Making the invisible visible

(Mains GS 3 : Conservation, Environmental Pollution and Degradation, Environmental Impact Assessment.)

Context:

• World Water Day is an annual United Nations (UN) observance day held on 22 March that highlights the importance of freshwater.
• The theme of this year’s World Water Day was ‘Groundwater: Making the Invisible Visible’.

Draw attention:

• The day is used to advocate for the sustainable management of freshwater resources and inspire people around the world to learn more about water-related issues and to take action to make a difference.
• The focus is to draw attention to the role of groundwater in water and sanitation systems, agriculture, industry, ecosystems, and climate change adaptation.
• India has an annual groundwater extraction of 248.69 billion cubic meters (2017), which is among the largest users of groundwater in the world.
• Almost 89% of the groundwater extracted is used for irrigation and the rest for domestic and industrial use (9% and 2%).

Reduce the risk: 

• Groundwater helps reduce the risk of temporary water shortage and caters to the needs of arid and semiarid regions, but its value has not been fully recognised in policymaking.
• While dependence on groundwater is increasing everywhere, there are serious issues of depletion of stored groundwater and deterioration of quality.
• Due to its high storage capacity, groundwater is more resilient to the effects of climate change than surface water.
• The international conference on ‘Groundwater, Key to the Sustainable Development Goals’ (May 2022) and the UN-Water Summit on Groundwater (December 2022) are part of global initiatives to highlight the significance of groundwater in sustainable development.

Levels varied :

• According to the Central Ground Water Board, the annual groundwater withdrawal is considered to be safe when the extraction rate is limited to below 70% of the annual replenishable recharge.
• Available data indicate that the level of extraction for the country in 2017 was 63%, from 58% in 2004.
• However, the level varied across regions as Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana, Delhi, Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Puducherry have crossed the 70% mark.
• NITI Aayog has set the 70% extraction value as the target to be achieved by 2030 as out of 534 districts in 22 States/UTs, 202 districts had stages of extraction ranging from 71% to 385%.
• Besides the high level of extraction, quality is also an issue of concern as fluoride, iron, salinity, nitrate, and arsenic contamination are major problems.

Needs Change of approach:

• The existing approach of dealing with surface water and groundwater independently has severe limitations.
• As the Mihir Shah Committee (2016) proposed, the Central Water Commission and the Central Ground Water Board could be united and a national water framework with an integrated perspective developed.
• There is also a need to work out local-level plans covering water resources in all its forms: rainwater, surface water, soil water and groundwater and the resource use sectors.
• Groundwater, surface water and the intervening landscape form part of a matrix, and together with the vegetation system they constitute the Critical Zone, where most terrestrial life resides.

Local area approach:

• Re-establishing connections between surface and groundwater systems, both for governance and management, entails a local area approach.
• This local area approach will involve revisiting the present groundwater estimations process, large-scale aquifer mapping, linking aquifers with river basin/watershed boundaries, hydrogeomorphology analysis, and factoring land uses and human-induced changes in the water system.
• Linking cropping patterns and crop intensity with groundwater availability, aquifer type, and the present state of groundwater extraction at the farm level is imperative.

A community resource:

• There is an energy subsidy for groundwater extraction with little regulation which encourages farmers to withdraw water at their will.
• Although groundwater recharging takes place through a geohydrological process and is not confined to administrative or property boundaries, a landowner has the exclusive right to groundwater available in their property.
• A community resource thus turns into a private resource due to the location of the extraction site, thus re-articulation of the legal framework for groundwater use gains relevance in this context.

Conclusion:

• The new paradigm for groundwater management is a socio-ecological challenge, where localism matters as it warrants technical, economic, legal and governance remediation with space for active public participation and community regulatory options to maintain groundwater balance at the village/ watershed level.