacier ice or snow pack with high liquid water holding capacity can pass through etched-out channels in the pack, generating an incremental discharge owing to the simultaneous melting of the ice or a mass of snow (Ward, 1978: 34). Floods of this type occur from April to June in the Himalayan valleys and rarely on the adjacent plains (Dhar and Nandargi, 1998: 4). An early onset of monsoon can instigate snowmeltcum-rainfall floods, as the 1988 flood in the River Sutlej (Ramamoorthi and Haefner, 1991: 353). Part Meteorological Floods

Floods for which the meteorological factors are responsible only partly or indirectly are a category by themselves. Floods of this type occur at the interface of land and water, such as in the coastal fringes and estuaries. Estuarine floods can be related to tidal currents


59

and result from the interaction of seaward surge of freshwater from the river mouth and alternating flux of the saline waterfront of the sea in a 12-hour period. River delta areas also bear the brunt of potential flooding hazard when exceptionally high tide levels occur due to storm surge effects, as are the cases of the delta region of the basins of the Ganga–Brahmaputra–Meghna, the Yellow River in China and the Red and Mekong rivers in Vietnam. Risks of coastal river flooding can approach disastrous proportions when abovenormal discharges, high tide levels and storm surges synchronise together. Storm surges also occur from meteorological causes like the intense atmospheric depression with an exceptionally low-pressure core, and often results in the sea gaining height along the coast. Extremely powerful storm events and physiographic factors, like the presence of a wide and shallow continental shelf or enclosed coastlines, can cause disastrous flooding of the coastal zones as in the typhoon-frequented eastern coast of Japan and the cyclone-ravaged shoreline of the Bay of Bengal. The stretch of the eastern coast of India in the states of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh are highly indented and irregular. Here, several tidal creeks and inlets serve as an ideal propagation route for cyclonepropelled tidal bores, with accompanying gales and very short-lived torrential downpours. Episodic Events

Some floods may be principally caused by extreme and unique geophysical processes, like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and, therefore, need to be addressed individually as a group by themselves. Accounts of these natural catastrophes can serve as a basis for understanding the episodic ecological processes and the major role played by such infrequent but spectacular events in shaping the ‘normal’ landscapes (Bloom, 1992: 249). Earthquakes and tectonic forces can initiate major changes in the river courses causing large floods. For example, an earthquake in the late eighteenth century resulted in significant changes in the course of the rivers Brahmaputra and Tista towards the south-west and north-east, respectively (Hofer and Messerli, 1997: 8; Hofer, 1998: 123). Some of the largest and most destructive floods on earth are caused by the failure of naturally generated obstructions to river flows. Depending on the size of the

60


impoundment, they have the capacity to generate floods larger than snowmelt or rainfall–run-off floods (Cenderelli, 2000: 73). Disastrous flooding and debris/mud flows can also result from displacement of large volumes of water held in volcanic craters or caldera lakes in the course of renewed volcanic action or when the steep walls of natural reservoirs give away (Duff, 1992: 251). Several instances of lava dam and caldera lake failures are replete in the Pacific Ring of Fire, where two-thirds of the world’s volcanoes are located. Active volcanoes like the Katla, lying beneath the Myrdalsjokull glacier in southern Iceland, erupt almost twice per century. During each eruptive phase, it unleashes a melt water jokulhlaup that surges across the countryside, carrying huge fragments of ice and boulders, at velocities reaching 60 miles per hour (Kane, 1987: 162). Floods of different types occur in the mountainous and upland parts of the basins. In the mountainous parts of the watersheds, flood hazards assume significance from their abrupt nature of onset, releasing hyper-concentrated flows of extraordinary magnitudes and destructive power. They can devastate downstream areas within a very short time. Natural slope failures, induced by extreme precipitation or seismic activities in unstable regions, often extend across the valley bottoms impounding the drainage systems (Cenderelli, 2000: 75). Rivers that are temporarily dammed (partially or wholly) by landslides or debris flow create large lakes that either overtops or breaches with catastrophic severity, usually within a few days or months (Bandyopadhyay and Gyawali, 1994). Intense, heavy rainfall or cloudbursts, continuing for two or three days in the mid-elevation high rainfall zones of the Himalayas, often trigger large landslides creating downstream flood risks (Sharma, 1988: 65). Similar in nature to the floods caused by landslide dam bursts are the glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs). Terminal or recessional moraines often cordon off valley melt water drainages, creating voluminous lakes that give away soon after overtopping. The steep slopes and the abundance of poorly sorted, loose sediment that constitute these moraines transform the water released from such lakes into heavy debris-laden hyper-concentrated flows that travel great distances downstream. The devastating effect of a GLOF is most strongly felt downstream, up to a distance of the first 10–20 km (Wohl and Cenderelli, 1998: 83), making the upland watersheds highly vulnerable


61

to such floods. In South Asia, outburst events of moraine-dammed lakes are common in the Himalayas (Cenderelli, 2000: 81). Catastrophic coastal flooding, exemplified by the Asian tsunami of 2004, result from gigantic waves produced by tectonic processes like plate movements and thrust faulting leading to powerful undersea earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or landmass sliding into a water body (Duff, 1992: 589; Thornbury, 1991: 421; Zubair, 2004). Most tsunamis originate from the great faults in the earth’s crust that surround the Pacific Ocean. In the open ocean, they may have an enormous average speed of 450 miles an hour with distances of up to 100 miles between crests (Shepard, 1987: 198). Due to their extremely long wavelength and low height (0.5 m), tsunamis cannot be detected in the open sea, but progressive shortening of their wavelength, reduction of speed and increase in wave height occur as they approach the coast where the sea is shallow (Bloom, 1992:51). Waves attaining extraordinary heights of 30 or 40 m can generate great damages to the exposed and vulnerable coastal peripheries (Thornbury, 1991: 421).

Intensification of Floods Apart from primary process-oriented factors that give birth to flood situations, there are several related secondary conditions, which act collectively to intensify those situations, producing unique flood hazards on earth. For instance, hydrometeorological causes may determine the temporal and spatial distribution of precipitation in a drainage basin, but the manner in which this incoming precipitation develops into a rapid run-off to create flooding is determined by the environmental status of the river basin, channel characteristics and network. Intensification of floods depends on a wide array of factors, which increase the drainage basin response to a given input of precipitation. Drainage Basin Parameters

The pattern of streams in a drainage basin is based on its geologic history, rock structure, their resistance to erosion and the steep angle of the slopes (Bolt et al., 1975). Each of these characteristics determines if flooding will occur or not. The most influential basin characteristic is area. The contributing drainage area and the shape of the catchments

62


affect the time of concentration and the total volume of stream flow in the course of a flooding event (Ward, 1978: 7). Another important characteristic is basin relief. As relief increases, stream gradients increase, time of concentration of run-off decreases and thus the volume of discharge increases within the basin (Baker et al., 1988). In case of coastal flooding, the intensifying factors are the shape of the estuary, coastline configuration and offshore gradient of water depth. Elevation above mean sea level and slope constitute the most important variables. A combination of high tides, elevated sea level and large waves from storm surges are, in a major way, responsible for causing floods in the coastal areas. Network Characteristics

As slope characteristics influence infiltration and the rate at which water reaches stream channels, the density and pattern of drainage, stream order and channel geometry control how rapidly this run-off along hill slopes moves along the channels of a given stream network (Wohl, 2000a: 5). The pattern of drainage, for example, can play a major role in intensifying flood flows. Drainage pattern where flood flows from a number of tributaries converge at a certain downstream point, as in the case of dendritic drainage, are likely to produce sharp, high magnitude flood peaks. In comparison to the latter, basins endowed with a trellis drainage pattern provide natural evacuation routes for downstream flood flows from tributaries before the arrival of flood pulses from the upstream regions (Ward, 1978: 7) (see Figure 2.3). The Himalayan rivers largely fall in the first group. Channel Characteristics

The variability of the nature of channels, related to channel roughness that indicates the constituent bed and bank materials and vegetation growth, and channel shape and storage properties is an important flood intensifying feature. The magnitude, frequency and duration of flood flows along channels greatly depend on the valley geometry (longitudinal gradient, width and depth), and the nature and resistance to erosion of the material forming the channel boundaries. Alluvial channels of large meandering rivers with poor bank cohesion, little boundary resistance and high mobility of bed materials are subject to recurrent bank erosion and collapse that often induces change in courses (Ahmad et al., 2001: 9; Kale, 1998: 244).


63

Figure 2.3 Illustrating Network Parameters B

A Trellies Drainage

Dendritic Drainage

B

Flood Hydrographs of A & B types of Drainage

A

TIME

Source: Adapted from Ward, 1978.

One of the most important but often underestimated factors that have considerable augmenting effect on the total flood discharge and depth are the nature and volume of sediment load transported in solution, suspension or as bed load within the channel boundaries. It must be remembered that in both mountainous and non-mountainous regions of the world, average values of erosion are greatly exceeded during flood events. This implies that the contributions of the dissolved, suspended and bed load components of the total stream load will also increase significantly in relation to the erosive turbulence created and the discharge generated. Sediment load in rivers may range from virtually zero in some clear water streams to heavy in debris or mud flows during storm or episodic events. Floods Induced by Anthropogenic Factors

Artificial regulation of river flows has a history of about 8,000 years, but the degree of structural interventions and flow regulation has

64


increased spectacularly over the last 100 years, when the technology of reinforced cement concrete became available for the construction of hydraulic structures. Since then, strong and intrusive anthropogenic processes have induced very large hydrographic changes on the riverine ecosystems all over the world. Due to the changed flow regimes, human-made barriers like dams generate greater sediment deposition in their upstream and consequently there is an increase in flood levels and extent (Kale, 1998: 242; Mallik and Bandyopadhyay, 2004). Widening, straightening or deepening of river channels can induce channel incision, alter flow velocities and increase the magnitude of flood discharges (Wohl, 2000b: 127). Responsibility for the creation of conditions of unusual floods in recent times has been often attributed to dam failures, unscientific management of dams at times of excessive upstream rain spells, breach of floodwalls or embankments, and so on. Dams built with poor regard for the geology of the surrounding areas often fail, as did the Vaiont dam in Italy in 1963 or the Panshet dam in India in 1961 (Cenderelli, 2000: 86; Ward, 1978: 54). Catastrophic flooding from embankment breaches has been reported from most of the heavily embanked rivers in the world (see Table 2.1).

Table 2.1 History of Embankment Breaches and Losses Location

Year/Details

Socio-economic Damages/Losses

Hwang He, China Yangtze River, China

900,000–2.5 million dead 145,000 dead

Yellow River, China Yellow River, China Hwang He, China

1887–1889 dike failure 1931, 300 breaches in main dike 1933 dike failure 1938 dike breach 1938, dike failure

Mississippi River, USA

1927, levees fail

Mississippi River, USA

1993, 70 per cent of levees fail 1998, 2,000 km. of embankment damaged

Ganges–Brahmaputra– Meghna River, Bangladesh

18,000 dead 890,000 dead 23,000 sq. km. area affected, 500,000 dead 51,200 km. flooded, 750,000 people homeless, loss of US$ 1 billion Loss of US$ 15 billion 1,000 dead, 1.56 million ha cropland affected, loss of US$ 1 billion

Source: Compiled from Cenderelli, 2000; Mishra, 2000; Papp, 2002; ESCAP, 1999; Ahmad et al., 2001.


65

In order to understand the causes and conditions of the various flood processes, as elicited in the preceding section, both process-related mechanisms and conditional factors deserve attention. Flood situations precipitate owing to the synergistic combination and interplay of potent meteorological factors, rainfall–run-off processes, surface and subsurface hydrologic processes and land use properties of the drainage basin (Hirschboeck et al., 2000: 32). The insight gained through establishing these interdependencies and close inter-linkages is a vital practical input for sustainable management of floodplains and riparian ecosystems.

Typology of Floods in India Flood-prone River Basins in India In India, most rivers have a flow regime characteristic of the monsoon. The south-west or the summer monsoon, which is active from July to September, generates about 80 per cent of the annual precipitation the country receives. The precipitation varies widely in space and time. The period of peak flows in the Indian rivers varies according to whether the rivers are fully or partly rain-fed, or fed predominantly by snowmelt (Bandyopadhyay and Gyawali, 1994: 4). Given a great spatial and temporal variation in annual precipitation, the diverse topography and the complex hydrology of the rivers, it becomes imperative to study flood patterns in India in convenient spatial units of river basins and sub-basins. Among the basins draining India (see Figure 1.2), the larger one of GBM is very much prone to high frequency seasonal and prolonged floods. The rivers draining north-eastern India, in the sub-basin of Brahmaputra, experience the maximum number of floods, followed by the Ganga and its tributaries (Dhar and Nandargi, 1998: 13). The river basins in the peninsula known for flood events include Mahanadi, Godavari, Mahi and Sabarmati. These rivers are characterised by the limited area of flood-prone lands and large recurrence interval of major floods (Kale, 1998: 233).

Types and Ecological Processes Associated with Floods The processes generating floods may appear at any point along the entire length of the river channel in a given drainage basin. Depending

66


on the basin relief, channel slope and sediment supply and transport, the nature of hazards can attain their eco-hydrological distinctiveness (see Figure 2.4). Figure 2.4 Some of the Eco-hydrological Processes Related to Flooding

GLOF Landslide Dam Outburst Flood

Intense Upland RainFast Run-off

Intense Foothill Rain

Alluvial FanSheet-flooding W

Local Rain on Flood Plains

T

Backwater Flooding High & Rising Groundwater Table

Lateral Shifting

Tidal Bore & Storm Surge

SEA

Source: Author.

Floods of various types occur in India as described in the following sections. Extreme Events

Extreme floods are obviously rare. The extremeness of a flood is determined by the size of the drainage basin in which it occurs, the period of recurrence and often by the extent of socio-economic damage or loss that it may entail (Papp, 2002: 373). However, it is important to understand and appraise the underlying meteorological conditions and context of flooding, which control the extreme nature of floods in the tropical monsoon climate of South Asia. Bangladesh faces the annual monsoonal inundations regularly, but almost the whole country gets submerged in the case of extreme floods. Mirza (2003) presents a good hydrometeorological analysis of the three extreme floods in Bangladesh. The scale of a precipitation


67

system is considered to be an important component of flood causality, as the way in which above-average precipitation is delivered in space and time largely determines the nature of extreme flooding and the hazards that it may generate (Hirschboeck et al., 2000: 66). Climatic extremes of heavy rainfall, occurring over one to several days in succession, become specially marked when the summer monsoon reaches its zenith in late August. As the soil is already saturated, any additional heavy rainfall is not easily absorbed, providing the conditions for floods (Bandyopadhyay, 1992: 111; Bruijnzeel and Bremmer, 1989: 29). Extreme point precipitation (EPP) totals may range f rom 400 to 800 mm per day in many parts of the northern and central India (Pisharoty and Asnani, 1957; Rakecha and Pisharoty, 1996 as cited in Rakecha, 2002: 169). Rainfall exceeding 1,000 mm in a 24hour span is observed in some of the zones in the eastern Himalayas (Bhandari and Gupta, 1985 as cited in Wohl and Cenderelli, 1998: 82). Figure 2.5 highlights some of the maximum observed 24-hour rainfall totals. The spatial variation of rainfall intensity closely parallels the general pattern of the annual rainfall—increasing intensity in the east and gradual attenuation towards the west Figure 2.5 Spatial Variation in Extreme Rainfall Intensity

24 hours Rainfall (in mm)

1,200 1,000 800 600 400 200

EAST

i nj pu rra he C rh ga ru ib g D lin jee ar D du an

al

i ad

hm at

tw

ng

a

Source: Bruijnzeel and Bremmer, 1989.

K

Bu

or

un

d ra

lm

ha D

A

eh D

0 WEST

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(Bandyopadhyay, 1992: 111). Such intense and prolonged precipitation is capable of generating very heavy flood discharges, which can be two or three times the normal monsoon discharge (Bandyopadhyay and Gyawali, 1994: 8). Floods of extraordinary magnitudes develop following continuous and heavy downpours of about 600–1,000 mm per day and extending to over two to three days, in large areas in the eastern Himalayas. The dominant run-off producing mechanism in the high gradient humid watersheds is accelerated subsurface storm flow (see Section on Drainage Basin Parameters), with only a meagre supplement from dispersed overland flow (Starkel, 1972: 122). The volume of sediment load generated at times of such rare natural events is exceptionally large. Extreme rainfall events and ensuing floods have a usual recurrence interval of 20–50 years, which plays a significant role in the shaping of fluvial systems and the sculpting of landforms, both in the mountains and plains (Starkel et al., 1998: 115). Apart from meteorological events, the existence of inexorable geotectonic forces often triggers catastrophic flooding in many rivers in India. Tectonic movements and earthquakes could induce drastic changes in the courses and profiles of rivers, which eventuates in extreme flooding. The 1787 and 1897 earthquakes, for instance, accounted for a significant shift of the channel of the river Tista in the Eastern Himalayas, inundating expected areas (Kale, 1998: 241; Majumdar, 1941: 30). Highland Flood

Floods in the highlands and mountain areas result from both intense rainfall in the summer and melting of snow in the spring. The distribution of the precipitation and its amount varies across macromeso- and micro-realms of the Himalayan region. Movements of westerly troughs or disturbances during July and August often bring a ‘break’ in the monsoon. Rainfall in the Western Ghats of the Indian Peninsula, despite being heavy, is not conducive for the generation of large floods as devastating and frequent as in the Himalayan rivers (Kale, 1998: 238). Large floods are common in the rivers of the far southern uplands of the peninsula where the winter rainfall (November–January) often brings the heaviest rainfall. Localised bouts of heavy and intense rainfall originating from thunderstorm systems or isolated convective cells can occur over a short period of several hours. This can suddenly precipitate flood flows in drainage channels


69

of many small, isolated upland catchments that remain dry over large parts of the year. Snowmelt surges due to warm weather conditions can produce highland floods in the western Himalayas. About 400–800 cu km of water flows down as melt water contributions annually from the snow and glacier fields in the Himalayas, as against earlier conservative estimates of 200–500 cu km/yr (Bahadur, 1997). Unlike episodic events and heavy monsoonal floods, snowmelt floods have a fairly predictable annual peak discharge and a low sediment budget (Wohl and Cenderelli, 1998: 82). The seismic movements in the Himalayas, indicating an uplift of about 6 mm/year (Newson, 1997: 191), make it highly susceptible to rapid structural collapse. This, combined with rugged topography and highly seasonal and intense precipitation occurring on the steep slopes, makes the Himalayas naturally prone to hazards like deep and large-scale landslides. Although earthquakes of different magnitudes weaken the slopes, cloudbursts often trigger landslides that may dam river courses and result in the impoundment of immense volumes of water (see Figure 2.6). When the blocked river breaks open the obstruction, the result is downstream catastrophic rush of water and debris, often attaining heights of 15–20 metres (Mahmood, 1987; Singh et al., 1974 as cited in Bruijnzeel and Bremmer, 1989: 64). Landslide dam outburst floods are common occurrences in the Himalayas (Cenderelli, 2000: 76; Sharma, 1988: 71). Such large-scale mass-wasting processes are a significant source of sediment in most Himalayan rivers. About 10–20 per cent of the total surface area of the Himalayas is covered by glaciers, while an additional area ranging from 30–40 per cent has seasonal snow cover (Bahadur, 1997). Himalayan glaciers have retreated circa 1 km since the Little Ice Age. Periodic fluctuations in climatic conditions and associated advance and retreat of glaciers in the high Himalayas have created several glacial lakes, chiefly moraine-dammed lakes in many areas. The risk of a GLOF is very high during the monsoon, as ablation and accumulation of snow and ice occur during the monsoon months in the Himalayan glaciers (Kattelmann, 2003). Foothill Floods

Some of the most known floods in South Asia are generated at the foothills of the eastern and central Himalayas. Such floods are

70


Figure 2.6 Landslide Blocking River Flow

Source: ICIMOD, 2002. Note: The photo was taken by Dr Li Tianchi of ICIMOD, Kathmandu.

significant in Bhutan, Nepal and the states of Assam, West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in India. The intensity of rainfall in the foothills together with large volumes of seasonal snowmelt are the principal upstream factors that bring a high flood discharge and proportionately high sediment load to the rivers descending on the


71

South Asian plains from the Himalayas. The exceptionally large volumes of sediment brought down by the rivers and their tributaries regularly cause aggradations of riverbeds and sharp changes in their courses. The geomorphic gradient at the piedmont break-off slope, as in the case of the Kosi, encourages the impetuous flow of river water from the mountains to the foreland. This peak flow races downstream as a combination of water and a very large amount of sediment, which is finally shed on the adjoining plains, as the slope of the riverbed and the velocity of the flow fall drastically. Some of the foothill stretches, as the Bihar plains, are areas of active neotectonism, where rapid land subsidence, at the rate of 0.2–0.3 m/yr, has been recorded (Sinha and Jain, 1998: 40). Upliftment or subsidence of the Indo-Gangetic plain could be truly linked to deep-seated tectonic movements, resulting in remarkable adjustments of the drainage to structure (Basu, 1997: 204). The inexorable avulsion of the flows of the Bhagirathi–Hooghly, Damodar, Padma, Tista and Kosi during the past two centuries has thus been a response of the drainage to the subsequent phases of subsidence and upliftment (see Figure 2.7). Active neotectonism coupled with high rates of sedimentation significantly lowers the carrying capacity of rivers downstream, causing floods (Sinha and Jain, 1998: 40, 41). Massive riverbed aggradations, extensive river bank undercutting, sharp changes in channel plan form and frequent lateral shifting of braided channels common to rivers draining the foothill zone present obvious hazards to the riparian communities. Flooding of this kind is intimately related to the largely unaccounted for sediment load as it is to the volume of water. The great amount of solids carried by most Himalayan rivers make them the conveyors of some of the highest sediment loads in the world (Bandyopadhyay 1992: 112) (see Table 2.2). This immense sediment load, evident in the huge alluvial fans of Tista, Kosi, Gandak, and so on, and the constant shifting of the river courses in the Himalayan foothills, stresses the need for a more comprehensive understanding of the eco-hydrology of the Himalayan rivers. The annual deposition of this sediment has been lifting some alluvial cones of the eastern Himalayan rivers by about 45 cm/year (Starkel, 1972: 118). The frequent shifts in the course of the Kosi river, which has migrated 120 km due west in the past 250 years (Bandyopadhyay and Gyawali, 1994), is, to a large extent, a result of the amount of sediment deposited at the foothills.

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Figure 2.7 Recorded Shift in Courses of Kosi, Tista, Brahmaputra, Bhagirathi and Padma

N

ew N

New Kosi

Goalpara

T a ist Sylhet

O

ld

Br

ra

R.

hmaput

Kartoa

. Atrei R

Rajmahal

ra New B

Old Tista

Old Kosi

ah

Surma R

m

ap

ut

ra

Sorajganj

Aj ay R

Pad m

aR

.

.

Dhaka

Comillah Fenny R

Old B hagir

a

a

m Pad

adm dP

athi

Ol

R.

w Ne

Dam odar

Calcutta

gly

Hoo R. BAY OF BENGAL Rivers Shift in river courses Hills

Approx. 100 Km

Source: Developed by the author based on the original map by Renell 1897.

Table 2.2 Some Himalayan Rivers and their Sediment Yield River

Measuring Station

Sediment Yield t/ha/yr

Ganga Karnali Narayani Bagmati Kosi Tamur Tista

In Bangladesh Chisapani Narayanghat Chobar Chatra Tribeni Anderson Bridge

15.7 67.4 56.8 30.3 31.3 82.2 125.1

Source: Bandyopadhyay, 1992.


