IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON OUR WATER MANAGEMENT REGIME PLANNING FOR STRATEGIES TO FUTURE CHALLENGES

INTRODUCTION
1. One of the largest impact being made by climate change is on water resources of the world. India having a random monsoon - based climate will be particularly vulnerable. India is blessed with a monsoon based climate and all our water-food-energy nexus operate around almost clockwork arrival of monsoons. The climate change has strong effects on global weather and the increasing frequencies of phenomena like Ël-Nino are making the water yields unpredictable in temporal as well as in quantitative terms. Our water resources projects are planned around a stationary random process of rainfall and yield.

2. Vulnerabilities : We need to look for the vulnerabilities that violation of these assumptions will generate on the success of the projects and what we need to do so as to minimize their effects. The impact may also affect our energy generation regimes by reducing thermal generation due to lack of water and hydro generation due to lack of storage capacities and decreasing non-monsoon flows. Thus, the peaking as well as base load capacities might get affected. While making projections for future, how to consider these aspects is a moot question which the water resources and climate professionals will have to answer.

3. Surya Foundation Think Tank comprising of experts in their domain deliberated upon various issues pertailing to the impact of climate change on our water management. Their analysis and the recommendations are given in the succeeding paras.

OBSERVATIONS AND CHALLENGES
Strategies towards ensuring that the water will remain available irrespective of increased skew in rainfall patterns?

4. As our economies and populations grow, our resilience towards accommodating shortages is already going down. The agricultural productivity is highly dependent upon the timely availability of water at the field level. The mix of rainfall with supplementary irrigation during kharif period may require more depletion of our storages which then can result in shortages during Rabi season thereby impacting the food grain baskets across the country. How to capture the water as it occurs and then manage over longer periods of shortfall is an issue we have not yet thought through.

Changing the operational strategies
5. How will we need to change the operational strategies of our water resources projects so that they continue to meet demands in a changing climate scenario needs to be analysed. We are endowed with about 250 Billion Cubic meters (BCM) of storages in our reservoirs. However, the pace of approaching the earlier targeted 450 BCM has slowed down significantly. This is due to various issues like pressures on land, sociological pressures and competitive politics amongst stakeholders. It therefore, becomes imperative that the available basket of storages is utilized at an optimum level to ease the situation. Most of our storage reservoirs are gradually losing capacities due to silting and many of our major reservoirs are not being able to store their full quantum of water due to constraints imposed on their Full Reservoir Levels for various reasons. In this context, we need to work on reviewing operational strategies being adopted in real life and how to make them more resilient.

Protecting society from water related disasters
6. The climate change will bring increased frequency and intensity of water related disasters like floods and droughts. Increasing intensities of rain storms are now becoming routine news in almost every monsoon. We have a number of examples of areas receiving monthly or more worth of rainfalls in 24-36 hours. This leads to flooding and damages to the overall economy of the areas under such effects. Similarly, the limited storage capacities coupled with such intense events lead to droughts in other seasons as the water could not be captured. How to build resilience in the society so as to minimize the long term damages and also putting a response regime in place commensurate with the local conditions is the need of the hour.

Resilient Agriculture Practices
7. How to provide and promote resilient agriculture practices for protecting the outputs against the variable rainfall and temperature patterns and what role agriculture water management play in the area is a vital issue. Nearly three-quarters of India’s families depend on rural incomes. The majority of India’s poor (some 770 million people or about 70 percent) are found in rural areas. India’s food security depends on producing cereal crops, as well as increasing its production of fruits, vegetables and milk to meet the demands of a growing population with rising incomes. To do so, a productive, competitive, diversified and sustainable agricultural sector will need to emerge at an accelerated pace.

8. The agriculture sector will suffer from a double whammy effect on account of climate change effects. On one hand, the availability of water will change, the changes in temperature and humidity regimes will also affect our output patterns. Thus, coupled with the water regimes, the agricultural practices will also come under stress and may have to be modified with regard to crop calendars, cropping patterns, resistant varieties and agronomic practices. Extent of these tasks are huge and dissemination and adoption by the agricultural practitioners is a challenge that we have not yet fully formulated.

