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| Making Water Everybody’s
Business Another campaign that Agarwal initiated is called ‘Make Water
Everybody’s Business’ using the technology of rainwater harvesting. Agarwal
while travelling through the desert villages of Rajasthan came across several traditional
water harvesting structures that were effective in meeting people’s basic water needs
even in bad drought years. Agarwal calculated that if one were to capture just 100 mm of
rainfall in a year falling over a catchment of just one hectare, one would get as much as
one million litres of water. India’s ancestors also knew that the monsoons give a lot
of water but almost all of its comes down in a mere 100 hours in the whole year. They
therefore developed an extensive tradition of rainwater harvesting. CSE, therefore,
decided to investigate the past in depth to see if there lay a solution for the future.
CSE divided the country into 15 ecological regions and documented the water traditions in
each of these regions. A comprehensive look into the past and how it has survived into the
present. Finally, in 1997, CSE published Dying Wisdom with a clear message that the
past still has a lot to teach us. But instead of leaving people to read the book and
slowly internalise the message, CSE decided to shorten the fuse on this time bomb. It
approached its friends in the civil society across India to organise public meetings to
release and discuss the modern relevance of the book. Senior political leaders, judges,
editors and other decision-makers and opinion-makers participated and within three months,
the nation was discussing the importance of rainwater harvesting.
CSE has since set up a National Water Harvesters Network to strengthen the hands of
those who are promoting this new paradigm in water management. In 1998, the President of
India requested CSE to help him undertake water harvesting in the Rashtrapati Bhawan
(President’s House). In December 1999, when CSE realized that a bad drought was going
to hit Gujarat, western Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh it decided to
investigate how rainwater harvesting communities were faring in the drought. The study
revealed that these communities not only had no drinking water shortage but were even able
to grow two crops. The findings were stunning and highly inspiring. As a result, when the
national media became conscious of the drought in April 2000, CSE was ready to show the
nation living examples of how people can beat the drought. The result: Everybody –
from the prime minister to state chief ministers – started talking of and developing
programmes for rainwater harvesting. CSE has also set up a Rainwater Harvesting Advisory
Service to help schools, colleges, residential colonies, households and industries
undertake rainwater harvesting.
Equal Rights to the
Atmosphere
At the international level, Agarwal campaigned for Equal Rights to the Atmosphere.
Developing countries will be the worst affected by global warming. He advocated that the
answer lies in the world moving away from fossil fuels to zero-carbon energy systems. But
this means changing the entire energy system on which the modern economy is built. How
will we share the cost and burden of this transition? Agarwal’s answer was simple.
Each human being should get an equal share to emit global warming-causing gases. Those who
emit less than their share – and these will invariably be poor nations like India,
Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and China – can sell their unused share every year to
those who emit more than their share. This trade in ‘atmospheric entitlements’
will allow poor nations to access funds to acquire non-carbon producing energy
technologies. Thus, both the poor and rich nations can move towards a new energy paradigm
that will prevent a disastrous build up of gases that cause global warming. Agarwal was
the first person to propose trading in greenhouse gases in the world way back in 1991. |
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