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Lowland Floods

The interplay of diverse ecological processes in the creation of floods in South Asia becomes more evident as one moves downstream from the foothill areas to the vast alluvial floodplains, evincing a welldrained, almost isotropic land of extreme low gradients. The extent and persistence of flood conditions and the interactive processes governing them are complex and diverse, alluding that run-off from upland watersheds can only be one of the several factors that contribute to floods. For example, Mertes (2000: 162), in a study of the inundation hydrology, identifies rising groundwater, hyporheic1 water, flooding of local tributaries, run-off from surrounding slopes, direct precipitation, snowmelt as well as antecedent water from prior floods as significant components of some channel–floodplain complexes. Recurring floods in Bangladesh can be an illustrative case in this regard. Inundation, common on the low-lying flatlands of Bangladesh, is the combined outcome of climatologic and hydrologic factors. Apart from the fact that this region drains almost 75 per cent of the total Himalayan run-off in a brief period of only three months (Bandyopadhyay and Gyawali, 1994: 12), there are several flood enhancing factors like local high groundwater tables, extreme low relief, obstructions of drainage by infrastructure and temporal coincidences of peak discharges of the Ganga and the Brahmaputra (Bandyopadhyay et al., 1997). Thus, a combination of the meteorological information with a systematic understanding of the dynamics of rainfall-runoff and surface and subsurface hydrologic processes (Ramirez, 2000: 293) becomes imperative to appreciate the upland–lowland interactive ecological processes involved in triggering floods. Antecedent climatohydrological factors such as the degree of soil saturation, the level of shallow groundwater tables and the rate of snowmelt (Hirschboeck et al., 2000: 53–54) also indirectly contribute to the run-off. When these are unrecorded, it causes difficulty in studying channel processes and their response to the changes in controlling variables. The inundation hydrology of the relatively flat alluvial plains of South Asia, looking downstream from the Himalayan foothills, bears a separate identity. At the height of the monsoon season, the groundwater table often lies close to the surface, offering limited storage. Heavy local rains can induce floods on such a super-saturated terrain even before the river reaches its over bank stage. Locally concentrated and sustained

74


hours of flood-producing heavy rain and local groundwater rise are, thus, sufficient antecedent determinants causing or exacerbating flooding in the plains of Bihar and Bengal. River water may also considerably contribute to the larger mixing zone (periheic) of local water source on floodplains during the course of such flooding (Mertes, 2000: 147). The potential of such multiple sources of water contributing to inundation as a synergistic function of several natural processes is not given the due attention in traditional engineering. This inability to perceive the complexity of over bank flow patterns forms the very basis of widespread confusion among engineers and technocrats about the obvious causes of flooding. Peak flows in individual tributary form an essential component of flood causality resulting in backwater flooding at major meeting points. Backwater flooding raises water levels by 6–8 metres at the confluence of Gandak and Ganga (Bruijneel and Bremmer, 1989: 64). The effects of such natural blockage of water in the flat terrain of the plains could be far-reaching, often travelling 100–150 km upstream from the point of confluence. Scientific and analytical study of such events is scanty. Coastal Floods

Estuarine and deltaic areas, along the coastline spread over the eastern coast of India, are naturally prone to flooding from storm surges or tidal waves. Tidal floods are common, occurring twice a day in the coastal fringes. Flooding during each fortnightly springtide is usually extensive. The most potent factor causing true devastation in low-lying, semi-enclosed coastlines, like the Bay of Bengal, is the storm surge. This is an outcome of piling up of seawater against the coast, caused by a combination of low barometric pressure and gusty onshore winds, associated with tropical cyclones (Ahmad et al., 2001: 46). When the surge occurs near the mouth of an estuary or a distributary at the delta head, the river flow is greatly hindered resulting in severe flooding of the coastal areas (Dhar and Nandargi, 1998: 3). Factors like extreme flatness of the terrain, high density of predominantly poor population and a low level of disaster preparedness promote the maximum damage during storm events (Haider et al., 1991: 16). Human-induced Floods

In recent years, many independent experts have expressed concern that human interventions and unwise management of engineering structures


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could cause or accentuate floods. Human modification of the natural flow of rivers by the construction of dams, barrages, embankments, and so on, may increase flood hazards in several ways. For instance, floods from dam collapses (Kale, 1998: 242) have been experienced at Kaddam (Andhra Pradesh, 1958), Morvi (Gujarat, 1979), Kharagpur (Bihar, 1961), Panshet (Maharashtra, 1961) and Chandora (Madhya Pradesh, 1991). Underestimating the magnitude and frequency of extreme run-off from the reservoir catchment can also induce dam failures and floods. The monsoonal storm of August 1979 overtopped and destroyed the Machchu dam in north-western India due to a similar reason (Rakhecha, 2002: 167). Flow regulation efforts by raising embankments are common. They have given rise to flood hazards by the breaching of the embankments. Such breaches have particularly become regular along all major embankments of the rivers in the Himalayan foothills. In addition, expansion of railway and road networks has created substantial obstruction to the natural drainage of the basins. Rapid increases in flood depth of excessive duration during prolonged rain hours are partly due to such human-induced drainage congestions. Similarly, extensive water logging in north Bihar is attributed to cumulative impacts of the construction of embankments (Mishra, 2000: 45). Extensive network of earthen embankments along the heavily aggrading Brahmaputra has resulted in increased sedimentation and further intensification of flood hazards within the confines of its narrow valley (Goswami, 1998: 69).

Urgent Need for Interdisciplinary Knowledge on Floods Floods and Expected Natural Inundations Regular annual inundations, in general, serve very important ecological and socio-economic functions. Viewed in the wider context of the ecological processes associated with them, river corridors and floodplains are considered complementary and inseparable elements of flood conditions. The inundation regimes in the river corridor perform vital functional processes like sustaining the complex interactive pathways and ecological connectivity between river

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channels, contiguous floodplains, upstream–downstream sections and groundwater aquifers. People living on the floodplains are aware of the benefits accrued from the periodic inundations. Indigenous knowledge and adaptive traditional solutions have always sought to rationalise floods both as nature’s gift and fury—using their regenerative power and protecting themselves from their ravaging nature (Bandyopadhyay and Gyawali, 1994: 12). Such inundations are perceived as a threat only when they are threateningly deep or the period of inundation is very long. Such an attitude towards regular inundations found expression even amongst the earliest settlements in the Ganga basin, where sailab or annual inundation was believed to help in the irrigation (NCIWRDP, 1999: 103). Floods now receive attention only when the damages are high during extreme inundations. In eastern India, ways of adapting to the riverine ecology by means of a special approach to surface water management based on the use of natural drainage, flood irrigation and open water fisheries developed. Floodwater was spread over the paddy fields or individual land plots through small channels, depositing its load of fine, rich silt and algae. This greatly helped in boosting the fertility of the soil and in replenishing groundwater, while water bodies on the floodplain served as settling grounds for fish eggs where freshwater fishes thrived (Mishra, 2000: 99–101). The latter became the provider of the principal or perhaps the only source of protein in the diet of the poor. Indigenous settlement pattern and architecture in the floodplains in north-eastern India also revealed unique modes of adaptation. Houses were built on bamboo posts and thus elevated, leaving adequate floodway space for the monsoon floodwaters to spread (Basu, 2001: 3). Moreover, the excavated ponds not only support the farming systems and meet domestic water needs, but also act as superb flood cushions. At times of severe flooding, people in the floodplains resort to temporary emergency flood-proof techniques like sandbagging doorways and other openings to prevent water intrusion, making habitats on makeshift elevated platforms and relying on the use of boats. People living in vulnerable areas reveal their mobile adaptability to flood situations with the tradition of migration to safer grounds when a high stage river threatens to erode its banks and char lands (Hofer and Messerli, 1997: 27).


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The Reductionist View of Floods The traditional strategy of adaptation to floods declined in India when river management was taken over by the irrigation departments of the ruling British government. In the governmental perceptions, floods in India slowly became a natural disaster that had to be controlled. This view continued till independence in 1947. In independent India, rapid growth in population, expansion of human activities into further lower areas in the floodplains, increasing economic aspirations of the newly independent country and the knowledge of European engineering tradition provided the backdrop for keeping the floods away from most parts of the floodplains through structural interventions as a political agenda. In the perception of governmental engineers, floods, at all times, tend to be associated with human suffering and economic losses in the floodplains (Garde, 1998: 173). The National Commission on Floods (RBA, 1980: 330) provides a better insight into this reductionist perception of floods as one major water-related ‘problem’ of the country that spells ‘disaster’ year after year. Hence, the idea to eliminate floods has emerged as a central theme in the present day governmental agenda on water management. Dams and Storage Reservoirs

For more than half a century, government engineers in India have favoured large dams and embankments as ‘the only important hydraulic structure common to overall water development and solution of flood problems’ (RBA, 1980: 270). India has 4,291 dams, next only to China and USA. Dams and storage reservoirs have been mainly designed to perform multiple functions, since pure flood control dams are not deemed economically viable (RBA, 1980: 270). Only in the Himalayan watersheds of the GBM basin, more than 50 structures are envisaged (see Figure 2.8). The seasonal flooding in the foothills and plains, the unrelenting demand for greater volumes of water for irrigation from the drier areas and the temptation to extract the big hydropower potential (specially in the Himalayan rivers) have been providing the prime incentive towards large engineering interventions. The multi-purpose management criteria have worked with some success for addressing irrigation, hydroelectricity and water supply needs. However, for flood control, large multi-purpose dams have not been very effective. This

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Figure 2.8 Plan for Dams in the Himalayan Watershed of the GBM Basin

Source: Adapted, compiled and prepared from various sources: National Atlas and Thematic Mapping Organisation, Kolkata; Central Water Commission, New Delhi and Ministry of Water Resources, Government of India, New Delhi.

becomes credible when one considers the fact that most Indian storage reservoirs are designed on a 75 per cent dependability basis whereby the storage becomes inherently incapable of holding back any abovenormal inflow into them. This can be a big reason for the sudden and untimely release of excess inflows flooding downstream sections, as has happened in the case of the reservoirs monitored under the Damodar Valley Corporation (Dhawan, 1993: 851). The non-availability of sufficient or reliable historical data on rainfall or river flows is one major stumbling block towards forming an accurate estimate of the probable extreme flood flows entering a reservoir. Thus, dams are often designed on the basis of a very limited database on the long-term hydrology of the rivers (Pearce, 2001).


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Extrapolations from small common floods and short time series of observed hydrological data results in serious underestimation of the magnitude and frequency of Probable Maximum Precipitation (PMP) events. This may create spillway discharges, exceeding the designed capacity of the reservoir during extreme precipitation events, prompting panic discharges or causing a dam to breach in severe cases. Rakhecha and Clark (2002: 287) have estimated such a probable outflow of 1.5 m depth over the crest of the Ukai Dam, lasting for 80 long hours, in case of a worst combination of meteorological and hydrological factors. The lack of a comprehensive database and automated measuring options of river discharges and rainfall, especially in the upper catchments, has further scaled down the scope of flood routing by dams in a scientific manner (NCIWRDP, 1999: 132). Lack of an adequate network of rain gauges in the upper catchments fails to produce the much-needed continuous record of hourly rainfall data. Most of these rain gauges, for example, in the flood-prone basin of Damodar, record daily total rainfall and, therefore, no information could be generated on the concentration time of rainfall and run-off peak or the available valley storages, if any, during intense and prolonged rainfall hours (Bose and Nag, 1951: 76). Oversimplification of a dam’s function also falls short of the knowledge of the primary purpose for which a dam must have been modelled, or whether the floodway has been properly managed downstream in case of an encroachment. Dams are often associated with the notion of total insulation of the downstream reaches from floods. Terminal reservoirs in a basin commanding a large downstream area do not have any moderation effect on run-offs from the downstream areas. A persistent storm event if the downstream reaches below a reservoir can generate flood run-offs. Almost 83 per cent of the total flood run-off generated in the Mayurakshi basin in September 2000 was a contribution from the unregulated catchment, as against the relatively unassuming outflow from the spillway of the Messanjore dam and the Tilpara barrage located upstream (Ray, 2001: 18). Moreover, flood moderation in multi-purpose projects often gets marginalised due to unclear priorities of management. This becomes

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literal when one observes that 96 per cent of the 4,291 dams in India cater to irrigation needs, as against less than 0.5 per cent meeting flow-regulation objectives (Sengupta et al., 2000: 24). Conflicting multiple functions become glaringly obvious in case of optimum flood control and power generation, where the former demands an empty reservoir and the latter prefers a full one (Ward, 1978: 158). Often, the operators of a multi-purpose reservoir tend to keep the flood space occupied for the generation of electricity (Dixit, 2001: 356). In such a situation, when flood moderation storage is exclusively unavailable in the reservoir, an impinging flood wave must be released, aggravating flooding downstream in the monsoon season. Release of over 900,000 cusecs of water down the Hirakud reservoir spillway led to flooding of downstream stretches in the peak monsoon season in 2001. This is a typical case in point where upstream rain could not be accommodated owing to energy optimisation drives (Anonymous, 2001). As reservoirs were already quite full during the heavy and incessant rains of September 2000, huge volumes of water released abruptly from Durgapur barrage, Mayurakshi and Kangsabati reservoirs, traced a grim picture of devastating floods in the downstream reaches of Damodar, Barakar, Mayurakshi and Ajoy river basins (Pearce, 2001; Dasgupta, 2002: 52, 53). Embankments

Embankments are usually constructed along rivers of comparatively gentle gradient and are an age-old and easy technique of flood protection in almost every country in the world. Large, lowland floodplain reaches tend to be heavily engineered and embanked, due to their importance as centres of human and economic activity over long periods (Paine et al., 2002: 217). For centuries, therefore, flood protection embankments have been constructed in the densely populated delta areas of the Godavari, Cauvery and Krishna in south India, the Indo-Gangetic plains and the deltaic floodplains of Bangladesh (RBA, 1980: 96; Safiullah, 1989: 175). These embankments were low, isolated earthen ridges, often discontinuous, with clever gaps at drainage crossings (RBA, 1980: 124), which protected agricultural areas from periodic floods as well as irrigated them without upsetting the regime condition of the river. Low-lying taccavi and zamindari embankments of the pre-independence period in north and east India, for instance, were


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often breached to allow the entry of heavy silt-laden floodwaters for irrigating and fertilising the soil (Basu, 1995: 153). Intense land-use pressure and an explosive population growth in urban and industrial areas in the floodplain belt led to a hunt for technical measures for a concerted effort at flood control in the post-colonial era. Engineering interventions in the form of flood embankments along major alluvial rivers of the GBM system of South Asia was one such envisaged structural scheme. Between 1954 and 1997, some 16,199 km of embankments have been constructed in India alone, which has claimed to have given flood protection to 17 mha out of the 40 mha of area prone to floods (NCIWRDP, 1999: 129). In Bangladesh, 8,300 km of extensive embankments flank the main rivers and protect urban areas since 1959 (Ahmad et al., 2001: 60). As economical means of flood management, mainly due to their highly labour-intensive make, the embankments were easily constructed using local materials and labour in a short span of time to provide shortterm relief from floods. The early years following the construction of the embankments saw a substantial reduction of flooding. This led to the rapid expansion of land-use activities and development of the floodplain. However, with the passage of time, the long-term unsustainability of these engineering interventions started to emerge, exposing the limitations of the reductionist knowledge base behind the design of these interventions. For example, in Bihar, an extensively embanked state, the flood-prone area has escalated from 2.5 mha before the embankments came (1952) to 6.89 mha by 1994 (Mishra, 2000: 52) (see Figure 2.9). The politico-economic imperative of constructing embankments as a common measure for flood control has overshadowed the ecological dimensions of such decisions. First, the embankments interfered with the natural exchange of water, sediment and energy between the river channel and the floodplain, modifying flow and channel configuration, often increasing the period and extent of inundation. This experiment with embankments in the Indo-Gangetic plains has grown to negatively affect flow regimes, both upstream and downstream (RBA, 1980: 229). High sedimentation is one of the natural causes of river oscillations and floods in the Himalayan foothills and plains. Embankments not only confined the voluminous flood flow, reducing the river’s

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Figure 2.9 Flood-prone Areas in Bihar 8

Area in Million Hectares

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

1952

1971

1982

1994

Years Source: Adopted and compiled from RBA, 1980 and Government of Bihar, 1994.

natural spill area, but also entrapped this enormous sediment load. Thus, increased sedimentation within the embanked channel with progressive increase in the height of embankments also resulted in an increased stage and velocity of floodwaters. This led to the coarser sediments being lifted and deposited over agricultural land and irrigation canals. Embankments are usually considered safe for a 25-year frequency period in agricultural areas and 100-year frequency in urban areas (Government of Bihar, 1994). Considering the limited knowledge of long-term weather patterns, such considerations of intervals of flood recurrence are misleading to those living in the floodplains (Rao, 1975: 202). The negative fallouts associated with intensified channel engineering highlights the uncertainty of living within an area that enjoys the so-called protection from floods but becomes prone to sudden, rapid rises of water level when embankments breach. Serious gaps in scientific knowledge, like underestimation of the importance of sediments, have led to the reduction of the wetted perimeter and major changes in the river cross section. This has reduced the carrying capacity and efficacy of the embankments


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resulting in a new genre of flood hazards, like frequent breaches in active, high-energy floodplain zones as in the middle-reach of the Kosi. Cutting of river spill by embanking rivers not only impoverished the agricultural land from the annual deposition of fertile silt, but also prevented valley storages like ponds, natural depressions and wetlands, traditionally available for the moderation of floods, from being useful. Compounding matters, the embankments tampered with the natural drainage of the countryside leading to extensive water logging that both reduce the arable land and abet epidemics (see Figure 2.10). Figure 2.10 Map of the Kosi Basin in Bihar Showing the Infrastructural Impediments Leading to Drainage Congestion

Source: Government of Bihar, 1994.

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Embankments along the main rivers often block the tributaries, natural spill and drainage channels from emptying into them, a situation that requires embanking tributary drainages as well. A narrowly focused and project-centric approach to water resource management seeks technical solutions to this human-induced drainage problem in building adequate sluices. Absence of considerations of the heavy silt load in the rivers leads to in-channel deposition, clogging such sluice gates, which, in turn, increase flooding and hinder the drainage of back swamps. In the case of the Kosi embankments, in-channel deposition keeps the riverbed approximately 2 m above ground level in the countryside (Mishra, 2000: 43). Thus, drainage of monsoon flows gets blocked outside and between embankments in addition to seepage from the raised riverbed to the land outside, when flow in the river remains high. Improperly planned road and railway embankments have, in addition, greatly interfered with the natural drainage of the basin, prolonging drainage congestion and extensive waterlogging in the irrigation command areas as well as the flood-protected zones. The ecological perspective, elaborated earlier, also questions the efficacy of the embankments in a hydroecological region characterised by a high groundwater table, where rivers are highly migratory in nature, having excessive silt charge, and prone to flash floods. Lapses in continuous periodic inspection and maintenance of embankments, and lack of a dependable flood warning system further increase the risks of human-induced flooding and consequent human suffering in the deltas and floodplains of South Asia. The existence of flood embankments creates an apparent feeling of absolute safety, leading to the unchecked human encroachment in the vulnerable zones along the embankments and floodplains. As a result, the extent of flood damage in most heavily-embanked stretches of South Asian rivers has been on a gradual rise. River Diversions and Inter-basin Transfers

River diversions are employed to control excess channel discharge by diverting the flow of a river with the help of large canals. These may carry away a significant portion of the available water or bring it back to the river further downstream (RBA, 1980: 88). One such river diversion is the Ghaggar Diversion Scheme, which diverts 340 cumecs of flood discharge from the river Ghaggar into the deserts of Rajasthan


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(Rao, 1975: 153). Inter-basin diversions are massive undertakings in which diverted waters of one stream/basin are fed into another. For a long time, visionary planners have been contemplating building of large storage reservoirs in the basins with greater precipitation and transferring it via link canals to the basins with lower water endowment (NCIWRDP, 1999: 181). These diversion schemes are envisaged to regulate uneven river hydrology into more uniform ones. Such inter-basin link-ups are not uncommon in South Asia and are exemplified by the transfer of west-flowing Periyar to east-flowing Vaigai, cutting through the high ranges of Kerala, or the re-routing of the Ravi–Beas snowmelt into the deserts of Rajasthan through the Bhakra and Rajasthan canals (Verghese and Iyer, 2002). Larger inter-basin transfer projects excited the mind and imagination of water planners and engineers since Rao came up with the idea of a Ganga–Cauvery link canal originating in Bihar and ending in Tamil Nadu (NCIWRDP, 1999: 179). Unfortunately, over the last 30 years, there has been no open refinement of scientific justifications of such transfers as flood control mechanisms. Channel Improvements

Channel improvement or the resuscitation method involves improving the carrying capacity of the river channel itself by artificially widening, deepening and straightening it, thereby reducing peak flood discharge (RBA, 1980: 87). Widening and deepening of channels by river dredging is a common but highly expensive practice for mitigating floods in major aggrading distributaries and spillways like that of the GBM delta. In deltaic Bangladesh, for instance, dredging activities exist along Gorai and Arial Khan (Latif, 1989: 103). Preoccupation with such physical works in river-floodplain management assumes the river system as functioning in a presumed steady-state condition. In contrast, rivers of the lower parts of the basin are dynamic, with high fluctuations, erratic stream flows, frequent erosion, course changes, heavy sediment load, and so on. River erosion is a natural process and inherent in the flow conditions that typify alluvial deltaic rivers of the tropics. Dredging activities in most alluvial channels with non-cohesive boundaries result in increased erosion and bank collapse during high flows, which extend both upstream and downstream of the improved stretch. This increases the sediment load downstream, resulting in more peaked local flood

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discharges (Wohl, 2000b: 126). Added to this is the practical difficulty in disposing off the dredged soil, which has to be dumped on the riverbanks close to the channel. Washed down by rainwater, the dredged silt often resettles back on the riverbed. Furthermore, by physically removing the silt load, dredging perturbs the natural aquatic balance of the river water (Kar, 2001: 53).

Conventional Engineering Responses and Ecosystem Services of Floods The reductionist perception of rivers led engineering prescriptions to classify rivers as ‘poised’ or functioning in a ‘steady state’. Such views do not recognise the ecological characteristic of most South Asian rivers that have a highly variable hydrological regime, great volumes of seasonal flow and high silt loads. Such an approach has not only been unable to bring relief from floods adversely affecting the regime characteristics of rivers, but has also ignored the geomorphic and environmental consequences of such flood protection works (Kale, 1998: 247). As an integral part of the riverine processes, floods perform a number of ecosystem services, which has contributed to human well-being for millennia. Examples of the ecosystem services are breeding of fish population, control of salinity ingress, biomass supply, cultivation of tropical wetland crops, livestock grazing, flood cushioning, nutrient cycling, groundwater recharge and discharge, cultural values, ecotourism, and so on. As the scale of engineering interventions has been altering the status of the ecosystems and scope of the ecosystem services, there appears an urgent need to evaluate and quantify the value of such ecosystem services. This would need to incorporate compromise-building mechanisms to ascertain the desirable prioritisation criteria required for protecting the ecosystem, which means identifying and evaluating the inherent trade-offs between conventional flood-control measures or recognition of the ecosystem services received from floods and the need to compromise engineering interventions accordingly. The value of all these vital life-supporting services need to be audited to help prioritise ecological concerns as against, for example, wetland reclamation. This would also drive home the need for estimating critical flow patterns for ecologically healthy functioning of the floodplain wetlands and


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their effect on the general flow regime of the river (Dyer, 2002: 252). This new approach has given rise to procedures for the assessment of environmental flows needs in rivers that are finding increasing use in many rivers of the world (Tharme, 2003).

The Idea of Living with Floods Agricultural communities living and farming in deltas and floodplains of South Asia have developed adaptive approaches to the enormous ferocity as well as the great utilities of the monsoon floods. Indigenous methods of adaptation to floods in the Ganges basin were practised among the rural communities as early as the fourteenth century (Hughes et al., 1994: 34). Such locally evolved flood survival norms, like elevated settlement pattern, adjusted cropping system and welladapted methods of inland transport, were practised to adjust with the riverine ecology. People in lowland Bangladesh, for instance, have developed many virtual coping strategies through their enduring experiences of living with annual normal floods or barsha and severe floods or bonna (Nasreen, 1999: 35). Given that any flood protection system guaranteeing total safety is an illusion, living with the awareness of the possibility of floods and accommodating them appears a much realistic notion (Kundzewicz and Menzel, 2003: 5). The new, evolving concept of living with floods represents a holistic, locally based, participatory and integrated approach that recognises the importance of floods in maintaining ecosystems and their role in human society. The basic idea is to evolve a sustainable long-term development plan for the flood belts. Managing floods from this new perspective requires the need to build resilience to disasters and increase people’s capacity to adapt to a changing natural environment. The basic need is to develop a system that fails in a safe way (safe-fail), rather than opt for a stochastic design-safe flood control work (Anonymous, 2003: 278). Generating awareness and building flood risk consciousness among the public is of utmost importance in this new emerging idea. A variety of ‘soft’ or non-structural approaches to flood mitigation, like identifying the best possible means of protecting crops, livestock and property, involve developing improved methods of flood management and flood preparedness. Response mechanisms to cope with floods is pivoted

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around the concept of watershed management, which includes land-use and soil conservation to arrest surface erosion and sediment transport by terracing and contour ploughing, vegetation cover management and afforestation (Kundzewicz, 2002: 5). However, considering the natural geological processes prevalent in the upland watersheds of the Himalayas and the great volumes of sediments generated, catchment management or treatment will not make a great difference to the creation of sediment loads (Bandyopadhyay, 1995: 427). Actuating a paradigm shift towards ‘living with floods while benefiting from them’, demands an approach that has learnt to make the optimal use of the services rendered by river inundation and adopts a strategy that can allot space to accommodate channel overflow. This would require coping mechanisms that strive to minimise obstruction on floodplains and enhance surface water storage capacity. Such a strategy has come up with a mix of traditional as well as new options. These include elevating rural and urban dwellings, restoring waterways, drainage channels, silt-choked inland water bodies, tanks and fishing grounds by re-instating their connectivity with rivers, flood-tolerant houses and crops, emergency floating or raised seedbeds, rainwater harvesting for household needs, floating postal and banking services, and so on (Islam, 1999:108; Mishra, 2000: 101,102,104). Advanced flood forecasting and warning systems provide mechanisms for alerting the population at risk, living in flood-prone areas. Forecasts, which are accurate enough, can generate reliable flood warnings that can then be effectively disseminated to the public, so that they can take necessary actions. Therefore, a well-developed network of monitoring stations from the headwaters to the foothills is desired, in order to combat floods and undertake adequate disaster preparedness measures. Another necessary codicil would be generating accurate and detailed maps for every 3 km of heavily embanked river stretch, with encoded extent and levels of maximum flooding risks at probable breach sites (Mishra, 2000: 106–07). In the case of the 126 km long eastern Kosi embankment, well-nigh 40 such large-scale maps need to be produced. This would give people ample time to think and plan ahead, and act wisely in their search for safer places of refuge or shelter whenever flood threats become imminent. Capacity-building options need to be incorporated simultaneously for improving public perception and understanding of flood processes and developing flood preparedness through a participatory approach.


