Sustainable water resource management of agriculture in India

Abstract

Agriculture (with industry and household sector) is one of three major sectors of human consumption in this Anthropocene era. For assessment of sustainability of agricultural water resource consumption, various methods have been used to get insight into this dimension from multiple perspectives, such as - triple bottom line approach, planetary boundaries framework, doughnut economy etc. At the end, agricultural indicators have been corroborated in accordance with UN SDGs (2030). To exert priority on India (i.e. operational boundary), every analysis has been done in the level of national - scale. The first part was to assess overall sustainability scenario analysis of India using safe and just operating space framework. The second part was to assess the sustainability scenario for water and sanitation sector in India through preparation of a new national water barometer . The third part was to assess the safe and just operating space of agriculture in India along with the contribution of this sector in overall sustainability dimensions. The fourth part was to assess the past and probable future trends of food consumption, water and land requirement for past and future food consumption of almost all of the major agricultural products in India. For all of these works, past trends have been analysed, interactions between biophysical (i.e. ecological) and socioeconomic dimensions have been analysed, probable future projection have been done based on UN and SSP scenarios, and lastly feasible mitigation ways for various challenges have been suggested based on the results of these works. This work would be helpful to understand the Indian context, especially concerning water and agriculture sectors, regarding the sustainable development goals, advocated by UN towards policy formulations in national context.