Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM)

This report under the WHiRL research project by the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) identifies the potential unintended impacts of water harvesting so that, if at all possible they are avoided altogether, but if these do occur, they are recognised at an early stage and steps are taken to mitigate their affects. It highlights evidence that is emerging about water harvesting in semi-arid areas, on how water if used inappropriately, can lead to inequitable access to water resources and, in the extreme, to unreliable drinking water supplies.Read More

The Rajasthan State Water Policy 2010, describes the critical status of water in Rajasthan in terms of:Read More

• The growing imbalance between demand and supply of water
• Uncertainty in availability of water
• Inequity in access to water
• Low operational efficiency of water resource development projects
• Depleting groundwater resources and deteriorating quality of water
• High cost of service, low cost recovery and low level of expenditure
• Lack of ownership among stakeholders

The policy has evolved out of the earlier policy documents and intends to function from the new perspective of Integrated Water Resources Management, which is holistic and includes a bottom up approach.

The report looks at water governance in the Man basin, a medium sized sub-basin of the Narmada river basin in tribal dominated western Madhya Pradesh. It deals with problematic issues of water governance in the basin and generates insights and guidelines that are important for both grassroots and policy level interventions in future.

It attempts to present a methodology to study the relationship between water availability and water use to see if it is sustainable and suggest measures for improvement. It also presents an analysis of the use of agricultural water and energy in the basin.Read More

It begins by discussing the relevance of the new concept of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) for water governance in river basins. It then sets out the reasons for the choice of the basin, its characteristics, the problems encountered with computation of water balance, the revised methodology for estimation of water use developed to suit the present study and the results of applying this methodology. It then presents a political economy analysis of the prevailing water use in the basin.

This presentation describes the work of Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Limited, in organising water management efforts within and around their soft drinks plant in Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh. Read More