India-EU Water Partnership
Capacity-Building Workshop on River Basin Management Planning and Governance
14-15 June, 2016
Conclusions
1. Overall conclusions
-Workshop aimed to inform water policy and management decisions taken in India
-Planning and governance is of high relevance
-Achieving good governance in river basin management is a long term process and requires political will, cooperation commitment and skilled teams
-Exchange has been active, identifying commonalities and differences EU – India – particularly in the break out groups. Stronger coordination betweenMoWR, NMCG and State level is needed
2. Low-hanging fruits:
-Pilots on RBOs and governance
-Start pilot work on sub-basins in one State onlyto avoid complexity of trans-boundary issues
-Create informal structures that provide a platform of exchange(top-down and bottom-up) (like the EU Water Directors) and to build mutual trust for enabling a frame of working together
-Start with monitoring and data sharing
3. Key findings on the workshop topics
3.1. Key findings on RBM Planning
-Start with data collection, management - with increased commitments towards clearly defined aims
-Prioritise topics, don’t start with everything at once and don’t overload capacity
-Significantly more coordination is required to solve water management challenges
-Propose and implement targeted, effective and efficient measures (focusing on the key ones)
3.2. Key findings on Governance and River Basin Organisations
-Start informally with easy topics for cooperation – learn by doing
-Variety of structural set-ups exists; flexibility, innovation capacity – as MANY institutions exist already, maybe a new structure is not (yet) needed but ‘organise’ the existing one
-Legal framework and political will are needed for cooperation
-Clear mandates, roles and responsibilities, avoid conflicting and/or vested set-ups
-Establish mechanism for resolving conflicts in an early stage
-Data and resources are needed for the success of RBOs
3.3. Key findings on Inter-State/Trans-boundary issues
-Main challenges are similar to non-transboundary basins, but are often exacerbated
-Coordination is crucial to ensure effective management on basin-wide scale
-Ensuring good linkage and exchange between the national and State/international level (and vice versa) is a pre-requisite for successful RBM across administrative/national borders
4. Possible next steps
-Support the setting-up and development of RBMPs
- Support to MoWR, DR & GR for RBM Planning
- Support to IIT Kanpur for further development and implementation of GRBMP
- Foster the establishment of a network of Ganga river basin States
-Address further relevant issues at next workshop on 14-15 September on water allocation, economics and eflows
-Develop a full IEWP workplan 2017; to be agreed at the Water Forum 2016
Annexes
5. Results of the break-out groups
5.1. Results of the Break out groups on Day 1 (River Basin Management Planning)
Commonalities and differences of the Ganga RBMP and the EU RBMPs and/or further areas of work regarding:
Group 1: Drafting and implementation process of RBMP
-Governance – lack of RBO level
-Legislation & enforcement
-Technical capacity
-Sector allocation & cooperation
-Approach towards space for healthy ecosystems
-Learn lessons from measures taken in the EU
-Invest in vitalising sustainable management
Group 2: Identifying significant/key water management issues and operationalising them
-Data access
-Legal framework
-Policy engagement at various levels and inter-State cooperation
-Finance investment
-Basin level organisation + sectoral-economic convergence
-How to deal with political promises (e.g. water pricing)?
-Awareness of population (education)
Group 3: Identifying pressures/impacts and setting of measures
- Most serious problems on Ganga are obvious and largely relating to health issues
- In India there is data on pressures but is not collected and stored in a systematic way yet
- The clear identification and location of pressures can be improved in order to manage these effectively and set adequate measures
- Recommendation: Focus on priority issues first
Group 4: Monitoring and data sharing
-Commonalities
- Lifetime of monitoring stations influences continuity of data collection
- Online systems are not common in water monitoring (compared e.g. to air pollution); use experience from air pollution monitoring
- Calibrating of systems and data collection is a challenge
- Sampling procedures are crucial and have to be streamlined
- Standard procedures for sampling, (pre)treatment and analysis is needed/to be defined/specified – to be agreed upon by the involved or responsible agencies in the different States
-Differences
- In EU, Member States deliver data
- Rainfall and river flow data collection: responsibilities not clear, non-technical people involved, network not dense enough – rainfall data are available, but not always adequate
- CWC does not share flow data with States, only with entitled institutions
- CPCB data (pollution) are available, but only as pdf, data limited, monitoring stations limited – data collection is outsourced to private sector
- In Europe, responsible agencies are defined for the collection of demanded data (research institutes play not an important role)
- In India, SOP are available, but probably have to be reviewed (international best practices) – go for ISO standards
- In India, no explicit data sharing procedures between States and institutions
-EU recommendation:
- Go for those who are willing, to share and in a first step for less sensitive parameters, use demonstration projects (e.g. LIFE)
5.2. Results of the Break out groups on Day 2 (Governance)
Group 1 (Set-up of RBOs in India and EU. What can be learnt from each others?
