CII-Triveni Water Institute (CII-TWI) launched a collaborative initiative in partnership with USAID India to establish a road map for cities to address climate change by pursuing water use efficiency in industry, buildings and municipality. Key activities included water audits, pre-feasibility studies of treated sewage from the municipalities for industry and other low-end applications, training and capacity building, and policy advocacy.
The findings show that initial 20%-30% demand-supply gap can be reduced through simple cost-effective demand-side interventions. These are categorized as low-cost options. Next 20%-30% reduction, categorized as low-to-medium cost interventions, can be achieved through efficient faucets and fixtures, recycling treated wastewater and water, precise measurements and control through digital instrumentation, and landscaping. Supply-side interventions such as rainwater harvesting can further reduce the gap. These needs to be followed by medium-to-high cost interventions that require management decisions for strategic investments.
The Institute organised an International Conference on the theme, ‘Promoting Water Use Efficiency across Urban Sectors to Address Climate Change” on October 9, 2013 attended by over 200 participants from diverse settings (Industry, Government, NGOs, academia, media).
A Handbook on “Water Use Efficiency in Urban India” was also released at the conference.
The handbook aims at raising awareness and sensitizing stakeholders to add water to their strategic thinking. It is a compilation of information on growing challenges in the water and wastewater sectors and plausible scalable solutions and strategies that can be adopted to promote water use efficiency.