Indian cities are facing significant challenges in meeting their escalating water demands due to their growing populations.
Take the case of Bengaluru. Even though more and more water is being pumped to the city from the Cauvery river, nearly 50% of its population is still dependent on groundwater, whose levels are declining steeply.
Of the 1,970 million litres per day of wastewater that Bengaluru generates daily, it treats two-thirds in centralised sewage treatment plants and about 12% in decentralised sewage treatment plants. Despite this quantum of treated wastewater, several barriers prevent the formation of a thriving wastewater reuse sector. As a result, most of this water ends up in the city’s lakes, where it mixes with untreated septage and raw sewage, rendering it unusable.
At the same time, Bengaluru and other cities are experiencing flooding due to unplanned urbanisation and climate change impacts. As India’s urban regions continue to expand, we need to plan and build better to prevent and mitigate the impacts of flooding while ensuring that urban populations are able to meet their water needs and water sources are not overexploited.
In light of these issues, Water, Environment, Land and Livelihoods (WELL) Labs is organising a conference on Building Water-Resilient Cities: Strategies for Wastewater Reuse in India in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology and Bangalore Apartments’ Federation. The conference will be held at the Infosys Science Foundation at Jayanagar.
We seek to bring together diverse stakeholders in the domain of water management and urban planning to facilitate cross-learning, effectively diagnose problems and transform systems.
10:00 AM
October 17, 2023
