Viewpoint: Defeating the water crisis: Community matters!

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
pp. 539-544
Author(s):  
Pragati Jain ◽  
Prerna Jain
Keyword(s):  
Community Engagement ◽  
Community Participation ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
Water Harvesting ◽  
Water Crisis ◽  
Rural Sustainability ◽  
Positive Externalities ◽  
Common Lands ◽  
Strategy Design ◽  
Water Harvesting Structures

Community participation is critical in enhancing rural sustainability in terms of managing indigenous water harvesting structures. The long-standing illusion that the water crisis can only be tackled through a top down strategy design has been shattered by a successful community engagement model using the social, financial, and human capital of the community in the semi-arid village Laporiya of Rajasthan in India. The positive externalities created through the process of community engagement are not only via knowledge sharing but also water sharing with neighboring villages. The appropriate policy suggestion for the positive externalities so created is to build an extra market for ‘ideas’ creating incentives for these innovative practices in rural settings by allowing them to flourish in a hazard free manner, free from the risk of encroachment of common lands, or of future inter-sectoral resource conflict arising out of any industrial activity. The state-managed community participation has also been successful in reviving and creating water harvesting structures, but the sustainability of such program is at stake, in the absence of social capital. Communities do matter but in ways that sustain the local economy.

scholarly journals Water balance assessment of Sajnam watershed, Lalitpur (U.P.)

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (02) ◽  
Author(s):  
R. K. Jaiswal ◽  
T. Thomas ◽  
Jyoti P Patil ◽  
Meeta Gupta ◽  
V. C. Goyal
Keyword(s):  
Water Balance ◽  
Artificial Recharge ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Water Harvesting ◽  
Balance Assessment ◽  
Irrigation Project ◽  
Main River ◽  
Balance Analysis ◽  
Demand Scenario ◽  
Water Harvesting Structures

It is a well-known fact that it is not all possible to avoid droughts, but droughts can be managed to minimise the hardships of the local population. For this purpose, understanding of the supply-demand scenario is of utmost importance to understand the overall hydrology and planning needs of any watershed. It is in this direction, the comprehensive water balance analysis has been performed for the Sajnam watershed in Lalitpur district of Bundelkhand which is susceptible to regular and continuous droughts. The detailed water balance has been carried out after identification of important components and their quantification using the advance tools of Remote Sensing and GIS alongwith standard estimation techniques of individual components. It was observed that the runoff at the outlet of Sajnam basin is influenced by the water storage in the irrigation project located on the main river. The higher surface runoff of 668.53 MCM, 406.17 MCM, 343.46 MCM and 214.00 MCM is generated only during 2013-14, 2008-09, 2012-13 and 2010-11 respectively. During the remaining years, the runoff varied between 89.35 MCM and 209.81 MCM. Efforts can be initiated towards exploring the possibility of more water harvesting structures onthe lower order tributaries as well as artificial recharge measures depending on the hydro-geology of the watershed..

scholarly journals Suitable Site Selection for Rainwater Harvesting and Storage Case Study Using Dohuk Governorate

Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 864 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaylan Rasul Faqe Ibrahim ◽  
Azad Rasul ◽  
Arieann Ali Hamid ◽  
Zana Fattah Ali ◽  
Amanj Ahmad Dewana
Keyword(s):  
Rainwater Harvesting ◽  
Image Data ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Severe Drought ◽  
Water Harvesting ◽  
Water Crisis ◽  
Model Builder ◽  
Dry Zone ◽  
Elevation Model ◽  
Model Inverse

The Middle East is an inherently dry zone. It has experienced severe drought for the last seven years, and climate change has made the situation worse. The Dohuk governorate has been suffering from an appalling water crisis. One possible way of relieving this water crisis is by properly harvesting the rainwater. Rainwater harvesting is a widely used method of storing rainwater in the countries presenting with drought characteristics. Several pieces of research have derived and developed different criteria and techniques to select suitable sites for harvesting rainwater. The main aim of this research was to identify and select suitable sites for the potential erection of dams, as well as to derive a model builder in ArcMap 10.4.1. The model combined several parameters, such as slope, runoff potential, land cover/use, stream order, soil quality, and hydrology to determine the suitability of the site for harvesting rainwater. To compute the land use/cover categories, the study depended on Landsat image data from 2018. Supervised classification was applied using the ENVI 5 software, while the slope mapping and drainage order were extracted using a digital elevation model. Inverse distance weighting (IDW) was used for the spatial interpolation of the rain data. The results demonstrated that suitable areas for water harvesting, are located in the middle and northern part of the research area, and in intensively cultivated zones. The main soil texture in these suitable sites was loam, while the rainfall rate amounted to 750 to 900 mm. This research shows that 15% and 13% of the area studied can be categorized as having excellent and good suitability for water harvesting, respectively. Furthermore, 21% and 27% of the area studied were of moderate and poor suitability, while the remaining 24% were not suitable at all.

scholarly journals My history, your history, our history: Developing meaningful community engagement within historic sites and museums

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 300-321
Author(s):  
Jessica Stroja
Keyword(s):  
Community Engagement ◽  
Community Participation ◽  
Participatory Process ◽  
Historic Sites ◽  
Community Needs ◽  
Sense Of Ownership ◽  
The Past ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities

AbstractVarying models of community engagement provide methods for museums to build valuable relationships with communities. These relationships hold the potential to become ongoing, dynamic opportunities for active community participation and engagement with museums. Nevertheless, the nuances of this engagement continue to remain a unique process that requires delicate balancing of museum obligations and community needs in order to ensure meaningful outcomes are achieved. This article discusses how community engagement can be an active, participatory process for visitors to museums. Research projects that utilise aspects of community-driven engagement models allow museums to encourage a sense of ownership and active participation with the museum. Indeed museums can balance obligations of education and representation of the past with long-term, meaningful community needs via projects that utilise aspects of community-driven engagement models. Using an oral history project at Historic Ormiston House as a case study,1 the article argues that museums and historic sites can encourage ongoing engagement through active community participation in museum projects. While this approach carries both challenges and opportunities for the museum, it opens doors to meaningful and long-term community engagement, allowing visitors to embrace the museum and its stories as active participants rather than as passive consumers.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document