Aravalli to Anuradhapura Summer Water Crisis in South Asia
Groundwater Recharge - IWRM – NbS-PES - Supply Augmentation - Demand Management - Infrastructure Restoration - Community Governance - Climate Resilience - Water Security -Equity Inclusion - Transboundary Cooperation -
South Asia faces acute summer drinking water crises driven by heatwaves, erratic monsoons, and groundwater over-extraction in critical hotspots including urban India, Pakistan's Indus Basin, Bangladesh deltas, and Sri Lanka's dry zone. This comprehensive analysis identifies six Key Result Areas (KRAs)—Groundwater Recharge, Infrastructure & Regulation, Community Engagement, Supply Augmentation, Demand Management, and Resilience Building—as strategic pillars for achieving water security. Groundwater recharge emerges as foundational, with low-cost percolation pits, wells, and check dams conserving millions of gallons of monsoon runoff, as demonstrated by Pakistan's community-managed systems and Sri Lanka's Anuradhapura harvesting programs. Native afforestation amplifies these efforts, reviving springs in India's Aravalli Hills (20-50% aquifer recovery) and sustaining Sri Lanka's ancient tank cascades through enhanced soil infiltration and siltation control. Infrastructure restoration addresses 40%+ leakage/evaporation losses through ambitious initiatives like Delhi's 200-lake revival and Colombo's wetland rehabilitation, unlocking gigalitres for urban peaks. Regulatory frameworks—Pakistan's 2018 extraction caps, India's model bills, and Sri Lanka's groundwater acts—reallocate agriculture's 80-90% dominance toward domestic summer needs, complemented by Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) for basin-wide coordination. Community engagement through India's Panchayats and Sri Lanka's Village Irrigation Committees reduces O&M downtime by 30-50%, enabling rapid heatwave responses. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) task forces and women/youth inclusion ensure equitable access, leveraging indigenous practices for cultural resonance. Supply augmentation delivers quantifiable volumetric gains—Pakistan's 10M+ gallon annual savings at <$1,000/structure—while demand management employs metering and tiered pricing against informal evasion. Resilience building via Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) sustains afforestation, boosting infiltration 15-30% as climate buffers. Discussion reveals critical implementation gaps: land zoning conflicts, transboundary IWRM needs, and enforcement technology deficits. Best practices benchmark local successes (Aravalli forestry, Delhi lakes) against global models (Australia's Murray-Darling, Singapore's ABC Waters), advocating hybrid tradition-innovation approaches. Key Recommendations prioritize widespread recharge deployment, PPP-driven infrastructure revival, SAWI-style basin commissions, and 2% national budget allocations for inclusive, climate-proof governance. These integrated KRAs promise transformation from summer scarcity to regional water security for South Asia's billions.
"Aravalli to Anuradhapura Summer Water Crisis in South Asia", JETNR - JOURNAL OF EMERGING TRENDS AND NOVEL RESEARCH (www.JETNR.org), ISSN:2984-9276, Vol.4, Issue 6, page no.b103-b115, June-2026, Available :https://rjpn.org/JETNR/papers/JETNR2606136.pdf
Volume 4
Issue 6,
June-2026
Pages : b103-b115
Paper Reg. ID: JETNR_235134
Published Paper Id: JETNR2606136
Downloads: 00074
Research Area: Other area not in list
Country: Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
ISSN: 2984-9276 | IMPACT FACTOR: 9.87 Calculated By Google Scholar | ESTD YEAR: 2023
An International Scholarly Open Access Journal, Peer-Reviewed, Refereed Journal Impact Factor 9.87 Calculate by Google Scholar and Semantic Scholar | AI-Powered Research Tool, Multidisciplinary, Monthly, Multilanguage Journal Indexing in All Major Database & Metadata, Citation Generator
Publisher: RJPN (IJPublication) Janvi Wave
