Water and Agricultural Competitiveness

Development Impacts - Water and Agricultural Competitiveness

Mon, Mar 30, 2009

Rachel Posner with CSIS. My question is for Dr. Saleth. You mentioned in your presentation that if there were continued development in India, that there could be conflict. And so I wanted to hear you expand on that a little bit, and if there were any instances that you could tell us about that have kind of happened already. We always get questions at CSIS about water and conflict, and so we would just be interested to hear what you've seen on the ground over there.

Yes. Actually, the demand for water (inaudible) is projected based on certain assumptions about our population growth, so they have several scenarios on population growth. So according to one scenario which assumes higher population growth, by 2050 all the water that can be used in India, usable water, will be exhausted. So at the micro level or (inaudible) level, 2050 around that time, India will use all its water. So that is the one point. The second point, at the micro level of smaller basins, which Peter may be knowing as well, basin level -- there are some basins that are already using more water than they already have, partly due to recycling and so forth. So some of them are using about sixty, seventy percent of the water resource potential for irrigation. So it means the remaining is for domestic and industrial uses, which is also growing. So the normal assumption is that whenever the basin, sixty percent of the water is used, then it is crossing danger zone, actually. So there are several areas where it already happened, and there are some rivers which they have a conflict between states in capturing water. One is the case of (?) water, which many times it even has some political ramifications, (inaudible) the stability of the central government which, since it is based on coalition partners, some states may. So those political implications are there, all the time. So that's the way I entered the presentation with that, whether the politics can win or the economics can win. Actually the economics is going to win, because of its political implications, because politics is not immune from economic conservation(?) in the long run. But you're right, there are several (inaudible) areas where these problems are already visible.