A perfect environmental storm and opportunity for India to think globally

Six-year-old Kaalu drinks water from the almost dry Ken riverbed in Banda, in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh. This image of a young boy bent over a sheet of almost-vanishing, shallow water, is part of a story run by India Today this June, entitled, “Scenes from a Deadly Drought”. The article goes on to inform us that nearly half of India is suffering from drought, with water in the reservoirs depleting and the delayed monsoon crippling lives.

This story is not a new one and will be repeated indefinitely till we understand how we are misusing water and learn to mend our ways to adapt to a new and enduring geographical reality: Lower rainfall, depleting groundwater and dry reservoirs. For all of that, we have not even begun an honest conversation as a society on how we use and allocate water.

Nor have we focused on where the water comes from in the first place. Northern and sub-Himalayan India gets their water from glacier-fed perennial rivers and rainfall. The rest of India relies exclusively on seasonal monsoon rainfall. The rivers largely flow in the monsoon season, extended only slightly by the delayed discharge from forests, which capture the water in their root stock and release it slowly. Added to all our problems, the rainfall patterns are now being affected by climate change.

Climate change

A recent World Bank report, South Asia’s Hotspots: The Impact of Temperature and Precipitation Changes on Living Standards, by Mani et al, 2018, notes that average temperature in the region has increased in the last 60 years. A hotspot is a location where changes in average temperature and precipitation will have a negative effect on living standards.

Six hundred million people in India are at risk from increasing temperatures (1.5–3 degrees C) and declining precipitation in these hotspots. Under a business-as-usual scenario, by 2050, the standard of living and income of half of the country’s population is forecast to decline by over 9 per cent, amounting to a decline in India’s GDP by 2.8 per cent. Income decline arises from lower crop yields and scarcity of water, and will lead to mass migration.

Central India, and Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh in particular, are forecast to have the highest decline in living standards, though seven out of the top 10 affected districts are expected to be in Vidharbha, Maharashtra.

The authors suggest the decline in living standards can be mitigated by increasing non-agricultural employment and reducing water stress — which would be standard outcomes from the enhancement of forestry.

Forestry

The Central Indian states likely to be affected by climate change are strongly advised to work on forestry: Create long-term non-agricultural jobs in rural areas, secure longer-term livelihoods by means of augmenting water sources, and so, to mitigate the effect of climate change. In the absence of headline-grabbing fresh industrial investments in remote rural locations, this forestry effort is intentionally a relaunching of tried and tested schemes, building on existing capacity and experience in the states.

As an example, Madhya Pradesh has the largest land area under forests in the country, over 80,000 sqkm These forests are responsible for perennial rivers that support the state and six neighbouring ones, making Madhya Pradesh not only the leading forest state, but also the water capital of India. Nearly 45 per cent of the water sources in peninsular India arise from Madhya Pradesh. Even as it works to enhance the recharge of water, for agriculture, and to minimise the rise in temperatures from climate change, MP has to prioritise the use of these resources within the state, and re-examine river inter-linking projects to benefit other states.

The headline challenge for Madhya Pradesh, as an example, is to improve the quality of the 36,000 sq. km. of degraded forests, which are no longer performing ecosystem services. There is another 17,000 sq km of scrub and blank forest, so open/scrub categories are more than 50 per cent of the forest cover of Madhya Pradesh — and growing. The distribution of the forest lands under the Forest Rights Act since 2005 has exacerbated the problem of forest fragmentation, access, and forest cover.

While restoring these forests will simultaneously improve water recharge, increase carbon storage, provide fuelwood and fodder to local communities, and moderate the increase in temperatures from hotspots, in reality the forest department in Madhya Pradesh has been facing reduced budgets, reduced staff strength, and low morale for some years. There is very little money for funding even the forest plantation work to compensate for current timber extraction, and nurseries are inadequate for any sizeable forestry operation.

Water

India is already a water-stressed country and water has become an endemic crisis in many areas. The main use for water is agriculture (85 per cent of water used). This situation is going to worsen with climate change.

We know the best way to mitigate the variability of water, given declining rainfall patterns and climate change, is by enhancing forest cover and by building water storage. Enhancing the quality of open forests to moderately dense forests would deliver a 2.5x increase in the economic value of water recharge services (IIFM, CESM study, 2014).

Building small check dams to collect water runoff from hilly areas is a well-known practice, and a tremendous boost to agriculture in areas without rivers and canals. The location has to be determined scientifically so the effort is fruitful.

Funding

A massive programme of job creation through forestry and water storage is the need of the hour for central India. Funding on a large-scale can come from a variety of sources, but two stand out. A focused approach would start such a programme with existing CAMPA funds. Then graduate to a larger programme with international loan support for ecosystem services.

There is tremendous interest in ecosystem services and forestry globally, given the risk of climate change. The idea is not to burden a state with ongoing liabilities, the enhanced forest cover should pay down the loan via transparently-certified carbon emission reductions. The time has come for the marriage of carbon finance and ecosystem service lending and several nations are examining this prospect, with the support of multilateral lending institutions, but none has shown leadership as yet.

India has committed to deliver carbon sinks of 2.5–3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent by means of additional forest and tree cover (50,000 sq. km. apiece). The papers report that India has made no progress in forestry and is trying to find a nuanced interpretation for additionality to avoid taking on ambitious projects.

This is in fact a perfect environmental storm and a tremendous opportunity for India to think globally and act locally. The need for non-agricultural employment is acute, water shortages are now endemic and growing across the country, even as climate hotspots are inexorably developing in the heartland.

India can show leadership by launching a massive integrated program for forestry and water storage, helping solve its own local problems and meet international commitments.