e-Governance on Environmental-Flow monitoring of Rivers in
India
As per a report on “Environmental Flows: State-of-the-Art With Special
Reference to Rivers in the Ganga River Basin” as part of exercise the
E-Flows are defined as “The temporal and spatial variations in quantity
and quality of water required for freshwater and estuarine systems to
perform their natural ecological functions (including material
transport) and support the spiritual, cultural and livelihood activities
that depend on them.” Since the last decade, WWF-India and its allies
have been fighting to protect the Ganga. While the work has been
multifaceted, ranging from river flow difficulties to water pollution,
climate change adaptation, and habitat and biodiversity conservation.
During 2015–16, WWF-India, in collaboration with partners, conducted an
action research study in over 2 million hectares of the culturable
command area of two irrigation systems branching from River Ganga to
understand the barriers to implementing Environmental Flows (E-Flows) in
the critical stretch of river Ganga (between Haridwar and Triveni Sangam
Allahabad). The team attempted to bridge the information gap about
potential trade-offs for implementing E-Flows in a crucial stretch of
the Ganga as part of this program. .
Science and implementation must inform environmental flow evaluations,
which must be led by systematic monitoring and adaptive management. An
effective environmental flow assessment must be science-based and
supported by relevant stakeholders. The implementation of an
environmental flow regime must include regular monitoring of the effects
of flow releases to verify and evaluate whether or not the desired
environmental outcomes are being met, as well as an adaptive management
framework that is flexible and capable of incorporating monitoring
lessons by modifying the operations of flow release structures.
India-WRIS Web GIS aims to be a ’Single Window’ solution for
comprehensive, authoritative, and consistent data & information of
India’s water resources, as well as allied natural resources, in a
standardized national GIS framework with tools to search, access,
visualize, understand, and analyze the data for assessment, monitoring,
planning, development, and ultimately Integrated Water Resources
Management (IWRM). In the year 2009, CWC, MoJS, and NRSC, ISRO, DoS
collaborated on the project. The India-WRIS Web-GIS comprises 12 major
info systems, 36 sub info systems, and 95 layers, all of which are
divided into five primary groups based on requirements and data
availability:
1) The Atlas of Watersheds
2) Layers of Administration
3) Projects involving water resources
4) Thematic Layers
5) Environmental Information
Basin, Sub Basin, Watershed, River, water-body, urban and rural
population extents, Dams, Barrage/weir/anicut, canals, and command
boundaries are some of the primary layers produced under India-WRIS.
Depending on the theme, these spatial layers have a huge quantity of
attribute data ranging from 5-100 years. The portal offers free
downloads of all unclassified data from CWC’s HO stations as well as
CGWB ground water data. Surface water, ground water, hydro-met
observations, water quality, snow cover, inter-basin transfer links,
land resources, socio-economic characteristics, infrastructure, and
other administrative layers all have specific Sub-Info systems (Central
Water Commission, 2022). As per the status report on Implementation of
minimum environmental flows in river ganaga (upto Unnao), published in
July, 2020, the daat was collected through emails, sms as well as
automatic sensors (Ministry of Jal Shakti, 2020).