Group6_D | SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation

Authored by:- Animesh Acharya, Moidin Afsan, Soham Banerjee, Aviral, Tarun Agarwal, Shubham Sanganeria, Antony Paul Elenjical

Introduction

Clean water and sanitation is the sixth Sustainable Development Goal of the United Nations and aims to secure adequate water and sanitation for all. Some of the main targets of this goal are to provide affordable drinking water, bring an end to open defecation and restore the quality of ecosystems dominated by water.[1]

The primary means to achieve these goals are by supporting developing nations in their progress and ensuring that there is engagement from the local communities. We can see the global nature of these issues is the fact that over two billion individuals lack a way to get safe drinking water, and the number is over four billion when it comes to safe and hygienic sanitation. The Coronavirus pandemic has expedited the need to overcome these challenges.[2] At the same time, the fall in monetary reserves of global agencies due to the same tilts towards the possibility that there may be a delay in achieving these goals.

This SDG is a pivotal one, as success in this helps accelerate the progress in many others. For example, improved water and sanitation helps in SDG 3 for health, and provides a boost in school attendance and poverty alleviation.[3] The United Nations considers access to pure water and adequate sanitation facilities as a fundamental human right.

Bringing about changes in sanitation and ending open defecation requires both economic and behavioural changes. The building of toilets and other facilities for over two and a half billion people is needed, clubbed with the need to change the habits of individuals to use the same. Consistent sweeping changes in SDG 6 can help in starting a virtuous global cycle for improving human conditions.[4]

Relevance to India

India, the world’s second most populated country with a population of around 1.3 bn has only 4% of the annual runoffs in rivers. Further on, the Indian economy is an agriculture dominated economy and nearly 600 million depend on agriculture for their livelihood. Around 2/3rd of the land for agriculture does not have accessibility to assisted irrigation, thus they primarily depend on underwater sources and rain to fulfil their requirement of water. From the above data we can safely conclude the importance of water and sanitation SDG for our country in general.

The targets set by India in the SDG-6 for the year 2030 is extremely ambitious and there are a number of roadblocks India will have to face in it’s quest to achieve the target.

Some of the challenges are broadly:

I. Societal Challenges: Around 6.7% of the Indian population live below the international poverty line and thus it would be very difficult to get them to use toilets or live under sanitary conditions.

II. Technological Challenges: The financial feasibility of the innovations in the country, especially in the rural areas is the biggest concern for our country.

III. Institutional Challenges: The lack of coordination between the government organizations, NGO’s, municipalities etc, cause considerable delay in the planning and implementation of any schemes.

IV. Financial Challenges: The global financial crisis fuelled due to COVID-19 pandemic is another challenge in the path of achieving the SDG’s

Current Performance and Initiatives

With focus on building toilets and educating people, a significant progress in terms of sanitation has taken place in India. States like Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh have officially been declared ODF and around 95% coverages have been achieved in West Bengal, Kerala, Haryana etc.

Swach Bharat Abhiyan is giving flexibility and incentives to states to maintain high sanitation levels in their regions.

Schemes like Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sanchai Yojana and investments in providing irrigation facilities and water harvesting is a good step towards the SDG of water for all.

[5]

Business implications and responses

Businesses throughout the world have a key responsibility towards achieving our goal of clean water and sanitation. Businesses, in any sector, are heavily dependent on water to run their daily operations. The past few decades have seen immense exploitation of water resources by the corporate world, be it polluting river water with industrial discharge or mindless usage of water, using more than what they need. However, the present and foreseen problems associated with scarcity of water along with rise in awareness and pressure from legal authorities has compelled these business houses to act judicially and adopt practices to save clean water. Besides, there is a sense of more obligation too which is contributing positively to this cause.

Just like SDGs are global efforts towards sustainability, there are certain companies which are responding to the dire situation with global initiatives. One of them is Netafim. The company is making a contribution to water conservation by deploying drip irrigation technology in India and the USA. The goal is to make farmers more resilient to drought and frequent issues of unavailability of water. It is to be noted that agriculture is the prime consumer of clean water reserves (70% of total fresh-water reserves) and therefore the cause of SDG 6 is most important in this sector. Farmers are also using methods like schedule irrigation, which involves watering the plants at the right time, right place, and right amount, and IoT (Internet of things) technology to manage the water consumption.

The manufacturing sector contributes massively to the degradation of quality of water and surprisingly a lot of them don’t even know the amount of water they use and discharge per day, per week or per month. To monitor this a lot of manufacturing units are installing sub-meters in their premises. This provides these units data to measure and monitor. Thereafter, the process involves formation of “Water Minimising teams” who look for loopholes and suggest the possible areas for water reduction. Some industrial locations have even started listing water savings as a key performance indicator (KPI). This allows these units to have a statistic of how much water has been saved for the specific time-period. Along with-it manufacturing units save water through measures like dry-in-place, dry machining, virgin fibre, ultrafiltration etc.

