A STUDY of WATER in BANGALORE a Thesis Presented
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PUTTING THE CITIZEN AT THE HEART OF WATER MANAGEMENT: A STUDY OF WATER IN BANGALORE A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of Architecture and Planning COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science in Urban Planning By Yasmin Zaerpoor May 2012 Copyright 2012, Yasmin Zaerpoor. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce and distribute copies of this work for nonprofit educational purposes, provided that copies are distributed at or below cost, and that the author, source, and copyright notice are included on each copy. This permission is in addition to rights of reproduction granted under Sections 107, 108, and other provisions of the U.S. Copyright Act. Before making any distribution of this work, please contact the copyright owner to ascertain whether you have the current version. 2 Acknowledgements: First, and foremost, I would like to thank my thesis adviser, Professor Smita Srinivas, for her patient guidance and for pushing me to think carefully about urban planning from a political economy perspective. This thesis would not have been possible had it not been for the many individuals that took the time, up to six hours (!), to educate me about the situation in Bangalore. I am also thankful for the larger GSAPP community. Within that, Professor Elliot Sclar, who has always provided words of encouragement and wisdom, Professor Robert Beauregard, whose humor and gentle nudging to define my role as a planner were always appreciated, and my urban planning colleagues, whose enthusiasm and idealism for planning more equitable cities always served as a source of motivation. I would also like to thank my thesis group – Josie Baum, Megan Marini, Devin McDowall, Alex McQuilkin, Jaeyoung „JJ‟ Paek, Lauren Racusin and Vanessa Monique Smith – for their thoughtful feedback. I also had the good fortune of traveling to Bangalore with a group of my colleagues – Clara Chung, Peter Jenkins, Jinny Khanduja, John Hosung Lee, Cuthbert „Ayo‟ Onikute, Anna Oursler, Ranjani Sarode, Lucre Montemayor Solano, and JiYeun Yu – who were there for an GSAPP urban planning studio and made the trip infinitely more enjoyable with their enthusiasm. To my friends – especially Ali Douraghy, Hassan Hussein, Shima Maddah, Dilshad Tung and Shayda Zaerpoor – who provided constant encouragement. Finally, to my family – my mother and brother for their unwavering support and to my father, who taught me to see myself as part of, and fear, the tragedy of the commons. Excerpt from Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons”: The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy. As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?"...Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another.... But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit -- in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all. (Hardin 1968) 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Abstract........................................................................................ Page 5 II. Introduction................................................................................. Page 6 III. Background.................................................................................. Page 8 IV. Literature Review........................................................................ Page 10 V. Research Design and Methodology............................................ Page 17 VI. Findings........................................................................................ Page 19 VII. Analysis........................................................................................ Page 44 VIII. Conclusions and Recommendations.......................................... Page 48 IX. Appendix (A, B).......................................................................... Page 53 X. Bibliography............................................................................... Page 55 4 ABSTRACT The focus of this thesis is the innovative process by which citizens in Bangalore, India have become engaged with the problem of water management through rainwater harvesting. Bangalore currently faces a water shortage of 500 million liters per day and, unless it dramatically changes its approach, acute water shortage by 2025. An effective water management scheme in Bangalore requires institutional restructuring to enable integrated management of water resources, strong legislation to protect groundwater, major infrastructural improvements to limit leakage, a shift in planning culture that more explicitly recognizes the link between the natural world and human settlements and stronger integration of science in planning. It is clear that any one of these actions is not easily implementable in the near term due to institutional, financial, and political challenges. In the absence of any near-term solutions for the water crisis, civil society has played a critical role in pushing the local water authority to make rainwater harvesting mandatory through the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage (Amendment) Act, 2009. This thesis aims to add to two larger theoretical discussions: governing the commons and finding innovative solutions and processes for resource management. Governing the commons, especially in the dynamic context of rapidly growing cities that face systemic scarcity, requires a strong state to effectively restrict wasteful practices and mining of resources and a strong civil society to curb demand. As such, the scarcity-induced innovation framework (Srinivas and Sutz, 2008) has been applied to identify rainwater harvesting as an innovative approach to engage citizens in the heart of water management and curb demand. Rainwater harvesting is not presented here as a panacea, nor is it meant to distract from the need for the state to play a much stronger regulatory and implementation role. 5 INTRODUCTION This thesis focuses on the city of Bangalore as an archetype of cities that face rapid urbanization, increasing environmental pressures, resource and/or institutional scarcities. Bangalore (Bengaluru) is the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka, in southern India (Figure 1) and has a population of over eight and a half million. Figure 1: Map of India showing the location of Bangalore in the state of Karnataka Source: Gronwall 2010(not to scale) The focus of this thesis is on the city‟s approach to water management. Bangalore currently faces a water shortage of 500 million liters per day (MLD), exorbitant electricity costs from pumping water from their main surface water source – the Cauvery River, a rapidly decreasing water table and an ever increasing urban population. What makes Bangalore exceptionally interesting as a project site is its strong civil society, which has become increasingly more active due to a lack of local representation in municipal governance and planning (Benjamin 2000). Urban planning and most of the city‟s services, including water, are managed by parastatal, rather than local, agencies and have a vested interest in supporting economic growth rather than equitable and sustainable development. Many of the livability initiatives, including environmental policies, have thus been initiated by civil society rather than by government. In the case of water 6 management, civil society was instrumental in building citizen support for rainwater harvesting and in influencing the water authority, the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB), to make rainwater harvesting mandatory for existing buildings over 2400 square feet and new buildings over 1200 square feet through the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage (Amendment) Act, 2009. This thesis uses the scarcity-induced innovation (SII) framework (Srinivas and Sutz, 2008) to better understand how scarcity has led to an innovative citizen-based demand-side approach to water management in Bangalore. The SII framework helps identify solutions that are viable despite cognitive, physical, institutional and socioeconomic barriers. A matrix of water management initiatives was developed using secondary data analysis and interviews to highlight rainwater harvesting as the only workable near-term approach. The original approach to this thesis was that rainwater harvesting was an innovative technology that should receive greater government support – through incentives and penalties – to drive more rapid and widespread adoption. A more comprehensive review of the city‟s institutional framework, state of water supply and geology signaled an urgent need