Annexure to
WIO’s letter to Chief Minister of Odisha
Water Initiatives
Odisha’s
Critical Concerns
and Broad Suggestions on Draft National Water Policy 2012
While the Draft Water Policy, 2012 accords basic livelihood
and ecosystem needs first priority, its prescription for turning water into an
‘economic good’ after these needs are met makes it an easy tool to exploit
water for profit. No lessons appear to have been learnt. Further, without a
proper account of current needs, use and exploitation integrated with
population increases, growing demand, and stresses arising out of climate
change, it’s almost impossible to monitor such a vague and unclear
‘prioritisation’.
That the country still doesn’t have an updated database on
the state of its water resources is clear from the draft policy which fails to
come up with any concrete data on most issues it deals with. The existing
policy expressed concern about adequate and accurate data; the proposed draft
repeats this concern. All plans and policies related to water use and
management are destined to fail in the absence of data, transparency and
accessibility. It’s perhaps because of this inadequacy of data and assessment
that the policy fails to quantify that ‘minimum’ of basic need beyond which it
suggests water be treated as an ‘economic good’.
Maintaining ecological flow, a major concern across the
globe, has not been accorded due seriousness in the draft policy. Like the 2002
policy, the draft proposes to set aside a portion of river flow to meet
ecological needs. Considering the extent of degradation of India’s rivers and
the pace of industrialisation and urbanisation, with scant control over the use
and abuse of rivers by these sectors, ensuring the minimum ecological flow of
rivers will be difficult. Indeed here water as a survival need and as an
economic good contradict one another. The draft policy puts the onus of
local-level awareness, maintenance etc on local communities but fails to
recognise that most river basins are polluted and stressed by industry and
urban settlement. While the later need water for survival and basic
livelihoods, the former has historically been an abuser. Further, whilst basic
users cannot pay for the use in ‘cash’, commercial and luxury users can use
‘cash payment’ to justify their abuse of the resource.
None of these problems have been addressed by the 2002
policy; the current draft does nothing further than advocating age-old and
unviable transfer of water from open to closed basins and the formulation of
regulatory authorities. The National
Water Policy, 2002 also treated water as an economic good and talked about
regulations and systematic planning, cost recovery, etc. However, we lost more
water than we had in this one decade, water conflicts grew, and the bias
towards corporations and the rich deepened.
Broad set of recommendations
What we should do, according to veteran water expert
Ramaswamy Iyer, is to try and reverse our thinking. “The ecology cannot be
asked to accommodate development needs. Our visions of development must spring
from an understanding of ecological limits,” he asserts. Himanshu Thakkar of
the South Asian Network on Dams, Rivers and People finds a way out in the South
African Water Act: “When the South African Water Act was passed in 1997, based
on the White Paper on South African Water and Sanitation Policy, 1994, the
policy took a detailed look at defining water for basic human needs, its
quality, quantity, access, distance etc, as well as various issues related to
water and environment. It was only with this background that South Africa could
take the revolutionary step of securing water for basic human needs and
ecological reserves first. It went through a rigorous, extensive process of
consultations with communities and other stakeholders (which still continues)
to actually calculate the reserve, implement it and monitor it.”
As against the 2002 policy, the 2012 policy considers
climate change a major factor. This is understandable as debates and
discussions around climate change increased substantially after the formation
of the National Climate Change Action Plan, which is also said to have mandated
the need for a new water policy.
However, when it comes to mitigation and
adaptation, the draft discounts the culprits and asks communities to take
action, become sensitised and be resilient. It is now well established that
rural communities -- a majority of the country’s population -- are excellent at
adapting to climate change.
It is urban society, large, centralised and heavy investment
development models, and industry that are the real culprits. The policy should
therefore make it mandatory for these sectors also to be climate sensitive and
use water more rationally. This can be done through water rationing for these
segments. Putting a price on water and leaving its management in the hands of
the private sector will only increase the access of richer sections to this
resource. India’s National Water Policy must recognise this reality.
Guiding principles
The National Water Policy should be based on the following
guiding principles:
Water is a finite natural resource over which all human
beings and other species have equal rights.
Centralised authoritarian structures of water governance and
regulation should be done away with.
Water for life and livelihoods (communities/people who are
directly dependent on water for their livelihood, for example, fisherfolk)
should be provided free of cost as part of the state’s responsibility under the
principle of ‘rights’ of these communities over the resource.
Industry and corporate houses that use water as a
‘commercial good’ for production and profit must not be considered
‘decision-making’ stakeholders and hence must never be allowed to sit on any
decision-making bodies related to water management and governance.
Water allocation should be based on the carrying capacity of
the ecology, considering present and future use, demand, recharging and threat
perspectives, where ‘future’ should not be limited to a few decades only.
If there has to be any bias towards a section in water
allocation then it should be towards the poor, farmers, fisherfolk and other
sections of society whose lives and livelihood are directly related to water.
And, of course, towards other life forms on earth.
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