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For advanced flood forecasting and warning, real time sharing of daily forecast data between and amongst upstream and downstream nations is needed (Ahmad et al., 2001: 19). Flood warning systems, however, need to be made more efficient and cost-effective, which ought to consider the whole forecasting–warning–response–feedback system. This system needs to be designed as a single entity rather than the subject of a fragmented set of responsibilities (Penning-Rowsell and Tapsell, 2002: 379).

Eco-hydrological Viewpoint of Floods in South Asia Growing Mismatch between Projected and Observed Behaviour of Managed Rivers Engineering regulation of flood flows in rivers is dependent on processbased flood prediction approaches and non-process based statistical interpretations (Ward, 1978: 68). The work of hydrologists is, therefore, largely rooted in theoretical and empirical assumptions guided by the physical laws and the development and testing of process/non-process based models (Dunbar and Acreman, 2001: 7). However, from the point of view of application to practise in the real world, such reductive analytical techniques do not have great utility in predicting the physical reality of true natural events like floods. In most flood predictions, superfluous mathematical rigour and theoretical probabilistic scaffolding, inherent in techniques like frequency and mathematical probability distributions, do not seem to have a practical side. Given the diverse causative factors of floods, interacting in complex ways, one-dimensional hydraulic models are ineffective to credibly represent the spatially heterogeneous physical processes involved, often dependent on antecedent conditions, like the effect of stream–aquifer interactions (Ramirez, 2000: 293). Furthermore, hypothetically-derived long observation records and the notion of a stationary world, where geophysical processes like the changes in climate, land use, river morphology, tectonic structure, and so on, are not considered, is likely to yield increasingly speculative and unrealistic results in traditional hydrological modelling exercises (Klemes, 1993: 168). The lack of a clear understanding of the physical

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processes involved also leads to the general misconception of large floods occurring at semi-regular intervals, for instance, once every 100 years (Kundzewicz, 2002: 7). In such an oversimplified approach, there can be absolutely no certainty that a 100-year flood may not recur more than once a century or a greater magnitude 1,000-year flood may not strike within the 100-year period. Moreover, design flood analysis using an event-based methodology does not represent the ecological characteristics of the catchment or the river basin. For instance, the prevalence of diverse and complex interactive processes and non-linear flow systems in permeable alluvial basins render the use of such procedures inappropriate and erroneous (Webster, 1999: 255). As a result of such synthetic approaches divorced from the real world, dams that are primarily meant for flood control have in many cases induced floods, and embankments designed on illusive flood frequency basis have repeatedly failed to offer protection. In this connection, it is important to realise that a complete insulation against floods cannot be gained from any flood defence work (Kundzewicz and Kaczmarek, 2000: 70). In terms of economic damages from floods in India, Gupta et al. (2003) have established the grave shortcomings of the flood control and mitigation measures taken so far. Planned changes in the regimes of rivers also require a comprehensive knowledge of the nature and scale of sediment transportation. However, a big gap in knowledge exists on the sediment load of fluvial flow–sediment–morphology systems at adequate spatial locations and/or time scale. Arbitrary ‘fixing’ of silt loads at 1/5,000 of the inflow stream discharge is often the persuasive logic at play while designing a project (Newson, 1997: 196). This has resulted in greater incidences of flooding, hazardous bank erosion and induced water logging in several stretches along the floodplain and the riparian corridor. It can be deduced that narrowly focused reductionist engineering needs to evolve with time and thus understand the tropical river ecosystems and the ecology of the floodplains in a comprehensive manner. In a desire to use their skills to tame and control rivers, disciplinary engineers missed out on their ecological peculiarities. In Figure 2.11, a comparative analysis of the hydrographs of temperate (a, b) and tropical (c, d) river systems at specific locations has been presented, which appositely outlines the basic differences in their


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annual flow regimes. Rivers belonging to temperate climates are less subject to marked inter- and intra-annual aberrations in flow and exhibit a fairly uniform and average flow pattern. On the contrary, tropical monsoon river-ecosystems are in every respect unique, evincing an exceptionally high discharge rate dominated by a wide degree of temporal variability in both inter- and intra-annual flows. The dynamics of sediment discharge and concentration closely parallels such a discharge hydrograph (see Figure 2.11). Figure 2.11 Comparative Annual Hydrographs of Two European and Indian Rivers 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0

c) Ganges (Farakka) (1949-1973) Discharge [m3/s]

Discharge [m3/s]

a) Rhine (Rees) (1930-1997)

2

4

6

8

10

5×104 4×104 3×104 2×104 1×104 0

12

2

4

Time [Month]

2

4

6 8 Time [Month]

10

12

d) Narmada (Jhamtara) (1949-1974)

600 500 400 300 200 100 0

Discharge [m3/s]

Discharge [m3/s]

b) Seine (Paris) (1928-1979)

6 8 Time [Month]

10

12

1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0

2

4

6 8 Time [Month]

10

12

Source: Global Run-off Data Centre (GRDC). Available at: http://www.grdc.sr.unh.edu/html/Polygons/P6335020.html (Figure 2.11a ) http://www.grdc.sr.unh.edu/html/Polygons/P2846800.html (Figure 2.11b) http://www.grdc.sr.unh.edu/html/Polygons/P6122300.html (Figure 2.11c) http://www.grdc.sr.unh.edu/html/Polygons/P2853500.html (Figure 2.11d) (downloaded on 10 January 2006)

Main Elements of an Eco-hydrological Viewpoint on Floods The emerging concept of eco-hydrology presents an opportunity to build on the insights and experiences integrated from various disciplines in addressing the problems related to managing river floods.

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The overarching goal of the evolving concept is to match a problem with the native river system process and to find solutions, which can then be identified at the specific spatial and temporal scales (Thoms and Parsons, 2002: 116). The principal elements of this new perspective on floods are as follows: 1. Floods are essentially natural processes and the characteristic feature of all fluvial systems/drainage basins on earth. They ensue from diverse and complex physical and hydrological processes, with essentially non-point or dispersed sources. 2. Floods tend to have many beneficial contributions through ecosystem services, thus providing important economic opportunities. 3. In the South Asian river system, floods are unique and need to be tackled individually, with the help of research across the different micro, meso and macro scales. 4. Elimination of floods will be ecologically destructive and economically unviable. 5. A high spatial and temporal variability (dynamics and concentration) of the sedimentation regime is typical of all the Himalayan rivers. Knowledge of the ecological processes related to the movement of sediments in these rivers is essential to hold a better and holistic perspective on the true nature of flood processes. 6. The protective value of natural ecosystems for shielding communities and regions from flood disasters needs incorporation in the new decision making. Measures that enhance both human and ecological resilience in the most vulnerable settings are, therefore, crucial for mitigating flood risks. Locally adopted/ indigenous practices must be encouraged to support and sustain farming systems and other ongoing human and economic activities on the floodplains. 7. Provisions for adequate natural drainage of the floodplains are needed for proper mitigation of floods. This should be made possible by improving, restoring and increasing the number of waterways for the quick and efficient passage of flood as well as making available all natural flood storages on the floodplains.


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8. The new approach to mitigating floods favours the concept of ‘living with floods’, with gaining the advantages of floods and protecting human societies from damage caused by the extreme floods. From the perspectives of such a holistic paradigm, what is also needed is a parallel process of synthesising research for full interdisciplinary collaboration between environmentalists, social scientists, economists and engineers. Hydrologists willing to associate with ecologists would need to shift their mindset from conventional techniques and the disciplinary paradigm, and step up new interdisciplinary thinking processes by accepting and adopting the elements of the novel perspective within the latitudes of their own discipline. This may become possible by undertaking interdisciplinary and participatory research and teaching. Only an open and collaborative approach can help evolve an ecologically sustainable and socially advantageous approach to floods in South Asia. There is no alternative to this path if the rich water systems wealth in the region has to be used for the removal of the great poverty existing in the region.

Note 1. This is the subsurface zone where the mixing of river water and groundwater takes place. A lateral hyporheic zone usually reaches out to 3 km from the wetted channel (Wohl, 2000a: 6). This water can flow to or from the floodplain, contributing to floodplain flows as well as channel flows, respectively (Mertes, 2000: 149).

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Chapter 3 Valuation of Water and Its Policy Implications* Introduction Increasingly, greater parts of the world are getting the status of becoming water scarce. Traditional approaches to the management of water, with its origin in Europe, have reached a plateau. The need for a paradigmatic breakthrough has been recognised at the highest professional levels. The progress towards the new paradigm has been good. In recent years, allocation of water has emerged as the one important feature for such a new paradigm and will surely influence new policy formulations in the coming years. This chapter reviews the diverse approaches to the valuation of economic and ecological services provided by water. This would offer a broad platform for evaluation processes and their policy implications. A large part of the practice related to water systems management is concerned with allocation. Many economists working on water have analysed the problem of water allocation in terms of institutional economic theories (Brown, 1997; Holden and Thobani, 1996; Richards and Singh, 2001). Institutional economic theory, by its very nature, calls for a diminishing transaction costs over time, and proposes ways of establishing a proper water management regime. Institutionalists have talked of the economics of property rights, and the legal frameworks that have been instrumental in the formulation of a number of international statutes related to water. Analysis of the existing legal framework has been motivated by institutional thinking * The author is indebted to Nilanjan Ghosh for significant contributions to this chapter.

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(Barrett, 1994). At the same time, economics of property rights have also been operational in delineating property rights explanations of water disputes (Berck and Lipow, 1994; Richards and Singh, 2001). Thus, institutional thinking has buttressed the framework for sustainable water systems management. However, being broad and qualitative in nature, institutional thinking only provides some guidelines set by international and national statutes. As a result, the laws have often been too rigid to provide easy operational solutions, and sometimes too flexible so as to be interpreted and defined by strong stakeholders according to their conveniences (Chauhan, 1981; Tarasofsky, 1993). Institutional economics has always talked of broad policy decisions, and has only provided theoretical explanations of these. At the same time, while institutionalists have been talking of diminution of the transaction costs, there has been no quantification (or monetisation) of the transaction costs due to their improper delineation. This leaves the policy maker with no benchmark as far as the goal is concerned. Hence, institutional thinking has, so far, not been successful in proposing any tangible, neutral and quantified instrument for water management. Although the statements made in the preceding paragraph are true for international water law, they remain equally valid for water laws for inter-state rivers within national boundaries. The institutional frameworks are often without objective economic instruments, despite their extensive underlying importance. The obvious question is whether it is possible to develop an instrument that can complement this broad subjective configuration provided by statutes? On the other hand, transboundary water disputes within a nation-state have often been attempted to be resolved in the framework of the water law of the nation. Even then, there is no domestic legal framework that makes any such provision for objective evaluation of disputes. Thus, the states abide by the awards of the courts or by orders passed by the concerned bodies vested with the judicial power to take decisions on water-related issues, once such an order has been passed.

Valuation as a Tool Under circumstances where institutional economics has not been able to provide an objective tool for resolution of disputes, there is a need

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to examine whether a more objective instrument can be provided with the help of the emerging tools, like those for valuation. Such tools are indeed in a very early stage of development and, accordingly, need to be used as an approximation. The value of a resource simply reflects the level of its usefulness to the user, whether an individual or a community, a corporate body or even a nation-state. This value varies with the user. The use of valuation in water management and dispute resolution needs to be rationalised. The reasons for the same are as follows: 1. Valuation offers a somewhat objective instrument for decision making: There often arise situations in which valuation can provide a more objective basis for decision ranking (OECD, 1995; Singh, 1994). 2. Valuation aids efficient as well as equitable allocation, helps the process of proper distribution and offers means of achieving better optimality in social consumption and production: Equity and efficiency in the allocation of natural resources have always been viewed as complementary ideas. The inherent conflicts in policy-making emerge from the dichotomy between efficiency and equity. In making a policy, the value yielded by adhering to either equity or efficiency (or a combination of both of them) should be considered. So is the case with distribution. Social planners need to take into account the value of the net social welfare to decide upon the distribution scheme. At the same time, either consumption or production is considered to optimise upon the net economic welfare of a system subject to some constraints. These may be in the form of resource availability, infrastructural bottlenecks, economic identities, and so on. Optimisation exercises yield shadow values (that reflect upon the increase in welfare with a unit release of a particular constraint), which are extremely relevant for future decision making with respect to economic variables (Bouhia, 2001; Mahendrarajah, 1999). Again, valuation of ecosystem degradations helps devise economic instruments like pollution or quantity taxes that can help in reaching social optimality in consumption or production (Acutt and Mason, 1998). 3. Valuation of natural processes or resources can raise awareness of the market and the policy makers on the importance of the ecosystem and related processes under consideration: A high value of a natural

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resource reflects its importance to the user(s) under consideration. Under situations where valuation mechanisms are absent, this importance remains unregistered. For example, the importance of biodiversity conservation or carbon sequestration by wetlands can be better understood, if it can be expressed in relatively quantified monetary terms. This would make the case for the public significance of wetlands, when communities often fail to recognise the same (Bann, 2002; OECD, 2002). 4. Valuation can help legal proceedings for determining damages where a party is held liable for causing harm to another party: In legal proceedings, where one party has caused harm to another, the need to evaluate the loss (in most cases, in monetary terms) and the affecter (when proved guilty) is made to compensate the affected with the value of the damage. This can also be the case for the services provided by the natural ecosystems. Pollution of a stream from upstream areas affects the downstream ecosystems negatively. The economic value of the harm so caused needs to be assessed for obtaining the extent of the negative externalities, so that policies for compensation can be properly addressed (Bann, 2002; OECD, 2002). 5. Valuation helps designing efficient management mechanisms (economic instruments, controls, and so on): Although economic instruments like a tax or a subsidy can help in the attainment of the optimality in consumption, when damages due to pollution, for example, are valued, valuation opens up a range of management options (Acutt and Mason, 1998). Apart from taxes, internalisation of the externalities and governmental controls in terms of laying a ceiling or a floor in the associated economic activity that creates the pollution can also help the process. Tradable permits also stand as another option (Hanley, 1998). 6. Valuation of natural processes and resources helps revise investment decisions, like in infrastructure development, which might otherwise ignore the related harm expected to be caused to the natural environment: Investment decisions on public goods and utilities (for example roads) in many countries largely ignore the possible environmental damages, thereby causing those damages in the long run, although the damages are accounted for as natural events. These have adverse impacts on the natural environment


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and human livelihoods dependent on them. While making investment decisions on projects, valuation of these ecological costs must be considered. It might happen that the ecological cost might be large enough to exceed the projected economic benefits from an investment, needing revision of the investment proposal (Bann, 2002). 7. Valuation reduces the scope for market failures and enhances its creation: Sometimes there may be goods for which markets do not exist. Examples of these include certain environmental resources, which are apparently abundant in nature such as air, water, and so on. As a result of the non-existent markets, there is no market clearing price. When such a resource become scarce, better resource management may call for the creation of markets. Valuation of the resource helps this process (Acutt and Mason, 1998; Fisher, 1995). This is also true for certain public goods and services. It is thus apparent that in all the major economic activities of allocation, production, distribution and consumption, valuation can play an important role in decision making and prioritisation. Valuation, thus, can offer a mechanism for extending justice and equity while setting conservation priorities within a limited budget.

Valuation in the Resolution of Water Disputes However, for environmental resources like water, the most important function is perhaps the correction of the market failures, which have great implications for its sustainable management. Given such a background, valuation has been proposed in this exercise as an instrument for mediating transboundary water conflicts. As a tool, valuation seems to be a more tractable one than the others and, if properly applied in the transboundary context, it can offer a more objective basis for resolving disputes. It should also be remembered that of the types of applications that have been extended from the framework of economics, valuation happens to be the most fundamental one. In the game-theoretic frameworks, pay-offs to agents depend on the values they put on water. Institutional approaches subsume valuation, thereby either enabling or preventing institutions from emerging.

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Water pricing with ensured minimum domestic supplies to all, whether by a government mandate or by market forces, is an important way to improve water allocations and to encourage conservation (Tsur et al., 2004). Interestingly, despite the realisations, there have been very few attempts at establishing an objective economic analysis of policies through the process of valuation. In the case of water, valuation studies have remained as the topic of interest of some economists. Such studies have so far rarely got involved effectively in policy-making, or as an objective instrument for analysing and understanding water disputes. If realised properly, valuation offers an effective approach to reducing conflicts among various stakeholders using a common source of water (Ghosh and Bandyopadhyay, 2002 and 2003; Ghosh, 2002). A number of publications consider certain particular aspects of water pricing, with comprehensive reviews being rare. Such an approach cannot remain confined within the disciplinary bounds. This chapter attempts to address this gap, by trying to summarise the accumulated knowledge on valuation of water. The review finds inspiration from ecological, environmental, resource and agricultural economics. The initiating point of the chapter lies with the notion that valuation of water resources involves the valuation of the services that water provides. It looks at two broad aspects of the valuation of water, the valuation of the economic services from water and of the ecological services. The chapter has been divided into four sections. The section ‘Valuation of Economic Services of Water’ relates the reader with the database of the literature that exists in the form of economic services of water. These broadly involve the valuation of the services that water provides in the economic sectors. The studies have been broadly categorised according to the methodology followed, and at the next level sectoral classifications have also been made. The section ‘Valuation of Ecosystem Services of Water’ addresses valuation of the ecological services of water, commonly described as ecosystem services. Finally, in the last section, an attempt is made to relate to the notion of scarcity value, as it exists in the literature, and I have argued how the various valuation modes followed so far in the academic literature have actually been valuing ‘scarcity’.


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Valuation of Economic Services of Water Depending on the way water has been treated in the various studies, it can be divided into two broad categories: 1. Water as an input to the production process. 2. Water as a good in the consumer’s utility bundle.

Valuation with Water as an Input to the Production Process Contribution of water as an input to the total output occurs primarily in the agricultural and the industrial sectors. The agricultural sector stands as the one that consumes most of the water supplies in the form of irrigation. A great number of studies have been conducted on valuing irrigation waters, with the production function approach. The valuation of water has been reviewed considering the separate use of water in agriculture and industry. Pricing of Agricultural Waters

While discussing pricing of agricultural waters, it is important to remember that the criteria for and practice of water pricing is not uniform. With price playing the fundamental role in allocation, a variety of methods for pricing water are available in the literature, which can be put under the following categories: 1. Pricing in practice. 2. Pricing criteria. 3. Valuation of agricultural water. Pricing in Practice

The prevailing pricing methods include volumetric, non-volumetric and market-based pricing methods. Under volumetric pricing mechanisms, the charge for irrigation water is based on the consumption of actual amounts of water. Non-volumetric measures are based on output, input, area and land values. Market-based mechanisms, developed recently, address the existing inefficiencies in the institutional mechanisms of allocation (Tsur et al., 2004).

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1. Volumetric Methods: The requirement for valuing water under this method is a measure of the volume of water consumed from an irrigation system. This information is collected by an authority or water users’ association, which sets the prices, monitors use and collects fees. Easter and Welsch (1986a), Small and Carruthers (1991) and Bandaragoda (1998) refer to the information requirements and costs, and priorities to be considered. Easter and Welsch (1986b) mention the operational and institutional problems of implementing irrigational projects. Easter et al. (1997) have described temporal block-pricing methods that are followed in the varying surface irrigation charges in the state of Maharashtra in India, where the water charge varies by crop and season. This implies that if the volume of water delivered per unit time by the water source diminishes throughout the cropping season, the effective price per unit of water should rise proportionally. In industrialised countries with sophisticated methods for monitoring and accession of information, multitiered volumetric pricing methods are often followed. Studies by Rao (1988) in the context of California and by Yaron (1997) in Israel reveal such examples. Boland and Whittington (2000) have traced the recent movement towards increasing block tariffs in developing countries. 2. Non-volumetric Methods: Non-volumetric pricing methods are used in situations where volumetric pricing is either unfeasible or undesirable. Several such pricing methods are common for irrigation service—output pricing, input pricing, area pricing and betterment levy pricing ( Johansson, 2000; Tsur et al., 2004). Area pricing is the most common mode of pricing irrigation water (Bos and Walters, 1990; Bosworth et al., 2002). Under area pricing, users are charged for water use per unit irrigated area, often depending on crop choice, extent of crop irrigation, methods of irrigation and season. Easter and Welsch (1986a) and Easter and Tsur (1995) explain its widespread prevalence in terms of its ease of implementation and administration, and its suitability in continuous flow irrigation. Due to the high costs of a meter system, it is often more efficient to use per unit area pricing than volumetric pricing when allocating water. However, this method suffers from the practical difficulty that the area of land is assumed to be an adequate proxy for the proportion of


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water received, which may not be so because of logistical, physical and political reasons (Rhodes and Sampath, 1988). Under the output pricing system, farmers pay a water fee for each unit of output produced, while under input pricing they pay for irrigation water through higher prices for inputs purchased from the government or a water agency. Both input and output pricing are easy to implement since these are readily observable and measurement of the water used is not needed ( Johansson, 2000). However, neither measure is favoured by economists because of distortion effects inherent to taxation (Rhodes and Sampath, 1988). 3. Market-based Methods: It has often been stated that the marketbased mechanisms can be used to reduce the inefficiencies in water allocation (Easter et al., 1999). Rosegrant and Binswanger (1994) suggest that water markets provide a flexible and efficient way to allocate water, while at the same time providing incentives that are beneficial for water users. When the saved water can be traded, they provide extra income to farmers, while pricing leads to a reduction in income. They also suggest that markets lead to the highest value use of water. As shown by Holland and Moore (2003) in the context of the Central Arizona Project, a restrictive market mechanism on groundwater resources could result in inefficient solutions. According to Hearne and Easter (1995), markets should be recognised as providing a means of allocating water according to its real value, thereby leading to efficiency gains and conservation. Gardner and Fullerton (1968), Hartman and Seastone (1970), Marino and Kemper (1999) and Holland and Moore (2003) suggest that markets can provide a means to allocate water according to its opportunity cost, resulting in efficiency gains. The nature of the markets can range from formal to informal. Informal water markets are found, for example, in India (Saleth, 1997), Pakistan (Bandaragoda, 1998; Meinzen-Dick, 1997), Chile (Hearne and Easter, 1995) and Mexico (Thobani, 1997). Transactions are typically small scale and local, selling surplus water to neighbouring farmers or towns (Bosworth et al., 2002; Johansson, 2000). Formal markets involve buyable and sellable water rights, permanent and seasonal transfers or transactions between sectors and jurisdictions. Examples exist for western

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USA (Colby, 1998), California (Howitt, 1998), Texas (Griffin, 1998) and Spain (Garrido, 1998). The most advanced form of tradable water rights are reported to exist in the MurrayDarling Basin in Australia, with seasonal and permanent states of diversion entitlements (Bosworth et al., 2002). Pricing Criteria

There are two broad criteria for charging a price for water. One involves the criterion of equity, while the other involves efficiency. An efficient allocation of water resources maximises the total net benefit that can be generated using the existing technologies and with the volumes available (Easter et al., 1997). In other words, efficiency incorporates the equalisation of marginal benefits from the use of the resource across sectors to maximise social welfare (Dinar et al., 1997; Ghosh and Bandyopadhyay, 2002, 2003; Ghosh, 2002). Sampath (1992) describes four situations under which efficiency can be defined pertaining to the relevant time horizon. Johansson et al. (2002) adopted a similar definition of efficiency. As put by Dinar et al. (1997), in the short run, an efficient allocation maximises net benefits over variable costs and results in the equalisation of marginal benefits from the use of the resource across sectors to maximise social welfare. In the absence of taxes or other distortionary constraints, an allocation that maximises net benefits is called first-best efficient or Pareto efficient ( Johansson et al, 2002; Tsur et al., 2004). With the incorporation of long-run fixed costs in the short-run maximisation problem, Pareto efficient allocations are possible. However, when maximisation occurs under distortionary constraints, the allocation is termed second-best efficient ( Johansson, 2000; Mascollel et al., 1995; Tsur and Dinar, 1997). Equity of water allocation is concerned with ‘fairness’ of allocation across economically disparate groups in society, and often they turn out to be incompatible with efficiency objectives (Dinar et al., 1997; Dinar and Subramanian, 1997; Seagraves and Easter, 1983). As suggested by Sen (1973), the concept of ‘fairness in allocation’ is vague and amorphous, and, hence, subjective in nature. Therefore, it is essential to obtain a yardstick to measure fairness. Sampath (1990) uses a Rawlsian concept of fairness to investigate equity in India’s irrigation systems. The concept seeks to maximise the welfare of the society’s least well-off individuals and allows evaluation of reform strategies in these terms.


