Urban development has taken a toll on water tanks in Bengaluru: IPCC

In its latest report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that by the middle of the 21st Century the international transboundary river basins of Amu Darya, Indus, Ganges and the interstate Sabarmati river basin in India could face severe water scarcity challenges with climate change acting as a stress multiplier.
Both climatic and non-climatic drivers, such as socio-economic changes, have created water stress conditions in both water supply and demand in all subregions of Asia. These changes in space and time directly or indirectly affected water use sectors and services, said IPCC.
The second instalment of the IPCC Working Group II report on Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability mentioned that urban development has taken a toll on the water tanks which were managed traditionally by communities.
The report said, “Today Bengaluru depends on long-distance water transfers that create political conflict and a dense network of private boreholes that are depleting the city’s water resources. The restoration of the existing community-managed water tanks network offers a more sustainable and socially just alternative for managing water resources.”
The report quoted the work of researchers Sudhira H S, Prof Vanesa Castan Broto and Hita Unnikrishnan.
It also highlighted that the records from the 6th Century shows that city rulers invested in interconnected, community-managed networks of tanks and open wells which were regularly recharged through harvested rainwater.
The report mentioned, “The water system was changed at the end of the 18th Century, as first the colonial state, then the post-independence government of Karnataka, took responsibility for water management. Ideas of modernist planning influenced the development of new water infrastructure and piped networks, including the first piped infrastructure, bringing water from sources 30 km away, including the Hesaraghatta and then the TG Halli reservoirs.”
It added, “The old network of tanks gradually deteriorated as tanks became disused, polluted, or built over. More prolonged and costly water transfers took place in the post-colonial period, delivering water from the Cauvery River in a massive engineering project with a high energetic cost and enmeshed in inter-state conflicts over water use. Scarcity is still a problem in Bengaluru.”
Scientists at the IPCC report said human-induced climate change is causing dangerous and widespread disruption in nature and affecting the lives of billions of people around the world, despite efforts to reduce the risks.