Tamil Nadu government says there no water scarcity problem in the state.
In a counter affidavit, the state argued that the implementation of two projects has taken care of both drinking and irrigation water.
In a counter affidavit filed before the Madras High Court, the state argued both drinking and irrigation supplies are adequate because it has implemented two major water resource projects over the past 12 years.
The division bench of Justices KK Sasidharan and GR Swaminathan was hearing a public interest litigation that asked for a special committee to be set up to preserve all of the state’s waterbodies.
The two projects the state is referring to are the Water Resources Consolidation Project, which was implemented from 1995 to 2004, and the World Bank-funded Irrigated Agriculture Modernisation and Waterbodies Restoration and Management project (2007 to 2015).
The state said the projects ensure that all the 16 irrigation systems, 25 minor schemes and 620 rain-fed tanks are rehabilitated from time to time.
The state also said it was trying to remove the encroachments by enforcing the Tamil Nadu Protection of Tanks and Eviction of Encroachment Act, 2007.
The state’s claims come at a time when drinking water supply to Chennai has been slashed by 50%.
“This is the worst drought of this century,” Muruganandan, Tahsildar of Madhavaram district, had told Scroll.in on June 4.
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From Beef to Palm Oil, Investors Worry about Climate Risk in the Food Industry.
DiNapoli led a push by investors in May to force Exxon to better explain the impacts of climate change on its business.
Shareholder resolutions like these are rising in both number and variety, according to research from the sustainability advocacy group Ceres, which has tracked shareholder resolutions within the top publicly traded U.S. food companies in recent years.
The number of climate-related resolutions filed with food and beverage companies is up from 12 in 2011 to 131 this year.
Of those, most were focused on deforestation linked to supply chains—from the production of palm oil, beef and soy—as well as climate change and animal welfare.
The group released a guide last week for food company investors that illustrates the climate-related risks that each of eight commodities represents to supply chains and businesses.
Shareholder resolutions on the rise The upward trend comes as climate-related shareholder resolutions are gaining traction among corporations in the oil and gas industry and beyond.
But, the group points out, oil and gas proposals were getting similar numbers until recently.
"But investors now are starting to use their power and voice to try and impact these other commodities through the supply chain."
"Investors are very concerned with food companies and the impact of agriculture," Pearce said.

Myanmar vice president calls for accelerating water management.
YANGON, July 5 (Xinhua) — Myanmar’s Second Vice President U Henry Van Thio has called for speeding up the country’s water management, urging ministries concerned to work together for prevention of flooding and water scarcity.
U Henry Van Thio, also chairman of the National Water Resources Committee, stressed the need at a meeting of the committee on Tuesday to take urgent steps for improvement of environmental conservation, putting the conservation of Inle Lake in Shan state and watershed areas of dams under the spotlight in the present fiscal year of 2017-18, Myanmar News Agency reported Wednesday.
He also emphasized the need to find ways for fighting pollution of the Ayeyawaddy River.
Myanmar is planning to improve infrastructure and capacity related with water management as part of efforts to get financial assistance under the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation program.
As Myanmar will host the 3rd Asia-Pacific Water forum in December, the vice president said the hosting of the event will provide opportunities to learn from international specialists about all round management of water resources.

Bricks in flush tank, filters on taps: Water-starved Chennai gets creative to save every last drop.
The municipality has added 300 tankers to its regular fleet but for some residents, the wait for a tanker could be a week, if not longer.
Water-saving devices One day recently, in an apartment block in South Chennai’s Thiruvanmiyur neighbourhood, building manager M Moorthy was inspecting several kitchen aerators – small cylindrical devices with two layers of filters that reduce the amount of water coming out of a tap.
“Our building is suffering from water problems, so we have purchased these caps to fit in the kitchen taps of every apartment,” he said.
“People tend to waste a lot of water while washing vessels.” Peeyush Kothari, cofounder of Eco365, which manufactures and sells all kinds of water-saving devices in India, including the kitchen aerators, said business was good.
To limit the amount of water from being used during flushing, a toilet bank is placed inside the tank so that it does not fill up to its full capacity.
A familiar sight these days in Chennai, especially in poorer neighbourhoods, is people waiting for Chennai MetroWater tankers, carrying bright plastic buckets and pots.
The water crisis has led to a surge in the demand for large buckets, according to M Senthil, whose store in South Chennai deals in plastic goods.
“Everyone wants these buckets to collect and store as much water as possible when water tankers pass through their area.” In these colonies, residents also collect waste water, from activities such as washing clothes, to use in their toilets.
“In houses like mine, we use only waste water for flushing.” But in the apartment buildings too, some residents are putting waste water to good use.

