Water Security

Access to safe and reliable water contributes to poverty alleviation in many ways—through the provision of sanitation services, water supply, affordable food, and enhanced resilience of poor communities to disease, climate shocks, and environmental degradation.

Water scarcity not only reduces access to the water resources needed for drinking, sanitation, and food production, but also threatens the viability of the livelihoods available to poor populations. Loss of arable land through desertification, widespread erosion that in turn leads to the siltation and drying up of freshwater sources, and increasing salinity of soil are the physically manifested adverse effects of water scarcity.

Problems of poverty are inextricably linked with those of water—its availability, proximity, quantity, and quality. They are connected to all the challenge areas, because water problems are people problems. Inadequate water services for the poor increase their living costs, lower their income-earning potential, undermine their well-being, and make their life riskier.

Despite its vulnerable ecosystem and a rather inhospitable terrain, Marwar is the world’s most densely populated desert. For centuries, its population managed its scarce water resources by attaching sanctity and value to the core principles of conservation, equity, and controlled utilization of resources. Traditional water management was embedded in a holistic and ecologically prudent matrix of Agor (catchment area), Gauchar (pastureland), and Oran (sacred groves-biodiversity repository)—the AGO. The agor was well protected so that it could sustain village water bodies, while a separate common gauchar was preserved to provide a support system for the livestock economy. The oran, often associated with a water body, was and remains the most effective way to protect biodiversity and improve retention and water quality.

The AGO matrix had been developed and controlled by people’s institutions that worked towards sustaining the local economy, catalyzing benefits from natural resources and, most importantly, institutionalizing an equitable pattern of resource accessibility and utilization. This tradition helped people adapt to the adverse climatic conditions of the region.

The AGO matrix, however, has been deteriorated due to a growing population and transfer of common property resources to centralized governance. This has led to desertification of the area resulting in water scarcity. Moreover, the situation has been predicted to worsen due to the adverse impacts of climate change. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global phenomenon of climate change is unequivocal and accelerating. Evidence of long-term geophysical and biological changes is already apparent in the region, which is experiencing an increase in the number of drought years and a change in monsoon patterns. Since a significant change in climate is inevitable even with the optimal mitigation response, adaptation to climate change is extremely important to reduce the vulnerability of the population.

Water-related adaptation is particularly vital, since diminishing fresh water supply could be the most challenging issue as it not only affects availability of drinking water but can also result in chronic poverty, especially as people’s livelihood is dependent on rain-fed agriculture and livestock rearing. Water scarcity forces people to compromise on quality and consume contaminated water, which has long-term impacts on health, which, in turn, are compounded by unsafe sanitation and hygiene practices. Drinking water scarcity places an enormous economic strain on communities, because they have to buy water, transported through tankers over long distances. Lack of water availability also results in the drudgery of women and girls. It also imposes a huge opportunity cost resulting from lack of time for pursuing education and other productive work. Ensuring water security is essential for expanding development opportunities for the disadvantaged desert communities living in the most backward districts of western Rajasthan.

The vulnerability of the population and the adverse impacts of climate change can be addressed through decentralized water resource management which improves the coping capacities of the population. Jal Marudhara Foundation looks at a broader range of critical risks that affect the life and livelihoods of local communities, especially the poor. For this, its initiatives envisage the integration of water management with the critical dimensions of community participation, water quality, better hygiene practices, improved access to sanitation. The Foundation adopts a bottom-up approach that acknowledges and incorporates the various coping mechanisms developed through traditional water management processes most suited for its project area.

JMF encourages village-level institutions to undertake micro projects to revive or create traditional water-harvesting systems. Village volunteers are encouraged to plant hardy and resilient native trees in order to help conserve the landscape and to retain more water, thus preserving the catchment area (agor, gauchar, and oran). Moreover, JMF facilitates communities’ experimentation with modern technologies like reverse osmosis (RO) plants. This initiative is a part of a strategy to meet the long-term safe drinking water needs of the region.

A community-led water management system has been evolved, which taps run-off from the catchment area through water or feeder channels to a surface water-harvesting structure (talab, nadi,or nada) located on the outskirts of the village and from water-harvesting structures to community water-harvesting tankas (underground rainwater-harvesting tanks) in the vicinity of the village. This decreases evaporation and seepage losses that occur in surface water-harvesting bodies, and reduces the distance that women have to travel to fetch water, leaving more time for them to pursue other activities.

Sustainability of these projects is ensured through a three-pronged strategy. Firstly, social capital is created through strengthening of community-based institutions from village level to project level. Secondly, financial sustainability and community ownership is ensured through a transparent system of Jal Kosh (development fund), in which people deposit at least 30 per cent of the project cost and nominal water charges for the development and maintenance of the micro project. Thirdly, the foundation focuses on capacity building of the rural community for development and proper management of ecological resources.