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Sustainable water security in the Thar Desert, India: blending traditional wisdom with modern techniques
conference contribution
posted on 2018-02-12, 15:09 authored by Deepak MalikWith 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 ConferenceCitation
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 UniversityVersion
- 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
2008Notes
This is a conference paper.Other identifier
WEDC_ID:12210Language
- en
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