The water programme of Centre for Science and Environment has evolved to help in establishing policy principles, innovative technologies and implementation strategies for water and wastewater management in India. These efforts have been directed towards meeting the twin goals of laying the foundations for a water prudent society and adapting for climate resilience.
CSE has been an important thought-leader in the water management sector. It has already influenced global policies and strategies to focus on the need for technologies to augment water resources in a decentralised manner through rainwater harvesting and to use that water to optimize on benefits. In 2010, CSE started the South Asia Water Programme. The programme involves three countries viz. Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Important objectives of the programme include awareness generation about environment and development as well as capacity building of societies to understand and deal with environmental issues. The programme is successfully ongoing since the past five years. Though the main aim of the programme was training government and non-government partners, it has diversified to model curriculum development, knowledge support to a regional rain convention and providing technical guidance on the implementation of model projects related to sustainable water management. Centre has tripartite MoU with Lanka Rainwater Harvesting Forum (LRWHF) and Ministry of Water Supply and Drainage, Govt. of Sri Lanka.
We believe this experience needs to be leveraged to share solutions with other countries in the developing world from South America, Africa and Asia that are enjoined in a common struggle to find ways of meeting the needs of urban and rural populations in the current water and wastewater paradigm which are affordable and sustainable.
In the coming five years, the Centre would like to build on expanding this work to other regions in the world in particular focusing on select countries in Africa through experience sharing workshops to identify gaps and challenges in urban water management and complement it later by capacity building in the region through tailor made training programmes.
Recently, the Centre organized four events, namely:
India-Africa Experience Sharing Workshop on Urban Rainwater Harvesting (25th February, 2015)
India-Africa Experience Sharing Workshop on Septage Management including Decentralised Wastewater Treatment- (26th February, 2015)
International Training Programme on Mainstreaming Sustainable Urban Water Management: Urban Rainwater Harvesting (23-24 March, 2015)
International Training Programme on Mainstreaming Sustainable Urban Water Management: Decentralised Wastewater Treatment and Reuse (25-26 March, 2015)
Share this article