The Government of India has established National Water Mission as one of the eight National Missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change. The main objective of NWM is “conservation of water, minimizing wastage and ensuring its more equitable distribution both across and within States through integrated water resources development and management”. NWM has identified five goals as under:-

1. Comprehensive water data base in public domain and assessment of the impact of climate change on water resource,
2. Promotion of citizen and state actions for water conservation, augmentation and preservation,
3. Focused attention to vulnerable areas including over-exploited areas,
4. Increasing water use efficiency by 20%, and
5. Promotion of basin level integrated water resources management.

Various strategies for achieving the goals have been identified which lead to integrated planning for sustainable development with active participation of the stakeholders.

Main objective and Background

The main objective of the National Water Mission (NWM) is “conservation of water, minimizing wastage and ensuring its more equitable distribution both across and within States through integrated water resources development and management”. The five identified goals of the Mission are: (a) comprehensive water data base in public domain and assessment of impact of climate change on water resource; (b) promotion of citizen and state action for water conservation, augmentation and preservation; (c) focused attention to vulnerable areas including over-exploited areas; (d) increasing water use efficiency by 20%, and (e) promotion of basin level integrated water resources management.

Various strategies for achieving the goals have been identified which lead to integrated planning for sustainable development and efficient management with active participation of the stakeholders after identifying and evaluating the development scenario and management practices towards better acceptability on the basis of assessment of the impacts of climate change on water resources based on reliable data and information.

Relatively very large temporal and spatial variation in rainfall and consequently in the river flow and ground water aquifers is an important feature of the water resources in India. Although the impact of climate change on water resources has not been accurately quantified, various studies indicate that the likely impact of climate change on water resources could contribute to further intensification of the extreme events. Further, the features of water resources – both the availability and the quality may also be considerably affected by the changes in the land use in the form of urbanization, industrialization and changes in the forest cover. Realizing that the various processes which influence the hydro logic cycle are of dynamic nature, precise quantification of the impact specifically due to climate change may not be a simple task and it would be necessary to make suitable assumption at the initial stages and undertake detailed simulation studies with more and more data as they become available with time. However, the likely impact of climate change on water resources could be in the form of:

1. Decline in the glaciers and the snowfields in the Himalayas;
2. Increased drought like situations due to overall decrease in the number of rainy days in many parts of the country;
3. Increased flood events due to overall increase in the rainy day intensity;
4. Effect on groundwater quality in alluvial aquifers due to increased flood and drought events;
5. Influence on groundwater recharge due to changes in precipitation and evaporation;
6. Increased saline intrusion of coastal and island aquifers due to rising sea levels.

From the above, it is apparent that in the context of likely impact of climate change on water resources, the most vulnerable areas in India would include (a) drought prone areas, (b) flood prone areas, (c) the coastal regions, (d) the region with deficient rainfall, (e) areas with over-exploited, critical and semi-critical stage of ground water development, (f) water quality affected areas, and (g) snow-fed river basins. For achieving the objectives of the National Water Mission, long-term sustained efforts both in terms of time bound completion of identified activities and ensuring the implementation of identified policies and enactment of necessary legislation through persuasion at different levels with the State Governments have been envisaged.