Final Programme Beyond the River - World Water Week

Saturday 26 August
Hard or Soft Landing in Closing Basins?
Coping with Quantity and Quality Challenges
Co-convenor: The Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture (CA), the CGIAR Challenge
Program on Water and Food (CPWF) and Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI)
As societies develop, water resources in a basin are increasingly
used, polluted and controlled. As water is diverted
and consumed for agricultural, domestic and industrial
purposes, streamflow is increasingly depleted, reducing
downstream usefulness and the ability to meet environmental
flow requirements. Basins are said to be closed
when depletion exceeds the amount required for environmental
needs. Over-appropriation of river flow is already
widespread. Groundwater depletion and pollution threaten
the water resource base; sediment flushing and salin-
ity intrusion threaten further the health of the freshwater
and coastal ecosystems. Society adapts through planned
and unplanned reallocation of the water resource, further
complicating upstream-downstream relations. A question
is whether the resource base will fail causing undue
hardship in a closed basin, or whether and how society
can adapt for a soft landing.
The 2006 SIWI Seminar will address emerging development
challenges, paying particular attention to efforts to
achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
Photos: Mats Lannerstad
Programme Saturday 26 August, 09:00–17:00 Folkets Hus, Room 307
09:00 Welcome
09:15 Introduction by Keynote Speaker: Hard or Soft Landing in
Closing Basins. Dr. David Molden, International Water
Management Association (IWMI)
09:45 Session 1: Development of Closed Basins – Why do Basins
Close, and What are Symptoms of Closure?
Jordan Basin: The Process of Basin Closure.
Dr. Jean-Phillipe Venot, IWMI
10:05 Olifants Basin: The Process of Basin Closure. Washy Nyabeze,
Makgaleng Projects, South Africa
10:30 Coffee
11:00 Large-scale Groundwater Withdrawal and Basin Closure: Case
Study on Upper Musi Basin, India. Venkateswara Rao, India
11:20 Moving Upstream: Dynamics in Bhavani Basin, India:
Planned and Spontaneous Intensification in Water Use. Prof.
Jan Lundqvist, SIWI, and Mr. Mats Lannerstad, Linköping
University, Sweden
11:40 Future Biomass Energy Supply: The Consumptive Water Use
Perspective. Dr. Göran Berndes, