Asia-Pacific Water Forum

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| by Fred Stanton | 07.08 2008 20:30 | url: |

In the outline of Recommendations for Priority Theme A: Water Financing and Capacity; following points are found to be most significant and needed for further discussions. That will also need to reflect in the Final outcome of the Summit as well as in the Ministerial declaration and Dialogue.

(a) Of the 2.6 billion people in the world without access to improved sanitation facilities, 2 billion are in the Asia - Pacific region.

(b) Despite the substantial improvement in access to improved drinking water supplies in the Asia - Pacific Region (around 3.16 billion people - 82% of the population - in the Asia - Pacific region had access to improved water supplies, up from 74% in 1990), formidable challenges remain. Approximately 669 million people in the region were still without access to safe drinking water.

©In terms of numbers of unserved people, the largest numbers are found in India and the People’s Republic of China.

(d)The Asia - Pacific region accounted for 91% of the world’s total deaths due to natural disasters and 49% of the world’s total damage due to natural disasters in the last century

(e) Finally, as stated in the key recommendations, what exactly needed is a firm political will and commitment to invest in water and sanitation sector.

In this context, I would like to comment on a few points on Indian scenario: "India’s Turbulent Water Future –massive investments needed”

Recently, a World Bank report (2005) says that unless water management practices are changed India will face a severe water crisis within the next two decades and will have neither the cash to build new infrastructure nor the water needed by its growing economy and rising population.

It was further noted that India’s past investments in large water infrastructure have yielded spectacular results with enormous gains in food security and in the reduction of poverty. However, much of this infrastructure is now crumbling. Shortfalls in financing have led to an enormous backlog of maintenance.

Faced with poor water supply services, farmers and urban dwellers alike have resorted to helping themselves by pumping out groundwater through tube-wells. Today, 70 percent of India’s irrigation needs and 80 percent of its domestic water supplies come from groundwater. Although this ubiquitous practice has been remarkably successful in helping people to cope in the past, it has led to rapidly declining water tables and critically depleted aquifers and is no longer sustainable.

Water scarcity, pollution and stress are the creations of modern India. The actual problem in India today is the extensive withdrawal of groundwater. Once water was in abundance in those parts of India such as Kerala, West Bengal and Chirrapunje- have developed acute water shortage due to large scale deforestation, thereby reducing their water-holding capacity. When rains arrive or snows melt, the water spills over and floods adjoining areas, causing as great devastation as a drought. The advanced technology on drilling and pumping methods have resulted in massive exploitation of ground water mainly for irrigation which is about 85% of the total withdrawal and approximately 15% for industrial and domestic purposes. The area under groundwater irrigation has increased from 6.5 million hectors in 1950-51 to about 40 million hectors in 2002-03. The exploration of ground water to meet the increasing demand of rising population from 36 million in 1951 to over 1 billion at present is causing the imbalance between over-withdrawal of ground water and inadequate recharge. This has resulted in rapid lowering of water table in the region. Over withdrawal along the coastal belts has resulted in saline intrusion into the potable ground water aquifers. The indiscriminate exploitation of groundwater has changed the hydro-geo-chemical environment of the aquifers and enhanced the toxic and chemical levels of water beyond the permissible limit.

India needs a lot more water infrastructure. Compared to other semi-arid countries, India can store relatively small quantities of its fickle rainfall. Whereas India’s dams can store only 200 cu.m.of water per person, other middle-income countries like China, South Africa, and Mexico can store about 1000 cu.m. per capita. New infrastructure needs to be built especially in underserved areas such as the water-rich northeast of the country where investments can transform water from a curse to a blessing. Furthermore India, desperately short of power in peak periods, has utilized only about 20 percent of its economically viable hydropower potential, as compared to 80 percent in developed countries. The country needs to invest in water infrastructure at all levels – from large multipurpose water projects to small community watershed management and rainwater harvesting projects (Courtesy, World Bank, 2005).

Dr.Roy Kunjappy , Ph.D
Executive Director
Centre for Community Health Research,
Sadanathil bungalow, Vettikavala,
Kottarakara, Kerala- 691 538, INDIA
Tel: 91 474 2403358 ; Fax: 91 474 2402055
E-Mail: roycchr@satyam.net.in

| by Dr.Roy Kunjappy | 10.20 2007 06:31 | url: |

Capacity Development - A Distant Reality

Despite that investments in water, drinking water or for that matter irrigation facilities, fall far short of the demand, a paradox does exist in the use of the investment. At one hand sufficient investment in water is lacking in several AP countries while at other available financial resources are misutilized or even misappropriated. The crux of the problem lies in the ineffective and inefficient use of funds. One reason for such inefficient use is attitudinal. It is quite often assumed that the needs of the target beneficiaries are known. This attitude despite unremitting call for stakeholders’ active participation remains to change. Hence financing mechanism has to address and ensure “water acquisition” particularly for poor communities.

The recommendation of “institutional reform and capacity development” hence is meaningful to improve on the orientation. However more often than not, it has been noticed that in most of the programs / projects the proportion of allocation to the “software part” is too minimal, even negligible compared to the fund allocated for the hardware. Investment in this regard has been penny-pinching. Judged from individual household perspective for drinking water the cost for educating the HH regarding the use and misuse of water / sanitation is less than 1% of the total cost. Likewise for irrigation water, the allocation for institutional growth or development (of water users) per hectare normally does not exceed double digit (in $ term) in a small to medium scale irrigation scheme. So I strongly feel that water development projects should categorically manifest an institutional development strategy paper and the proportion of funds that has to be apportioned for software component.

Second, regulatory reforms in developing countries have been rather a conundrum. They in the first place do not come easily and at the second, come too little too late. Customarily they are taken as donor induced and become a very common tool at the hands of political nonconformists for their political gains. Moreover the reforms are quite often put up hastily to meet requirements of a specific project/program and thereby fail to address broader issues. So, pre-emptive efforts with sufficient lead time have to be made in order to attain a meaningful reform in regulatory policies.

| by Sushil Subedee | 10.18 2007 14:12 | url: |