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According to Tsur and Dinar (1995), water pricing mechanisms are not very effective in redistributing income. However, it always remains in the government’s national interest to increase water available for certain sectors and citizens. Hence, certain sectors of the economy (for example, agriculture) are offered water at subsidised rates. This is where inefficiency often creeps in. Seckler et al. (1988) differentiate between efficiency and equity concerns related to irrigation pricing, considering efficiency as a managerial issue, and equity as a policy issue. Pricing can be an effective tool for both equity and efficiency under certain conditions. Differential pricing based on volume, as stated in volumetric methods, is based on the notion of vertical equity. On the other hand, market-based pricing is more likely to produce efficiency. When left to the market forces, water tends to find a value of its own. The market price of the resource bears the signal of the level of its availability and scarcity. A higher market price of water would reflect on a higher effective demand for water. With water finding its value in the market, a trend towards greater efficiency is seen. In the contexts of the variants from equity and efficiency, nonvolumetric prices might apply. This is particularly true for output pricing. Under output pricing, it is assumed that a higher output entails a higher use of water. It, thus, loses its visions thoroughly from the efficiency notions of resource-use efficiency and factor productivity. Output pricing can result in an individual getting unnecessarily penalised, despite lower exploitation of the resource. Valuation of Agricultural Waters

Attempts by environmental and agricultural economists to obtain the value of water exist in reasonable numbers. In a majority of the cases, agricultural waters have been valued with a production function approach. This involves assuming a production function where water is an input in the production process. Theoretical details of the economic principles based on which such pricing and hence the demand and supply curves for water can be derived have been provided by Tsur et al. (2004: 64–85). Similar to economic valuations in various contexts over time and space, assigning a monetary value to water through improved agricultural output, resulting from improved availability of the resource, involves what has popularly been termed a ‘with-versuswithout’ comparison (Gittinger, 1982).

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Bouhia (2001) provides a value of water from a constrained maximisation exercise on Morocco. This study stands as one of the most comprehensive ones, in terms of structure and content. The analysis talks of the sectoral shadow values of water by considering the three sectors, namely, industrial, urban and agricultural. Ghosh and Bandyopadhyay (2002), in a theoretical yet simplistic mode, propound static and dynamic frameworks to set the rules for optimal payment, which the beneficiaries should pay the affected for obtaining benefits from a marginal increase in water usage. They (Ghosh and Bandyopadhyay, 2003) suggest similar exercises in the upstream– downstream framework. All these exercises talk of the shadow value of water that emerges from the value of the multiplier associated with the optimisation exercise. Barring a few (some of which have already been mentioned), most of the studies have been confined to the sectoral allocation of water. Of the publications on the agricultural shadow values, those by Acharya (1998) and Kumar et al. (2003) are recent. Young (1996) suggests applied approaches that incorporate change in net income, the most commonly used method of determining the shadow price of irrigation water. Omezzine et al. (1998) take the average returns to water from agriculture, and have set the path to the approach to valuation. Among the examples of economic analysis of irrigation issues using a mathematical programming approach is a study by Bernardo et al. (1987), in which a programming model was developed and applied to assess irrigation management decisions in north-western USA. The researchers identified various responses to the growing water scarcity and rising energy costs, including more careful irrigation scheduling, crop substitution, the adoption of irrigation labour practices and the idling of land. Mahendrarajah (1999) uses the latest optimisation tools and simulation models in his study on small-scale water resource systems in Sri Lanka. Gomez-Limon and Riesgo (2004) have developed Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) mathematical programming models that reveal the usefulness of differential analysis in evaluating the impact of a water pricing policy. This was applied in the case of Duero Valley in Spain. This allows significant differences in the evolution of agricultural incomes to be observed as well as the recovery of costs by the state, demand for agricultural employment and the consumption of agrochemicals, resulting from


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rising prices of irrigation water in various groups of farmers within a given irrigated area. Lindgren (1999) used field-based primary data with the residual valuation method for the evaluation of Stampriet aquifer of Namibia. Existing literature points out that residual imputation is valid if two conditions are satisfied (Southgate, 2000; Young, 1996). First, all inputs and outputs must be exchanged in markets that are both competitive and unregulated. On the factor side, this means that the price of each and every input is equal to its marginal value product (that is output price multiplied by the additional output associated with a marginal increase in employment of the factor). Second, the production function should be such that an X-fold increase in each and every input leads exactly to an X-fold increase in output (Southgate, 2000). However, Lindgren (1999) hardly makes such assumptions explicitly, and generates the value with a small sample of 17 farmers from the questionnaire method, which also raises questions on the data and the estimates. In India, quite a few economists have, however, worked extensively on detailed analysis of economic contributions from irrigation and related agricultural production. An impressive amount of literature is available on this subject, and Vaidyanathan (1999) has given a realistic picture of the economics of irrigation in India. The water sector suffers from economic ills of under utilisation, inequitable distribution and heavy loss of stored water, but their quantification and subsequent use in policy has not happened. Interestingly, research on more advanced topics, for instance, pricing of water, allocation under conditions of physical scarcity, and so on, has not entered the decision support arena. This has not deterred scholars though. There have been quite a few studies that have unanimously indicated that the prevailing irrigation water rate for different crops in India neither promotes use efficiency nor cost recovery (Ghosh, Unpublished; MoWR, 2002; Nagaraj et al., 2003; Sangal, 1991; Vaidyanathan, 1994). Vaidyanathan (1994) classified three major heads of cost of irrigation water, namely, operations and maintenance, depreciation and interest on capital invested. Nagaraj et al., by considering the same three heads, revealed the yawning gap between revenue collected and expenditure incurred, in the context of the various crops. The gap persists, and the problem related to cost recovery has mostly been attributed to the political

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economy of the water sector in India (Vaidyanathan, 1999). In a recent essay, Vaidyanathan (2004) addresses the issue of water charges and suggests a two-pronged strategy involving the media to highlight the current mismanagement of irrigation and utilising farmers’ awareness of the improved water management to mobilise their support for better maintenance by operational and maintenance (O&M) cost recovery. Although a good beginning can be marked by this, there is no doubt that the political economy of water pricing is complex and made even for complicated by the vote-bank politics (Gulati et al., 2005; Mollinga, 2003). Somanathan and Ravindranath (2006) argue that raising the marginal price of electricity towards near its actual cost could substantially mitigate the problem of over-extraction of groundwater. They have arrived at this conclusion with the help of a survey conducted, estimating the value of water, and have also arrived at a structure of demand functions. Ghosh and Bandyopadhyay (forthcoming) have also talked of the political economy of conflicts over the Cauvery basin, and have attributed conflicts to non-diminishing scarcity value of water from paddy cultivation in the basin, resulting in an ‘insatiable demand’. Pricing of Water as an Input in the Industrial Sector

The value of water in the industrial sector emerges from its role as an intermediate public good that plays an active part in the production processes, thereby reducing the unit cost of production. Despite the ubiquity of water use among manufacturing firms, studies concerned with the structure of industrial water demand are few. A majority of the water use studies for industry were performed by estimating water demand models where the ratios of total expenditures to total quantity purchased were used as proxies for prices. The initial studies of water use in the industry were conducted by estimating single equation water demand models where the ratio of total expenditures to total quantity purchased was used as a proxy for price (DeRooy, 1974; Rees, 1969; Turnoskvsky, 1969). Grebenstein and Field (1979) and Babin et al. (1982) extended these analyses to incorporate trans-log cost functions where water was included and treated like any other input as labour, capital and raw materials, and the average cost of water was used to determine the price. Most of these studies used average cost of water as an indicator of price. Thompson and Singleton (1986),


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Renzetti (1992) and a few others on recent accounts (Dupont and Renzetti, 2001; Reynaud, 2003) have used either econometric or programming methods to examine the structure of industrial water demands. Renzetti (1988) assumed a Cobb-Douglas production function to derive a water demand function in the process of estimating industrial water use elasticity. He used firm level data on water use and expenditures for British Columbia manufacturing firms in 1981. In another paper, Renzetti (1992) reports the general findings suggesting that water demand was inelastic. In most jurisdictions, self-supplied firms typically obtain their raw water intakes at little or no external cost (Renzetti and Dupont, 2003). In these cases, analysts typically have access to information on the quantity of water withdrawn and, perhaps, the firms’ characteristics. A number of methods have been employed for inferring the value of industrial water use in these circumstances. One straightforward method involves calculating the ratio of the value of output to the quantity of water intake (Giuliano and Spaziani, 1985; Mody, 1997). This approach is problematic, as it fails to account for the contributions to production of non-water inputs and for differences in revenue across firms that are not related to water use, such as the structure of output markets. A variation on this approach is adopted by Wang and Lall (1999). They developed a marginal productivity approach for valuing the industrial use of water and applied it using data from 2,000 industrial firms in China, where water, as well as capital, labour, energy and raw materials, is treated as an input to a production function. The authors have regressed total revenue against input quantities and a set of regional and scale dummies, using data from a cross section of Chinese manufacturing plants. On more recent accounts, Goldar (2003) has worked on water use and its value in the Indian industry with econometric fittings. Prior to that, Goldar and Pandey (2001) studied the distilleries in India, and worked out their pricing and abatement cost of pollution. This chapter also exhibits how in countries like India, where concentration-based environmental standards are adopted for water pollutants and financial extraction costs of water are too low, firms have incentives to dilute the effluent stream with the excessive use of water. Kumar (2006) has used input distance function to estimate industrial water demand in India, with a linear

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programming approach on a sample of 92 firms for over three years. The results show that the average shadow price of water is Rs 7.21 per kilolitre and the price elasticity of derived demand for water is high, –1.11 on average, a value similar to what has been found by other researchers working on developing countries (for example, China and Brazil). This indicates that water charges can be an effective instrument for water conservation. Holmes (1988) and Renzetti (2001) estimate econometric models that demonstrate that water treatment plant costs rise with decreases in water quality. Gibbons (1986) reports on the use of linear programming models to base valuation measures on the marginal cost of recirculation and concludes that the values are typically quite low: US$ 6–10/acre-foot (1980 US$ rates) for cooling water and US$ 16–75/acre-foot for process water applications. According to Renzetti and Dupont (2003), such methods are useful when data on water prices and quantities are not available. Under conditions of regulatory restrictions that restrict the firms’ freedom to alter water intake quantities, estimation of a restricted cost or profit function in which water is treated as a quasifixed input, as conducted by Halvorsen and Smith (1984 and 1986), is suggested. The estimated cost or profit function coefficients can then be used to calculate shadow values for water.

Valuation of Water as a Good in the Utility Bundle of the Consumers Valuation of water as a good in the utility bundle of the consumers has been followed with three approaches, which can be classified under two broad heads: the stated preference approaches and revealed preference approaches. Stated preference approach has only one component, which is popularly known as contingent valuation method (CVM) that involves creation of a hypothetical market, and asking respondents about their willingness to pay for a change in their ambient environment, qualitative or quantitative (Kolstad, 1999; Mitchell and Carson, 1989). Under revealed preference approaches, there are two categories, namely, travel cost methods and hedonic pricing methods. The travel cost method involves the estimation of the value of an environmental resource through the amount spent by a consumer in the process of visiting it. On the other hand, hedonic pricing estimates


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the value of a resource through the differentials in the property prices resulting from variations in ambient environments through location changes (Kolstad, 1999). Applications of such methods can be found in limited numbers for the irrigation waters, in a greater abundance for the urban waters and for various non-use values of water. Pricing of Irrigation Water as a Good in the Utility Bundle of the Consumers

Irrigation water has rarely been priced with the consideration of the same as a good in the consumer’s utility bundle. Contingent valuation has not been used very frequently in the study of water for irrigation. The same can be said about travel cost methods. The seemingly apparent inapplicability of such methods in valuing irrigation water (where water is always to be seen as the input in the production process) has perhaps restrained research with these methods. However, hedonic pricing perhaps seems to be one that can be applied in this case, though in a restricted manner. This has been used in ex post evaluations of irrigation projects and usually involves analysis of agricultural real estate values. An econometric model relating these values to all relevant variables is estimated. Of particular interest are the price differentials between irrigated and non-irrigated land, with proper allowance for other factors influencing the market value of real estate like location and soil quality (Southgate, 2000). In the late 1980s, for example, Whitaker and Alzamora (1990) conducted a survey of real estate values to determine the premium offered for irrigated land in Ecuador. Their sample included parcels lying inside systems that account for three-fifths of the irrigable area of the country’s government-run projects. Price data for similar parcels close to but outside those same systems were also collected. Per hectare premiums were found to range from US$ 367 to US$ 3,897. The weighted average for 25 projects was US$ 1,091 per ha, which was a little less than half the average cost of irrigating that same land. That is, ex post evaluation revealed that irrigation investment in Ecuador had turned out to be quite inefficient. Pricing of Water Supply to Urban Areas

The contingent valuation method can be used to estimate consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for just about any environmental good

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or service, including clean water. Whittington et al. (1991) and Whittington et al. (1993) have carried out contingent valuation studies of the WTP of households for improved sanitation services. The same approach can be used in potable water valuation. Whittington et al. (1990) have estimated the WTP of the consumers for water services, in a case study in Southern Haiti. Jordan and Elnagheeb (1993) have examined the WTP for improvements in drinking water quality. Ragan et al. (1993) provide estimates of the damages from residential use of the mineralised waters. Dasgupta (2003) uses contingent valuation methods for evaluating safe water supplies for urban households in Delhi. Esrey et al. (1991) have talked of the effects of improved water supply and sanitation on various diseases like ascariasis, diarrhoea, and so on. Musser et al. (2003) talk of contingent valuation methods as providing useful information for resolving disputes related to the provision of drinking water. Altaf and Hughes (1994) also conducted another contingent valuation study for measuring the demand for improved urban sanitation services in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Stewart’s (1996) study on the valuation of Sierra Nevada is one of the most comprehensive studies and deserves mention in the context of urban water valuation. Harris and Tate (2002) present a detailed analysis of the economic aspects of municipal water servicing. The report initially reviews some of the economic theory related to water management, and then describes water quantity and quality issues in Ontario, closing with selected estimates of pollution-related costs to water utilities. Billings and Day (1989) and Billings and Jones (1996) have long been talking of the factors affecting urban water demand, and eventually of frameworks for forecasting urban water demand. Pricing of urban water often involved block rates in several places around the world (Harris and Tate, 2002). Billings and Agthe (1980a, 1980b) have shown the methodologies and discussed the concerned issues involved with price elasticities of water under conditions of increasing block rates.

Valuation of Ecosystem Services of Water In recent years, the ecological services provided by the natural systems have interested economists, independent of their values in traditional economics. Although the ecologists have started to identify the


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ecological services provided by the natural systems over time (Ehrlich and Ehrlich, 1981; Holdren and Ehrlich, 1974), there remains a lot to be done. Despite the extensive scientific research worldwide, the appreciation of the contributions of water as an input in the sustenance of diverse natural ecosystems has remained neglected. A rudimentary recognition of the water dependent ecological services has, however, now appeared in the form of the provision of environmental flow requirements. Hitzhusen (2007) provides a useful collection of papers related to the economic valuation of river systems. Environmental Flow Requirements mean the allocation of the part of the flow in rivers for the maintenance of ecosystem goods and services, and making the rest available for direct human uses like agriculture, industry, power generation, domestic supplies, and so on (Acreman, 1998; Smakhtin et al., 2004). With increasing diversion of water from the natural aquatic systems, damage to the ecosystem services and processes became evident. Establishment of a balanced allocation mechanism between the needs of the aquatic ecosystems and of the diversion of water has become critical in many river basins around the world (Naiman et al., 2002; Postel et al., 1996; Vörösmarty et al., 2000). The Millennium Ecosystems Assessment has further stressed the need for the valuation of ecosystem services for water (Aylward et al., 2005). Although the ecosystem services provided by water gets hardly any recognition in the scenario of the reductionist, received view of policy making in general, informed policy makers with a comprehensive knowledge base in a number of countries have slowly realised the extensive value that ecosystem services can provide. One of the initial attempts at discussing economic valuation of ecosystem services was Proposed Practices for Economic Analysis of River Basin Projects by the Committee on Water Resources in 1958 (Bingham et al., 1995). Valuation of ecosystem continued throughout the next decades (de Groot et al., 2002), but research attention has expanded greatly since two publications helped the subject gain popularity. The first is a book, edited by Daily (1997), which discusses ecosystem services and their valuation, and provides several case studies. The second is a paper by Costanza et al. (1997) that came up with a value of US$ 33 trillion for ecosystem services across the globe by extrapolating with previous and new data. Though their methods and results were criticised, the papers served their purposes by bringing attention to and provoking discussion on the topic of ecosystem service valuation.

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Ecosystem Services Provided by Water Ecosystem services provided by water involve the usefulness of stream/river flows, groundwater, wetlands, estuaries, near-coast marine ecosystems, and so on. Humans receive a great variety of benefits from these ecosystems free of cost. These benefits are provided in terms of both goods and services. In the category of ‘goods’, Dyson et al. (2003) include clean drinking water, fish and fibre, while in the category of ‘services’, the components are water purification, flood mitigation and recreational opportunities. Rivers and other aquatic ecosystems need water and other inputs, like sediment, to perform the associated ecological processes and provide related benefits to people. Environmental flows are vital for the health of these ecosystems (Dyson et al., 2003). Unavailability of these flows causes degradation of the ecosystems, and thus deprives the people and communities of the ecosystem services they depend on. What stands as a danger in the long run is that the long-term absence of environmental flows puts at risk the very existence of dependent ecosystems and, therefore, the lives, livelihood and security of dependent communities and economies. Existing literature clearly reveals that the quantitative knowledge of changes in ecosystem functions does not exist in the details needed. One important process on which attempts for quantified modelling have been made is that of the self-purification potential of the river flows. The load of agricultural nutrients on aquatic ecosystems has increased considerably during the last few decades. This puts an extra load on the potential for self-purification available in river flows (Mitsch and Gosselink, 2000). Thus, in studies on ecosystem services, the self-purification potential is frequently evaluated (Bystrom, 2000 and 1998; Gren et al., (1997). Dyson et al. (2003) discuss various methods for defining water requirements and for maintaining the ecological processes. The same has previously been set by Dunbar et al. (1998). Tharme (1996) and Arthington et al. (1998) provide reviews of these methods. Smakhtin et al. (2004), in a seminal attempt, summarise the results of the pilot study on global assessment of the total volumes of water required for such purposes in the river basins of the world. These volumes constitute the Environmental Flows Requirements (EFR) at the global level. Previous studies in this regard have used purely hydrological methods, which derive environmentally acceptable flows from the


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traditional hydrological point of view and use a limited ecological or eco-hydrological knowledge base (Hughes and Münster, 2000; Richter et al., 1997), rather than multidisciplinary, comprehensive methods like functional analysis, involving expert panel discussions and collection of significant amounts of geomorphological and ecological data (Arthington et al., 1998; King and Louw, 1998).

Economic Valuation of Ecosystem Services of Water One of the most comprehensive reviews of literature on economic valuation of the ecosystem services of water has been done by Dalton and Cobourn (2003). The existing body of literature on such issues need to be seen under three heads, namely, the theory behind ecosystem service valuation, application of ecosystem service valuation and multifunctional attributes of agriculture and ecosystems valuation. This classification continues in the work of Dalton and Cobourn (2003). The theoretical approach for the valuation of ecosystem services is, by far, the largest section of the review, because the bulk of the work on ecosystem valuation has been theoretical or analytical. However, attempts to empirically value ecosystems services have been limited in numbers. On the other hand, studies related to ecosystem service valuation in areas such as the measurement of the multifunctional attributes of agriculture provide a contrasting vision of how to expand the value of agricultural production into food and functional values. Theory of Valuation of Ecosystem Services

Despite movements towards collaborative research at the interface of environmental and economic sciences, the differences in delineations of structures and contents of the two disciplines often act as impediments for transcending disciplinary boundaries. However, the value of ecosystem services can be a useful guide when distinguishing and measuring trade-offs between society and the rest of nature are possible and where they can be made to enhance human welfare in a sustainable manner. While win–win opportunities for human activities within the environment may exist, they also appear to be increasingly scarce in a ‘full’ global ecological–economic system. This makes valuation all the more essential for guiding future human activity. Farber et al. (2002), while talking of economic valuation versus ecological valuation, feel that

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though economics talks of values in various terms like use, exchange, labour, utility, scarcity, and so on, ecology relies on the energy theory of value. This chapter addresses critical zones or threshold conditions of the non-linear relationship between the ecosystems and economic uses. This leads to the idea that there is an insurance premium that society could pay to avoid a natural catastrophe. In another paper, Limburg et al. (2002), distinguishing between the ecological modes of valuation and economic valuation, suggest that as an ecosystem approaches a state of rapid bifurcation (non-marginality), ecological methods of valuation are more appropriate than economic valuation. This suggests a combined system based on both forms of valuation, depending on where the system is in terms of its marginality. Bockstael et al. (2000) state that value must be stated in comparative terms—the answer to a question should involve two clearly defined alternatives. ‘Compensation measures cannot be defined in isolation. They are entirely dependent on the context and may change as there is change in one or more elements of that context’ (Bockstael et al., 2000: 1385). Therefore, the need for being specific about both the default and changed situation arises. Hannon (2001) attempts to model ecological and economic systems into an ‘input–output’ framework. He assumes that the system is static, linear and requires a system equilibrium assumption. However, he does not address computation of biological costs. The three core competencies of this chapter are delineation of metabolism as net input of the ecosystem, use of economic techniques to evaluate metabolic costs and addition of lost capital to the net output definition to determine the system efficiency. Alexander et al. (1998) assume ‘weak complementarity’, which implies that ecological services are absolutely essential in production and consumption—their value can be as much as the surplus generated in all production and consumption processes. Wilson and Howarth (2002), in an interesting discussion, propose that valuation of ecosystem services should be elicited through free and open public debate to enhance the social equity of the final decision, in contrast to the other methods that rely on individual estimates of WTP or willingness-toaccept (WTA). Farber and Griner (2000), in a critical attempt to value ecosystem change using conjoint analysis, feel that the methodology is more appropriate than any of the others for ecosystem valuation because it allows the valuation of ‘complex multi-attribute values to


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people’ (Farber and Griner, 2000: 1408). Eventually, they show its application in a watershed quality study. However, later on, there have hardly been any attempts to evaluate environmental change with this methodology, may be because of the difficulty of administration and understanding. Kaiser and Roumasset (2002) estimate the value of indirect ecosystem services that do not contribute to the production of a well-valued final good (for example, public goods), in their study on valuing tropical wetlands, by using shadow prices, calculated from an optimising model to estimate the discounted net present value of water resources with a conservation policy and without the conservation policy, respectively. Their economic model involves consumer surplus formulation. Some other notable attempts with regard to the theoretical approach to valuation of the ecosystem services have been those by Antle and Capalbo (2002), Ando et al. (1998), Hawkins (2003), Simpson (2001) and many others. Antle and Capalbo (2002) demonstrate the limitations of using economic decision models that are not integrated with biophysical processes, using an example from Ecuador. Simpson (2001), while delineating a conceptual framework, expresses that the data with which to implement them empirically is generally not available. Conceptual frameworks in these lines have also been developed by Ghosh and Bandyopadhyay (2003). Ghosh and Shylajan (2005) posed a theoretical model of stream flow depletion and pollution affecting the mangroves and fisheries negatively, and they eventually propounded a principle based on which ‘compensation’ can be paid to the fishermen community. There is no doubt that theoretical models have their own novelties, but what constrains their real-life applications is the understanding of the complex ecological processes, which further acts as an impediment for data availability. As a result, the theoretical models have often been incomplete, and could have been improved even in theoretical terms to incorporate greater ecological functions. Application of the Valuation of Ecosystem Services

Research on the application of ecosystem service valuation has indeed been limited, for the obvious reasons already stated. At the same time, the little that has happened has been criticised on various methodological grounds. Klauer (2000), based on analogy between

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ecological and economic systems, uses mathematical economic price theory and applies it to the ecosystems to derive values based on gross ecosystem outputs. It has been inferred from this study that estimated prices are not comparable to economic prices because there is no relation to individual evaluations, nor are they comparable over time (and structural changes). Flessa (2004) estimates that ecosystem service value of the Colorado water is US$ 208 per acre-foot (US$ 0.17 per cu m). He thus concludes that the ecosystem cost of US$ 208 per acre-foot (US$ 0.17 per cu m) is a hidden subsidy currently paid through the loss of nature’s services to society. Lazo (2002) presents a comprehensive delineation of valuation of ecosystems and provides an overview of methods for valuation of ecosystem services. The study uses methods from non-market valuation to scale potential restoration projects. However, the work that has been the most referred one as well as the most criticised in this purview is that by Costanza et al. (1997). They have compiled more than 100 studies that estimate the ecosystem services of various biomes. Then they obtained values of these services using one of the three methods: the sum of consumer and producer surplus, producer surplus, and product of price and quantity. They multiplied these values by the surface area of each respective biome to generate an estimate of the total value of all ecosystem services. They estimated the total value to be in the range of US$ 16–54 trillion. Pearce (1998), in a critique of the paper by Costanza et al., expresses that the latter have violated all principles of economic valuation. The results are inconsistent with WTP as the estimates (33 trillion) exceed world income. They focus only on the benefits of protecting the environment not the costs. They do not conduct a marginal analysis and ‘find the value of everything’; but WTP is for relatively small changes, not the extensive changes that Costanza and his co-authors assume. The paper has also been criticised on methodological grounds, especially with the assumption that there are no irreversible environmental thresholds and that there is no interaction between services (Dalton and Cobourn, 2003). Chopra et al. (2003) have devoted substantial attention to the valuation of ecosystem services in the Indian context, and even in the context of policy response options on the linkages between ecosystem and human well-being, The other notable studies are summarised in Table 3.1.


