IISER MOHALI

Abstract: Water management in the Global South often happens in silos with multiple stakeholders acting at cross purposes and governance structures failing to integrate them. This talk is a synthesis of insights from collaborative, interdisciplinary studies, involving tools and approaches from environmental and social sciences conducted over several years in Southern and Western India. We argue for a basin level thinking on water management, guided by normative principles. In the Arkavathy sub-basin, part of which falls in Bengaluru city, there are strong interlinkages between upstream villages and the city in resource dependency. Shifts in land use particularly to water intensive crops are triggered by the city. In the Upper Bhima sub-basin, comprising Pune city, the governance mechanisms are effective in protecting biodiversity in the upper catchment, but closer to the city, the land use is dynamic, with cropping pattern changing in response to demand from the city. We argue that the efforts at integration must begin with an understanding of how human interventions modify the basic hydrological cycle, focus on the basin as the unit, see for what purposes water is used, by whom, and how this can impact the normative policy goals of efficiency, fairness and sustainability.

Bio: Dr. Bejoy K Thomas is an interdisciplinary social scientist working on environment and development. His research covers water management, with a focus on adaptation, access and use in agricultural and domestic sectors, metrics used for measuring sustainable development and normative issues in environment and development. He has been a part of several projects with extensive field research in the Cauvery and Krishna basins, Kuttanad/Vembanad wetlands and peri-urban areas of Bengaluru and Pune.

Dr. Thomas is an Associate Professor at IISER Pune in the Humanities and Social Sciences department and Centre for Water Research. He has previously worked with ATREE, Bengaluru, and has been a visiting fellow at University of Waterloo, and University of British Columbia. His primary discipline is economics, and he holds a PhD in development studies from Tilburg University, The Netherlands.