Water Mismanagement in Southern India's States – Issue #73
Karnataka faces a drought due to poor rainfall, exacerbated by real estate development annexing traditional rainwater harvesting structures. Tamil Nadu grapples with similar challenges.
The Big Picture
Here we go again. Last week saw the resumption of water battles between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
The first of these saw not one but two bandhs (strikes) in a week as pro-Kannada groups took to the streets. They were protesting the Supreme Court’s decision to not interfere with an order of the Cauvery Water Regulatory Committee telling Karnataka to release Cauvery waters (5,000 cusecs, later reduced to 3,000 cusecs, for 15 days) to Tamil Nadu. A veritable who’s who of the state’s political economy – farmer organisations; movie actors; rival politicians... – entered the melee saying Karnataka was too water-stressed to share water.
Little here is new. The two states have seen similar tussles for long. It’s also true that rains have failed Karnataka this year. With poor rainfall in all 31 districts, the state faces a spell of drought. That said, South India was poorly served by the monsoons this year. And so, emotions run similarly high in Tamil Nadu as well. If Karnataka releases less water, it will suffer. One looks at these battlelines and feels a sense of exasperation. Neither Karnataka nor Tamil Nadu uses its water reserves judiciously. In Karnataka, cities like Bangalore have allowed traditional rainwater harvesting structures to get annexed by real estate developers. Despite its well-documented effects on rivers’ capacity to hold water, illegal sand mining continues unabated. Tamil Nadu is no different. Governments might change but illegal sand mining continues to flourish there – here is one instance from AIADMK days and another from today’s DMK days. As does construction in lowlands and water bodies. Both states, it barely needs to be added, fail to crack down on water pollution and unregulated groundwater extraction.
Much of this contradiction has also been documented – this essay by Nityanand Jayaraman is an excellent instance – yet, nothing changes. Even as rainfall distribution over these two states changes, it’s understandable that their political leadership will want these zero-sum articulations of the crisis. More striking is the ease with which institutions and civil society embrace parochialism and slip into similar articulations.
News of the week
Moving on from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, several other trends made headlines.
A PTI report reiterated two key differences in the respective energy transitions of developed countries and the developing world.
“The lesson that most European countries took from the surge in fossil fuel prices and the concern over security in supply from Russia's invasion of Ukraine was that they would accelerate the move to renewable energies,” says the PTI report. In the third world, something very different is underway. What these countries have in common is “a shift to electrify as much as possible, from transport to industrial and residential heating and cooking... (but) Asia seems to be content to use coal-fired power to increase its electrification, working on the view that this is a better carbon outcome than continuing to use crude oil and gas.”
One fallout of this? Even as the world adds solar capacity much faster than envisaged, fossil fuel consumption has barely budged. They supplied 82 per cent of the world's energy last year and 87 per cent in 2000, wrote PTI. Divergent energy transitions hold the answer. "(In Europe and North America) renewable energy has slowly eaten into the proportion of energy generated by fossil fuels, while all other energy sources (nuclear, hydro, biomass) have remained about the same,” wrote PTI. “In Asia, electricity demand has tripled since the 2000s, with the bulk of this energy coming from fossil fuels."
These countries will taper coal use more slowly – slowly replacing costlier thermal units with cheaper sources of power; or, as another announcement this week, telling the carbon-intensive sectors (petrochemicals, iron and steel, cement and pulp and paper, to start with) to reduce their carbon intensity, and to prepare for carbon trading.
For now, though, the buzz of panic which had briefly settled upon coal miners has passed. They now know coal will be around for a bit longer. And so, coal auctions continue – and so does the bidding.
Turning from king coal to renewables, India is set to issue tenders for seven seabed sites off the Tamil Nadu coast for offshore wind energy projects with an estimated capacity of 7,215 MW. As the tweet says above, these will cover a seabed area of 1,443 square kilometres. One interesting factoid here. In Gujarat – the other state with high offshore wind potential – the price of offshore wind is around Rs 7-8 per unit. According to an internal assessment of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, this “could” come down to around Rs 4.5 per unit by 2030.
