India: From water management to climate change

The State of Maharashtra is the second most heavily-populated in India, with 96 million inhabitants, of whom more than half depend upon agriculture to make their living. The greater part of their land depends, for its cultivation, upon the monsoon rains. Unfortunately soil impoverishment as well as a non-sustainable exploitation of water supplies and natural resources has resulted in land degradation. Droughts and famines have forced numerous inhabitants to migrate.Since the beginning of the 2000s, the SDC has been working with a local organization, the Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR). Specialising in the communal management of water supplies, this partner has helped to set up projects in 31 districts. Working with the local populations, the WOTR has enabled some 950 villages to protect themselves from recurring water supply problems.However, since 2000, local climate conditions have altered considerably. The farmers can no longer rely on their ancestral knowledge and are often taken by surprise at the timing and frequency of the rains, which can be torrential just as they can be insufficient.