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Table 3.1 Some Notable Studies on Valuation of Ecosystem Services of Water Author

Methodology Classification

Kaplowitz (2000)

Contingent Valuation Methods

Empirical test of the use of focus groups versus individual interviews to identify and value ecosystem goods. Examine hypothesis that focus groups and individual interviews, all else equal, ‘reveal similar sets of information about a shared mangrove ecosystem’ (p. 171).

Kerr (2002)

Informal Personal Interview

Looks at watershed development projects initiated in India under various types of organisations and qualitatively analyses the impact of those projects on the poorest sector of society. Women and the poorest in the villages were hurt the most, where public lands are closed for use in re-vegetation.

Chomitz et al. (1998)

Analysis of Financing

Details particulars of the Costa Rican federal programme for four forest benefits: biodiversity, carbon sequestration, watershed protection, and ecotourism and scenic values.

Environmental Services

Summary

Kumar et al. (2003)

Production Function

Pan et al. (2002)

Ecological Function Analysis and Indirect Valuation Methods

Attempted to estimate the Baoan Lake ecosystem services (CO2 fixation, O2 release, nutrient recycling, water conservancy, and water supply and SO2 degradation) and its indirect economic values on the basis of ecological function analysis and economic methods.

Sekar (2003)

Contingent Valuation Methods and Hedonic Pricing Methods

Conducted for Kargambathur village of Vellore District in the state of Tamil Nadu in India to assess the effects of deterioration of the Palar River, due to pollution from the leather industry.

Approaches

Evaluates groundwater recharge through the agricultural production in the floodplains of the River Yamuna in the corridors of Delhi.

Multifunctional Attributes of Agriculture and Ecosystems Valuation

It is often difficult to distinguish between the former category talking of application and this one delineating the multifunctional attributes of agriculture and ecosystems valuation because both involve mere applications. However, various attributes of agriculture have been considered here to value the ecosystem services of water. Although

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agriculture’s primary function is the production of crops and other commodities, it is also the source of many non-commodity outputs. Most agricultural commodities are traded on well-organised markets. In contrast, most non-commodity outputs, such as food safety, contributions to the environment, landscape amenities and cultural heritage, are not traded in such markets. Despite this, non-commodity outputs are clearly valued by the inhabitants of rich countries, and that valuation appears to increase as their incomes and wealth rise (Blandford and Boisvert, 2004). Chopra and Adhikari (2004) have attempted to model the development–environment linkage in a simulation framework. They have formally brought out that the supply of ecological resources are determined by technological, physical and ecological factors, while a series of behavioural and institutional variables impact the demand for such services. The methodological problems in such attempts might be galore. However, both the interests of ecologists and economists have been reconciled in this chapter by investigating the nature of the linkage between the economic value and the ecological value in the context of the Koeladeo National Park. A glance at the existing strands of literature reveals the prevalence of interesting methods of obtaining the value of the watershed ecosystems, under this head. Some of the more popular methods include producer surplus approaches, dynamic programming models and contingent valuation methods. A few studies under this head have been summarised in Table 3.2.

On the Notion of ‘Scarcity Value’ of Services ‘Scarcity Value’ of the services as an environmental resource has remained a neglected concept, with its implicit and infrequent mention in the literature. Values arise due to the shortages of the resource under consideration and act as a monetised scarcity signal (Batabyal et al., (2003). Though Batabyal et al. (2003) are the initial ones to explicitly realise that there are differences between total value and value of scarcity, the concept of the implicit allusions of scarcity value can be found in the concept of Ricardian rent (Ricardo, 1817), where rent arises due to the fact that the inferior quality of land is being brought into the fold of the production process, resulting in diminishing


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Table 3.2 Studies on the Multifunctional Attributes of Agriculture and Ecosystems Valuation Author

Methodology Classification

Pattanayak and Kramer (2001)

Producer Surplus Approach

They have generated estimates of the value of forested watersheds in terms of drought mitigation by estimating the impact of a change in base flow on agricultural profit through increased production of coffee and rice.

Portela and Rademacher (2001)

Dynamic Programming and Simulation

Examine four ecosystem services in the Brazilian Amazonia’s river drainage basin, including climate regulation, erosion control, nutrient cycling and species diversity. Use estimates from Costanza et al. (1997) to value the four services.

Smith et al. (1998)

Contingent Valuation Method

Look at the possibility that small-scale farmers in the Peruvian Amazon could provide carbon sequestration services. Taxation is considered an undesirable alternative because of equity considerations and enforcement difficulties.

Peterson et al. (2002)

Commentary on the Policy Perspective

For an open economy, output subsidy is only efficient if all multi-goods have positive social values, and production of non-commodity outputs is fixed in proportion to production of commodity outputs. Decoupled policies only work if every input can be allocated separately in the production of either public or private goods.

Babcock et al. (1997)

Commentary on Valuation Tools

Examines implications of using alternative decision rules that do not maximise total environmental benefits (cost, benefits and C/B ratio targeting). Infer that Benefit Ranking is superior to Cost Ranking, in most cases.

Horan et al. (1999)

Commentary on the Effects of Valuation

Literature deals with economic efficiency and gives no weight to farm income objectives important in designing a green payments programme.

Helfand and House (1995)

Production Function Approach

Estimates the losses due to use of second-best regulatory instruments when pollution sources vary in characteristics, as applied to lettuce production in California’s Salinas Valley.

Randall (2002)

On Valuation Methodologies

A Commentary stressing the need for right valuation to remove inefficiency.

Summary

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productivity of the marginal land. However, existing literature has hardly recognised this phenomenon. Despite that, ever since the time of Ricardo and Malthus, economists have explicitly discussed the concept of scarcity of economic resources. The basic economic resources turned out to be in the form of natural endowments (for example, land, water, forest, and so on). Such environmental resources are becoming scarce over time with the swiftness of human consumption, and the typical irreversibility thereof on a time scale of interest to humanity warrants substantial prudence in human predatory behaviour (Daily, 1997; Daily et al., 2000). Although the concept of scarcity implicitly remained in the analyses of the classicists and neo-classicists and never came to the forefront, it was finally formalised by Hotelling (1931). Hotelling showed the mechanism by which a market price serves as a signal for scarcity. Interestingly, though it was not explicitly present in the works of other market economists, it remained dormant in their analysis. Barnett and Morse (1963) extended this work by demonstrating the way in which the increasing price associated with increased scarcity actually mitigates the scarcity problem. However, in all these works on scarcity, the focus has primarily been on the scarcity of the exhaustible resources for which well-functioning markets exist. Environmental resources are non-market goods and hence the market system has no say in their price determination. Thus, there is no readily available price or non-price signal that can serve as an indicator of scarcity. Costanza and Folke (1997) and Goulder and Kennedy (1997) point out that important ecological phenomena that affect the scarcity of ecosystem services are often not incorporated into prices. Batabyal et al. (2003) point out that although ecologists are aware of the complex dynamics of the environmental system, they rarely consider the behavioural forces that influence individual decision making. By focusing on the scarcity of the provision of ecosystem services, both ecologists and economists will be able to find a common ground that can be the basis for meaningful future research towards the formulation of environmental policy. Although economics is the study of efficient allocation of scarce resources, one of the necessary steps towards achieving the same is to understand the scarcity value of these resources. Unlike a few exhaustible resources like fossil fuel and minerals, many other natural resources are often found to be independent of the market system, with their scarcity values not incorporated in the market prices. To


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incorporate the same in the process of valuation, environmental economic approaches have lately been suggested. Though it is expressed that these valuation techniques can do an adequate job of measuring the scarcity of environmental resources with regard to the manner in which they contribute to the production of economic goods, except the efforts by Batabyal et al. (2003), there hardly exists any other worthwhile effort to explicitly measure the value of scarcity, rather than the total use value of the resource. Saleth (2001), while talking of the problems of water pricing, refers to the difference between scarcity value and the total market value (as given by cost) of water. The total cost signals the scarcity value and opportunity cost of water and guides allocation decisions within and across water sub-sectors. Hence, he advocates that the financial function requires water rates to cover the cost of supplying water to users. In practice, the supply cost is obtained by adding the operation and maintenance costs and the capital costs of constructing the system. However, full cost recovery also requires water rates to reflect the longterm marginal cost (the cost of supplying an additional unit of water including the social cost of externalities). Thus, Saleth (2001) implicitly refers to the scarcity value of the ecosystem services provided by water, along with the scarcity value of the economic services. While talking of water pricing policies, Saleth (2001) highlights the role of scarcity value in the following words: The economic and allocative role of water pricing requires water rates to capture the scarcity value (or the marginal productivity/utility) and to equalize the opportunity costs (the value of water in its next best use) of the resource across uses. As water moves from least productive to most productive uses, places, and time points for efficient allocation, there will be a convergence of the scarcity value, opportunity cost, and long-term marginal cost of the resource. Unfortunately, such a convergence is rarely seen in practice… Water rates are still subsidised even in countries with a relatively mature water economy such as Australia, Israel, and the United States. This is rooted in the political economy of water, as powerful state and user interests often oppose charging the full cost of water. As a result, the gap is vast between the observed water rates and the ideal economic prices of water, as reflected by its scarcity value and opportunity cost.

The notion of ‘scarcity value’ of water emerges more explicitly in a document published by CIE (2004). It clearly states that for water to acquire a scarcity value, the supply of water must be a limiting constraint

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to economic activity. In such circumstances, a marginal reduction in access to water will reduce the profitability, wealth or other measures of economic welfare of the entitlement holder. Scarcity values have often been referred to as resource rent or scarcity rent. These terms are used to refer to the returns or imputed values of natural resources that remain after all user costs have been accounted for. For renewable resources such as water, scarcity rent equates to the above-normal returns to using water in a production process (CIE, 2004). Normal returns are defined as the earnings needed to cover long-term costs, including labour and other variable operating costs (including water charges); overheads, including depreciation and the cost of capital; a ‘normal’ rate of return on capital, which is the minimum rate of return required to hold capital in the activity (sometimes referred to as normal profit); and a margin to cover risk (CIE, 2004). Above-normal returns are defined as the returns in excess of all the costs listed. These are the surplus above returns that are necessary to retain the use of inputs in the production process. Scarcity rent to the use of water in a particular activity is only available where there is a surplus after all other costs, including water service charges, are accounted for. The entitlement to take and use water will have value as an asset if these surpluses are expected to be positive, either in their current use or when traded for another (CIE, 2004). According to Ghosh (2005), the notion of scarcity value of water should be interpreted as the ‘unmet demand’ for water. Ghosh (2005) has shown how a non-responsive scarcity value to water use in the Cauvery and the Colorado basins has resulted in conflicts over water resources in the basin. Hence, Ghosh and Bandyopadhyay (forthcoming) recommend that in a situation of ‘non-satiable’ water demand, supply augmentation plans can only aggravate the hydropolitical condition in a basin by resulting in enhanced conflicts. In the previous two sections of this chapter, we have discussed the valuation of economic and ecosystem services of water. It should readily be realised that like the total value of water, scarcity value of the services can arise from both the economic services as well as the ecosystem services of the resources. Due to scarcity of water, losses occur in both economic and ecological services. Scarcity value can capture the loss of value in each of these services.


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From ‘Scarcity’ to ‘Scarcity Value’ It becomes clear that the changing water paradigm, with its shift away from sole or even primary reliance on finding new sources of supply to address perceived new demands, emphasises incorporation of ecological values into water policy, re-emphasises meeting basic human needs for water services, and consciously breaks off the ties between economic growth and water use (Gleick, 2000). The vision of the need and demand for water as an input in production and social life implies a partial view that fails to consider the implications of the status of water after use Falkenmark et al., 2004. A very large proportion of humankind lives downstream of other communities, and all these people live downstream of precipitation. Indiscriminate upstream activities have often caused problems to the downstream communities, not only because of quantitative losses, but also due to losses in qualities. ‘Reuse of water could be possible in a quantitative sense, but if quality is affected through previous uses, reuse is associated with various costs and hazards’ (Falkenmark et al., 2004). The consideration of the term ‘scarcity’ confines the analysis to the quantitative physical availability of water, without giving much consideration to its qualitative aspects. Scarcity mitigation exercises were conducted through supply augmentation plans. This vision dominated the old reductionist vision that existed in the form of what has been called ‘arithmetical hydrology’ (Bandyopadhyay and Perveen, 2004). This is what was being followed in the two basins analysed in this thesis. This thesis exhibited that the social cost imposed by addressing scarcity, defined in terms of physical availability of water, is conflict between stakeholders. Under the new holistic paradigm of ‘eco-hydrology’, the importance of supply augmentation is slowly but steadily getting reduced, and demand management has started taking its place. Notionally as well as in practice, demand management occurring under scarcity (either through virtual water imports or through other measures) does not mitigate scarcity but allows for a process of ‘adaptation’ to the scarce conditions. It allows for ‘playing on the will of nature’, rather than ‘playing against the will of nature’. For example, as argued in this thesis, regions under chronic water scarcity, like the Cauvery basin, would be under further stress if it produces high water consuming

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crops like rice. Similar is the case with Colorado that produces a high water-consuming fodder crop like alfalfa. These regions should grow low water consuming crops that are more suited in terms of water availability. By raising less water consuming crops in the region, scarcity is not mitigated, but scarcity value of the concerned high water consuming crop is lowered, as the unmet or excess demand of water for the same goes down. Israel happens to be the ideal case where one can always explain the attempts to reduce economic scarcity value of water, rather than scarcity mitigation. If one looks at scarcity in the region in terms of low physical availability of the resource, one would be horrified to note the state of affairs. Yet, scarcity value mitigation through appropriate strategies has totally changed the profile of Israel, thereby calming down the hydropolitical tensions with Jordan and Palestine. Agricultural (virtual water) imports have played a crucial role in this context. It needs to be understood that scarcity value is a holistic measure of not only the state of the resource, but also of every type of intervention that can occur on the resource, which rarely gets captured by the notion of scarcity. The part of the world, where policies are fundamentally based on arithmetical hydrology, there remains the utmost need to understand the scarcity value of the services that water creates. What is intended to be presented in this discussion is that the shift from the old paradigm to the new paradigm should be understood as the shift from addressing scarcity to understanding scarcity value.

Conclusions There, however, remains no doubt of the fact that despite the growth of conceptual literature on valuation of ecosystem services, empirical applications have happened in restrictive numbers. When applications have adopted production function approaches, the valuations of the ecosystem services have happened by considering a marketed product (in most cases, agricultural). This involves the framing of an agricultural damage function, which is happening due to effluent emissions (Kumar et al., 2003; Sekar, 2003). This leaves out an entire range of ecosystem functions that are provided by the resources for the sustenance of the planet. Due to the lack of the ‘optimal’ integration of economic


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sciences and the biological sciences, such an application has not been made possible. At around the same time, the problem with the creation of the best types of models to delineate a framework of the working of interrelationships of the various ecological systems has restricted growth of the literature on such applications. The uses of contingent valuation methods, however, are prone to yield hypothetical results based on hypothetical markets. It has also proved highly vulnerable to response biases and individual whims. One must remember that revealed preference methods like travel cost and hedonic pricing cannot reflect the value of ecosystem services, as market awareness of the ecosystem services has been traditionally low. On the other hand, all these methods that attempt to evaluate the various functions of water through the utility approach actually talk of valuing scarcity and not the absolute values of water. In the context of non-market methods like the contingent valuation methods, the question asked to participants is about their WTP for qualitative or quantitative improvements in ambient environment. This question is being asked to reveal something that does not exist or to reflect upon the scarcity of the improved quality of environment. In the case of revealed preference approaches, like travel cost, there is an implicit attempt to put a value on the environment that does not exist in the proximity of the agent. Even in the case of the hedonic pricing, somehow it is scarcity of the resource that is being valued. Finally, let me conclude my discussions on valuation by talking of valuation in the context of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). Valuation of water resources is an important instrument in the context of IWRM. As argued in various contexts, valuation can help comprehensive assessments of water development projects, keeping the integrity of the full hydrological cycle by a holistic evaluation of economic and ecological systems. On the other hand, it is also argued that prioritisation of water needs can also be done through valuation. In the context of the new economics of water, valuation provides a new basis of water use and a means to understand and evaluate the emergence of institutions. Hence, in order to offer the right type of basis for an interdisciplinary knowledge base, it becomes essential to emerge with the right type of valuation methods where one can compare the economic and ecological services of water to offer as a benchmark for comparison. Our survey in this chapter reveals that such attempts have so far been rare, but are emerging.

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Whittington, D., J. Briscoe, X. Mu and W. Barron. 1990. ‘Estimating the Willingness-to-pay for Water Services in Developing Countries: A Case Study of the Use of Contingent Valuation Surveys in Southern Haiti’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 38 (2): 293–311. Whittington, D, D. T. Lauria, A. M. Wright, K. Choe, J. A. Hughes and V. Swarna. 1993. ‘Household Demand for Improved Sanitation Service in Kumasi, Ghana: A Contingent Valuation Study’, Water Resources Research, 29 (6): 1539–60. Whittington, D., D. T. Lauria and X. Mu. 1991. ‘A Study of Water Vending and Willingness to Pay for Water in Onitsha, Nigeria’, World Development 19 (2): 179–98. Wilson, M. and R. Howarth. 2002. ‘Discourse-based Valuation of Ecosystem Services: Establishing Fair Outcomes through Group Deliberation’, Ecological Economics, 41 (3): 431–43. Yaron, D. 1997. ‘Israel’, in A. Dinar and A. Subramanian (eds), Water Pricing Experience: An International Perspective, World Bank Technical Paper # 386. Washington, D.C.: World Bank. Young, R. A. 1996. ‘Measuring Economic Benefits for Water Investments and Policies’, World Bank Technical Paper 338, World Bank, Washington, D.C.

Chapter 4 The River-link Project

Where are Equity and Sustainability!*

Global Water Scarcities and Inter-basin Water Transfers Water is available on the surface of the Earth in a skewed manner, spatially and temporally. Humans have tried to intervene into such an inequity to fit the map of requirements of their societies. The present industrialising world is in the midst of an escalating search for newer supplies, as if an endless stock of freshwater exists. Global supplies, however, will remain almost the same, unless desalination technology is used on a significant scale. The growth in population has brought the per capita availability of water substantially down. From local communities to national governments or international organisations, all have been searching for ways to meet the challenge of ensuring greater freshwater supplies. With the arrival of reinforced concrete technology, humans got an upper hand in this race as larger and larger structures could be built. The trend-setting Hoover dam in the US has cast a long shadow the world over. Massive investments in engineering structures have, until now, made it possible to withdraw more and more water from the natural surface sources like lakes and rivers. Groundwater aquifers have frequently been degraded with the use of high-powered pumps. To overcome the spatial inequity in water availability, physical transfer of water from one river basin to another has often been promoted as an exemplary engineering response. The fixation for such supply-side technological solutions in place of ‘soft’ demand-side management options (Biswas, *This is an updated and modified version of the paper published in Economic & Political Weekly 39 (50): 530–16, 11–17 December 2004.

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1979) has consequently led to several plans for grand interregional water transfers (IWT) in many parts of the world. One of the earliest examples of IWT is found in Egypt where engineering efforts to moderate the flow in the Nile River had started as early as in the Pharaonic era. King Mina, ruler of Egypt in the First Dynasty, had constructed a large number of canals and bridges to carry the Nile water to the lower lands (Abu-Zeid, 1983). Another primordial evidence of IWT comes from Japan—a small island nation—where water transfers have been in practice for over several 100 years. Though initially started on a small scale, primarily to serve the purpose of rice cultivation, the expansion and development of the cities and industries in recent years (especially after World War II) had prompted Japan to take up large-scale IWT projects (Greer, 1983). More than half of all accessible global freshwater run-off is currently withdrawn by human interventions. The amount of water available at the global level so far being determined by the hydrological cycle, the results of these transfers have been the drastic reductions in the amount of water remaining in the natural ecosystems. While the case of the ecological disaster from such transfers from the tributaries of the Aral Sea is globally known, smaller ‘Aral Seas’ are already present in large numbers in many parts of the world, damaging the various ecosystem services provided by water that was flowing instream. The Nile in Egypt, the Ganges in South Asia, Amu Darya and Syr Darya in Central Asia, the Yellow River in China and the Colorado River in North America are among the major watercourses that have been dammed and diverted—to the extent that for certain parts of the year, little or none of their freshwater reaches the sea (Postel, 2001). The decade of the 1960s had actually evidenced some enthusiastic propositions for major inter-basin water transfer proposals. A new generation of plans was put forward in North America in 1964, headlined by the much talked about and grandiose North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA) scheme. It included numerous plans of unprecedented scales to distribute water from the high precipitation areas of the north-western part of North America to less water endowed areas of Canada, USA and Mexico (Biswas, 1978). The immensity of the plan stirred the imagination of many engineers and economists and within five years of NAWAPA being proposed, a whole series of IWT schemes were put forward to redistribute the waters of North America (Golubev and Biswas, 1978).

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Similarly, in the erstwhile Soviet Union, ambitious new engineering propositions were put forward for transfer of water from the more humid to the less humid regions of the continent (Micklin, 1977; Soviet Geography, 1972). Until the 1960s, the former Soviet Union used mostly traditional irrigation techniques. The ‘integrated method of development of desert lands’ (Gujja and Shaik, 2004) exemplify the immediate realisations of engineering capability and economic growth in industrialised economies, resulting from alterations of the natural flows in the rivers on a very large scale. At around the same time (1959–61), the proposal for the South to North Water Transfer Project was being discussed in China. The Yangtze basin, well-endowed with water, as well as other southern river basins benefiting from the ample summer monsoon precipitations had about 80 per cent share in the total annual run-off but served only 40 per cent of the arable land. On the other hand, the drier regions in the north and north-east of China, the Huang he (Yellow), the Huai he, the Hai he basins and the north-west inland region together have more than half of the geographic area with 45 per cent of the arable land and nearly 36 per cent of the population. They, however, possess only 12 per cent of the water resources (Gujja and Shaik, 2004). The Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted field investigations of the water transfer in the upper reaches of the Chang Jiang (Yangtze). When fully developed, the scheme is proposed to divert 40–50 cu km of water per year from the Yangtze basin to the north China plain, alleviating water scarcity for 300–325 million people living in what even then would be a highly water-stressed region (Berkoff, 2003). In India, projects such as the Periyar–Vaigai system, Indira Gandhi Canal and Telegu–Ganga stand as classic examples of IWT. In the 1970s, the proposal for transferring water from the Ganga to Cauvery through a link canal, as propounded by Rao (1975), received considerable attention.

