By Genevieve Costigan

Concerns about drought, inter-state bickering over water allocation, irrigation and the quality of drinking water are not unique to Australia and in fact research being conducted on stressed water basins overseas is being used to inform research into the water crisis in Australia.

A University of Melbourne team working with scientists from the International Water Management Institute has lead a consortium of institutions including the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University and Indian Institute of Science to design a water resource assessment and allocation computer modelling framework to show the economic, social and environmental implications of water allocation in the Krishna River Basin in India.

The project is led by Associate Professor Hector Malano with Dr Biju George and Dr Brian Davidson from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the Faculty of Land and Food Resources.

Like the Murray Darling Basin, the Krishna Basin encompasses three large states, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andra Pradesh, and is one of India’s largest domestic waterways supplying water to 67 million people. It is also one of the most important food production areas in the country.

“Initial modelling showed that large areas of the Basin are under stress and the river has frequently stopped flowing at its mouth in the Bay of Bengal; in hydrologic terms it is a closing Basin. The water discharge into the sea has significantly decreased and inflow into storage structures has changed drastically due to successive drought and development,” Associate Professor Malano says.

Water allocation in the Basin is further complicated by 40 years of large scale irrigation development and by the fact that the three states have irrigation, urban and industrial sectors which are rapidly developing with increasingly competitive water demands.

“Meeting water demand in the future will require important conservation measures to reduce urban and industrial demand as well as water recycling in the urban sector. Failure to put these measures in place will translate into a significant reduction of water for agriculture which will impair India’s ability to meet its food demands from its growing population and will intensify poverty in rural areas,” Associate Professor Malano says.

“Allocating water is a relatively new concept in India,” Associate Professor Malano says. “Our major responsibility in this project has been to develop a comprehensive water allocation modelling framework which will also allow us to explore different future policies within the three states so we can predict the economic outcome of the actual amounts of water allocated.”

“This analysis is designed to provide support to decision makers in the relevant state governments and other national agencies engaged in the management of the Krishna River basin.”

“The most interesting part of the project in some ways is the major impact management of water can have on people. Seventy five to eighty per cent of people in this particular Basin and across India still live in rural areas and they depend very much on water – even a minor reduction in water allocation can have a huge impact,” Associate Professor Malano says.

“India is industrialising very quickly and the demand for water is increasing very fast – any change or reallocation of resources can have a huge impact on the rural population.”