Managing Land and Water under Changing Climatic Conditions in India: A Critical Perspective

In the case of developing economies, climate change and its economic consequences presume vital importance in the process of realizing sustainable development in the longer timeframe. Land and water are the two major ingredients of the successful realization of this process. It is needless to say that land and water cannot be disconnected while addressing the issue of sustainable development. Here, this paper would concentrate on the issue of water where many issues would be equally relevant to the issues of land. It has been concluded in the Natural Resources Defense Council report that, the global warming may increase the risk of floods, so an efficient and conservative water use will be of paramount importance for future water supply. The main motivation of this paper is to discuss the water management challenges that can handle the threats or stresses like Global Environmental Change (GEC), climate changes, natural disasters like flood, drought or even an extreme climatic event like cyclone. The current paper focuses on the broad area of water management issues such as the major river system of India, condition of ground water resources, the current water utilization, water losses, water under stress, water pollution and increased population & its impact on the problem of scarcity of water. It also focuses on the water policy, land and water rights and act, Interstate Water Dispute Act etc. An attempt has been made to illustrate the environmental interface between land, water and climate. The paper assumed an interdisciplinary approach combining knowledge from environmental sciences with social sciences.