Jal Bhagirathi Foundation

The Marwar region is the most densely populated arid zone in the world. It is a part of the great Thar Desert in Western Indian and is characterised b Read morey harsh physical geography and a fragile ecology. Jal Bhagirathi Foundation (JBF) has developed an innovative model of water management. With a meagre annual rainfall of 200 MM and saline groundwater, life is an endless struggle in Marwar. With the changing climate, droughts have become more frequent with the region witnessing six drought years in the last decades. The temperature reaches 50+°C in summer. The challenges facing the people of the Thar Desert are manifold. Water scarcity has resulted in chronic poverty and vulnerability for the population, forcing people to compromise on the quality of drinking water and consume water having high levels of nitrates and fluorides adversely affecting the health of the people in the long term. Drinking water scarcity is an economic strain on communities as they have to buy water, transported through tankers from vast distances. To address this, JBF seeks to revive and construct rainwater harvesting structures through community mobilisation. The goal is to manage water resources sustainably within the environmental constraints, creating water security by decentralised and adaptive water resource management resulting in improved resilience to climate change.