Over the past few decades we have been witnessing a paradigm shift in water access and availability, owing to the multitude of factors affecting the environment. Climate change has aggravated the water crisis, water borne diseases, and water related hazards. According to the UN water, around 2.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water. The crisis is not centred around having too little water but also on empowering the community on managing the scenarios with respect to the dynamic changes in the environment. Due to lack of sufficient knowledge and skills, billions of people around the world are continuing to suffer. With increasing populations, estimates show that the global water shortage will increase to 40% by 2030. Thus, protecting and restoring water-related ecosystems and their biodiversity can ensure water purification and water quality standards. Along with this, it is important to work towards bringing in technological and governance interventions in order to ensure water sustainability.

Water Sustainability is a key priority globally and resolving the challenges in the area of water and sanitation will create a ripple effect across various SDGs along with playing a vital role in creating a sustainable future for all. Ensuring water sustainability is important to unlock economic growth and productivity among others. Hence, it is more important than ever to reshape our conversations towards ensuring water sustainability through various interventions through technologies, policies, and procedures. This can only be achieved by including a multitude of stakeholders including experts from industry, government, academia, and community.

As per UN, Sustainable Development Goal 6 goes beyond drinking water, sanitation and hygiene to also address the quality and sustainability of water resources, which are critical to the survival of people and the planet. The 2030 Agenda recognizes the centrality of water resources to sustainable development and the vital role that improved drinking water, sanitation and hygiene play in progress in other areas, including health, education and poverty reduction.

Organized By: Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham’s UNESCO Chair on Experiential Learning for Sustainable Innovation and Development and Amrita School for Sustainable Development

Date & Time: March 22 – 24 2022

Time: 4:00 PM to 9:00 PM (IST) / 10:30 AM to 3:30 PM (UTC) /11:30 AM to 04:30 PM (CET)

• Water Challenges in Urbanising World: Clean Water Availability, Access, Challenges & Solutions
• Scalable Smart Water Solutions: AI, IoT, Remote Sensing, Citizen Science & Wireless Sensors.
• Affordable Water Treatment Technologies: Circular Economy & Decentralised Systems
• Water Sustainability: Climate Change Adaptation & Mitigation
• Water Sustainability: Water policy and Governance, Capacity building, Community Adaptations & Case Studies
• Groundwater: Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Management

To empower the communities across India to become champions in the area of water sustainability, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham launched an initiative in collaboration with ESRI India. The program, “Mera Gaav, Hamara Jal”, that translates to “My Village, Our Water” aims to transform the attitudes of community members to view water as a personal resource rather than as a community resource. The program was launched during the valedictory ceremony of the 3-day International Symposium on Water Sustainability (IWSS 2022): Technologies, Challenges and Opportunities held from 22 to 24 March on the Occasion of World Water Day. The program was jointly launched by Mr. Agendra Kumar, Managing Director, ESRI India and Dr. P. Venkat Rangan, Vice Chancellor, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham.

This initiative aims to empower communities to map & monitor the resources, map the water quality, practices prevalent in the community, livelihood activities, drainage mapping, weather variability and climate impacts. This extensive crowd sourced data will provide the opportunity to derive the water sustainability challenges in each of the communities and equip the local administration, community organisations and individuals to develop strategies for water conservation, optimise water usage, develop restoration of water resources, and build awareness in short and long term impacts. Thus we aim to empower community members in India’s villages to achieve water sustainability.

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Speaking on the occasion Sri Agendra Kumar, Managing Director, ESRI India said “We are privileged to partner with Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham on this transformational initiative. “Mera Gaav, Hamara Jal” program will transform the way rural India looks at water sustainability. This would change the attitude of the communities as they start seeing water as ‘our resource’ rather than ‘my resource’. The program would encourage community participation as villagers themselves can collect and provide the data related to water availability, water consumption, etc. The ArcGIS system will be used to create maps and dashboards for understanding trends and patterns, and thereby enabling different stakeholders like the local administration, NGOs, and citizens to take steps for more judicious use of the scarce resource and encourage water conservation. This initiative is an excellent way to collaboratively move towards the achievement of UN SDG 6, which aims to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”.

Speaking on the occasion Dr. P. Venkat Rangan said “It is with great delight that we announce the launch of Mera Gaav, Hamara Jal Program in collaboration with ESRI India. The initiative that translates to My Village, Our Water aims to empower villagers to become champions in ensuring water sustainability at a community level. Water sustainability is a key national priority. Being home to 18% of the global population, India possesses only 4% of water resources across the world. Through this partnership, we aim to empower villagers to map their water resources by including various aspects like sources, distribution, family wise consumption pattern and their demographic details via Amrita’s EMPOWER community app. This data will be used for mapping hotspots with respect to water sustainability which in turn will help to map the water quality. As we add one more page to Amrita’s array of activities in this regard, it gives me immense happiness to join hands with ESRI India.”