Contaminated and polluted water kills more than 2.2 million people per year which experts point out is more than the number of people killed from all forms of violence, including wars. The situation is especially dangerous in India where 80 per cent of all urban water is being discharged daily into the country’s rivers making most water bodies unfit for human use.
As a run up to the Teri ‘s Delhi Sustainable Development Summit kickstarting from Thursday, Teri organised a workshop along with the Norwegian Institute for Agricultural and Developmental Research on Water and Climate Change.
Speaking on the occasion, director-general of Teri and chairman of intergovernmental panel on climate change R.K. Pachauri expressed his concern over the increase in pollution in the country’s major rivers, including the Ganga.
He requested water resources minister Salman Khurshid, who presided over the workshop, to travel down the Ganga river to study why people could no longer take a bath in this holy river.
Blaming Green Revolution for the increased use of fertilisers, chemicals and pesticides which had adversely affected the quality, Dr Pachauri said the issue must be addressed “with a sense of urgency” otherwise “we are going to see some major reduction in the quality of water especially at a time when the demand for water will increase almost disproportionately in the country because of its growing population and higher industrial growth”.
Dr Pachauri also called for a collaboration with Norway in managing the country’s water resources as the Scandinavian nation has managed its water resources “with great deal of imagination.”
Meanwhile, Mr Khurshid also underlined the need for an initiative to deal with the impact of climate change on the water resources. India must ensure that it could combat the problem of climate change and its subsequent impact on its water resources, he said.
While 2.2 million people were dying from diarrheal diseases caused by unsafe drinking water and lack of hygiene, another 1.5 million children below the age of five die every year due to water-related diseases. The problem is more acute with the Yamuna from which the Delhi government is extracting 1.1 billion litres of water daily making it the capital’s largest water source.