Raipur: Experts attending the 2-day ‘Jal Jagar’ festival in Dhamtari in Chhattisgarh have suggested that at least 20 percent of water in the water bodies should be reserved for recharging.
Padma Shri awardee and eminent environmentalist Popatlal Pawar has emphasized that at least 20 percent of water in water bodies should be reserved for recharging, and only 80 percent should be utilised.
At least one fifth of water in water bodies should be conserved for the purpose of recharging the water body, he added.
While sharing stories of successful water conservation measures undertaken in many places, he along with other participants such as Padma Shri awardees Shyam Sunder Paliwal and Uma Shankar Pandey stressed the need for conservation of biodiversities in the Western Ghats for the protection of the Himalayan ecosystem.
Hailing the initiative taken by the Dhamtari district administration to hold the two-day International Water Conference, which ended on Sunday, chief minister Vishnu Deo Sai said that Dhamtari which was witnessing a significant depletion of its groundwater level has experienced a positive and revolutionary transformation due to the ‘Jal Jagar’ initiative, a campaign to generate awareness among the farmers and locals on the need for water conservation, taken by it.
Addressing the conference, Dr Maninder Kaur Dwivedy, additional secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, highlighted that Dhamtari has a long tradition of water conservation.
A local farmers’ body in the district had initiated the cultivation of rice varieties that require minimal water, she said.
She said that there are numerous such varieties of rice that thrive with less water and ripen quickly.