Save every water drop: Karimnagar Collector.
​Karimnagar: The mankind can sustain only when each drop of water is saved, observed District Collector Sarfaraz Ahmed at a ceremony held in Karimnagar on Tuesday.
He was the chief guest at the closing ceremony of ‘Save Water Awareness’ programme held under NABARD here at Central Cooperative Bank.
Speaking on the occasion, the Collector said that NABARD has been conducting awareness programmes on water conservation in about 614 villages in the united Karimnagar district from May 1 to June 8.
He advised all the people to dig a soaking pit in their house for harvesting rain water and for increasing groundwater table.
He assured the people steps will be taken on behalf of the government for harvesting the rain water by sanctioning funds for constructing soak pits and bunds with stones surrounding the hills and tanks.
The farmers must go for either drip or sprinkler type irrigation methods to conserve water and not to waste it unnecessarily during cultivating their fields.
By harvesting every drop of rain water the problem of water scarcity can be get ridden, suggested the Collector.
NABARD Divisional General Manager, Hyderabad Subash Chandra, Assistant General Manager Ravi Babu and Chief Executive Officer of Karimnagar DCCB Satyanarayana Rao and Joint Director of Agriculture Department Sridhar were present along with others.

Children learn the importance of water.
Tahatai Coast Primary School children are learning real-life skills like compassion and empathy in their latest hands on project where every drop counts.
Five classes of Year 5 and 6 students took to the streets in Tauranga and Mount Maunganui to refund-raise money for the Hopes Initiatives Project, who help communities in Kenya access fresh water.
Tahatai Coast teacher Craig McDonald says the pupils have made a great effort and ended up raising $1323, which will go towards Sawyer PointONE bucket filters for communities in Mukuyuni.
“For learning to have a real impact it needs to have a practical outcome in the world.
The children have learnt about waterborne diseases, how important fresh water is, places where there is water scarcity or the water supply is polluted, and how this effects the communities.
“Last year was such a success around the child labor issue, we thought we would tackle a different issue, but come in trying to beat that.” Last year they raised $2000 for the Born to Be Free programme who pay off any debts that the parents have to free the children from labor.
They used a chain as a metaphor for the children and each time the pupils raised some money they cut a part of the chain off with some bolt cutters.
Due to the positive feedback from last year and what the children got out of the experience, they felt like they wanted to do something similar again.
Chris says this will definitely be something that he will continue to put into practice as a teacher.

By Robert Kibet NAIROBI (IDN) – Braving a scorching temperature, 38-year-old Caroline Rono rambles barefoot along a tiny path that snakes in the direction of the reptile-infested salty seasonal Lake Solai in Kenya’s Rift Valley with the giggling baby on her back swaying to the movement of her mother’s hips.
“We, the women shoulder the burden of collecting and carrying water for domestic use, and sometime for weak animals during extreme drought,” Caroline, who hails from Kibatat village, some 4 km from Lake Solai, told IDN through a translator..”When hand-dug wells dry up, we are forced to walk hours to collect water.” Diana Mutai is 43-years-old and ever since she was a little girl, it has been her chore to fetch water for the family.
I did not get back home until afternoon.
Now, through the intervention of non-state actors, mostly international non-governmental organisations like World Vision Kenya (WVK), a significant number of women and girls in rural Kenya can access water not only at a safe distance, but also water that is clean and potable.
To alleviate the risks that women like Diana face in collecting water in Solai, has WVK built a 192-element solar panel balanced precariously atop a metal supported roof that can pump water from a 180 metre-deep borehole.
“When we dug this borehole, at first we were for generator-set powered water pumps but we realised it would be costly,” said Njehia.
Peter Ndegwa of St Joseph Church in Wenje Parish says the 21kilowatt solar powered borehole has spared the community, especially women and girls, the long distance walked to the river and reduced the risks of women being attacked by predators.
“Here, women have been trekking about 15 km to fetch water from crocodile-infested River Tana.
According to the Crocodile Specialist Group of the Species Survival Commission of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) involved in conservation of 23 species of alligators, crocodiles, caimans and gharials in the wild, the incidence of crocodilian attacks in many countries is very difficult to quantify because “many more people are attacked than is reported, as many attacks occur in remote areas.” “With the clean water which is available now at the homestead, our women and girls do not risk attack from crocodiles or other predators.
[IDN-InDepthNews – 2 July 2017] Photo: In the rural areas of Kenya, the burden of collecting, carrying and managing water (often contaminated) has always rested on the shoulders of women.