As CarbonCopy has been saying, price – not policy – looks set to determine the contours of India’s energy transition. The country is backing fossil fuels and renewables, with ambitious targets for each. In such an outcome, the price will determine which form of energy sells – and which ends up with stranded capacity. It’s interesting to note that offshore energy, with all its high installation costs, starts at Rs 7-8/unit.
Russia has banned diesel exports
It is yet unclear if the country is again weaponising energy supplies or trying to shore up domestic supplies for the winter.
“Traders said the fuel market in Russia, one of the world's biggest oil producers, was hit by a combination of factors including maintenance at oil refineries, bottlenecks on railways and the weakness of the rouble, which incentivises fuel exports,” reported Reuters. “Russia tried to tackle the diesel and gasoline shortages in recent months but turned to export curbs to prevent a fuel crisis, which could be awkward for the Kremlin as a presidential election looms in March.” The ban might be consequential, said Reuters, because Russia is the world's top seaborne exporter of the fuel, just ahead of the United States. “It shipped an average 1.07 million barrels per day (bpd) of diesel from the start of the year to Sept. 25, accounting for more than 13.1% of the total seaborne diesel trade, according to oil analytics firm Vortexa.”
Last week also supplied a lesson on oil realpolitik. Russia is selling oil to India at nearly $80 per barrel, reported Reuters. This means Russia has sidestepped the Western price cap on its oil exports – its selling price is about $20 above the Western price cap. India has gained as well. Between February 2022 and now, the average price of brent crude has been around 93 dollars per barrel. The West has gained as well. Arms exports grew. Much of the oil shipped to India found its way to Europe anyway. Also amongst the gainers were the shadowy shipping firms that ferried oil from Russia to India and Europe.
Who are the losers? The commoners of Ukraine and Russia. Not to mention the developing world, which gets hit by the externalities of high fuel and food costs.
Elsewhere, the Adani Group continued to make headlines. Its Abu Dhabi investor – IHC -- exited Adani Green and Adani Transmission, selling its shares to an unidentified buyer. In a report that further turns the screws on capital market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India, corporate records accessed by The Indian Express show that the controlling shareholder of Opal Investment Private Ltd, one of the 13 overseas funds under probe and the largest public investor in Adani Power Ltd, is a “single person company” established in the UAE in May 2019.
In other news, more tigers are getting poached than before. This year alone, between January and September, India has registered 146 tiger deaths. Smaller wildcat species, like the Indian desert cat, are not doing very well either. Finally, India is mulling its carbon tax, on the lines of the European Union’s proposed Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism principles, especially for exports to the European nations. “Under these taxation norms, India will collect the tax proceeds itself instead of sharing it with the EU,” reported Hindu Businessline. This has to be understood better.
Has India managed to clean the Ganga yet?
Years have passed since Namami Gange was approved to great fanfare. ThirdPole takes a look at its performance.
“When The Third Pole spoke with the chief engineer of one of Varanasi’s STPs – who wished to remain anonymous – he said that water from the Ganga is only kept in the STP for a maximum of three hours. He points to the “overwhelming amount of sewage that is routed to this plant” as a factor, saying that the water cannot be treated for longer as the volumes requiring treatment are too high.”
Climate long-reads of the week
ClimateBrief takes a look at Biodiversity Offsets.
Revealed: 'Chaos' as MEA Backed US Demands in 2005-6 Nuclear Talks, DAE, PMO Pushback Saved the Day (The Wire)
Climate crisis in forests: Trees missing fruits, first forest landslide — Karnataka’s Anshi stands altered (Down To Earth)
‘We’re not doomed yet’: climate scientist Michael Mann on our last chance to save human civilisation (Guardian)
CAG Slams Gujarat Govt Over Wildlife and Protected Area Mismanagement
Modi’s G20 Push For Green Credit Scheme Wants Private Plantations To Replace Forests, Rejected By His Own Experts (Article-14)
Monsoon left widespread destruction and uneasy questions in Himachal (mongabay)
Was the Freak Storm That Devastated Libya a Glimpse of North Africa’s Future? (The Wire)
The cost of protesting against mining in Gadchiroli (Scroll)
How America’s War Devastated Afghanistan’s Environment (New Lines)