Apr 11 2005
The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in New Delhi, an influential Indian non-governmental organisation led by Ms. Sunita Narain, a dynamic advocate for water, environment, human rights, democracy and health, will receive the 2005 Stockholm Water Prize.
The award has been given to CSE for its efforts to build a new paradigm of water management, which uses the traditional wisdom of rainwater harvesting and advocates the role of communities in managing their local water systems.
In its citation, the Nominating Committee lauded CSE, under the leadership of Ms. Narain, “For a successful recovery of old and generation of new knowledge on water management, a community-based sustainable integrated resource management under gender equity, a courageous stand against undemocratic, top-down bureaucratic resource control, an efficient use of a free press, and an independent judiciary to meet these goals.”
CSE will receive the $150,000 Prize from HM King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden in August. The Stockholm Water Prize is awarded annually to individuals and institutions for their outstanding contributions to the world of water. This year’s prize to CSE acknowledges the growing crisis of water management in many regions of the South and the need for new approaches that provide local food and water security to communities.
CSE’s work, through its many publications, its research and advocacy has helped create new thinking on how traditional systems of water management, which use rainwater endowment, once rejuvenated could become the starting point for the removal of rural poverty in many part of the world. It is clear that the management of water, and not scarcity of water, is the problem in many parts of the world. CSE’s work on rainwater harvesting has shown the many ingenious ways in which people learnt to live with water scarcity. The solution practiced diversely in different regions, lies in capturing rain in millions of storage systems – in tanks, ponds, stepwells and even rooftops -- and to use it to recharge groundwater reserves for irrigation and drinking water needs.
The world faces a critical challenge is improve the productivity of rainfed and marginalised lands. In this challenge, water can turn a large part of the country’s currently parched lands into productive lands, reduce poverty and increase incomes where it is needed the most
. CSE has shown through its advocacy that localised water management is a cost-effective approach and more importantly that local water management – harvesting and storing water where it falls – can only be done through community participation. The work of CSE has highlighted that water cannot become everybody’s business until there are fundamental changes in the ways we do business with water. Policy will have to recognise that water management, which involves communities and households, has to become the biggest cooperative enterprise in the world. For this, the organisation forcefully argues that the prevalent mindset that water management is the exclusive responsibility of government must give way to a paradigm built on participative and local management of this critical life source. This powerful idea is gaining ground to become the policy and practice in many regions of the world.
The 2005 Water Prize is given for CSE’s contribution to build a water-literate society that values the raindrop and teaches society to learn from the frugality of our ancestors, to build a water prudent world. The movement has the potential to change the water futures of the world.