CSE to organize Anil Agarwal Dialogue 2013

26 February, 2013

The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) is organizing the Anil Agarwal Dialogue 2013: Excreta Does Matter, on urban India's water supply and waste management challenges in New Delhi on March 4-5, 2013.

The dialogue highlights the main findings of CSE publication, the 7th State of India’s Environment Report called Excreta Matters. The two-day dialogue will deliberate on critical issues on how cities will get affordable and sustainable water and waste systems that can supply to all and take back and treat the sewage of all. It will be attended by about 200 leading national experts on water and sewage treatment from the private sector, government, non-profit organizations and donors.

India’s rapid urbanization has thrown up very serious problems concerning water supply and sewage management. “Our cities produce nearly 40,000 million litres a day of sewage, enough to irrigate 9 million hectares; barely 20 per cent is treated while the rest pollutes rivers, lakes and groundwater. Cities are also huge water sinks and now source water from increasingly greater distances pushing up costs and leading to conflicts,” CSE said.

CSE’s publication, the 7th State of India’s Environment Report called Excreta Matters, details the challenges faced by cities as they source water from further and further away; increased distribution losses and cost of supply; increased disparity within the city and most importantly, paucity of funds for sewage systems to be set up and maintained. Today, all cities are losing the battle to treat sewage.

As a result, we are killing our rivers and water bodies, which have become receptacles of sewage and garbage. Cities are impinging on the rural areas, resulting in increased tension and conflicts over sourcing. We hope to deliberate on these issues to look for answers.

The dialogue is an annual series, named after Anil Agarwal, environmentalist and founder of CSE. Anil strongly believed in the power of research, discussion and debate to drive policy.

The water and waste and pollution sector is extremely truncated and disparate. We hope this dialogue will help bring the community together. We hope this will become an important event on water in India that brings together people from the government, NGOs, donors, private sector and academia, CSE hoped.

The objectives are to build a community of people working on water from all over India, provide a forum for interaction and highlight current thinking that can inform policy and programmes.