about a third of the needs of business and industry, according to city data.“ It’ s like Swiss Cheese underneath,” the World Bank’ s Fook said.“ Groundwater extraction is unparalleled for a city of this size. People are digging deeper and deeper, and the ground is collapsing.” The effect is worsened by the sheer weight of Jakarta’ s urban sprawl. Economic development in recent decades has transformed the city’ s traditional low-rise silhouette into a thickening forest of high-rise towers. The weight of all those buildings crushes the porous ground underneath.
In the megacities of Southeast Asia including Kolkata the impact of subsidence, due mainly to groundwater extraction, has been greater. Manila is sinking at a rate of around 3.5 inches a year. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, is subsiding 3 inches a year, and Bangkok around an inch.
About Kolkata a report by P. S. Ray, of the National Remote Sensing Centre, who had studied the city’ s groundwater level through laser mapping stated“ Signatures of subsidence have already been felt in the Rajabazar-Sealdah area,”.
The phenomenon has been most pronounced in Asia, home to the top five nations in terms of population growth in vulnerable coastal areas. In China, that population rose 29 percent to 162 million during the 20-year period; in India, the increase was 43 percent to 88 million; and in Bangladesh, it was 46 percent to 68 million.
( Source: Reuters by Bill Tarrant, The Telegraph 16 th January 2009)
International Conference on“ Water in Mountain” The International Conference on“ Water in Mountain” took place in Oct, 2014 in France. The conference issued an alert to the need to quickly adopt strategies to adapt to the impact of global warming on water resources in the mountains. With the decrease of snow cover and glacier melt, the water regimes of all major rivers coming from mountains are now changing. However, the flow regularity of these rivers is crucial for the supply of drinking water to populations, and for the economic development at the foothills and the plains. India Rivers Week The first India Rivers Week was organized from 24 th to 27th of November 2014 in New Delhi. The event was aimed at bringing together different stakeholders involved in protection and conservation of rivers of India and to deliberate upon the main threats to Rivers, as well as the way forward. The meet, aimed at activists, community groups,
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Integrated River Basin Management Society