India’s per capita availability of water will outstrip demand by 2025

Chennai:

Rising demand for water, depleting water resources, climate change, dismal investment in wastewater treatment and sewage infrastructure will result in demand outstripping the availability of water, warns an expert.

Arjun Thapan, the special advisor to the Asian Development Bank president for infrastructure and water said, “India’s per capita availability of water, which was 5,177 billion cubic metres in 1951, is expected to decline to less than 1,000 billion cubic metres by 2025 while the demand for water is expected to grow by 1,500 billion cubic metres in 2030.”

According to recent studies, the demand is estimated to double that of China (818 cubic metres) by 2030, he said.

He also highlighted the need for aggressive reform of the urban water supply sector to help the country’s cities weather climate change and remain the principal drivers of economic and social growth.

He said that governments in Asia have typically regarded investments in wastewater management as dead end offering little or no returns. “This is completely misplaced as a study conducted last week by Water and sanitation programme has shown India loses about 6.4 per cent of its GDP annually on account of inadequate environmental sanitation infrastructure,” Thapan added.

He said while 85 per cent of urban water supplies are met from groundwater resources, the groundwater table is slowly depleting. “The Central Groundwater Board has estimated that about 30 per cent of India’s groundwater resources have been irreparably damaged and are not susceptible to either artificial or natural recharge due to over extraction,” Thapan said.

Highlighting the threats of climate change, Thapan said without urgent changes in global policies to curtail carbon emissions more than 40,000 Himalayan glaciers across Tibetan plateau will be gone by 2070. “It would be a catastrophe for one sixth of world population who live in glacier fed river basins and depend on water for livelihood, food and domestic use,” he added.

He also said that India’s investments in waste water treatment and sewage infrastructure is minimal with les than 26 per cent of India’s urban and industrial waste is treated to dubious standards. “As a result, India spends about $15 billion every year on treatment of waterborne diseases and the loss to India on account of premature mortality related to water borne disease is $39 billion annually,” he added.