Given the increasing scarcity of water across the country, the big Indian conglomerates have begun to realize that conservation is the need of the hour. Some of them are:

Coca Cola: Coca Cola India has improved its Water Use Ratio in their operations to 1.74 in 2019 from 2.56 in 2010. Through its foundation, Anandana, Coca Cola India have 320 water replenishment projects and 150+ community water conservation projects which have benefitted 800000 community members over 600 villages. Anandana has also looked at sanitation and has built hygienic toilets and water tanks at primary schools in Chennai which will benefit 10,000 people. [6]

PepsiCo: PepsiCo India meanwhile was awarded the US Secretary of State’s Award for Corporate Excellence in the sustainable operations category in 2019. They partnered with 24,000 farmers saving more than 17 billion litres of water through sustainable farming practices. [7] ITC’s watershed programme covers more than 1,000,000 acres across India. ITC’s Kovai Paperboards factory in Tamil Nadu is the only factory in India which has been awarded the ‘Alliance for Water Stewardship Platinum-level certification’ which is the highest recognition for water stewardship in the world. ITC’s waste management programme, Well Being out of Waste covers over one crore citizens across India. [8]

HUL: HUL has managed to conserve more than 980 billion litres of water through improved supply and demand management of water. It has led to over 960,000 tonnes of additional agricultural and biomass production generated which was recognized through Confederation of Indian Industries Award for Excellence in Water Management in 2019. HUL also plans to create an additional water potential of 1.5 trillion litres of water for India by 2024. [9]

Analysis

The SDG-6 is of paramount importance to India as it is interlinked with various other factors like health, in terms of water borne diseases, food security, in terms of availability of water for irrigation and the sustainable development of the country. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India is taking Multiple steps towards achieving the targets set forth in SGD-6.

a. Safe and Affordable Drinking Water

The National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP) has provided 81.07 % rural areas in the country with access to 40 litres of potable water per day. It also aims to provide piped water connection to every rural household under the Jal Jeevan Mission by 2024. Furthermore, under the recently launched Jal Shakti Abhiyan, India aims to strengthen its efforts toward water conservation by means of renovation of traditional water bodies, afforestation drives etc. [10]

However, the country faces problems with ensuring the right quality of water as most of the water bodies and groundwater reservoirs are contaminated with elements like arsenic and zinc from industrial effluents, and faeces from open defecation. To tackle this problem, the central government has implemented a host of measures. The central water commission has been tasked to monitor water quality in over 390 locations across the country. Highly polluting industries have been identified and monitored to ensure compliance with the regulations. Under the Namami gange programme the government set forward to accomplish the objectives of abetting pollution and rejuvenation of the river ganga.[11]

b. Sanitation and Hygiene

Under the flagship programme of the Swachh Bharat Mission, the government of India has achieved a major target of making India open defecation free. The programme has been able to achieve a Behavioural change in people by means of raising awareness of hygienic practices.[12] However, Constraints are still imposed on women to access sanitation facilities in certain regions ,which need to be tackled.

With all the steps taken towards ensuring the compliance with SDG-6 ,India has been able to achieve an SDG Index Score of 88 out of 100. However , when the performance of different states and UTs are observed on the SDG index it was observed that states facing water shortage performed better than the ones having abundance of water resources.Hence, it can be inferred that scarcity drives better management of water resources. As the distribution of water resources in India is not uniform ,a different and holistic approach needs to be taken.

The Path Ahead

Effective utilization of water resources: India despite being a country that receives the maximum amount of annual rainfall and having the heavy supply of water resources in many parts of the country is still the worst performer in terms of SDG 6.

In order to address this there should be a shift from supply-side perspective (focus on availability of water) to demand side as scarcity drives better utilization and management of resources. Since this method also has some weaknesses, there should be a holistic index which takes into consideration both demand and supply.

Competitive economy on the basis of SDG 6 Index achievement: This will lead every state to achieve a higher ranking in terms of SDG 6 achievements. The best and worst performers will be published in the public domain, the competition between states will produce outcomes that will be superior and efficient. Also, the competitive spirit amongst the states will lead to policy reconsideration, changes and advancement timely in order to achieve higher index.

Employing hydroscience engineers in each company: Many industries don’t know about the amount of damage they are causing to the water resources. They either lack proper industrial practices or don’t know how to effectively manage the water, there is a need of guidance. Hence, every industry should employ a hydroscience engineer who can help the company to relate between their industry practices and hydrological cycle. Also, it will help in efficient utilization of economic resources for conservation and balancing ecological cycle.

References:

[1] https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1607165

[2] https://niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/SDG-India-Index-2.0_27-Dec.pdf

[3] https://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/swachh-bharat-shows-how-to-nudge-the-right-way/1733445/

[4] https://www.orfonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ORF_OccasionalPaper_250_CleanWaterSanitation.pdf

[5] https://in.one.un.org/page/sustainable-development-goals/sdg-6/

[6] https://www.coca-colaindia.com/stories/sustainability-2019-20/water-stewardship-2020

[7] https://share.america.gov/pepsico-wins-award-for-stewardship-india-s-water/

[8] https://www.itcportal.com/ReturnViewImage.aspx?fileid=1476

[9] https://www.hul.co.in/news/news-and-features/2020/water-for-public-good.html

[10] http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals/goal-6-clean-water-and-sanitation.html

[11] https://www.susana.org/en/knowledge-hub/resources-and-publications/library/details/3637