Every year March 22 is observed worldwide as World Water Day to raise various issues on water while celebrating the success in water management. One of the prime concerns is how to ensure water bodies remain out of pollution with booming urbanization when half of global population now lives in cities and towns. The reasons for such thought are obvious, as most of our water bodies are full with encroachments and pollutions etc. At the same time, those who have visited Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Stockholm must have wondered why those cities’ water bodies are in beautiful shape than ours.
The reality is most of the water bodies that we see today in European cities like london, Amsterdam, Stockholm, and Bonn or in Asia like Seoul, Singapore or even in Hanoi all are once the career of garbage or all sorts of pollutions that we don’t want in our living space. It took millions of pounds to bring back Thames and two decades of time to return blue water in it. Same way, the Seoul river took one decades of leadership to make it Asia’s one of the largest public entertainment zones that once carried filthy water.
Interestingly, these cities have planned themselves in such a manner that they don’t worry about piecemeal approach of water harvesting rather every drop of water either finds its way inside soil or into recycling units or into water bodies which later controls city’s local weather in ensuring cities don’t face abnormal heat island effect while sewer water pumped into farm activities after recycling. Unfortunately in most of our cities, the focus is on how quick we can flush rain or waste water into nearest river that can tackle water logging or flooding. Gangua, Daya, Kathajodi and Kuakhai etc in fact are a living testimony.
We should have designed or planned Bhubaneswar around water and not flush water out of city. The result so far is most of the water bodies in our cities do not meet our water quality standards or vanished while paving way for roads or construction of concrete jungles or are being contaminated. We need every other river or water bodies to follow the paths of Sabarmati or Thames. The truth is in our urban planning, water management is considered too late. We need a better understanding of the city’s ecosystems where development can take shape around water while these water bodies keep controlling city’s vibration. We need to ensure water doesn’t get wasted or flushes fast into large rivers or creates flooding in cities or rivers become carrier of sewers.
The fundamental part of a water centric urban planning is that we integrate the plans of those features into our larger urban plans with livable landscapes. So that we could hold on more of our flood water for reuse in meeting demand for irrigation, gardening, boating, amusement, while at the same time taking the pressure off from existing infrastructure by reducing the amount of water entering the sewers or polluting larger rivers. Perhaps we need to concentrate more on keeping the waters flowing into large rivers just like in Netherlands where their policy says no one just can’t obstruct water rather develop around water without polluting or obstructing it. Dutch canals are very popular worldwide replicated for tourism and irrigation purposes. Surely it requires a change in our thought and acceptance to innovation in city water management.
(Dr Rout is an urban planner and founder, local Governance Network)