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♤ Water resources will come under increasing pressure in the Indian subcontinent due to the changing climate.
♤ The Himalayan glaciers are a source of fresh water for perennial rivers, in particular the Indus, Ganga, and Brahmaputra river systems.
♤ In recent decades, the Himalayan region seems to have undergone substantial changes as a result of extensive land use (e.g. deforestation, agricultural practices and urbanization), leading to frequent hydrological disasters, enhanced sedimentation and pollution of lakes.
♤ There is evidence that some Himalayan glaciers have retreated significantly since the 19th century.
♤ Available records suggest that the Gangotri glacier is retreating about 28 m per year.
♤ Glacial melt is expected to increase under changed climate conditions, which would lead to increased summer flows in some river systems for a few decades, followed by a reduction in flow as the glaciers disappear.
♤ As a result of increase in temperature significant changes in rainfall pattern have been observed during the 20th century in India.
♤ A serious environmental problem has also been witnessed in the Indo-Gangetic Plain Region (IGPR) in the past whereby different rivers (including Kosi, Ganga, Ghaghara, Son, Indus and its tributaries and Yamuna) changed their course a number of times.
♤ The recent devastating floods in Nepal and Bihar due to change of course of River Kosi is a case in point.
♤ Available study suggests that food production has to be increased to the tune of 300 mt by 2020 in order to feed India’s ever-growing population, which is likely to reach 1.30 billion by the year 2020.
♤ The total foodgrain production has to be increased by 50 per cent by 2020 to meet the requirement.
♤ It is feared that the fast increasing demand for food in the next two or three decades could be quite grim particularly in view of the serious problem of soil degradation and climate change.
♤ The rise in population will increase the demand for water leading to faster withdrawal of water and this in turn would reduce the recharging time of the water tables.
♤ As a result, availability of water is bound to reach critical levels sooner or later. During the past four decades, there has been a phenomenal increase in the growth of groundwater abstraction structures.
♤ Growing demand of water in agriculture, industrial and domestic sectors, has brought problems of overexploitation of the groundwater resource to the fore.
♤ The falling groundwater levels in various parts of the country have threatened the sustainability of the groundwater resources.
♤ At present, available statistics on water demand shows that the agriculture sector is the largest consumer of water in India.
♤ About 83% of the available water is used for agriculture alone. If used judiciously, the demand may come down to about 68% by the year 2050, though agriculture will still remain the largest consumer.
♤ In order to meet this demand, augmentation of the existing water resources by development of additional sources of water or conservation of the existing resources and their efficient use will be needed.
♤ It is evident that the impact of global warming threats are many and alarming.
♤ Water security in terms of quantity and quality pose problems for both developed and developing countries.
♤ However, the consequences of future climatic change may be felt more severely in developing countries such as India, whose economy is largely dependent on agriculture and is already under stress due to current population increase and associated demands for energy, freshwater and food.
Do you know?
Indian Flying Fox are the fruit eating bats. This species is found in roosts in large colonies of hundreds to
thousands of individuals on large trees in rural and urban areas, close to agricultural fields, ponds and by the side of roads.