Opinion: Water shortages need permanent solution.
Most water taps in Nairobi estates are set to remain dry a little bit longer until the expected short rains in October raise water levels in dams that serve Nairobi and its outskirts.
Insufficient rains during the recent long rain season meant that the Ndakaini dam, suffering from a shortfall of 24 per cent water volume, could only be raised by 15 per cent yet this is the dam that supplies 84 per cent of the water needs of Nairobi residents.
It is easy to blame poor rainfall for the water problem in Nairobi but discounting the ineptitude of the county government would be dishonest.
Poor city planning in part accounts for the perennial water shortage experienced in Nairobi.
But the problem is not just limited to that for, while residents encounter shortages, it recently emerged that some officials from the Nairobi City Water and Sewage Company create artificial shortages to give their side water bowser ventures a boost.
Corruption, it would seem, permeates every single stratum of society.
Harvesting rain water and facilitating city residents to do the same would go a long way in addressing water shortage not just in Nairobi, but other urban centres across the country where populations increase daily due to rural-urban migration.
The water scarcity problem cannot be taken lightly any more and county governments should be at the forefront seeking solutions.
ALSO READ: Water company vows to cut water supply to Nairobi residents

Min.
Al-Jabri shows Kuwait’s efforts to tackle water scarcity.
Speaking at the 40th Session FAO Conference on tackling the water scarcity and improving food security amid climate change, Mohammad Al-Jabri, Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs and Minister of State for Municipal Affairs, said Kuwait has been suffering from a sharp shortage of water resources.
The State of Kuwait has only a resource of water, limited to groundwater, while most of the country’s water needs are met by desalination, he added.
As a result, the country had to depend on wastewater treatment as an additional source for agricultural purposes, and to reduce pressures on indispensable groundwater, he told the conference.
Kuwait is taking part in the conference to share expertise and views, and supporting the initiative launched by FAO in 2013 in collaboration with the Arab League in the Near East and North Africa region, he stressed.
Meanwhile, Arab League Secretary General Ahmad Abul Gheit said the future of the Arab region in tightly linked to the problem of water scarcity, referring to a major gap between supply and demand in water and food in the Arab region.
For his part, FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva said the Arab countries should continue to seek innovations to overcome the water scarcity crisis in the face of climate change.
"Population growth and the impacts of climate change will put more pressure on water availability in the near future.
He pointed out that farmers and rural households should be at the center of strategies to tackle water scarcity.

Manufacturing PMI falls to 4-month low in June on sluggish output, foreign demand.
India’s manufacturing sector growth eased to a four-month low in June amid a slowdown in output and new orders as softer domestic consumption partly offset strong foreign demand, a business survey said.
In June, the PMI still held above the 50 level that separates growth from contraction for a sixth straight month.
Manufacturing growth slowed last month largely as domestic consumption cooled even as external demand remained solid.
New orders from external markets increased at a solid rate that was the most pronounced in eight months,” Lima said.
While the new tax system is expected by some firms to generate more business, others feel that GST will have a detrimental impact on orderbooks.
“As such, overall optimism slipped to a three-month low,” Lima said.
The manufacturing PMI averaged 51.7 during the April-June quarter, above the one seen in the previous quarter.
On the price front, there were signs of inflationary pressure losing speed as input costs rose to a lesser extent than in May.
Although manufacturers experienced reduced input cost pressures last month they did not pass on the benefits to customers.