Adapting to climate change in the Godavari River basin of India by restoring traditional water storage systems

Abstract

Food, climate and water crises are interrelated and interdependent. Climate change is projected to significantly alter rainfall patterns, with implications for the annual runoff for the Godavari River basin of the Indian subcontinent. Agriculture, especially rain-fed agriculture, will be particularly affected, due to changes such as periodicity and intensity of rainfall. This paper describes field interventions in 2005–2007 designed to restore traditional water management systems (in the form of water tanks; that is, wetlands embedded in a semi-arid region), with the aim of mitigating the effects of increased climate variability and the frequency of weather extremes. Our findings suggest that traditional water management methods can be both socially and economically effective in coping with variability in precipitation patterns, decentralizing management institutions, improving crop productivity and increasing groundwater recharge. This approach is preferable to large projects for increasing water storage capacity or expanding areas under irrigation, which are expensive, and can displace people and degrade ecosystems.