CHALLENGES
In the last decade alone more than 2200 major and minor water related disasters occurred
in the world. Of these floods accounted half of the total disasters while droughts
accounted for nearly one- eighth of the disasters. The scenario is signaling the fact that
we are miles away from integrated water resources management, more so in the case of
developing countries of Asia and Africa as they have accounted for more than 60% of the
total water related disasters. More than 70% (80% in the case of Asia) of water withdrawal
in the world is still used for the agricultural purposes while nearly 1.1 billion people
(of these two-third are from Asia) lacked safe drinking water making a case in the point
that we have to save lot of water from agricultural sector not only to provide safe
drinking water but also for the survival of the agricultural sector itself. For example,
in many of the semi- arid regions like southern India runoff from the catchments has been
sharply declining due to upper catchment development and forcing the well established
irrigation in the deltas of Kaveri, Krishna and Godavari under water stress. Therefore
there is a dire need to improve the water productivity in the agriculture for sustainable
food production on one hand and to provide more clean drinking water as well as sufficient
water for industry on the other. While this competition is going on between various
sectors of water use, there is a threat of increasing hydrological extremes looming large
on our heads due to climate change which underscore the point that there is a need for
storage of water and inter- connectivity of various water sources to combat floods &
droughts.
In the light of the above, adequate investments have to be made in the water and
environmental sector at all levels of the government. Simultaneously, proper interventions
could be made to the implementing programs and policies based on the sound scientific and
technological skills in the hydrology and land management. In order to take these messages
to the public in general and to the decision makers in particular, efforts must be made on
continued basis by organising public debates, workshops and conferences. The Centre for
Water Resources of JNT University has been active in providing a platform for various
forums and the last international conference on this subject successfully organised by the
Centre was in the year 2002. Since then many new developments have been taken place and
the focusing areas have already been emerged in view of the climate change and consequent
recurring droughts and floods. In this context the Centre has been planning to organize an
international conference on “Hydrology and Watershed Management” with a focal
theme on "Improving Water Productivity in the Agriculture" during 5 th to 8 th
December, 2006.
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