IFC Helps Find Solutions to Water Scarcity in India
August 12, 2015 — Some water experts believe that diverse communities need to work together to make difficult trade-offs to achieve water security and sustainability. IFC, as a member of the 2030 Water Resources Group — a international group of stakeholders who are actively driving change to address severe water scarcity — has been working to meet the challenge in India.
India is already beginning to witness the severity of impact from water scarcity in terms of damage to livelihoods, health,and eco-systems. Local, national, and international institutions need to come together and dramatically improve the way we envision and manage water to safeguard economic development in many countries. With this in mind, IFC mobilized the 2030 Water Resources group, government, civil society, and private sector stakeholders to join a National Workshop on Water and Sustainability.
A Much-Needed Dialogue for Water Security
According to estimates, India is likely to have a 50 percent water deficit by the year 2030. The agri sector, which currently accounts for 80 percent of the country’s water consumption, is highly inefficient in its water use pattern. Historic rates of supply expansion and efficiency improvements will close only a fraction of this gap.
"In water....it almost seems as if there is a big war happening, and as a country, we haven't even realized it," said Ireena Vittal, member, National Advisory Committee, Hindustan Unilever Foundation.
The program highlighted the need for collaboration and partnership-oriented implementation across public and private sectors, civil society, and academia, and to establish state-level networks to facilitate agri-water efficiency and pollution reduction.
“Public-private-partnerships in water can work as long as ownership of water remains with communities," said Rajendra Singh, the 2014 Stockholm Water Prize winner.
Private and Public Sector Come Up with Joint Solutions
Workshop participants also witnessed the signing of a strategic partnership between Hindustan Unilever Foundation and the 2030 Water Resources Group to develop innovative, large-scale solutions focusing on technology, finance, knowledge, and results-based implementation, which will target the agriculture sector. The resulting partnership will help impact over one million farmers and cumulatively save more than two trillion liters of water.
“The partnership coordinated by 2030 WRG aspires to create one of the largest participatory programs globally on demand-side management of water in the agriculture sector. A key focus is scientific and impact-driven action through a results measurement framework at the state level to measure water savings and agricultural productivity enhancement,” said Sanjiv Mehta, CEO and MD, Hindustan Unilever Limited.
This partnership has a bottom-up approach to policy transformation to promote efficient water-use practices and technologies among farmers, incubate new models, utilize knowledge and tools to drive behavior change and catalyse replication of best practices.
The partnership will also establish the Ganga Multi-Stakeholder Action Forum to develop inclusive and collaborative approaches to rejuvenate the Ganga Basin.
“This is a critical aspect of our partnership, as the Ganga Basin is home to 450 million people. Over 60 percent of them depend on agriculture for their livelihoods,” said Anders Berntell, Executive Director, 2030 WRG. “Making a difference here has the potential to transform lives.”
For more information, contact Minakshi Seth and Mansi Joshee, New Delhi/Communications Practice Group.
