- Given this situation, we require policies that promote judicious use of groundwater.
- Although there are a number of potential interventions in the area of groundwater conservation, there are hardly any rigorous evaluations.
- In absence of rigorous research, such as randomized evaluations, which can establish the causal impact of an intervention, it is a challenge to identify solutions that are highly effective.
- However, researchers could draw lessons from existing solutions, and use them to design interventions that could later be rigorously evaluated.
- One of the proposed ways to reduce groundwater extraction is by reducing electricity subsidies.
- An analysis of panel data across 370 districts in India found that a reduction in electricity subsidy was correlated with a decrease in groundwater extraction.
- On average, a 10% reduction in electricity subsidy generated a 6.7% decrease in groundwater extraction.
- However, reducing electricity subsidies for farmers could be politically unpopular.
- Another way of efficiently using groundwater is by encouraging farmers to adopt micro-irrigation techniques such as drip irrigation and micro-sprinklers.
- According to the CWMI report, adopting micro-irrigation techniques can save roughly 20% of the groundwater used annually on irrigation in India. A key challenge is to convince farmers to adopt such techniques.
- A study showed that the adoption of drip irrigation increased in areas where less water-intensive crops such as banana, grapes and coconut were grown.
- Additionally, the study found that the adoption of drip irrigation was higher in regions where water and labour were scarcer.
- Thus, it would be prudent for policymakers and researchers to encourage adoption of drip irrigation practices and rigorously evaluate its impact on groundwater levels in such areas.
- Lastly, creating sustainable change would require a bottom-up approach by empowering the local community to become active participants in managing groundwater.
- In line with this, the central government in its 12th five-year plan proposed a policy of participatory groundwater management (PGM), which involves a collaborative approach among government departments, researchers, NGOs and community members.
- The plan involves training community workers to carry out aquifer mapping and implement innovative ways to use groundwater conservatively with the local community.
Groundwater has helped India overcome food shortage in the 1960s by playing an instrumental role in ushering in the green revolution. However, the NITI Aayog CWMI report is a timely reminder of the need for policymakers and researchers to come together and conduct rigourous evaluations in order to understand what works and what doesn’t work for groundwater conservation. Unless we take urgent measures to avert this crisis, we may find ourselves faced with an environmental catastrophe of our own making.