Climate change: Is an urban water crisis caused only by water scarcity?

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Water supply is increasingly becoming a ubiquitous concern among cities around the world. More and more cities are now experiencing water stresses with the onset of summer, purportedly due to scanty rainfall and depletion of surface water resources on account of climate change.

On closer investigation, this proves to be an overly simplified narrative. While there is no doubt that climate change has profound impacts on natural water systems and has exacerbated the issues of urban water supply, it is not an exclusive factor leading to the urban water crises. Water crises in most cases have little to do with scarcity which is the physical endowment of water and more to do with the social, political and technical factors that produce ‘shortage in pipes’.

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Scarcity and shortage in pipes are two different phenomena. In Shimla, scarcity is constructed as a monolithic problem arising due to reduced precipitation. This obscures anthropogenic factors such as deforestation, land intensification, haphazard urbanisation which culminate into reduced availability of water over a period of time.

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For ensuring resilience, water management has to be efficient. This means leakages have to be plugged to achieve installed capacity. Further, contamination of surface water should be checked in urban areas and urban planning has to be compatible with local ecology. Local sources such as lakes and ponds should be revived and finally, the water system as a whole, will have to be imagined, designed, and managed to sustain equity.