Exploring The Water-energy Nexus

There is a clear need in urban India and the countryside for concerted investigations that address the water sector's impact on energy resources, and the energy sector's impact on water resources, including development, operations and end-uses, says Hariharan Chandrashekar.

- Hariharan Chandrashekar

As in many knowledge domains across the world, there has been an explosion of research and lay writings in the media on matters of environment and ecology. There is a general and vague understanding, fuelled by the odd eruption of bad news [for e.g., Cape Town] or the knee-jerk on building resilience every time there is a natural disaster [e.g., post- Tsunami Tamil Nadu or post-flood Kerala]. That water is on top of most crises in the world is recognised but not yet touching people's lives badly enough for a response that will bring the sharp shift in water management that cities and the countryside need. Ever so slowly, over the last 3 to 5 years, water-users in the urban segment are stirring themselves to some bit of action on what they should be doing to mitigate their own personal challenge at home , hotel, office or their company or industry. Farmers continue not to see the challenge and lay the blame at the door of governments. Uniformally, all of them as water-users have not a clue on what lies as solutions. Policymakers and Governments have shown no inclination to respond to the crisis beyond the fire-fighting modes they don every once a while when things erupt.

Brave hearts in the business of exploring solutions don't want the emphasis on bad news. It is not for want of solutions, they insist, and this writer is one of them rooting for such simple changes at the waterusers' end while of course acknowledging that the war cannot be fought without the collective heave of all shoulders across the spectrum from water-providers to technologists to integrated solution providing professionals whose tribe needs to grow, and the Government's multiple agencies which are grounded firmly still on supply-side solutions.