1. ECONOMICS
WATER CONSERVATION AND
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

2. INTRODUCTION
Water conservation encompasses
the policies, strategies and
activities to manage fresh
water as a sustainable
resource to protect the water
environment and to meet
current and future human
demand. Population,
household size and growth
and affluence all affect how
much water is used. Factors
such as climate change will
increase pressures on natural
water resources especially in
manufacturing and
agricultural irrigation.

3. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
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Water is an essential natural resource for human
existence. It is needed in every industrial and natural
process, for example, it is used for oil refining, for
liquid-liquid extraction in hydro-metallurgical
processes, for cooling, for scrubbing in the iron and
the steel industry and for several operations in food
processing facilities, etc. It is necessary to adopt a
new approach to design urban water supply networks;
water shortages are expected in the forthcoming
decades and environmental regulations for water
utilization and waste-water disposal are increasingly
stringent.
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To achieve a sustainable water supply network, new
sources of water are needed to be developed, and to
reduce environmental pollution.

4. STRATEGIES
In implementing water conservation principles
there are a number of key activities that
may be beneficial.
1. Any beneficial reduction in water loss, use
and waste
2. Avoiding any damage to water quality.
3. Improving water management practices that
reduce or enhance the beneficial use of
water.

5. HOME APPLICATIONS
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Water-saving technology for the home includes:
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Low-flow shower heads sometimes called energyefficient shower heads as they also use less energy,
Low-flush toilets and composting toilets. These
have a dramatic impact in the developed world, as
conventional Western toilets use large volumes of
water.
Dual flush toilets created by Caroma includes
two buttons or handles to flush different levels of
water. Dual flush toilets use up to 67% less water
than conventional toilets.
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Saline water (sea water) or rain water can be used
for flushing toilets.

6. POPULAR
STRUGGLES
RELATED TO
WATER
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7. THE GANGES
Ganges River, Hindi Ganga, great river of the plains of northern India.
From time immemorial it has been the holy river of Hinduism.Rising in
the Himalayas and emptying into the Bay of Bengal, it drains a
quarter of the territory of India, while its basin supports hundreds
of millions of people. The Gangetic Plain, across which it flows, is the
heartland of the region known as Hindustan and has been the cradle
of successive civilizations from the Mauryan empire of Ashoka in the
3rd century bce down to the Mughal Empire, founded in the 16th
century.
For most of its course the Ganges flows through Indian
territory, although its large delta in the Bengal area, which it
shares with the Brahmaputra River, lies mostly in Bangladesh. The
general direction of the river’s flow is from northwest to southeast.
At its delta the flow is generally southward

8. THE GANGES DISPUTE
The Ganges is disputed between India and Bangladesh. The
water reserves are being quickly depleted and polluted,
while the Gangotri glacier that feeds the sacred Hindu
river is retreating hundreds of feet each year and
deforestation in the Himalayas, which is causing
subsoil streams flowing into the Ganges river to dry up.
Downstream, India controls the flow to Bangladesh
with the Farakka Barrage, 10 kilometers on the Indian
side of the border. Until the late 1990s, India used the
barrage to divert the river to Calcutta, to keep the city's
port from drying up during the dry season. This denied
Bangladeshi farmers water and silt, and it left the
Sundarban wetlands and mangrove forests at the
river's delta seriously threatened. The two countries
have now signed an agreement to share the water more
equally. Water quality, however, remains a problem,
with high levels of arsenic and untreated sewage in the
river water

9. THE NARMADA
Narmada River, also called Narbada or Nerbudda, river in
central India. It rises in the Maikala Range in east-central
Madhya Pradesh state and follows a tortuous course
through the hills near Mandla. It then enters the structural
trough between the Vindhya and Satpura ranges at Marble
Rocks Gorge and flows westward across Madhya Pradesh
and Gujarat states, entering the Gulf of Khambhat through
an estuary 13 miles (21 km) wide, just below Bharuch.
Draining the northern slopes of the Satpura Range along its
800-mile (1,300-km) course, it flows through the
Hoshangabad plains, the Dhar upland, the Mahishmati
plains, and the gorges at Mandhata and Murakta. The river
has numerous waterfalls and tributaries. Some important
cities and towns on its banks include
Hoshangabad, Jabalpur, Handia, and Mandhata. Called
Namade by the 2nd-century-ce Greek geographer
Ptolemy, the river has always been an important route
between the Arabian Sea and the Ganges (Ganga) River
valley.