Opposition to the IWTs Water planners and developers have always worked on the basis of projections of growth in population, industrial and agricultural production, and the level of economic development to assess future water demands. Engineering solutions were accordingly prescribed to

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provide such quantities of water. Golubev and Vasiliev (1978) have pointed out that ‘Interregional water transfers are appealing because of the great amount of waters produced, which drastically changes the water situation.’ Over the past few decades, however, this blind dependence on supply-side solutions offered by engineering have been jolted, and perceptible changes have been observed in the way management of water has started to be perceived, that is, in a holistic interdisciplinary framework. As the earlier solutions are now being seen as part of the problems, the practice of water management is facing a crisis. The emerging thought is that it is only a fundamental shift away from the present paradigm of reductionist engineering to a holistic and interdisciplinary one that will be able to provide sustainable solutions to the complex challenges facing water management today. As Wolff and Gleick (2002: 1) have noted, ‘The world is in the midst of a major transition in the way we think about and manage our vital and limited freshwater resources.’ Such a statement exemplifies the fundamental changes that are going on in the creation of a framework for water systems management (Postel, 1997; Reddy, 2002; Seckler, 1996). As a result of such changes, a more cautious approach towards the design of IWTs had been observed during the 1970s, which subsequently led to rethinking on some of the earlier plans for water transfers. In North America itself, implementation of some large projects have been abandoned, modified or at least slowed down. The original proposal for the Texas Water System made in 1968, consisting of a large diversion from the Mississippi River into the state of Texas, is a clear indication of this new trend. The earlier plan for the Texas Water System has been modified so much that it now serves as a negative example of IWTs and inter-basin transfers. The overwhelming attention was focused on narrow engineering aspects, while scant perfunctory attention was accorded to the associated ecological–economic aspects (Greer, 1983). Studies indicate that at least three factors have contributed to this change in the professional view of IWT projects. First, there were strong oppositions to the transfer from the basins from which water was taken out. Second, the economic feasibility of such large transfers was not established in a convincing manner. Third, and the most important reason, was the cumulative environmental impacts that got little attention in the initial feasibility reports. In short, the decade of


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the 1970s was also the time when ‘New approaches to complex river development were according greater recognition to its environmental limits and consequences’ (White, 1977). Given their enormous economic, social and environmental impacts, the justification for and feasibility of large-scale inter-regional water transfers became a topic of intense policy debate. Shao and Wang (2003) suggest that ‘Interbasin water transfer projects are prone to problems and controversies, and may challenge the established basin management, legal system and policy making procedure which are taken for granted until such projects are put under consideration.’ Howe and Easter (1971) additionally caution that IWT projects are likely to prove expensive to nations, except under certain ‘rescue operation’ type of cases (to replenish the groundwater, for instance). But Wells (1971), pointing out the case of the Texas Water Systems, notes that water imports to the high plains of Texas are not only economically feasible but also that the state simply cannot afford not to import water to that area. Such statements clearly point to the need for a comprehensive feasibility study and options assessment as decision support for large-scale water projects. There is an implicit understanding that environmental and economic systems are interconnected and interdependent entities. This becomes more evident in the background of a widely acknowledged discernible shift in the water resource sector from supply-side to demand-side management. Three criteria for evaluating the performance of water resources systems, that is, how likely is a system to fail (reliability); how quickly does it recover from failure (resilience); and how severe are the consequences of failure (vulnerability), were discussed by Hashimoto et al. (1982). It is suggested that these criteria assist in the evaluation and selection of alternative design and operating policies for a wide variety of water resource projects ( Jain, Reddy and Chaube, 2005). Though many people have studied these problems in the context of various river basins, further work is needed to provide a more penetrating and overarching policy framework.

Water Resources in India and the Logic for the River-link Project The climate in South Asia is dominated by the tropical monsoon. India receives about 4,000 cu km of average annual precipitation (NCIWRDP, 1999b: 23). Unlike the ‘relatively even flow’, as evident in

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the rivers of the temperate world, the flows in the rivers fed by monsoon precipitation are characterised by large variations during the various parts of the year. Wide temporal inequity in precipitation over India brings about 80 per cent of the annual precipitation within a short span of 2.5 months, from July to September. Furthermore, a large part of this occurs as short-lived storms, spread over a total period of 100 hours of intense downpour, which accounts for about 50 per cent of the entire annual precipitation (NCIWRDP, 1999b). In addition to this, a large spatial variation also accompanies the precipitation over India. For example, in Mawsynram in the state of Meghalaya in the eastern part of the country, the average annual precipitation is about 11,600 mm as compared to, for example, Ajmer in the western part, which receives merely 200 mm of the annual precipitation (see Figure 4.1). Figure 4.1 Precipitation Isohyets over India 15 40 100

20 30 50 SRN

100 75

LEH 75

50 20

150

40 30

CHG

100

50

15

DBH

DLH 250 LKN

250

100

JDP

15 20

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GHT 250 250

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150 AGT

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BHP

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150

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BWN 150

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250 250

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50 VSK

AN

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AN

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100 250 PNJ ANT

AMN 75

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TRV 100 75

75

S

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ND

MNC

LA R IS

TRP

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NICOBA

EP LAKSHADWE

BNG

AND

CNN MNG

Source: http://www.imd.ernet.in/section/climate/annual-rainfall.htm (downloaded in 2001).


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Basic supplies of domestic water have become part of human rights and it is indeed important to promote more equal domestic water availability in the country. The assumed objective of the river-link project is to act as a mechanism for balancing this uneven distribution of precipitation in the country, solving the dual problem of floods and water scarcity. In short, this project aims at the negation of the spatial and temporal variations characteristic of the natural pattern of precipitation over India. Bandyopadhyay and Mallik (2003) have described the complexity of the assessment process of such projects. Accordingly, in this chapter, some of the crucial scientific and policy aspects related to the river-link project in India will be identified and analysed. These are essential for a comprehensive assessment of the project, but have not received adequate scientific attention. Given the ongoing paradigm shifts in the knowledge of water systems the world over, the absence of such an assessment from a comprehensive viewpoint in the case of India will surely be unwise.

Changing Paradigms for Water Systems Human knowledge on water systems is changing rapidly and the ‘changing water paradigm’ represents a real shift in the way increasing number of humans are thinking about management and uses of water resources (Gleick, 1998). Also, the need for new water professionals informed of the new paradigm are being heard from the highest international levels (Cosgrove and Rijsberman, 2000). Twentiethcentury water resources planning, as pointed out by Gleick (2000), relied on projecting future populations, per capita demand, agricultural production and levels of economic productivity. As a result, prior to the 1980s, the water resource planners provided supply-side solutions, assuming that projected shortfalls would be met by taming more of the natural hydrologic cycle through larger physical interventions (usually reservoirs) in the water systems. Since each of these variables has also been traditionally projected to rise in the near future, water needs and demands have also been projected to escalate accordingly. It is indeed expected that any project, like the river-link, would base itself on an updated knowledge base rather than an older and traditional one. However, in the absence of an institution (Bandyopadhyay, 2007) for scientific and technical engagement between the governmental

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engineers and independent experts, any open and professional assessment of such projects would not be possible, thus obstructing the process of paradigm shift. On that account, the limited information that one can gather about the project from available sources does not permit a good examination of the veracity of the proposed links and appurtenant structures. In this chapter, the conceptual questions on the river-link project would be taken up first.

On the Concept of ‘Surplus Flow’ in Rivers The crucial starting point for the river-link project is the assumption that river basins in India can be divided into ad hoc categories of ‘surplus’ and ‘deficit’ basins. It will be a win–win situation if one can simply utilise ‘the water otherwise going to waste in the surplus river basins’ (NCIWRDP, 1999b: 181). A methodology for working out whether a basin is surplus or not has also been described in an unpublished paper by Mohile (Unpublished). However, today with all the advances in water science, there is a need to go into more details on this categorisation. Whilst the Report of the Working Group on Interbasin Transfer of Water clearly outlines the methodology for the assessment of irrigation, domestic and industrial needs of water (NCIWRDP, 1999c: 30), no methodology for the assessment of the environmental flow requirements, for example, salinity control or other water needs for the continuation of diverse ecosystem services provided by water, are presented. From the hydrological point of view, conventional water engineering has focused predominantly on visible and flowing water and neglected other diverse ecological uses of water (for instance, in plant production) and hidden functions (like water as a transporter of pollutants) (Falkenmark and Folke, 2002). Water systems evolve by making optimal use of every drop of water available. In the context of a river basin, there is no drop of water that is surplus or having no ecological role. Every drop of water in a basin plays some ecological role. This perspective, identifying a river basin on the basis of run-off and projected use in few economic activities, is a misleading one and is being increasingly described as ‘arithmetical’ hydrology. Ecosystem services are performed by water all along the basin, from the upland catchments to the downstream confluence. A volume of water can be diverted away from one basin, but a proportional


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damage will be done to the ecosystem services. The financial value of this damage cannot be precisely calculated now, but Costanza et al. (1997) have provided a rough approach to make such an estimate. In the absence of the recognition of ecosystem services, there is, however, little difficulty in identifying a river basin as surplus and taking a decision for the transfer of water out of it, without seeing any damage done in the process (Singh, 2003a). On the contrary, the traditional view claims that by transferring the surplus, a ‘loss’ to the ocean has been averted. Prabhu (2003) makes this position clear when he claims that ‘the (interlinking) project is about rationalisation of water that is lost to the sea’. However, when the reductionist vision of arithmetical hydrology is replaced by the holistic perspective of eco-hydrology, the outflow of a river to the sea does not appear to be a ‘loss’. Nor can monsoon flood flows be seen as an unmixed harm that needs to be controlled. In the eco-hydrological perspective, there is always some cost, known, unknown or perceived, associated with the transfer of water from one basin to another, whether in small amounts or large. For example, monsoon flood flows in eastern India may appear to be a harmful surplus from the viewpoint of arithmetical hydrology, and its transfer to a drier basin in another part of the country represents something of a win–win situation. On the other hand, from the holistic ecohydrological viewpoint, flood flows perform important ecosystem services, as the transporter of free minerals for the land, provider of free recharge for the groundwater aquifers and lakes, free medium for the transportation of fish and conservation of biological diversity, free bumper harvest for the farmers, and so on. Early irrigation and river experts like William Willcocks, Radhakamal Mukherjee and Satish Chandra Majumdar had looked at floodwater as a useful resource and not as an unmixed harm (Munshi, 2003). The cumulative ecological impacts of large-scale water transfers sometimes express themselves through almost irreversible environmental declines. In the widely known case of the Aral Sea, for instance, largescale upstream diversions for irrigation, of about 8 million ha of land, have reduced inflow of water to the lake to the extent that the shoreline in some places has retreated by more than 120 km. For what was once the fourth largest inland body of water on Earth, a World Bank Report (1992) says that ‘Total river runoff into the sea fell from an average 55 cubic kilometers a year in the 1950s to zero in the early 1980s…

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If current trends continue unchecked, the sea will eventually shrink to a saline lake one-sixth of its 1960 size.’ Furthermore, while drainage from vast irrigation areas has converted the water body into a saline pool and toxic salt particles are picked up by the wind and spread to surrounding areas (Kindler and Matthews, 1997; Postel, 1996), arithmetical hydrology may still find ‘surplus’ water in it that could be diverted for upstream irrigation. As the paradigm of knowledge for the understanding of water systems advances, the hope for concepts like surplus water to get professional acceptance is retreating. For example, the Murray-Darling Basin Commission in Australia is seriously contemplating on extending financial encouragement to farmers for saving their allocation of irrigation water and allowing the savings to remain instream, thus reversing the process of transfer. In another instance, Chile’s National Water Code of 1981 established a system of water rights that are transferable and independent of land-use and ownership. The most frequent transaction in Chile’s water markets is the ‘renting’ of water between neighbouring farmers with different water requirements (Gazmuri, 1992). Thus, reallocating water administratively or through market mechanisms, such as trading among users, can also reduce distortions or inefficiencies’ (Anonymous, 1996). In USA today, the country which started the global trend of building large dams, ‘there is a new trend to take out or decommission dams that either no longer serve a useful purpose or have caused such egregious ecological impacts as to warrant removal. Nearly 500 dams in the USA and elsewhere have already been removed and the movement towards river restoration is accelerating’ (Gleick, 2000). In this context, Beard (1995) has commented that ‘Earlier building large dams and diversions was an acceptable approach (in the USA) as long as there were ample water supplies, plentiful government funds and as long as environmentalists and indigenous people had limited influence… All of that has changed now.’

The River-link Project in India In this background of the dynamic rethinking on the usefulness and limits to large-scale water transfers, this chapter analyses the widely publicised project for linking rivers in India (TFILR, 2003). It is


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stressed that with the shift in the paradigm for the management of water systems the world over, proposal for such heavy investments in water transfer projects needs to be assessed in a very comprehensive manner. This becomes particularly important because almost all technical criticisms of the proposed river-link project have not been addressed. This becomes a great obstacle to the better use of scientific knowledge for the use of natural resources. A study of the available information (Alagh et al., 2006) on one of the proposed link canal, the Ken–Betwa link, gives a good indication of the professional weaknesses of the whole process of planning and design related to the proposed river-link. As has been discussed earlier, due to the distribution of the monsoon precipitation, the availability of water in various parts of India is characterised by wide spatial and temporal variations. Thus, while some parts of the country receive large amount of monsoon precipitation and related rivers expectedly inundate wide areas in the floodplains, some other parts may not enjoy a similar abundance of water. India occupies about 2.45 per cent of the terrestrial surface of the Earth. In terms of precipitation per unit area of land, the country receives 4 per cent of the total global precipitation, which is well above the global average. Nonetheless, with over 17 per cent of the world’s population living in the country, India is in a difficult position when per capita water availability is considered. The spatial and temporal variations in the precipitation lead to regional inequities in water availability in India (see Figure 4.1). About 71 per cent of the available water resources of India are localised in 36 per cent of the geographical area of the country, primarily in the Ganga–Brahmaputra–Meghna (GBM) basin and all the west flowing rivers from the Western Ghats. Furthermore, major rivers like the Ganga and the Brahmaputra take water from rain scarce areas to areas with high rainfall. For example, Ganga carries water from Ajmer in Rajasthan to the floodprone areas in Bihar. Similarly, the Brahmaputra carries water from the cold desert areas of Tibet to near the Meghalaya hills, where the spot with the highest rainfall in India is located. It is natural that people in the drier areas would like to get this trend reversed and want the transfer of water from the areas with greater precipitation. Surely, the domestic water needs of all people should be met, if needed, by transfer from other basins. However, political leaders have ascribed qualities to the proposed river-link project, as the perceived win–win

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solution to the dual ‘problems’ of floods in some areas and droughts in other areas of the country. In the following sections, an attempt will be made to assess the justifications put forward in favour of the project. This has created an impression that by constructing storage dams and large canals, these variations in the availability of water can be (and should be) removed. The case, however, is not that simple. Unfortunately, the issue of domestic water security for all people has got mixed up with the larger political economic interests in gaining access to water as the fuel for regional economic growth. The drier areas of western and southern India are also areas with rapid industrial and urban growth. For agricultural and industrial growth in the drier areas, every additional volume of water, made available through long distance transfer projects, ensures their financial future. The growing demands for water for promoting commercial agriculture, urban supplies and industries in various regions have started to become the roots for intense conflicts. The river-link project is driven by the economic dream of the drier parts of India that additional water, once brought to them, would go a long way in promoting economic growth. About a century ago, partly for addressing the spatial and temporal inequities and partly for improving navigational access, proposals for several canals were made by Arthur Cotton. With the availability of greater engineering capabilities in India, the idea of transferring large quantities of water from areas with higher precipitation to the drier areas started to encourage policy makers to think on the river-link project. Rao (1975) proposed three link canals between the Brahmaputra and Ganga, between Ganga and Cauvery, and between Narmada and parts of Rajasthan with the purpose of transferring water to the drier areas in southern and western India. Such a proposal was not favoured by the Central Water Commission (CWC) of India on various grounds, including the cost. The main idea of transferring water from the Brahmaputra river all the way to the less water endowed areas in southern and western parts of India by linking canals, nevertheless, remained a very important idea in the minds of the officials and engineers in India’s Ministry of Water Resource (MoWR). With the formation of the National Water Development Agency (NWDA) in 1982, this got into circulation again.


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The NWDA was, subsequently, entrusted with the task of developing plans for inter-basin transfers of water to examine the possible storage sites and interconnecting links in detail. After detailed studies of a typical irrigation project, it had proposed 30 links in the Himalayan and Peninsular components (see Figure 4.2) that are now important parts of the recent proposal for the Interlinking of Rivers (ILR) in the country. Figure 4.2 Links Envisaged as per the National Perspective Plan of NWDA

Others Others Jhelum Ind us

Ch en ab

Be

as

Ravi

it

t hi Lo

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Manipur Gan Barak Basin g Da a mo Basin Padma Su da b rB Bra arnar asin hm ekh in Govind Ballabh an Gulf of as asin Pant Sagar i Ba a Bas Kachch iB in hi B it a a at Kaladan Basin ran hi M m r a i rs Bas Calcutta M Narmada Narmada Basin Othe aba ga Mahanadi Basin in S an Mouth Of Ganga g u n T i api g at Wa Hu Hirakud Mah bh anad m i ha fK Chilika o Penganga lf God Gu Mumbai Bhubaneshwar li ra sin ava ri va ha Ba Godavari Basin Go ga ad ya da Na nisikul ir a va V sh ri ba Ru Sa Kr ish na Bay Krishna Basin Hyderabad na h of Kris Bengal hadra ab g n Lu Penner Penner Legend Basin Arabian Sea Pulicat Surplus Gandhi Sagar

na

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ati

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Vembanad Pe r

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Gulf of Mannar

Marginal Deficit Marginal Deficit (Surplus by report)

Indian Sea

Source: NWDA, Ministry of Water Resources, New Delhi.

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With a view to bringing about a consensus among the states on the ILR plan and to provide guidance on norms of appraisal of individual projects and modalities for project funding, a Task Force on Interlinking of Rivers (TFILR) was also set up in 2002 by the MoWR, which has subsequently been disbanded. The written justification presented for the proposed ILR by the TFILR (2003: 22) is based on addressing three types of need: 1. The paramount need for national self-sufficiency in food and energy with sustainability. 2. The need for regional equity with regard to poverty alleviation and means of livelihood for the rural agricultural-based population in low rainfall areas. 3. The need for promoting greater cooperation amongst the states in management of inter-state river systems, thus avoiding water disputes, which have held up development or caused ill-will amongst them.

An Assessment of the Justifications Put Forward for the Proposed River-link Project Though the proposal for the ILR in India has been widely publicised since October 2002, there is still scanty technical information on the project, especially on the various storage dams proposed. The sites of several important storage dams are not within the territory of India, but are located in Nepal. Some technical information on the various links in the peninsular component of the project is available from open sources. However, any dialogue or clarification on them is not taking place. In the absence of more complete technical information, a professional assessment of the justifications for the project can be made from a policy framework. Bandyopadhyay and Perveen (2004) and Iyer (2003) have clearly indicated that there are serious reasons to proceed with such an open professional review of the proposed ILR, to establish its social acceptability, economic feasibility and ecological sustainability. The work of the National Civil Society Committee on Interlinking of Rivers (Alagh et al., 2006) on the Feasibility Report for the Ken–Betwa Link aptly substantiates this stand. As a result, significant questions


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have been raised by many on the conceptual framework, justifications and options assessment, as given in favour of the project (Iyer, 2004; Vaidyanathan, 2003).

Conceptual Gaps in the Proposed ILR The main conceptual framework used to design the proposed riverlink project is based on an identification of the various river basins of India under the broad categories of ‘surplus’, ‘marginally surplus’, ‘marginally deficit’ and ‘deficit’. Though the World Water Assessment Program (WWAP, 2001) describes ‘water scarcity’ as ‘the condition of insufficient water of satisfactory quality and quantity to meet human and environmental needs’, no clear and peer-accepted methodology for the classification of river basins under various categories of ‘surplus’ or ‘deficit’ has been made available. The Available Water Resources (AWR) per capita consequently measured the ratio of the renewable water in the hydrological cycle to the number of people (Falkenmark et al., 1989; Gleick, 2000). But the term ‘renewable water’ was later replaced with ‘water withdrawals’ since it was felt renewable water might also include floods and, more generally, all the renewable water resources, which are not controlled. Additionally, ‘water withdrawals’, which referred to the total amount of water diverted or abstracted from a river basin (Raskin et al., 1997), were further refined when it dawned upon the hydrologists that it is important to distinguish between ‘water withdrawals’ and ‘water use’. Defined as the amount of water physically removed, water withdrawal as a concept is less useful in a discussion of limits on the total amount of water, since much of the withdrawn water is later returned to the water cycle (IWMI, 2000: 24). Seckler et al. (1998) have pointed out that half of the diverted water in some basins returns to the rivers and goes to the sea; in others, no more than 5 per cent of the total run-off reaches the downstream end of the basin. ‘Water use’ was consequently considered a more useful measure of water consumption (Molle and Mollinga, 2003). Adopting a slightly different approach for analysis, Salameh (2000) has focused on the amount of water needed for domestic needs and for meeting the demand of food production in relation to the population size. However, while the indicator does provide useful means of

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estimating water stress in relation to food self-sufficiency, the focus on the food–population ratio does not yet consider environmental needs. It also disregards the potent concept of virtual water—the latter allowing domestic shortfalls in water to be made up by food imports (Allan, 2002; Perveen, 2004; Postel, 1999: 130). In a study done by Feitelson and Chenoweth (2002), however, the provision of water for domestic use as well as environmental services has been considered. This review makes it clear that deficiency in water supply or ‘scarcity’ is not just a meteorological phenomenon. It is also dependent largely on the indicators we use to assess demands, the nature of demand in a particular basin, social customs and institutions, and government policies. Any measure to manage demand for water can therefore be truly effective if they are based on an understanding of the water demand situation in a region—that is, where water is going, where it is being lost, where savings can be made (or maximised) and the attitudes of water users. The intrinsic variability in water endowment rules out any possibility for making a straightforward assessment of a river basin as ‘surplus’ or ‘deficit’. If such an arithmetic view is nonetheless followed, as has happened in the case of the proposed river-link, it would be presupposing an unhindered mobility of water within the geographical area of the basins (Bandyopadhay, 2004). With such an unsubstantiated approach for the identification of surplus basins, it is likely that serious differences of opinion between a recipient and a donor basin could erupt on whether the basin in question is ‘surplus’ and whether water can be transferred away from it without causing harm to the downstream areas or its future uses. This has already become the case in several basins in India, which are being categorised as ‘surplus’. The assessment and approval of water projects in India have traditionally been based on narrow economic criteria. The intrinsic social, economic and environmental costs that have remained marginalised, therefore, become a sine qua non for a more informed and equitable process of project assessment. The present limitations of such practices have invariably generated popular discontents and, thus, have considerably disgraced large water-related projects in the public eye. With the recent advances in ecology of water systems and in ecological economics, more realistic and comprehensive assessments of the environmental impacts of water diversion projects have become possible. When environmental flows and ecosystem services offered by


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water systems is brought within the framework for decision making, fundamental alterations in the policy on large water projects can surely be expected. On the basis of the description of the river-link project as available in the public domain, an assessment of the justifications and available options for addressing the same objectives can be undertaken. This section examines the important justifications, on which the very costly project is being proposed. In this background, the following conceptual questions are raised and analysed: 1. Will the river-link project control floods in high rainfall areas and ensure domestic water security in the areas with scarce rainfall? 2. Does India’s food security depend on irrigation from the proposed river-link? 3. Is there a comprehensive knowledge base for the Himalayan component?

Will the River-link Project Control Floods in High Rainfall Areas and Provide Domestic Water Security to the Areas with Scarce Rainfall? In terms of quantity, the domestic water requirements in India constitute a very small part of the total volume of water diverted from lakes or rivers and taken out from the aquifers. However, security of domestic water supplies should be recognised as a part of human rights (McCaff rey, 1992) and receive top priority in the allocation policy. In the official approach for the calculation of demand for water in India, the total demands for water, including those of irrigation, are given high visibility. The importance of small but crucial domestic supplies and the large volumes of water needed for irrigation thus get mixed up. The objective of providing domestic water security to all should undoubtedly get the highest priority, and for this, if needed, water should be transferred across river basins. However, the domestic needs are so small that many instances indicate that attention to local level water conservation would solve the question of domestic water security in most parts of India. The water demands for the production of food grains should get the next priority. Water for commercial

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farming and industry sectors should be treated with a different priority and pricing policy. Aggregate picture for all the demands would be misleading and unjust for domestic water security. Nigam et al. (1997) had undertaken water availability studies in a few water scarce areas of India and their study made it clear that if the precipitation available within the concerned watersheds or sub-basins is harvested and conserved properly, supply of domestic water needs would not pose a serious problem in most parts of the country. For promoting domestic water security in the drier areas of India, local-level water harvesting and conservation have been practised for centuries. It offers a suitable technological option even today, when compared with large storage and long distance diversion facilities, since they often carry high financial, social and environmental costs (WCD, 2000). This observation is completely in consonance with the results of numerous community initiatives for water harvesting in the drier areas of India, whether in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttaranchal or anywhere else in the country (Agarwal et al., 2001). The impression of a crisis situation with water gets further strengthened by the eagerness to get areas declared as disaster affected by ‘droughts’ or ‘floods’. Under the climatic conditions dominated by the monsoon, periods of stress and regular annual inundations are to be expected as natural events (Bandyopadhyay, 1989), and agricultural practices have subsequently evolved with due protection against such natural variability. Moreover, there are many other human-induced reasons for water scarcity occurring in an area, including unsustainable levels of groundwater extraction and land management not informed of the importance of soil and water conservation. The distinctions of diverse forms of drought get reconfirmed by Kelkar (Businessworld, 2001) when he warns that: If the rainfall over a given region is more than 25% below normal, meteorologists call it a drought. However, this does not always bring out the true picture since crops could still survive if they get enough rain at the critical growth stages. On the other hand, a statistically normal rainfall but with a few spells of very heavy rain interspersed with long dry spells can cause agricultural drought as opposed to a meteorological drought.

An impression has been created in the minds of the common people that the proposed river-link project would solve the twin problems


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of floods in the higher rainfall areas and water scarcity in the areas with less rainfall, though the scientific credibility of such a claim is not established. Scientifically credible or not is a separate issue. Nevertheless, this has generated a great deal of excitement among the people in the drier areas of India. Similarly, there is no scientific claim for flood control in the project and, at best, there would be some limited moderation in the flow regimes caused by the proposed structures. What is quite regrettable is that the unsubstantiated dream that floods would be controlled and water provided by the project would solve the scarcity problems in the drier areas. Such governmental hopes have led to a decline in the interest of the communities in taking up conservation of rainwater through local initiatives. Furthermore, statements by political leaders have created an impression that there is ‘enough’ water in the identified ‘surplus’ river basins to cater to all the needs of all the people in the country. Among these people, the impression is taking root that there is no need to do anything locally except wait for this mega-project of river-link, for which anyway the government is going to pay. Such impressions negate the reality of water security achieved in the drier areas by many non-governmental initiatives. Pointing out to the need for looking beyond the grandiose proposal only, Verghese (2003) wrote that: The Interlinking project is not a single stand-alone panacea for the country’s water problems but the apex of a progression of integrated micro to mega measures in an overall but unarticulated national water strategy.

There is another question that has been raised on the ability of the proposed ILR to address the issue of domestic water security. A look at the map showing the link canals will show that the links are aligned along low contours. Some smaller proposed links get scattered in other smaller parts of the country. A scrutiny of the map will surely not convince anyone that it will offer respite to the vast water scarce rural areas in the country. Domestic water supply in the dry and relatively upland areas will prove to be much more secure through local level harvesting and promotion of greater recharge of groundwater from local precipitation. This reality has got sidelined in the glory associated with the promises identified with the river-link proposal. Further, in the case of the coastal areas, all the way from the Sunderbans in the east, down to Kanyakumari in the South, to Kutch

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in the west, the rapidly commercialising technology of desalination could offer a cheaper and more dependable option for the provision of domestic supplies in the coastal areas. The cost of production of potable water from desalination plants is going down quite rapidly. It may not be unrealistic to say that in the future decades, domestic water security would be forthcoming from desalination plants and the utility of the river-link project in that respect will be very limited. Large cities near the coast, like London, have already made massive plans for future water supply based on this technology. As it stands, there is no clear case made for the role of the proposed river-link in ensuring domestic water supplies in either the coastal areas or the less developed heartland of India because cheaper and more dependable technological options are clearly available. Thus, domestic water security of these areas cannot be accepted as a justification for the project. Large inland urban areas and industrial towns would, nevertheless, need a lot of water for domestic supplies. For addressing such requirements, clear domestic water supply plans that keep inter-basin transfers as a possible option are needed. However, priorities for secure domestic supplies is supreme and should not be mixed with the demands from the commercial farming and industrial sectors.

Does India’s Food Security Depend on Irrigation from the Proposed River-link? During the 1960s, when India was facing serious problems with food self-sufficiency, the package of Green Revolution technologies of high yielding varieties of seeds, fertilisers, pesticides and irrigation helped the country immensely in enhancing food production. The irrigation potential created in the country has grown in the last 50 years from 22.6 mha to 106.6 mha, an increase of about 500 per cent. India has the largest irrigation network and second largest arable area in the world. According to the available projections, the population in India will continue to grow for a few more decades and, by the middle of the present century, it is expected to stabilise and then start to decline. Food security has been shown as a justification for the proposed river-link. Food self-sufficiency is a very important and sensitive political factor in India, which makes an attractive justification for promoting public investments. The investment being very large in the


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case of the river-link project, it will also be necessary in the national interest to make sure that the justifications are scientific and the technological choices the best. It should also be remembered that agriculture in India has evolved to a stage of diversification and food security cannot be linked with cereal production at the national level any more. To understand the food scenario, assessment of future food grain requirement can be made from per capita consumption and projected population figures. Per capita food grains production has been a common indicator of food security. Recent agricultural statistics reveal that with improvements in farming technologies and plant genetics, India has achieved a record food grain production of 211.32 mt in 2001–02, which is 15.40 mt more than that of the previous year (MoA, 2003). Between 1950 and 2000, annual cereal production per capita rose from 121.5 to 191.0 kg (Hanchate and Dyson, 2004: 229).

Assessment of India’s Food Grain Requirements Based on population projections, socio-economic and demographic changes, and assumed changes in the pattern of food consumption, several projections for future food grain productions have been made. The NCIWRDP had estimated the total food grain demand for 2010, 2026 and 2050 high and low growth rates. These projections were made using the work of Ravi (1998), probably based on incomedemand elasticity. According to the estimates of the NCIWRDP, the food grain demand for India (direct and indirect) for 2010 under the low and high demand scenario have been shown as 245 and 247 mt. Hanchate and Dyson (2004: 241) in a systematic review of the past work say that: …this analysis suggests that in 2026 direct cereal demand will be roughly 220 mmt, with another 30 mmt being needed for other uses, giving a ‘ball-park’ total of 250 mmt.

The TFILR (2003) has, however, projected that ‘considering both internal consumption and exports the country has to plan for 550 million tonnes of food grain production by 2050 AD’. It is necessary to examine the validity of this figure of 550 mt of food grain requirement. The drastic increase in the food needs conflicts with

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the field level data like those of the National Sample Survey (NSS). According to the Asian Productivity Organisation (APO, 1996), for India, ‘in the last 20 years, there have been no significant changes in average daily food consumption.’ In this way, the estimates of food requirement by the NCIWRDP for 2010 is similar to what is projected for 2026 by Hanchate and Dyson (2004). It is quite relevant to point out that the basis for such a drastic increase in the annual food grain requirement is probably rooted less in reality and more in two factors. First, a mechanical calculation based on income demand elasticity for estimating future food grain demands. Hanchate and Dyson (2004:233–235) do not indicate any large changes as projected above: According to the NSS annual consumption of all cereals combined fell from 175 kg per person during 1972–3 to about 147 kg during 1999–2000. The FBS (FAO) figures, however, suggest that consumption rose slightly from around 153 kg in 1972–3 to about 157 kg in 1993–4, before increasing to 164 kg in 1999–2000…The NSS data on per capita food consumption underpin the projections because they provide the only state level figures.

While projecting cereal demand for India in 2026, Hanchate and Dyson (2004: 237) accept that: Accordingly, here we have simply assumed that for the rural and urban populations of each state, levels of per capita consumption will remain constant, as in 1993–4. For all India, this corresponds to annual consumption of 154 kg per person—a figure which is almost identical to the average of the NSS and FBS estimates for 1999–2000.

The second factor for the very inflated target figure of 550 mt comes from the linking of agricultural exports with the internal food grain requirements as is clear from the TFILR (2003: 11) statement below: Attempts, therefore, need to be made not only to be satisfied with producing enough to eat, but the strategy needs to be able to produce surpluses for export to achieve a commanding position. Therefore, considering both internal consumption and exports, the country has to plan for 550 million tonnes of food grain production by 2050 AD.

Indeed, the above position of the TFILR puts the scenario for water management in exactly the opposite setting to what existed in India in


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the 1960s. At that time, the country did not have enough food in stock and was on the verge of importing food grains. International trade was not supervised within a framework like the WTO. The present food grain scenario in India is quite different. Agriculture is diversified and there is a decided policy to import food from the international market. International trade is in a vastly different stage, with the WTO in place. As will be described later, there are also many other options for enhancing the total agricultural production, without the river-link. All such options are not assessed. It is indeed when agriculture is not seen as an exclusive domestic market-oriented activity that the role of the proposed river-link in promoting food selfsufficiency starts to get confused. The project starts to get more clearly connected with the export-led growth in farming and water intensive industries in the drier parts of the country, which is being threatened by the growing water scarcities. It is indeed good to have economic growth through new forms of farming and industries. However, the question is whether there is any great justification for India making such a heavy public investment of funds and opportunities for the promotion of commercial farming, agro-companies or industries. There is nothing wrong in economic development based on the export market as long as the common people are fully informed and are not burdened with accepting huge sacrifices in the name of the ‘development’, as was the case in the earlier decades. Moreover, economic development needs to be shared among all the stakeholders and not enjoyed by one group at the cost of sacrifices made by many others, especially with respect to involuntary displacement and unsatisfactory rehabilitation due to water-related projects. The past records of widespread displacement and unsatisfactory rehabilitation related to large water resource projects in India make it necessary to change the processes and share economic gains equitably. Food Self-sufficiency through Improvement in Yields

There are many factors that govern the total food production. Prescription for mechanical expansion of irrigated areas is only one factor for increasing the total agricultural production. This seems to be the only path seen by those proposing the river-link. In spite of the availability of good water and land, the yield in agriculture in India stands at quite a low level when compared with other countries of the world. Options for improvement in the yield under these conditions

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offer a cheaper avenue for attaining higher food yields. This may be elaborated with the example of China, which faces challenges similar to India in terms of population and food production and has a larger population to feed with much less arable land, where the yield levels are almost double of that of India. As Swaminathan (1999: 73) has pointed out, China produces 13 per cent more food grains per capita than India. Data from the FAO (CWC, 1998: 223–24) indicates that while the cereal yield for India stood at 2,134 kg per ha in 1995, the same for China was 4,664 kg per ha (see Figure 4.3). Figure 4.3 Country-wise Yield of Cereals (in kg/ha)

Yield of Cereals (kg/ha)

7,000

5,737 5,864

6,000 5,000

3,840

4,000 3,000

4,841

4,664

3,077 2,424

2,000

2,134

4,647 3,523 2,017

1,000 0

ia A ea sh na ait sia sia an am tan de Chi Ind one Jap Kor US uw alay ietn akis a l K d P of V ng M In p. Ba Re Country Source: CWC, 1998.

As far as agricultural science in India is concerned, great technological breakthroughs that can push agricultural productivity very much upwards in the coming years exist. The NCIWRDP (1999b: 57) has pointed out that the yield of wheat in experimental farms in India has already exceeded 6,000 kg per ha. If a level of yield somewhere close to this is achieved even after half a century, food self-sufficiency without the river-link will not be a problem. This has been the view of many experts on inter-basin transfers, for instance, Bharat Singh (2003) takes the view that India is ‘already producing enough food; production can be further increased by at least 25 percent from existing irrigated area itself by improved inputs and agricultural technology.’


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Similarly, in rain-fed land, NCIWRDP has projected that the food crop yield is expected to grow from the present 1,000 kg per ha to 1,500 kg per ha only in half a century. However, Carruthers and Morrison (1994) reiterate this view when they say that: We do not anticipate or call for an increased rate of capital intensive investment in irrigation infrastructure but we do need to see that more is achieved with what is presently developed.

It is important to note that China today, with only half as much arable land per capita as India, is not thinking in terms of drastically increasing the volume of water in agriculture but increasing the water use efficiency in the existing irrigated areas. Wang Shucheng (2002: 15, 110), the Water Resource Minister of China, writes that: Irrigation is no longer ‘watering the land’ but supplying water for growth of crops… At present, the average agricultural water use efficiency is 0.43 in China. If water saving irrigation is extended to raise the figure up to 0.55 (some experts consider 0.6), food security can be guaranteed when the population increases to 1.6 billion in 2030 without increase of total agricultural water use.

In the case of India, blessed with more arable land and greater irrigation potential, while similar figures for improvement in the efficiency of the use of irrigation water (from 0.35 at present to 0.60 in 2050) have been projected on paper (NCIWRDP, 1999b: 58), there is no clear policy perspective for attaining higher water use efficiency on a time bound basis. The lack of interest in end-use efficiency in irrigation will push the farmers to the soft but costly solution offered by the river-link project. Swaminathan (1999: 93) has thus cautioned that: The inefficient and negligent use of water in agriculture is one of the most serious barriers to sustainable expansion of agricultural production. Public policy regarding the cost of water supplied by major irrigation projects and low-cost or free distribution of power for pumping underground water aggravate the problem… Water consumption can be reduced radically, by as much as fiveto-ten fold, at the same time as significantly increasing crop yields.

Vaidyanathan (2003), who has examined the methodology and estimates in the NCIWRDP Report, questions the very concept of this efficiency underlying the measures. He says that:

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The present available efficiency of surface irrigation, according to the figures cited in the report, ranges between 30 and 50 percent… The concept of efficiency not being specified, their relation to projections cannot be verified without comparable estimates of current and future water balances and irrigation efficiencies overall for the two major sources separately.

The World Bank Irrigation Sector Report on India takes a similar view on irrigation and takes the position that ‘from the past heavy emphasis on physical expansion, effort now needs to turn to a much greater emphasis on productivity enhancement’ (World Bank, 1999: 11). It is clear that a clear justification for investment in further physical expansion of irrigation is not convincing. This makes it clear that achieving food self-sufficiency of India can be based on several steps and the expansion of irrigation potential by another 35 mha through the proposed river-link is a costly option. There are several proven and more cost-effective technological options to ensure that. It is not convincing that the NCIWRDP projects the yield from India’s irrigated fields by 2050 to be only two-thirds of what has already been achieved in experimental farms (6,000 kg per ha). The proposed river-link, if executed, would nevertheless, transfer substantial amounts of water to the drier areas at great public expense. In a globalised economy and diversified agricultural sector, the additional water could surely generate products of high value. Obviously, chances are high that the additional water would go towards growing water-intensive commercial crops in the dry areas or be supplied to water-intensive industries. Production of food grains should surely be protected from the variations in the climate. For this, however, the river-link project is not the best available option. Better options are related to more fundamental changes in agriculture by addressing many other factors, in particular those of sustainability. Otherwise, as Postel (1999) has cautioned: It is not enough to meet a short-term goal of feeding the global population. If we do so by consuming so much land and water that ecosystems cease to function, we will have, not a claim to victory, but a recipe for economic and social decline.

This analysis makes it clear that the justification given for the proposed river-link through the issue of food self-sufficiency does not appear convincing. However, unless serious scrutiny is undertaken on this


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subject, the political advantage of the word ‘food-self-sufficiency’ may overtake scientific gaps in decision making. In this situation, there is a clear possibility of the water provided through the river-link being used extensively for export-oriented production by agri-business companies or industries. Greater economic use of natural resources is surely to be promoted. However, this process of the IWT could be taken up only on the basis of open professional discussion among all stakeholders, including financiers. Otherwise, the common people of India would be asked to make sacrifice for such ‘development’ activities and project-affected people would be evicted from their habitat without proper compensation and adequate rehabilitation. Otherwise, the tragic history of reductionist engineering and ecological naiveté extending unsustainable justifications for proposals with questionable economic feasibility and uninformed of ecological implications may continue in India. Is There a Comprehensive Knowledge Base for Taking Up the Himalayan Component?

In essence, the bulk of the additional water resource generated by the proposed river-link would come from the Brahmaputra sub-basin and go to the drier southern and western parts of the country. The essence of the river-link remains that of the proposal by Rao (1975). The ‘Himalayan Component’ of the project can make available some amount of water and the ‘Peninsular Component’, by itself, offers very little. Indeed, water from the Himalayan rivers during the premonsoon months, if transferred to the drier southern and western parts, could create great values in agriculture and industry. Since the public knowledge on the proposed river-link does not contain any detailed technical data on the Himalayan Component, in term of what amount of water is going to be transferred and stored, from where, to where and at what point of time, and so on, only an intelligent guess can be taken recourse to in this regard. The two Himalayan rivers Ganga and Brahmaputra are inseparable entities in the South Asian socio-economic scenario. Their great water resources have helped the growth of rich agrarian economies. The engineering interventions of embankments and dams on the various Himalayan tributaries of these two rivers are parts of the proposed river-link, though not much technical information has been made available on them. A good amount of research work has

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been published on the very complex nature of the ecology of these rivers (Bandyopadhyay and Gyawali, 1994; Ives and Messerli, 1989). However, policies and investments on them are still being thought of by adopting the mechanical and traditional view of the development of the Himalayan rivers (Blaikie and Muldavin, 2004). A very important aspect of this knowledge gap is uncertainty on the sediment budget of such river basins (Bruijnzeel, 2004). Given this sedimentation has remained a blind spot in the water-led development discourse in South Asia. Most of the writings that highlight the potential of water-led development make no mention of risks posed by sedimentation in the Himalayan rivers. Even a recent treatise that outlines the framework for sustainable development of the GBM basins has very little to say on the challenges posed by the high rate of natural sedimentation of the Himalayan rivers (Ahmad et al., 2001). Consequently, many dam designs on the Ganga and Brahmaputra river systems have been done without openly available data on sediments. Major Himalayan dams such as the Pong in Himachal Pradesh or Ramganga in Uttar Pradesh have been silted up at rates four to five times higher than those assumed (Bandyopadhyay, 1995). Special attention, thus, needs to be given to this factor in the design and estimation of the economic performance of dams, more so given the fact that neither the processes of sediment generation nor the nature of its transportation in the Himalayan context has been studied or understood systematically. In the descriptions and analyses of water resources of the GBM basin nonetheless, the high seasonal flows is probably seen as the basis for it being ‘surplus’. Given this, a largely unrealistic impression has been created that the GBM basin is rich in water resources (Bandyopadhyay, 1995)—an idea emanating largely from an incomplete knowledge base of the climatic characteristics of South Asia and the nature of the ecosystem services provided by the tropical rivers. In this context, it becomes pertinent to cite Das Gupta (1984), who noted that ‘The greater part of the (GBM) basin would have been hydrologically dry if the total annual rainfall were distributed evenly over the twelve months of the year.’ The Himalayan rivers also generate an important group of upland–lowland hydrological linkages—shaped by the immense spatial and temporal variation in the river flows and characterised by monsoon floods and high sediment transport in the streams. With such unmindful alterations in the flow patterns (Bunn and Arthington


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2002; McCully, 1996; Poff et al., 1997; Postel and Richter 2003; Tharme 2003), experts have studied the long-term hydrological records and noted a marked reduction in the annual discharge on some of the world’s major rivers. Due to the official confidentiality on the detailed hydrological data on the Himalayan rivers, the open community of professionals can only make intelligent guesses on the technical and economic feasibility of these projects. Further, the potential for earthquakes at the plate boundary all along the Himalayan foothills is well known and widely accepted (Khattri, 1987). From the various documents that are openly available, it is clear that the ecological complexity and the geomorphological peculiarities of the Ganga–Brahmaputra river system have not received the due research attention. Verticality and the fragility of the seismic-prone foothills of the Himalaya will subject these structures to a high level of structural instability. Unfortunately, the knowledge base required for making professionally comprehensive assessment of such projects is in a state of infancy. To any professional informed of the complexity of the eco-hydrology of the Himalayan rivers, it is clear that development of systematic knowledge needed for making credible impact assessment of the proposed dams and canals would need extensive field observations spread over decades. The fact that a great gap exists in the viewpoint of engineers in India about what should constitute an environmental impact assessment is reconfirmed in a paper by Mohile (2003). This needs to be seen in the background of the period of 12 years given by the Supreme Court as the time limit for the completion of the proposed interlinking. When such a comprehensive knowledge base gets used in an open and professional manner, a completely new assessment of several of the proposed projects may emerge. Recognising the seriousness of the gaps in the knowledge on the Himalayan rivers, the NCIWRDP (1999b: 187–88) took the wise view that: The Himalayan component would require more detailed study using systems analysis techniques. Actual implementation is unlikely to be undertaken in the immediate coming decades.

As an example of the great need for filling this knowledge gap, one can consider the common belief (and justification in the public mind) that the proposed river-link will be able to ‘control’ floods in the

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Himalayan rivers. Floods in the Himalayan foothills and the adjoining plains are the result of an enormously intense monsoon precipitation and the complex ecological processes associated with its movement downstream. The flows in these rivers have a very large peak to lean ratio and regular inundation of the floodplain during the monsoon period is an obvious expected event. On the other hand, based on a simplistic interpretation of hill slope hydrology, afforestation projects in the Himalayan catchments are recommended as measures for ‘flood control’. The media often has made reporting based on shallow knowledge. When rivers try to discharge the great volumes of water in the monsoon period, and unwisely designed embankments are destroyed, wide areas are flooded. Reporters have, interestingly, started to describe these life-giving rivers as ‘rogues’ (Sharma, 2005). At the same time, based on the unsustainable sense of protection from embankments and driven by the desperation of claiming part of the floodplains, people have been invading the floodplains in the GBM basin in large numbers. Politicians are unable to reverse the trend, even if they wish to do so. In tune with the politicians, the traditional and reductionist engineering makes claims that the embankments and dams are needed to control floods in the Himalayan rivers. Such claims are not new, and continue to be made over decades in spite of a great deal of research to the contrary (Mishra, 2003). However, the tragedy with these Himalayan rivers is that systematic hydrological research has been seriously undermined by this confidentiality, which has also affected the activity of the NCIWRDP (1999a:370), which observed that: … the secrecy maintained about water resources data for some of the basins is not only highly detrimental but is also counter productive. Hydrological data of all the basins need to be made available to the public on demand.

It is thus, clear, that an adequate knowledge base does not exist on the basis of which the Himalayan component of the ILR can be addressed. Furthermore, the process of the generation of new interdisciplinary knowledge base is seriously restricted by the confidentiality of data. In order to make any management plans for the Himalayan rivers, open and systematic research over the next three to four decades will be needed. Interventions made without such a knowledge base will be open to high financial losses and ecological risks.


