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This three day national seminar was jointly organised by the Kerala State Council for Science, Technology and Environment (KSCSTE), Thiruvananthapuram, and the C Achutha Menon Foundation (AMF), Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala and included presentations and discussions on a range of water related themes such as water scarcity, water conservation, commercialisation of water, water conflicts and water management.
The seminar aimed at creating awareness and triggering a dialogue among scientists, academicians, researchers, activists, as well as lay people on the emerging challenges related to water resources, water quality and water conservation in the state of Kerala. The seminar was inaugurated by Shri V M Sudheeran, Ex MP and former speaker, while Dr Rajasekaran Pillai, Executive Vice President KSCSTE, delivered the keynote address with the felicitation by Shri M P Achuthan, MP.
The seminar included discussions under five different themes related to water issues that included water scarcity, water conservation, commercialisation of water, water as an new area for conflicts and water management.
The three day seminar on water management at the Achuta Menon Foundation, Trivandrum, Kerala
This session was chaired by Dr P Nandakumar, Regional Director, Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), Kerala and included the following presentations:
However, in the presentation, it was argued that the meaning of literacy had changed in modern times and was not associated with awareness about issues and acting on them, but only with education. This was evident in the way in which the water resources were being handled in the state and how there was a very little role that literacy had in changing the poor condition of water resources in the country through activities for conservation of water. For example, inspite of the rich tradition India had in the past, many were totally oblivious of the water wisdom that we had in olden times and the technologies that our ancestors used to preserve and conserve water. No attempts were also being made to learn from the past and value water in the same way as our ancestors.
The presentation made references to the Rig Veda, The Ramayana, the Indus Valley civilisation where there was ample evidence that indicated that there was abundant knowledge on technologies for construction of tanks, water management and sanitation, canal irrigation, use of instruments such as rain gauge etc. The presentation referred to the current situation of water where the world was running out of freshwater and there was increasing pressure on water resources from the agriculture and irrigation sector, industries.
Groundwater over pumping was one of the serious problems that the country was facing. Privatisation and commmercialisation were some of the current problems and access to water was becoming a problem day by day. There was a need to have a water literacy campaign, developing awareness among the population was also very important along with encouraging optimum use of water, water quality testing, water conservation education, education of the population on groundwater recharging, rainwater harvesting, recycling and preservation of water. The presentation ended by pointing that the NGOs had an important part to play in increasing the literacy of the population on water related issues.
Thus, quality and quantity management of water was very important and there was an urgent need to involve the community in the conservation of resources, water management, species evolvement and resources management. He also described the case of Technopark in Trivandrum where construction of buildings had led to the gradual death of a stream in the area, which had abundant freshwater prawn species not found anywhere else, which had gradually disappeared following the death of the stream.
Thanal narrated their experiences of going from factory to factory to collect samples with the help of Cochin University and some of the factories were asked to be shut down. However, the Chief Minister intervened as a guarantee and factories were started again. The environmental impact assessment studies showed chemical contamination, but nothing was being done, in fact, trade unions also supported factories while people fighting pollution were blamed as anti developmental activists in the process.
Shreedhar argued that the pollution in the rivers was increasing day by day with highly toxic wastes such as ferrous sulphate being found in the river Pampa. Inspite of this situation, no one wanted to talk about it. It was not possible to remove these harmful chemicals through filtering. The upper catchment areas of rivers were thus being polluted because of factory wastes and the middle ones due to waste dumping. No one was concerned and no one was doing anything about it, but this was a very serious situation. Half of the wells in the state were being converted to septic tanks, plus motors were being put on wells.
The questions that were thus important were, how can we do management, how can we learn to use water efficiently. Did we use hand wash and detergents before? These are known to be extremely hazardous to the river waters. Thus it was important to understand that we were killing our rivers due to changing life styles and needs and we urgently needed to reverse this process to save our rivers, a valuable water resource and an integral part of our culture.