10. THE NARMADA
DISPUTE
The Narmada, also called the Rewa, is a river in central India and the fifth longest river in
the Indian subcontinent. Investigations for harnessing the Narmada waters started
around the time of independence, when Central Waterways, Irrigation and
Navigation Commission (CWINC) identified several storage schemes and in 1948 the
Khosla Committee prioritised the proposals and named Tawa, Bargi, Punasa and
Bharuch projects for preparation of reports. The reports were ready by 1963.While
the project in Gujarat called Baruch Weir project went through a series of
modifications and improvements with a reformed scheme at Navagam village to
extend benefits up to the Rann of Kutch, but following the bifurcation of the
erstwhile Bombay state into Maharashtra and Gujarat states and Gujarat's intent to
raise the height of the dam at Navagam to maximise storage benefits at the cost of
submergence of potential hydropower sites in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh,
created a dispute between the states. After intense parleys failed to resolve the
problem, GOI decided to set up the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal (NWDT) in
1969 under the Interstate River Water Disputes Act, 1956 to adjudicate on the
dispute relating to sharing of water of the inter–state river Narmada and its
valley.After ten years of deliberations, the Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal (NWDT)
gave its award in December 1979. The NWDT, considering the development of the
water resources of the basin as a whole, gave its award, allocating share of water
and Hydro Power of the Sardar Sarovar Project.

11. GEOGRAPHY

12. WORLDWIDE CONSERVATION OF
WATER
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As the world population continues to grow, the
ability to source clean water is becoming a more
pressing concern. Worldwide agriculture
accounts for 70% of all water consumption,
compared to 20% for industry and 10% for
domestic use.
Utilization of water in different countries:USA - In the United States an average
American uses over 420 litres per day. This is one
of the highest in the world, and by 2050 14 states
will face an extreme risk to water sustainability.
The UK – In the UK an average person uses 150
litres a day. Now UK has less available water per
person than many countries in Europe.
Africa – Access to water is a bigger problem in
Africa than anywhere else on the planet. Out of
the 25 nations of the greatest percentage of
people who do not have access to safe drinking
water, 19 of them are in Africa.
Florida also has similar water shortage problems.
These consumption issues are being resolved by
Florida and its citizens by using methods like
reuse of greywater and rain water harvesting.
These two methods of conserving water are also
used by many different countries including the
United States to overcome the problem of
shortage of water.
In Melbourne, Australia, a zero water use
commercial building, the 60L, has been
constructed. The building uses rainwater as a
supply for every type of consumption with the
exception of the fire sprinklers.

13. WATER CONSERVATION IN INDIA
India is a large nation with a much larger population.
Overpopulation, consequent demands for
water, overutilization and unequal access to water, all
these are the root cause of water scarcity in India. So it
is the need of the hour to conserve and manage our
water resources.
The Miracle Water Village of India
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Lying in one of the worst drought-prone regions of
India, the village of Hiware Bazar battled many decades
of sparse rain and failed crops. However, 20 years
ago, the entire village came together to script a silent
revolution by designing a rainwater-harvesting model
that saved every drop of the scanty rain they received.
Today, the village is literally an oasis in the middle of
the desert, boasting of bumper harvests, dairy cooperatives, millionaire families and visionary farmers.
Hiware Bazar still receives the scanty amount of rainfall
it used to in the heart of its most trying years, but what
has changed is the way it has managed its water and
created a miracle with this most precious liquid
resource!

14. RAINWATER HARVESTING
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Rain water harvesting system is a viable
alternative of multipurpose projects both
socio-economically and environmentally.
Objectives of rain water harvesting:To conserve surface run-off during monsoon
To recharge aquifers and increase
availability of groundwater
To overcome the problem of flooding and
stagnation of water during monsoon season.
Why is it needed?
Water scarcity- a serious problem
throughout the world for urban and rural
communities.
Urbanization has led overexploitation of
groundwater reserves and the quantity of
rainfall is not certain anytime.

15. WATERSHED MANAGEMENT
Watersheds can be defined as a
geo-hydrological unit draining to a
common point by a system of drains. All
lands on earth are part of one
watershed or the other. Watershed is
thus the land and water area, which
contributes runoff to a common point.
Need for watershed management
In spite of sufficient rainfall, people have
to depend upon tankers for domestic
water supply in summers in most of the
areas.
A raindrop, when flows along the
slope, carries the loose soil along it. In
this case the topmost layer of soil is lost
rapidly.