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Conclusions The river-link proposal has been in public circulation for quite some years now. Quite a bit of literature has been generated around it. Unfortunately, the feasibility of the project, both in parts or as a whole, has not yet been established by an open scientific exchange. On the basis of the feasibility reports that have been put in the public domain by the MoWR, critical reviews (Alagh et al., 2006) have established the need for a more comprehensive review of the approach and assessment of the feasibility of the project. The river-link project is divided into two components, the Peninsular and the Himalayan. The critical factor, in terms of the volume of water transfer, is the link proposed between the rivers Brahmaputra prior to its entry into Bangladesh and the Ganga above Farakka. This will make possible transfer of a reasonable amount of water from the Brahmaputra to the Ganga sub-basin. The flow in the Ganga is planned to be transferred to the distant areas of southern and western India. Questions have been openly raised by professionals on the economic feasibility and ecological sustainability of the project as a whole. However, this has drawn no professional response from the proponents of the project. The inadequacy of the knowledge base on the Himalayan rivers strengthens the need for open scientific debate on the Himalayan component. This chapter makes it clear that the river-link project would neither secure domestic water supplies in all the dry areas nor can assure basic food security of India, when a lot of land is being used for exportoriented farming, There are many alternative and easier options for achieving these ends. The environmental impact study on the project needs open public scrutiny. The number of people to be displaced involuntarily has not been estimated, nor their resettlement and rehabilitation worked out. It is surprising that such a project, openly facing professional questions, is being pushed forward while science is being pushed backwards. The justifications and presumed benefits of the river-link are populist and circulated without scientific assessment. The present analysis is an attempt to establish the fact that there is an inherent need to introspectively revisit the conceptual thinking behind the proposed river-link. This chapter stresses that in hydrological science, river basins can not be inherently divided as ‘surplus’ or ‘deficit’ ones. Thus, there is little scientific justification behind calling water transfer

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from a so-called ‘surplus’ basin to a so-called ‘deficit’ basin, as a win–win situation. This chapter has examined whether: 1. the proposed ILR will control floods in high rainfall areas and provide water security in all the water scarce areas of India; 2. India’s food security depends on irrigation from the proposed ILR; and 3. a comprehensive knowledge base for the Himalayan component is available. The official documents that are available in the public domain are not found to be able to convincingly answer the first two questions. Accordingly, this chapter concludes that unless the proposed river-link is discussed in all its details with all the stakeholders and scientific critics, and unless a comprehensive knowledge base for the water transfer project is generated, the justifications of promoting it do not exist. Thus, the wisdom of going ahead with the proposal in its present form is seriously questionable.

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Index adjusted cropping system, 87 administrative system for water, 16 afforestation, 88 agricultural, agriculture, 38, 107; communities, 87; economics, 20; and ecosystem valuation, multifunctional attributes, 125–26; employment, 112; production, 113, 153, 170; waters, valuation, 111–14; agrochemicals, 112 agro-climatic appropriateness, 30 Ajoy river basin, 80 allocation and access to water, 3, 4, 21, 30, 37, 41, 101, 106, 109, 119, 129; equitable, 103, 110; in terms of institutional economic theory, 101, 105; for irrigation, 156; role of pricing, 107, 109, 110; under conditions of physical scarcity, 113; policy, 163 alluvial basins/plains, 63, 74, 90 Alpine rivers, 51 Amu Darya, 148 anthropogenic factors, 55; floods induced by, 64–65 aquatic ecosystems, 49, 119–20 Aral Sea, 148, 155 arsenic in groundwater, 27 atmospheric depression, 59 atmospheric sciences, 40 AWR (Available Water Resources), 161 backwater flooding, 74 Bangladesh: embankments, 81; floods, 67, 73, 85, 87 bank erosion, 90 Barakar river basin, 80 basin management, 24, 151

Bay of Bengal, 39, 59–60, 74 behavioural forces, 126, 128 Bhagirathi–Hooghly, 71 Bharat Nirman, 11, 25 biodiversity conservation, 52, 104 biofuel cultivation, 37 biomass supply, 86 bottled drinking water, 32 Brahmaputra, 15, 51, 59, 73, 75, 157, 173, 177 British rule in India, 8, 9, 13, 14 canal works, 2, 8–9, 82, 85, 148–49, 157–58, 165, 175 carbon sequestration, 104 catchment management, 88 Cauvery, 25, 80, 131, 158; water sharing disputes, 3, 6, 38, 41 Central Arizona Project, 109 CWC (Central Water Commission), 29, 158 channel: characteristics, 62–63, 73, 88; engineering, 82; improvements, 85–86; morphology, 50 climatic conditions, 33, 35–36, 49, 58, 69, 73–74, 164; change, 33, 39–40;— human-induced, 40 coastal areas, 11, 40, 50, 165–66; erosion, 7; flooding, 59, 61–62, 74–75 Cobb-Douglas production function, 115 collaborative mechanisms, 35 Colorado, 124, 130, 132, 148 commercial farming sector, 37, 164, 169 Committee on Water Resources, 119 commoditisation of water, 32 communities and local institutions, role, 21, 36–37

INDEX

compensation, 122–23, 173; for the involuntarily displaced people, 29; policies, 104 competition into the water services industry, 19, 40 conflicts over sharing water, 2–3, 6, 25, 32, 37, 40–41, 102; valuation in the resolution, 105–06 CVM (contingent valuation method), 116 conventional engineering responses and ecosystem services of floods, 86–87 corruption in the water sector, 20, 32, 37 cost of recirculation, 116 cost recovery, 113–14 Cotton, Sir Arthur, 9, 158 crop substitution, 112 cyclonic storms, 50–51, 57, 75 Damodar, 71, 79–80 dams and storage reservoirs, 2, 23, 24, 75, 77–80 debris-laden hyper-concentrated flows, 60 deforestation, 24 demand management, 131, 147 demographic changes, 167 dendritic drainage, 63 desalinisation, 38–39, 147; cost factor, 166 development: and environment linkage, 126; water-related discourse, 174 disaster approach, 35 disaster preparedness, 74, 88 domestic water: needs, 5–6, 76, 154, 161; security, 158, 163–66; supply, 25, 39, 165–66;—as a human right, 3, 153, 163 downstream, 7, 23, 51, 56, 60, 76, 81, 85–86, 112, 131, 154, 161–62, 176; ecosystems, 104, 176; flood risk, 60–63, 69, 71, 73–74, 79–80 drainage, drainage systems, 61–62; channels, 84, 88; congestion, 83–84; of the floodplains, 92 dredging activities, 85–86

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drinking water 27, 118, 120 droughts and floods, 21, 34, 35, 39, 164–65. See also floods Duero Valley, Spain, 112 Durgapur barrage, 80 earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, 59 eco-hydrological, eco-hydrology, 12, 33, 71, 91, 131, 155; cognitive aspects, 57; distinctiveness, 66; knowledge, 20, 21, 24, 121;—on groundwater systems, 25–28, 41;—on the surface water systems, 22–25, 41; perspective on floods, 49ff., 89–93; research on the flood and drought, 35 ecological, ecology, 14–15, 23, 50, 106, 126, 133, 150; characteristics of the catchment, 90; connectivity between river channels, 75–76; costs, 105; economics, application in water system management, 31, 33, 38, 76; of the floodplains, 90; knowledge, 35, 56; peculiarities, 90; perspective of hydrological events, 21–22, 33–35; of floods, 52–53; processes, 23–24, 33, 35, 57, 59, 65, 75, 92; risks, 176; services, 101, 106, 118–19, 122, 130, 133; sustainability of water systems, 4, 15, 19, 160 econometric model of pricing, 116–17 economic, economics, 121–22, 124, 151; analysis of irrigation scheduling, 112; development/growth, 9, 22, 31, 149, 169;—from irrigation and related agricultural production, 8, 30, 113, 153;—role of water, 22–23;—and water use, 8, 131; and ecological services provided by water, 101; conception of water, 31–32, 42, 106; damages from floods in India, 90; resources, 128; scarcity value of water, 132; in water policy and governance, 21, 30–33. See also property rights ecosystem services, 3, 7–8, 13, 15, 19–21, 23–24, 30–31, 35, 40, 49, 52, 56, 92, 104, 106; damage/ degradation,

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103, 155; riverine, 64, 91, 174; riparian, 65; water-based, 21, 31–32, 119–20, 126, 130, 148, 154–55, 162–63;—valuation, 118–19, 132–33; of degradation, 23, 103;—economic, 120–23 ecosystems, 7, 11, 28, 31, 50, 53, 57, 87, 148, 172; changes, 120; degradation, 23, 103, 120; water based, 21, 32 embankments, 75, 80–84, 176. See also dams energy: costs, 112; optimisation drives, 80 engineering interventions, 6, 11–12, 23, 36, 74, 77, 81, 86, 149; regulation of flood flows, 89 environmental: consequences of river linking, 150–51; economics, 32–34, 139; EFR (environmental flow requirements), 4, 8, 20, 26, 87, 119–20, 151, 162; impacts, 6, 7, 23–24;—of river link project, 162–63; law, 28; movement, 3; policy, 128; resources, 105, 126, 129; standards, 115; status, 61 estuarine and deltaic areas, 74 European: water engineering, 11, 77; knowledge system, 50 European Union, 12–13 externalities and governmental controls, 104 EPP (extreme point precipitation), 67 factor productivity, 111 Farakka, 177 farming systems, 76, 92 fiscal policy on water conservation, 31–32 fisheries, 14, 35 floods, 21, 35, 39; adaptation, 77; causes and conditions, 57–65, 89; coastal, 74–75; control and mitigation, 14, 21, 50, 56, 87–93, 176, 178; cushioning, 86; and expected natural inundations, 75–77; of foothill, 69–73; forecasting and warning

systems, 88–89; in Gangetic plains, 35; of highlands, 68–69; holistic perspective, 56–57; human-induced, 35, 54, 74–75, 84; intensification, 61–65; idea of living with, 87–89, 93; of lowlands, 73; management, 35, 81, 87; preparedness, 88–89; processoriented factors, 61; prone river basins in India, 65–66; proof techniques, 76; reductionist view, 77–86; risk consciousness, 87; survival norms, 87; types and ecological process associated with, 65–66; urgent need for interdisciplinary knowledge, 75–89; varieties in the world, 51–52; on the Yangtse, 35 flow-regulation objectives, 80 fluvial flow-sediment-morphology systems, 90, 92 food: grain requirements of India, assessment, 167–69; population ratio, water needs, 161–62; production, water needs, 161–62; scarcity, 11, 23; security, 9, 164, 171, 177–78;— irrigation and river-link project, 166–67; self-sufficiency, 2, 160, 162, 166–67;—through improvement in yields, 169–73 Gandak, 71, 74 Ganga, 9, 15, 23, 51, 59, 65, 73, 74, 87, 148, 157, 158, 173, 177; water sharing disputes, 6 GBM (Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna) basin, 7, 24, 35, 59, 65, 78, 81, 85, 157, 174, 176 Ganga-Cauvery link canal, 85 GATS (General Agreement of Trade and Services), 19 geochemical processes, 27 geo-hydrology, 20 geological processes, 88 geomorphology, 34, 121 geophysical process, 59, 89 Ghaggar, 84 Ghaggar Diversion Scheme, 84

INDEX

GLOFs (glacial lake outburst floods), 60, 69 glaciers and seasonal snow packs, 58 global change and water systems, 21, 39–40 GWP (Global Water Partnership), 19 globalisation 19, 29, 32 Godavari, 8, 65, 80; conflicts, 40–41 Gorai, 85 Green Revolution, 25, 166 groundwater, 5, 21, 32, 52, 73–74; administration, 26; aquifers, 26, 33, 55, 76, 147, 155, 163; depletion and degradation, 27; ecological linkages, 26, exploitation/over-extraction, 26– 28, 114; law, management strategy, 28; recharge and discharge, 86; sociohydrology and eco-hydrology, 26; and surface flows, 27 health issues, 37, 41 hedonic pricing estimate, 116–17 Himalayan rivers, 4, 6, 11, 36, 62, 67–75, 77, 92, 159, 173–76 Hirakud reservoir, 80 Hoover dam, 147 Huang he, 149 human-induced floods, 52, 74, human predatory behaviour, 128 human rights, 2, 13, 30 human well-being, 23 human-induced: drainage problem, 84; floods, 35, 54, 74–76, 84;— impacts on floodplains, 52–55 human interventions, 55, 148 human societies, role of water, 15 hydraulics, 8, 13, 20, 22, 64, 73–74 hydroelectricity, 77 hydrogeology, 28, 35 hydrograph, 91 hydrographic changes on the riverine ecosystems, 64 hydrological cycle, hydrology, 1, 13, 20, 23, 27, 34, 35, 38, 40, 50, 52, 57, 132, 153–54, 161, 177; and irrigation engineering, 4; of rivers, 65, 79

187

HELP (Hydrology for Environment, Life and Policy), 16 hydrometeorological date base, 24 hydrometeorological factors for floods, 57–61 hydrometeorology to GIS (Geographical Information System), 25 hydropower and public health, 14 Hydroschizophrenia, 25 hydrosphere, economy and natural environment, social linkages, 56 income demand elasticity and food grain requirements, link, 168 income generation from irrigation projects, 23 Indira Gandhi canal, 149 Indo-Gangetic plains, 25, 81; embankments, 82 Indus, 15, 23 industrial sector, 23, 30; water demands, 115, 153, 163 industrialisation, 2, 39, 41, 147 input distance function, 115 input pricing, 108–09 institutional economic theory, 101–02 institutional mechanisms, 10, 22, 27, 29, 37, 39, 41, 107; obstacles, 20 IWRM (Integrated Water Resource Management), 17–20, 133 interdisciplinary water systems management, 12–13 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), 39–40 (ILR) Interlinking of Rivers, 11, 16, 159–60, 165, 178; conceptual gaps, 161–63; economic feasibility, 171–73, 177; environmental impact, 175, 177; and flood control, 163–66; Himalayan component, 176, 177. See also riverlinking project international waters, conflicts and cooperation, 41 IWT (interregional water transfers), 147–48, 173; opposition to, 149–51 inter-state river systems, 160

188


inundation hydrology, 6, 33–35, 49, 50–56, 66, 73–77, 81, 88, 164, 176 investment decisions on public goods and utilities, 104–05 irrigation, 2, 9–10, 14, 25, 28, 38, 79; development, 8; end-use efficiency, 38; and hydropower dams, 22; and industry, 21; management, 112; needs of water, 154, 163; pricing, 111–13, 117; projects management, 41; scheduling, 112; induced water logging, 27; water needs, 107; water use efficiency, 171–72 jokulhlaup, 60 Kangsabati reservoir, 80 Ken-Betwa link, 157, 160 Koeladeo National park, 126 Kosi, 71–73, 83; embankments, 84, 90 Krishna, 8, 80; water-sharing conflicts, 41 land acquisition, 29 Land Acquisition Act, 1894, 29 land-use and ownership, 81, 88, 156; changes in climate, 89; properties of the drainage basin, 65 landscape heterogeneity, 52 land–water interactive cycle, 52 lava dam, 60 linear programming approach, 115–16 livestock grazing, 86 Machchu dam, 75 Mahanadi, 65 Mahi, 65 Malthus, Robert, 128 marginal productivity approach, 115 marine ecosystems, 120 market-based mechanisms, 107, 109–10, 128 See also pricing mass-wasting processes, 69 mathematical programming approach, 112 Mawsynram, 6, 152

Mayurakshi basin, 79 Meghalaya hills, 4, 6 Mekong river, Vietnam, 59 Messanjore dam, 79 meteorological and hydrological factors, 57–61, 65, 73, 79 meteorological floods, 58–61 meteorology, 20, 35, 40, 65 Millennium Development Goals, 15 Millennium Ecosystems Assessment, 119 Mississippi river, 150 monsoons, 6, 49–50, 58, 67, 151–52. See also floods, inundation Murray-Darling Basin, Australia, 110, 156 Mutha Canals, 9 Myrdalsjokull glacier, Southern Iceland, 60 Nace, Raymond, 25 Narmada river basin, 29, 57, 158 National Civil Society Committee on Interlinking of Rivers, 160 National Commission on Floods, 77 National Perspective for Water, 14 National Water Code, Chile, 156 NWDA (National Water Development Agency), 158–59 National Water Policy, 2002, 11 natural flow regime, 49 natural reservoirs, 60 neotectonism, 71 network characteristics, 62–63 Nile basin, 55, 148 NGOs (non-governmental organizations), 32 NAWAPA (North American Water and Power Alliance), 148 nutrient cycling, 86 oceanography, 40 O&M (operational and maintenance) cost recovery, 114 output pricing, 108–09, 111, 113 overexploitation of groundwater, 26–28

INDEX

Pacific Ocean, 60–61 Padma, 71 paradigm shift, 13 Parthasarathi Committee, 23 Peninsular River Development, 11 Pennyquick, John, 9 Periyar Dam, 9, 85, 149 Physiographic factors, 59 Plachimada (Kerala), 2 Planning Commission, 15, 29 Polavaram irrigation project, 16, 30 policy framework, 11, 13, 30, 32, 151, 160 political advantages, 34 political economy: of conflicts over the Cauvery, 114; of groundwater use, 27; of water pricing, 114; of water sector, 113–14 political issue, 2 pollution, 10, 21, 26–27, 32, 104, 123; taxes, 103 Pong dam, 174 population growth, 81, 147, 149 poverty, 33 poverty alleviation, 9, 21, 22, 42, 160 power generation, 80 precipitation pattern, 4–6, 28, 40, 49–50, 57, 61, 65–67, 69, 73, 85, 131, 151–52, 157, 164, 176; and crop choice, correlation, 28; spatial variation spatial variation, 31, 152 pricing and abatement cost of pollution, 115 pricing of water, 30–32, 106; of agricultural waters, 107–14; criteria, 110–11; as an input in the industrial sector, 114–16; irrigation water, 111, 113, 117; to urban areas, 117–18 privatisation of water systems, 19, 29, 31 PMP (Probable Maximum Precipitation), 79 production process, 126; water as an input, 107–16 Project-affected people, 173 property rights, 3, 12, 26, 28, 101–02

189

public health, 38 public–private partnership, 29 qualitative aspects of degradation, 37 rainfall, 5–6, 58, 67; intensity in foothills, 70;— spatial variation, 67; runoff, 52, 65, 73; snowmelt and rainon-snow, 59–60; and surface water systems, 25 rain-fed streams, 51 rainwater harvesting, 88, 164 Ramganga dam,174 Ravi-Beas, 85 recharge mechanisms, 21; and sustainable use, 26–27 recreational opportunities, 120 Red river, Vietnam, 59 regional: cooperation and conflict resolution, 42; development, 30; diversity in precipitation, 10; mechanisms, 21 regulatory restrictions, 116 rehabilitation and resettlement of the people displaced by large water projects, 28–30, 36, 169, 173, 177 relief-based approach, 33 remote sensing technology, 39 renting of water, 156 resettlement and rehabilitation, 29, 177 resource availability, 103 resource-use efficiency, 111 re-use of water, 39 Ricardo, 128 riparian ecosystems, 65, 90 river, river systems, 37, 85, 176; aggradations, 71; corridors and floodplains, 75; diversions and inter-basin transfers, 8, 84; economic valuation, 119; ecosystems, 90, 91; floods, 50–53; flows, self purification potential, 120; managed, mismatch between projected and observed behaviour, 89; management, 77; morphology, 89; oscillations, 81 river–floodplain–riparian zone, 53

190


river-link project, 147ff.; in India, 156–60; economic aspect, 162, 171–73; ecological implications, 173; and flood control, 163–66 rural poverty, 27 Sabarmati, 65 saline water encroachment, 26 salinity: control, 154; ingress, 86 sandbagging doorways, 76 Sardar Sarovar Project, 29 scarcity of water, 6, 10, 112, 161; mitigation, 131; to scarcity value, 131–32; value of services, 126–30 scientific credibility, 165 sedentary conditions, 6 sedimentation regime, 35, 71, 75, 82, 90–92 seismic movements, 61, 69 seismic-prone foothills, 175 Sidhnai Canals, 9 Silicon Valley, 1 snowmelt, 58–60, 73 social: acceptability, 15, 20; aspects of water use, 41; dimensions of groundwater use, 27–28; dimensions of water systems, 15, 21–22, 36, 38; divide, 5; and ecological impacts of the transfer projects, 29; equity, 13; and environmental externalities of water resource projects, 31 socio-economic damage, 66 socio-economic transitions, 2 sociology, 40; of local water institutions, 28 soil: conservation, 88; fertility, 76; moisture, 52; saturation, 73; sciences, 28 solar tents, 39 South to North Water Transfer Project, 149 Stampriet aquifer of Namibia, 113 stream-aquifer interactions, 89 stream flow depletion, 123 structural engineering in dams and barrages, 23

structural interventions, 8, 63, 77 subsurface storage of water, 52 Sunderbans, 165; ecological decline, 7 supply augmentation, 11, 16 supply-side technological solutions, 147 surface: ecosystems, 53; irrigation charges, 108; and subsurface hydrologic processes, 52, 65, 73; water regime, 39, 52; water storage capacity, 55, 88 surplus flow in rivers, concept, 154–55 sustainability of water system, 3, 4, 13, 19, 22, 27, 39, 42 Syr darya, 148 taccavi and zamindari embankments, 80 TFILR (Task Force on Interlinking of Rivers), 160, 167 Tawa project, Madhya Pradesh, 30 technocracy, 31 technological innovations, 38 technological options in water systems management, 27, 38–39 technology, 21, 30, 38, 64 tectonic forces, 59–61, 68, 89 Telugu-Ganga, 149 temporal block-pricing methods, 108 temporal inequities, 6 terracing and contour ploughing, 88 Texas Water System, 150–51 Thar Desert of Rajasthan, 6 Thompson College, Roorkee, 8 tidal floods, 74 Tilpara barrage, 79 Tista river, 59, 68, 71–72 tradable permits, 104 transaction costs, 101–02 transformations in the conceptual frameworks on water systems, 17–18 transportation and deposition of sediments, 24 tsunamis, 50, 51, 61 typology of floods in India, 65–76 Ukai Dam, 79 under-utilisation, 30, 113

INDEX

UN (United Nations), 19 upland-lowland, 24; interactive ecological processes, 73; hydrological linkages, 174 Upper Bari Doab Canal, 8 Upper Ganga Canal, 8 urban sanitation services, 118 urban water valuation, 117–18 urbanisation, 2, 11, 39, 41 utility factor, water as a good, 107, 116–18 Vaigai basin, 9, 85, 149 valuation of water: of economic service, 107–18; and its policy implications, 101ff.; as a good in the utility bundle of the consumers, 116–18 vegetation cover management, 88 Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes, 52 volumetric pricing methods, 108, 111 vote-bank politics, 114 water, water systems: changing paradigms, 153–54; conservation, 116; crisis, 40; development plans and projects, 3, 12–13, 15, 22, 30, 133; diversion, 7–9, 23, 85, 110, 119, 150, 155–56, 162, 164; as an economic good, 31; education, 8; governance institutions in India, 17, 20, 24; harvesting, 37, 88, 164; interdisciplinary knowledge, 1ff.; intrusion, 76; knowledge and water resource development, disconnect in India, 13; laws and entitlements, conflicts and their resolution, 21, 40– 41; logging, 75, 83, 90; management, 2–3, 8, 10, 18, 21, 30–32, 37, 84,

191

88, 101–03, 150, 157;—in India, history of, 8–13;—research agenda for an interdisciplinary framework, 17–21;—themes, 21–40; markets, 32, 109;—of Chile, 156; per-capita availability of water, 4; purification, 120; quality, 116; related projects, comprehensive assessment, 28–30; resource engineering, 50; resources in India and logic for river-link project, 151–60; rights, 109; scarcities, 34;—human-induced, 164;—and inter-basin water transfers, 147–49; services, 131; storage capacity, 55; supply and sanitation, 23, 118; tariffs, 31; transfer projects, 28; treatment plant costs, 116; unique features, 4–8; use, 41, 161;—and local institutions, social dimensions, 36–38; withdrawals, 161 WFD (Water Framework Directive) of European Union, 11, 12 weather systems, 57 Western Ghats, 4, 68 wetland reclamation, 86 WTP (willingness-to-pay), 117–18, 122 World Bank, 29, WCD (World Commission of Dams), 36 WTO (World Trade Organisation), 19, 169 WWAP (World Water Assessment Program), 18, 161 Yangtze, 35, 51, 149 Yellow River, China, 59, 148

About the Author Jayanta Bandyopadhyay is the Head of the Centre for Development and Environment Policy at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC). After completing his doctorate in engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, he turned his professional attention towards interdisciplinary studies of science and public policy with special interest in sustainable development policy. He has worked at reputed institutions such as Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (1978–87), International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Kathmandu (1987–93) and International Academy of Environment, Geneva (1993–97) where he was appointed Director of Research. His work in the past 25 years has been guided by the objective of generating transdisciplinary public interest knowledge on critical issues related to sustainable development and equity. He was a Coordinating Lead Author for the Responses Working Group in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the area of climate change and water. He is currently the President of the Indian Society for Ecological Economics (Delhi) and the South Asian Consortium for Interdisciplinary Water Resource Studies (Hyderabad) and a member of the Board of the International Society for Ecological Economics. Professor Bandyopadhyay has published more than 100 research papers, books and articles. His latest publications include Integrated Water Systems Management in South Asia: A Framework for Research CDEP Occasional Paper 09 (Kolkata: Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, 2006); Biodiversity and Quality of Life (New Delhi: Macmillan, 2005); Moving the Mountains Up in the Global Environmental Agenda CDEP Occasional Paper 03 (Kolkata: Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, 2004); and a chapter on ‘Freshwater Ecosystems Services’ in the Report of the Millennium Ecosystems Assessment, Ecosystems and Human Wellbeing: Policy Responses (New York: Island Press, 2005).

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