-Legislative framework is important but no silver bullet. Exists in India since 1956 but never applied
-Very little number of RBOs as compared to number of basins. No standardised mandate and structure, no standardised financing mechanisms
-Administration complexity: Central, State and Districts.
-Long-term goal might follow RBO model of EU – this can be good management without RBO.
-New compulsory regulation is needed
-Pilot projects on RBO establishment are needed; maybe first with simple contexts
-RBO establishment requires systematic planning and monitoring, clear mandate & financial autonomy and decision-making.
Group 2 (Challenges and conflicting issues of RBOs and solutions to overcome these); did not reach final conclusions within the group
-There are instruments and institutions in place, but improvements are needed
-Clear long-term steps; environmental and social networks are needed, media and awareness
-Low hanging fruits: pilots; start with RBOs within federal states (e.g. Kergala); bring decision-makers together on an informal basis
Group 3 (Stakeholder involvement and mechanisms in India and EU)
-Tailor-made stakeholder involvement (who and why?)
-Strategy for discussion, and definition of responsibilities (incl. negotiation)
-Expectation: shall stakeholder involvement address objectives (e.g. pollution reduction target) vs. process (how to reduce pollution towards target).
-Exchange on good practices and successes of stakeholder involvement
6. Stakeholder-wise workshop feedback and future expectations from IEWP
Stakeholder/Representatives / Type / Workshop feedback / Futureexpectationsfrom IEWP
Ministry of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation / Central Agency / ---- / IEWP should support one basin or sub-basin (on pilot basis) for preparations of the river basin management plan
Madhya Pradesh (MP) / StateInstitution / MP has decided to prepare plans for some sub-basins in the State. Learning from the workshop will be useful in refining the existing plans for 2 sub-basin / IEWP can support one sub-basin for preparing plans
Delhi / StateInstitution / Case studies presented in workshop were useful to understand efforts taken for cleaning rivers in Europe / IEWP should conduct capacity building activities to further understand various technologies in detail
Jharkhand / StateInstitution / Very useful to learn experiences of river basin management planning and governance in Austria, France and Germany / IEWP should provide legal, technical and financial support for development of one sub-basin in State with specific reference to : water conservation, renovating existing infrastructure schemes, and water use optimization
Kerala / StateInstitution / Quite rich information on river basin management in Europe was shared / IEWP can help in identifying problems in basins, data collection and monitoring and developing a case study on river basin planning
Telangana / StateInstitution / Case studies especially on Danube was very useful / IEWP can help in addressing trans-boundary water sharing issues in the State
Haryana / StateInstitution / ---- / Case study on river basin planning should be developed in the State
Himachal Pradesh (HP) / StateInstitution / ---- / Issues of Hill States are different (access to water, high cost for water supply). Successful cases of river basin management in Europe to be replicated incorporating State concerns (climate proofing, water conservation etc.)
Uttarakhand / StateInstitution / EU experience on river cleaning was useful / IEWP can take up similar work in upper reaches of Ganga basin
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur / AcademicInstitution / Workshop was useful in understanding efforts taken at the EU level for implementing WFD in managing river basins / IEWP can help Centre for River Basin Management and Studies on following topics: Experience with PPP in Europe, management of small water bodies, sustainable model for the treatment plants, water markets, water monitoring network.