Kolkata

This brief from the Observer Research Foundation highlights the issues involved in improving urban water supply in India. The urban expansion in India has not been met by a similar expansion in infrastructure and basic services. This has severely affected the quality of urban life and economic growth.Read More

This paper in Journal of Earth System Science attempts to estimate the possible rate of land subsidence of Kolkata City including Salt Lake City and the adjoining East Kolkata Wetlands located at the lower part of the deltaic alluvial plain of South Bengal basin. Land subsidence is an environmental hazard which is caused by overdraft of groundwater or oil extraction and results in gradual settling or sudden sinking of the earth’s surface owing to subsurface movement of the materials of the earth. 

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This report by Price Waterhouse Coopers India Limited for the Second Annual India Water Conference in April 2011 presents its view on urban water reforms for the next decade. India is still at an early stage of the urbanisation process and will witness exponential growth in many of its cities over the next few decades. By 2030 the urban population is expected to reach more than 590 million. This will put enormous pressure on all existing resources, especially water. Despite sufficient availability of raw water, many of its cities struggle to provide more than a few hours of water supply.

Improving water availability in the cities requires addressing complex policy, institutional and funding challenges. According to the report, the collective vision should be to provide good quality, reliable, affordable and continuous (24x7) water supply to residents. The core of the new approach will include instituting a new era of greater accountability and a performance-driven approach. Service delivery to urban poor has to be an integral part of this approach to bring about greater inclusiveness.

Recent experience with Public-Private-Partnerships (PPP) in urban water supply shows that with a customer focused approach and demonstration of clear benefits, there will be greater political and public acceptability of private participation. At the same time, fiscal framework at the local level has to be considerably strengthened before attempting wide scale replication of PPP. 

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This climate adaptation report by World Wildlife Fund India captures its experience on climate change in the Sundarbans. Beginning in 2005, WWF-India has conducted dozens of personal interviews to record how climate change impacts people's lives here and now. These perceptions demanded that scientific studies be carried out to ascertain the veracity of the claims.

The report draws heavily from the studies undertaken by the School of Oceanographic Studies, Jadavpur University at the micro-level as well as across the Indian Sundarbans. These studies made it possible to design initiatives that enhance risk preparedness as well as adaptive capacity of vulnerable communities that ensure physical and livelihood security, and reduce sensitivity in case of exposure to high intensity weather events. Not all of these were successful, for example, attempts to raise mangrove plantation. The successful ones are briefly described in the last chapter of the report.

The eco-region that forms the Sundarbans is both unique, and uniquely fragile. Unique because it is one of the most extensive mangrove forests in the world, existing in a vast deltaic region where freshwater and seawater mix. Also unique, because the human population that exists on the fringes of the coastal forest, in land that has been slowly adapted to cultivation over the last two centuries, confront challenges from both land, air, and sea that few other local populations have to contend with. And further unique, because the flora of the Sundarbans, the mangrove, presents a natural buffer, a bulwark against coastal erosion and seawater ingress into one of the most densely populated regions of the world. Ironically, the Sundarbans' fragility stems from its uniqueness.

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