Recommendations of Working Group Meeting - Policy Issues
Submitted by praveena on November 24, 2009 - 03:37
Working Group Meetings formed by a panel of experts in the respective field, formed a significant aspect of WHSC Conference. The conference is geared towards effecting a change in the way water resources are governed and managed. Towards this, the working group meeting's recommendations were valuable, and awaited.
The group on Policy Issues identified the main issues in Water Harvesting as:
- Regulatory requirements for rainwater harvesting
- Policy initiatives for rainwater harvesting in different states - Rural vs. Urban scenario
- Development of surface water bodies vis-à-vis groundwater recharge
- Water pollution – standards for disposal, reuse, recycle, recharge, harvesting and storage
- Water consumption for various uses – quality and quantity aspects
- Water conflicts
The recommendations put forth, are:
- Decentralized process of water management to be taken up with respect to drinking water
- Discourse on using Stormed Water from paved and unpaved areas for recharging
- Need an understanding of Aquifer dynamics / Characteristics for Urban and Rural areas separately
- Not entire area can be taken up for recharge – Site based recharge needed
- Uttar Pradesh has guidelines on recharge – condition specific Institutional mechanism for implementation of Policy / Guidelines
- Regulatory Mechanisms - Regulatory bodies to work properly
- Regional Plans for planning and Micro Plans for implementation
- Conjunctive use of Surface and Ground Water use
- State of Maharashtra has initiated Community Based aquifer based Water Management – Technical Know how
- Capacity building of the communities knowledge related to overall Water Management
- Decentralized the City
- Aquifer dynamics
- Water Quality Monitoring
- Citizens Education on water issues
- No of labs for Water Testing – Increase no of labs at district and taluk, block level
- RGNDWQSM to be made functional at District, taluk, block and panchayat level
- Development & Conservation & Rejuvenation of natural water bodies- ponds, tals, wetlands
- Institutional assistance to scientific approval of recharge structures/systems/schemes
- Development of IS codes
- Defining ground water recharge protection areas on the lines of reserved forests
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Comments
1. Comments on Policy Recommendations
The recommendations of the working group meeting, were posted via blog and email, to a large number of conference attendees as well as people realted to water sector. The following is a comment sent by Suresh Babu S V , Programme Manager (Communications & Advocacy) Arghyam, received via email. I post them here for the readers (text modified to fit the context):
1. Have there been any discussions, concerns on protecting and reviving urban lakes so as to augment the water supply and recharge.
2. One of the recommendation is 'Incentive based approach rather than regulatory compulsion' why not a judicious mix of both. We have a regulation and to implement the regulation have fiscal instruments in place. Here the instruments could be judicious pricing of municipal supply, subsidies for RWH etc.. The idea is also to promote conjunctive use.
3. One of the recommendations is that PRIs should be administratively involved in RWH along with the water management schemes. But if you look at the NREGA and the NRDWP this is exactly what the PRIs will [or supposed to] be doing. The issue seems to be lack of capacity at that level. So the recommendation seems to be too generalised and simplified and cannot yield any value add to the whole RWH community.
4. Talking about user rights etc etc--this is typical argument of the anti RWH lobby. These are not backed by any studies at a scale [they simply dont exist] that can give us enough evidences or policy prescriptions. I suggest the IITs take up similar studies in those areas where the debate seems to be relavant.