Page 45 - Tata-Trusts-Annual-Report-2021-22

OF
HOPE

Tapping technology for water security planning in rural India

Among the far-reaching impacts of accelerating climate change Jaltol has greatly benefitted community members involved in
is a looming global water crisis, with India figuring among the rural water security planning as it provides them with data on
worst-a ected nations globally. With nearly six in 10 people their watershed and helps them estimate water budgets at the
depending on the agricultural sector for their livelihood in India, click of a button. This has helped improve water management
ramping up clean energy solutions that o er lasting resolutions practices followed by the gram panchayat for the benefit of the
for these problems is crucial. local community.

Despite substantial investments, success in implementing Veena Srinivasan, director, CSEI, ATREE shares, “ICC partnered
interventions at scale has been limited as they largely fail to with CSEI at ATREE in 2020 with the objective of co-creating
account for regional ground realities. Allowing local systemic solutions for rural water security. Our joint objective
communities to manage and build capacity for their resources is was to help ICC’s network partners redirect investments and
critical for the success of any such intervention. make data driven decisions about which interventions to scale,
how, and where. Our initial research resulted in a set of
Based on a similar rationale, Tata Trusts-led India Climate
typologies and metrics to evaluate rural water security
Collaborative (ICC) has been working with the Ashoka Trust for
interventions. ICC also helped us co-design
Research in Ecology and Environment - Centre for Social and
the “Jaltol” water budgeting tool. It is
Environmental Innovation (ATREE–CSEI) to develop a water
a truly collaborative partner and
diagnostic toolkit. It uses open-source data to create tools that
has been open to all our ideas,
facilitate community programmes to improve water security (for
and ICC’s commitment to
instance, using digital tools to estimate the groundwater levels
leading these ideas to fruition
in the local watershed), plug in missing data layers, and develop
has been phenomenal.”
training material for better design solutions.
As part of this project, CSEI launched Jaltol in November 2021—
a free, open-source plug-in tool that simplifies water balance
Women mapping their village
estimation. Jaltol was developed following extensive
resources in a community meeting
consultations with grassroots stakeholders.

Jaltol was piloted during training sessions with over 50
participants from more than 20 organisations and there are
plans to continue improving the tool based on feedback from
these sessions. CSEI will also focus on increasing engagement
with civil society organisations to augment the uptake and
usage of Jaltol.

ANNUAL REPORT 2021-22 38