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Sustainable water security in the Thar Desert, India: blending traditional wisdom with modern techniques

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conference contribution
posted on 2018-02-12, 15:09 authored by Deepak Malik
With a population of 30 million people, the Thar Desert is one of the poorest areas of India primarily due to the chronic aridity of the region. A perpetual crisis situation exists in the area due to the increased impact of both the human and livestock population which continues to put tremendous pressure on land, surface and groundwater resources. The acute problem of water scarcity, particularly the low rate of annual rainfall and subsequent lack of crops grown in the region, have made it difficult for people to develop agricultural land and survive solely off the income it provides. Although measures have been taken by the government to address the mentioned crises, none of the measures had a long lasting impact as these did not incorporate indigenous knowledge that helped the local people to survive for centuries. In the drive for development, and due to indifference to local know-how, much of the traditional wisdom have been forgotten. This paper explores the efforts made by HEDCON and GRAVIS in reviving traditional technology and blending it with modern techniques to provide sustainable water security in the Thar Desert.

History

School

  • Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering

Research Unit

  • Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC)

Published in

WEDC Conference

Citation

MALIK, D., 2008. Sustainable water security in the Thar Desert, India: blending traditional wisdom with modern techniques. IN: Jones, H. (ed). Access to sanitation and safe water - Global partnerships and local actions: Proceedings of the 33rd WEDC International Conference, Accra, Ghana, 7-11 April 2008, pp. 335-339.

Publisher

© WEDC, Loughborough University

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2008

Notes

This is a conference paper.

Other identifier

WEDC_ID:12210

Language

  • en

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    WEDC 33rd International Conference

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