Speakers
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David ShackletonDavid has played leadership roles in new technology start-ups ranging from the first digital music recording studios to digital satellite TV, cellular telephony, internet service provision, e-commerce, software and IT services, establishing dominant players in their markets.
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Gurudas NulkarDr Nulkar has a PhD in environmental management within industrial ecosystems and has been the Endeavour Fellow of the Government of Australia, and the Sir Ratan Tata Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru. Gurudas has published three books, several research papers, and articles, with his area of research in the alternative economy for a sustainable planet. His Marathi Book “Anartha Shashtra” has been awarded the Maharashtra State “C.D.Deshmukh award for economic literature”. He is a trustee of Ecological Society, Member-Secretary ‘Carbon Neutral Pune 2030’ and a founding member of the Ramnadi Restoration Mission, an advisor to the Meenanadi and Agrani River Restoration Programs. He is also a member of the Indian Society of Ecological Economists, India, Association for Sustainability in Business, Australia, and an adjunct faculty at Symbiomotivatingsis Centre for Management & HRD, and the Biodiversity Committee of SIU.
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Hari Haran ChandraHari Haran Chandra is an environmental economist, a journalist and a 1990s pioneer of green buildings in the world. He has founded and built businesses that mainstreamed technologies and solutions for ‘zero energy development’ pioneering green directions way ahead of its time. He has mentored a new generation of green entrepreneurs on money, markets and on solutioning sustainability that makes good business sense. His work on solutions for water and energy management in the urban and rural context and his incisive reports on the economics and ecology of urbanising have influenced change in many segments. He drives today a Consortium-led approach, at AltTech Consortium, to mentor retrofit solutions for buildings to help secure freedom from the grid. He is a Senior Fellow and member of the Indian Green Building Council and founder trustee of a couple of other organisations in the space.
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Nirmala GowdaComputer Science Engineer by education and profession, Nirmala last worked for Novartis in the US. Intending to learn and understand environmental issues, she obtained an M.Sc in Environmental Management from the University of San Francisco.
She has volunteered with several environmental organisations like Sierra Club (East Bay chapter & San Francisco), Nature Conservancy, Leukaemia and Lymphoma society in San Francisco. After spending more than a decade in the US, she returned to her homeland Bengaluru, intending to work on environmental issues.
Over the past few years, she has authored several articles and reports: My mother is the river. The river is my mother., Bellandur Lake reports, BLINDSIDED, Brewing Farmer Crisis in the Byramangala Tank Region.
Early this year she co-founded Paani.Earth with the intention of addressing the failure of water governance.
Why Paani.Earth?
Early this year she co-founded Paani.Earth with the intention of addressing the failure of water governance. Addressing these challenges involves making sound data-driven, evidence-based decisions in the context of river basin.Currently, no such river basin data system exists in India’s silicon valley state: Karnataka or for that matter, in India. Critical fundamental data is not gathered in a systematic way. Whatever little is gathered, is housed and maintained by multiple agencies without interoperability. The current setup has left the citizens and decision makers completely un-informed or mis-informed. The current setup has led to ad-hoc decision making, execution of needless water infrastructure projects, politicization and privatization of river water. All of this has resulted in a complete failure of water governance, taking us on a path further and further away from the elusive goal of water security and water/river conservation.
Notable works of Paani.Earth: Comprehensive Arkavathi River Basin Map, Comprehensive Vrishabhavathi River Basin Map, Analysis: Rise & Fall of Thippagondanahalli Dam
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Sharad LeleSharachchandra Lele (aka Sharad Lele) has a broad interest in resource and environmental issues, which began while he was doing his B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering in IIT Bombay. He moved to the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, where he completed an M.S. in Systems Science in 1987, working on the optimal sizing of hydropower projects incorporating the energy and economic costs of land submergence. He went on to the University of California, Berkeley, where he completed a Ph.D. in Energy & Resources in 1993 on the definition, measurement and causal analysis of sustainability in forest use in a part of the Western Ghats forests. He then spent a year at the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, Oakland, as a Senior Research Associate and a year at Harvard University as a Bullard Fellow for Forest Research, before returning to Bangalore to work in collaboration with the Institute for Social & Economic Change, and eventually to being involved in the founding of CISED in 2001. He was Coordinator of CISED for 8 years, and following CISED’s merger with ATREE, he is now with ATREE.
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Vijayaraj ShishodyFounder & Director of Farmland Rainwater Harvesting systems
S I N C E 2 0 0 2
Trained more than 1500 Individuals for Implementing of Groundwater Recharging as well as Rooftop Rainwater Harvesting
Speaker at 100’s of webinars, seminar and conferences for promotion of Rainwater Harvesting.
Worked for River, pond and lake Rejuvenation
Have been part of many social organisation such as Rotary,Jaycee’s ,Hasiru ratha and many other environmental supportive organisation
Work experience in Sustainable Development.
Local Time
- Timezone: America/New_York
- Date: Sep 20 2022
The Challenge of Bengaluru’s Water Governance
In a two-part discussion that brings together the decision makers and leaders of Bangalore, INHAF’s Rethinking Cities Series [Editions #79 and 80] bring you insights into the city’s state of current challenges on water [Sept 15], and what India’s third largest agglomeration can do to Water Governance Beyond Governments [Sept 20].
Bangalore hit national and global headlines with the deluge that had a large swathe of the east and southeast of the city mired in water. Thousands of families were evacuated. The poor suffered the most while whatsapp and media relished in showing pictures of families of the super-rich deserting their homes for a few days.
Where lies the challenge? Why was the city so poorly prepared? What are measures the BBMP—with a $ 3-billion annual revenue – has implemented over the years? Why were the rainwaters not draining out of the roads and the residential and commercial areas?
Is it that the city has received rains beyond the norm? This August the city saw 184 mm of rainfall this August 2022. It is reported to be the highest in four years. The city’s average August rainfall over the last 20 years is at 125 mm. Last year in the same month the city received a rainfall of 98 mm, while in August 2018 it was 158.3 mm.
The city’s drainage has desperately needed attention specially in the cascade of lakes to the east and south of Bangalore. In the 1990s the City had worked on a major project to improve the drainage from Koramangala across the IT corridor to Whitefield which is now called the IT Corridor. To the north, too, from further north of Yelahanka to the Manyata Tech Park and further down to Jakkur, a disaster is waiting to occur—if the waterways are not unclogged. There are CSOs working as activists but claim they are blockaded by either govt agencies or by companies who are the encroachers.
What should the city do to this natural cascade of lakes to ensure that the waterways or the network of natural canals are free and the larger drainage of the city gains greater resilience for the future? The choking of some of the lakes in such cascades, or the encroachment of many of the waterways, the kaluves and raja kaluves, have been part of the challenge. Town planners have looked the other way, builders have had a field day, is one part of the story. Builders have their defences, too.
The larger challenge, beyond the flood threats that the city faces, is the grim water supply situation. In 2108 a senior minister in the Congress cabinet in Karnataka said, “Bengaluru will not face any water crisis. Even in the summer, there will be no problem of drinking water.” He was reacting to a BBC News report entitled ‘The 11 cities most likely to run out of drinking water’. Bengaluru featured second on the list of the world’s water-deficit cities.
So what is the reality? The city needs 200 crore litres. Less than half is provided by BWSSB, the water utility. The rest is drawn from borewells in a city that has arguably the fastest depleting groundwater table in the country at over 1500-2000 feet in many parts. All this in a city that enjoys an enviably even distribution of rainfall for ten months with over 15 mm rainfall at the minimum in each month.