This session was chaired by Dr Biju Kumar, Head, Department of Aquatic Biology, University of Kerala and included the following presentations:
This was followed by the National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP) that followed the demand led approach, but corrected some of its flaws and emphasised water as a public good, with reliance on multiple water sources and need to build local capacities through various mechanisms, especially the need for PRIs and local communities to prepare and implement the water security plans for the management of resources and storage and maintenance of data to be fed on to a national level MIS on rural drinking water. All these needed capacity building at various levels and most importantly at the Gram Panchayat level.
The session described the findings of the study that aimed at documenting the paradigm shifts in policy and the related governance challenges in the provision of rural drinking water in the past decades. The analysis found that the capacity gap was a running theme with related issues of lack of transparency and accountability of the governance system.This was most acute in the current phase where the advantage was of reclaiming the state, but that posed a huge challenge to the gram panchayat that demanded challenges of capacity enhancement at the local level.
The presentation highlighted that reaching the unreached would be very difficult without the active involvement of the stakeholders and that streamlining of the latest programme that had divested much of the responsibilities back to the state was essential and that none of the flagship programmes could work without the active involvement of the civil society. The presentation ended by suggesting that a preliminary plan to develop capacities of educational institutions and civil society organisations to help local institutions was necessary.
The presentation highlighted a case study of the groundwater crisis in Kozhikode, Chevayoor where flats were constructed in 2007, one well was present and one borewell was constructed, no sanction was taken. When people went there to stay, an open well was constructed of 5 meter diameter in which pipes were fitted and a borewell was made inside this well. People started using this well water and water levels in 13 neighbouring wells declined and they had to dig deeper. A study was consequently done by CWDRM and the Groundwater Department who advised to control groundwater use and the residents were forced to take the water authority connection, the well had to be registered, and rainwater harvesting had to be made compulsory. Rules such as the Kerala Groundwater Regulation Act 2002 and the Kerala Municipal Building Rules section 109 A were ignored that made permission for wells mandatory. Also, penalty for breaking these rules was also very less, observed the study.
This session was chaired by Dr Prakash Nelliyat, National Biodiversity Authority, Chennai and included the following presentations:
The presentation also informed that Regional Agricultural Research Station, Kumarakom had developed a eight hectare wetland structure to a water harvesting structure and it was found that an impervious layer of clay soil prevented percolation of water into the reservoir. A treatment plant was fitted to treat water to remove high iron content and acidity of the soil, which used reverse osmosis. The filtered water qualified to the BIS drinking water standards, which suggested the potentialities of using derelict swamps and polders in Kuttanad as water harvesting structures to improve the water situation in the area.
This session was chaired by M R Ramesh, Former Director, Groundwater Department, Kerala and included the following presentations:
The chairperson for this session was Dr Vivekanandan and included the following presentations:
Besides being primary sources of water, wetlands offered 21 services that could be classified into four categories namely:
These wetland ecosystem values when converted into monitory terms were worth Rs 22,24,350 per hectare annually as reported by the TEEB in 2010 (The economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) as a part of the UN Millenium Assessment of Wetland values hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme in collaboration with various other agencies. The value of wetlands in Kerala amounted to about Rs 1, 22,868 crores. However, the loss of wetlands to the tune of 1,67,812 ha (49%) in seven years in Kerala and 20 lakh hectares in nearly 10 years in the country was a manifestation of the gross ignorance and sheer insensitivity to this valuable resource, which was being destroyed at the cost of the current developmental activities.
The presentation ended by arguing that it was high time for the country to have a National Wetland Conservation and Sustainable Use Strategy and Action Plan to ensure water and food security. Such as policy needed to have:
What happened to the river, its natural flows, the basic and livelihood needs of the people at the downstream, the harm caused to the ecology and aquatic diversity were thus rarely the concern of any bureaucrat or the government. The early drying of rivers and the increasing saline ingress inland were indications that most of the rivers in Kerala did not reach the sea in summer. The presentation argued that rivers were thus being managed without understanding or accounting for their fragile nature.
The presentation argued that strategies for river revival that needed to be backed by an enabling policy and legal protection for rivers. There was no law for protection of rivers in India. The presentation ended by highlighting some of the necessary policy-legal prerequisites for an enabling river restoration strategy that needed to be considered were: