19/06/2018

Deadly Tensions Rise As India’s Water Supply Runs Dangerously Low

New York Times - Maria Abi-Habib | Hari Kumar

When the Indian resort town of Shimla ran severely low on water last month, “key men” like Inder Singh — who open and close the valves that supply water to each neighborhood — felt the people’s wrath. “I would be mobbed by dozens as I was trying to leave my home for work,” he said. Credit Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times
SHIMLA, India — The people of Shimla haven’t agreed on much lately. A drought in the Himalayan resort has had residents blaming farmers, the tourism industry and one another for depleting the strained water supplies.
And everyone’s been angry at the key men.
Shimla’s decrepit network of water pipes, built under British colonial rule more than 70 years ago, depends on the civil servants known as key men to open and close the valves that supply each neighborhood. The current shortage, which in May left some homes without water for 20 days, has led to such fury toward the key men — accused, in just about every neighborhood, of depriving it of its fair share — that a court ordered police protection for them.
“I was getting angry phone calls calling me everything — stupid, worthless — at one or two in the morning,” said Inder Singh, 44, who has been a key man for 24 years. “I would be mobbed by dozens as I was trying to leave my home for work,” he said, inserting his key — a meter-long metal contraption — into the ground to open a valve.
Tourism is the mainstay of the economy in this mountain city, which the British colonial authorities made their summer capital so they could escape the brutal heat of New Delhi. But the drought — accompanied by unusually high temperatures, above 90 degrees Fahrenheit — has been so severe that in May, some residents took to Twitter to ask tourists to stay away and leave the water for local residents. Many in Shimla call it the worst shortage they can remember.
New York Times
As much as 30 percent of the city’s hotel bookings have been canceled since last month because of concerns about the water supply, said Sanjay Sood, the president of northern India’s hotel and restaurant association. Some of those reservations were canceled by tourists, others by the hotels themselves.
Water tankers have been lined up at hotels along Shimla’s windy mountain roads. A slogan on one of them read, “If there is water, there is a tomorrow.”
A government report released on Thursday said that India was experiencing the worst water crisis in its history, threatening millions of lives and livelihoods. Some 600 million Indians, about half the population, face high to extreme water scarcity conditions, with about 200,000 dying every year from inadequate access to safe water, according to the report. By 2030, it said, the country’s demand for water is likely to be twice the available supply.
In Shimla, rising annual temperatures and dwindling rain and snowfall — the city’s main water sources — have been major factors in the crisis.
“There’s global warming all over India, and Shimla is no exception,” said Vineet Chawdhry, chief secretary of the state of Himachal Pradesh, whose capital is Shimla.
But the city’s ancient pipe system also leaks five million liters of water every day, Mr. Chawdhry said in an interview in his office. A $105 million, World Bank-backed upgrade of the system, including a pipeline drawing water from a nearby river, is scheduled to be finished in 2023.
Shimla’s population essentially doubles during the summer tourist season, increasing the strain on the water supply. Credit Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times
The strain on the water supply increases greatly during the summer tourist season, when Shimla’s population essentially doubles. In the summer months, Mr. Chawdhry said, the city typically needs 45 million liters a day. He said the current daily supply stood at 31 million liters, and at the height of the crisis in May it was as low as 22 million.
Shimla is not the only Indian city whose water supplies are under increasing pressure. Last year was the country’s fourth hottest since record-keeping began in 1901, with rainfall down by nearly 6 percent from 2016, according to the Indian Ministry of Earth Sciences.
New Delhi, the capital, is one of many Indian cities with chronic water supply problems. Two men, a father and son, died in the city’s Wazirpur neighborhood this year after a fight broke out among people waiting for a water tanker. Credit Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times
And many of the country’s cities have outdated water distribution systems, said Rajendra Singh, founder and chairman of Tarun Bharat Sangh, a conservation group. India has also fallen short on conservation measures like capturing rainfall and snowmelt, he said.
“There are around 90 cities in India which are water stressed. They face crisis today, tomorrow and the day after,” Mr. Singh said. “Shimla got more media attention, but many areas are facing water scarcity.”
That includes the capital, New Delhi. This year, in the city’s chronically water-deprived neighborhood of Wazirpur, a father and son died after a scuffle broke out among people waiting in line for a tanker.
Rahul Kumar, 18, was fatally injured in the fight in the grueling March heat, which began when a neighbor accused him and his brother of jumping the line. His father, Lal Bahadur, 60, died of a heart attack after trying to intervene, the authorities said.
A Shimla resident carrying water. The city’s water crisis has eased since last month. Credit Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times
Mr. Kumar’s mother, Sushila Devi, said that Wazirpur had run out of water in January — earlier in the season than usual. Other Wazirpur residents said that in the rare instances when tap water flows, it is dirty and undrinkable.
“My husband and son died because of water,” Ms. Devi said.
On a hot recent afternoon in Wazirpur, neighbors lined up again with empty jugs waiting for a government-supplied tanker. This time, as the tanker arrived, an older man directed the crowd, to make sure it was orderly.
“I do a public service,” the man said. “After the fight we came together in the neighborhood and made this system of queuing.”
But there were still tense moments. “Why is your pot so big? It’s too big!” one woman yelled at another. “It’s fine,” the other woman snapped back.
A tanker in the state of Himachal Pradesh. “Shimla got more media attention, but many areas are facing water scarcity,” said Rajendra Singh, the founder of an Indian conservation group. Credit Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times
In Shimla, the water crisis has eased since last month. Municipal officials divided the city into three zones in late May, distributing water to them on a rotating basis so that none would go without for more than two days. Residents complained that the city had been slow to act, but over all, tensions have decreased.
“Namashkar!” residents yelled cheerfully to Mr. Singh, the key man, from their balconies as he made his rounds recently. Mr. Singh returned the traditional greeting, but he said they hadn’t always been so nice.
He said he was cursed and shouted at during the worst days of the crisis, but never physically attacked. But some of the city’s 61 other key men were held down by mobs and forced to keep the water on, municipal officials said.
The pandemonium moved Shimla’s High Court to act. It ordered that key men be supervised to ensure that they were not giving favorable treatment to hotels or V.I.P.s. The acting chief justice went into the streets personally to watch some of them work.
“The key man not only holds the key, but in fact, by the strength of the key, he can put the entire town to ransom,” the court said in its ruling this month.
The court also ordered that every key man be escorted by two police officers while on duty to ensure their safety. Some key men — surrounded by a veritable entourage — said they had never felt so important in their lives.

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ASIC Warns On Climate Risk As Heat Turns On Directors

Fairfax - Clancy Yeates

An ASIC commissioner has urged company directors to take seriously a leading barrister's opinion that they could face lawsuits for failing to consider risks related to climate change.
As large corporations face pressure to tell their investors more about risks they may face from climate change, ASIC Commissioner John Price said in a speech on Monday directors "would do well" to carefully consider a 2016 legal opinion by Noel Hutley SC and Sebastien Hartford-Davis.
ASIC commissioner John Price says the regulator is looking at climate change disclosure across the ASX 300. Photo: Ryan Stuart
The legal advice, which was commissioned by the Centre for Policy Development (CPD) and the Future Business Council, said directors not thinking about climate change risks today could be found liable for breaching their duty of care in the future.
"While matters such as this will, in the end, be determined by a court, we think the Hutley opinion is relatively unremarkable," Mr Price said in a speech to a CPD event in Sydney.
"We say that in the sense that, in our view, the opinion appears legally sound and is reflective of our understanding of the position under the prevailing case law in Australia in so far as directors’ duties are concerned."
The legal advice of Mr Hutley said it would likely be "only a matter of time" until a director personally faced litigation over their statutory duty of care relating to climate change.
AICD general manager advocacy Louise Petschler said:  "The AICD promoted the Hutley opinion to widely to our members, noting there is little downside, and much potential upside, for directors in properly considering and disclosing climate risks.
"As the opinion itself stresses, the relevance of climate change risks to a specific company will be assessed on a case-by-case basis, and any allegation of a breach of duty in avoiding ‘foreseeable risk’ would be determined on its individual merits. The opinion is, necessarily, general," she said.
A key legal issue in any such climate change lawsuit would likely be whether the company was "materially" exposed to climate risk, and Mr Price said this would be determined by looking at the specific circumstances of the company.
Even so, Mr Price is the latest senior regulator to urge company directors to think about the potential for climate risks, which have become a growing concern of major investors here and overseas in recent years.
In another sign the corporate cop is closely focused on the issue, Mr Price also said ASIC was working on a review of how companies across the ASX 300 index disclosed information on climate change, and it planned to publish the findings later this year.
The comments come as regulators in Australia and internationally are taking a growing interest in the potential for climate change to destabilise financial markets.
The Council of Financial Regulators - which includes ASIC, Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), the Reserve Bank and the federal Treasury - has also created a working group looking at climate risk as it affects the financial system.
APRA executive board member Geoff Summerhayes last year also cited Mr Hutley's advice in a speech in which he described climate change as a "material" risk for the financial system.
A new report from the CPD, a progressive think tank, on Monday said more Australian companies were looking at how the Paris agreement on climate change could affect their businesses.
But it also said many big businesses' attempts to model potential climate change scenarios were based on "questionable" assumptions and did not consider the physical effects of climate change.
Mr Price also highlighted that social and environmental issues were an "acute" concern for some investors, and corporate boards should consider whether they were responding in a way that was consistent with their "social contract."

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Climate Change A 'Man-Made Problem With A Feminist Solution' Says Robinson

Reuters - Zoe Tabary

U.N. rights commissioner Mary Robinson: “Climate change is a man-made problem and must have a feminist solution.” James Akena / Reuters
LONDON - Women must be at the heart of climate action if the world is to limit the deadly impact of disasters such as floods, former Irish president and U.N. rights commissioner Mary Robinson said on Monday.
Robinson, also a former U.N. climate envoy, said women were most adversely affected by disasters and yet are rarely “put front and centre” of efforts to protect the most vulnerable.
“Climate change is a man-made problem and must have a feminist solution,” she said at a meeting of climate experts at London’s Marshall Institute for Philanthropy and Entrepreneurship.
“Feminism doesn’t mean excluding men, it’s about being more inclusive of women and -in this case - acknowledging the role they can play in tackling climate change.”
Research has shown that women’s vulnerabilities are exposed during the chaos of cyclones, earthquakes and floods, according to the British think-tank Overseas Development Institute.
In many developing countries, for example, women are involved in food production, but are not allowed to manage the cash earned by selling their crops, said Robinson.
The lack of access to financial resources can hamper their ability to cope with extreme weather, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of the event.
“Women all over the world are ... on the frontlines of the fall-out from climate change and therefore on the forefront of climate action,” said Natalie Samarasinghe, executive director of Britain’s United Nations Association.
“What we – the international community – need to do is talk to them, learn from them and support them in scaling up what they know works best in their communities,” she said at the meeting.
Robinson served as Irish president from 1990-1997 before taking over as the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, and now leads a foundation devoted to climate justice.

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