Attachments
Foreword
South Asia’s rich human and physical geography are tightly bound to the rivers that radiate out and down from the great Himalayan massif and the extensive Indo-Gangetic basin aquifers. Driving some of the largest irrigation systems in human history and nourishing populations and ecosystems straddling rich alluvial floodplains, the annual flood pulses of these rivers — the Ganga, Indus, Brahmaputra and Meghna amongst them — has determined the development of human civilizations and provided livelihood security for several millennia. More recently, groundwater from alluvial and hard-rock aquifers has augmented less reliable surface supplies for irrigation and become the primary source of rural, urban and industrial water supplies.
These water resources are now rapidly changing, and this change brings heightened risk and uncertainty. Global warming is altering the behavior of the great ice mass — the cryosphere or ‘third pole’ — and is also affecting the pattern and behavior of monsoonal rains, river flow regimes, evaporation and demand patterns. Groundwater resources are under unprecedented pressure. The qualities of rivers and aquifers are deteriorating from contamination from communities, cities, industries and agriculture. Floods, droughts and cyclones cause devastation for millions. Climate extremes, together with changes in annual rainfall and sea-level rise, will affect the lives of over a billion people, increasing human insecurity and hindering the wider development efforts and economic growth directions of the region.
These series of South Asia Water Initiative reports were commissioned to help support greater understanding of these change including ways in which better water resources management can enable more effective climate adaptation policy, practice, design and implementation across the countries of South Asia. The summary report has drawn from three background papers and a range of expert inputs from IWMI, the World Bank and international and regional climate and water resource management experts.
By assessing available evidence and mapping the landscape of existing knowledge and policy approaches in South Asia, while keeping in mind key socio-economic and institutional contexts, this summary report and background papers inform public debate on climate change and water resources management in South Asia and provide valuable inputs to effective decision making.
The hope is that the guidance and recommendations offered by the wider project, of which these reports form a part, will enable South Asian governments and societies to enhance their capacities for building resilience to further climate change — which is now inevitable — and ensure a more sustainable and secure future for the whole region.