Resuse / Recycle Policies
9. There is a need for augmenting and providing reliable sources of water using reuse/ recycle policies so that the circular economies are ensured for water. With the increased urbanization and industrialization, the pollutant loads in the outflowing waters are increasing dramatically. These are posing challenges of quality to the downstream communities and also to the food quality and safety. The climate change will aggravate this crisis as the consumption patterns of the communities will change with changes in temperature cycles and also the life styles. On the other hand, the effluent flows will provide a steady source of water but using the same will require treatment facilities and consumer acceptance. Mobilization towards this end requires setting up of the policy directions and backed by legislative support.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Climate Policy and Governance
10. Climate policy makers should put water at the heart of action plans. Sustainable water management will help the country to adapt to climate change by building resilience, protecting health and saving lives. It will also mitigate climate change itself by protecting ecosystems and reducing carbon emissions from energy generation, transportation and agriculture practices.

11. The climate change effects are getting increasingly prominent and the impact is the greatest on the water resources and also the related aspects of water-food-energy nexus. Our economy and social fabric is heavily dependent on timely and well distributed monsoons. Increasing frequencies of phenomena like El-Nino and Indian Ocean dipole are impacting not only the availability of water but also are generating unexpected water related disasters which are coupled with unusual occurrence of cyclonic storms and droughts.

12. It has been generally agreed that adaptation measures will have to account for the tendencies of shifting mean, increased variability and changed symmetry of our hydrologic cycle. All or any of these tendency will lead to more incidences of extreme hot weather/ extreme cold weather or both occurring simultaneously in the same year.

13. Water governance regime in the country is not conducive to fight climate change. The policy of political and administrative compartmentalisation of water management has generated many adverse effects and these coupled with the future have more severe effects of temperature rise and climate change. A national perspective in managing water in a collaborative manner is yet to emerge. Since water has a considerable impact on socio-political processes, the country is in need of developing a nation-wide strategy for handling the effects of climate change impacts on water which is adopted and honoured by all the stakeholders concerned. There is a need to build capacities amongst all the key stakeholders and opinion makers for participating in such a collaborative exercise in an informed manner.

Water Related Disasters and Flood Storage
14. Water related disasters especially in terms of floods will have tendency to increase in frequency. As witnessed lately, concentrated rainfall events over limited areas result in flash floods in such areas who have a general drought prone regime. Effects of severe cyclones also fall in this category. More attention will have to be paid to pre-emptive forecasting and building disaster resilient water infrastructure. Evolution of processes and mechanisms for establishing such resilience is needed to be established in an inter-disciplinary way as multiple agencies are involved.

15. There is tendency to separate the flood flows and average flows in the rest of the year. Already we are getting about 30% of the annual water resources as flood flows which are concentrated in a small time window of 18% of the year. Thus, conservation of the flood flows is an increasing necessity for evening out the water availability throughout the year. For this purpose, the conservation efforts in all respects i.e. large to medium storages are required to be increased. Over the period of time, the addition in the storage creation has stagnated and the growth has considerably slowed. It is necessary that the growth momentum need be maintained at the same level as earlier periods when we were trying to achieve food security from an essentially food insecure nation.

16. Considerable storage opportunities are still available in many of our basins like Ganga in its upper reaches, Brahmaputra and other rivers in the country. Innovative measures for creation and maintenance of these storages is a necessity to combat the global warming induced changes in our glacial storages as well as increasing demands for agricultural and eco services in lean seasons.

17. Our energy generation especially the hydro generation which is a green, clean and sustainable energy having a strong potential of balancing demand supply gaps in peak periods is heavily dependent upon the availability of water in our streams. Augmentation of storage based hydro power generation capacities is the need of the hour for our transition to green energy based economy.

18. Due to various topographic constraints as well as socio-economic challenges, the storage creation policy will require use of off-line storages, creation of carry over storages capable of tiding over multiple deficient hydrological cycles and transfer of short time surplus flows from one basin to another are needed to be put in place.

19. Socio cultural dialogue need to be set on a scientific rationale basis with adequate measures to be put in place for ameliorating the adverse effects of storage creation on local populations and simultaneously create a consensus about the necessity of implementing the measures for national level water security in the face of climate change.

20. Equitability of water availability across the country are likely to be adversely affected due to climate change. Large scale inter-basin transfer of waters as envisaged by the popularly called Interlinking of Rivers Programme need be enhanced by providing it with adequate legal and constitutional strength and also creating a consensual atmosphere amongst various party states for implementing the same as a long term insurance against the climate change effects.

21. Increase in aridity and severe rainfall events will lead to increasing silt loads in our surface waters. This will shorten the effective life of the existing reservoirs. Managing silt inflows in the existing reservoirs and their management by de-silting and also decreasing generation of such loads are big challenges. Strong R&D coupled with sound economic solutions are the need of the hour to protect our much valued storage structures from the vagaries of climate change induced losses.

Managing and Conserving Our Existing Water Infrastructure
22. A healthy water infrastructure will go a long way in increasing efficiencies of distribution and use of available water. With the increasing age and also the adverse climatic events, the safety assurance of the water infrastructure is assuming increasing importance. We recently have enacted Dam Safety Act 2019 and the implementation of the act is in progress. However, there are a number of issues that will crop up in the realm of flood and earthquake risk reduction are yet to be addressed. Also, the administrative and rule based mechanisms will have to be put in place across the country. A time bound action programme of building capacities and institutions across the country is needed. While we are concentrating on the headworks, a large component of our investments is captured in the distribution networks like canals and pipelines. These also form a vital link of joining the sources to the consumers and any inefficiency will affect equitable and efficient distribution of water resources leading to aggravation of the ill effects of climate change. Attention on this aspect on the lines of dam safety is also needed to ameliorate the effects of climate change impacts.

23. There is a need for bringing in integrated planning and managementwithin the major river basin areas. Such measures will have to accountfor various sources, their yield and consumer groups with their changedpriorities. Since the climate change will make such priorities highlyvariable, a dynamic measure for decision making and coordinatingamongst competing groups is needed to be provided with dueintervention of federal government for making the exercise deliberativerather than that of resource grabbing one.

Climate Resilient Agricultural Practices
24. Climate change will change the temperature and humidity regimes as well as natural soil moisture regimes. All biological processes of crops are heavily dependent on these parameters. Water requirements will also vary accordingly and if the water is not supplied in appropriate quantities, the yields will also suffer. This has a direct impact on the food security of the country. Changes in crop regimes and management will have to be tailored in terms of the rational availability regime emerging as a result of climate change.

25. India is critically dependent on the annual groundwater recharge. Even if there is a reduction of 5% in recharge because of climate change, it would create a considerable adverse impact, on the livelihood of small and marginal farmers and also on food production, rural drinking water supply, non- monsoon flow in the rivers and expending geogenic contamination. Climate change would thus impose an additional burden on sustainable groundwater management. The demand-side management practices like, crop diversification, micro irrigation, leaser levelling of land and proper agronomic practices are to be taken up. On the other hand, supply-side interventions like, Artificial Recharge (AR) and Rain Water Harvesting (RWH) should be adopted on a wider scale.

Focus on Research and Development
26. Focussed Research and Development activities in the field of water resources especially in the context of climate change is largely missing. Developments in other associated fields like meteorology, agronomy and crop science, energy generation with water a consumptive or non-consumptive input are not being integrated with water management practices. It is necessary that a coordinated programme under a single scheme is taken up to collate and integrate all such ongoing and past developments and provide necessary financial and data resources for the research.

Efficient Use and Reuse of Water
27. Water quality management will also undergo severe stress with the increasing variability’s of water resources availability and also increasing population of humans and livestock. Reuse and recycle processes will have to be improved and made economical for improving the water use efficiencies.

28. Water use efficiency is a multi-dimensional subject. However, the optimum results can only be achieved only if all the dimensions are addressed equally. Climate change effects on water resources have generated an acute need for all round improvement in water use efficiency.

Transboundary Concerns Emanating From Climate Change

29. India is in a special geographical environment where we are connected with almost all our immediate neighbours from water resource sources and consumer areas. Climate change will not recognize the national boundaries. Being the largest country and also the largest consumer of water resources, our hydro-diplomacy will need to account for possible vulnerabilities that the Indian sub-continent region bound by Himalayas/ Hindukush and Indian Ocean will face in terms of water resources. Our existing and future treaties and agreements with our neighbours will have to be tailored by appropriately accounting for the climate change effects on water resources of trans-boundary basins.

CONCLUSION
30. It is now well understood that the climate change effects are already upon us. The impacts on the water resources regime and possible ill effects have not yet been adequately recognized. Multiple strategies in form of augmenting storage capacities, improved management of existing water infrastructure, climate adapted agriculture practices and attention on transboundary stresses on security of our water resources are the focal points that we need to attend to urgently. Changes in water resources management and development are slow moving and we need to commence implementing them in systematic manner to cope with the future effects of climate change.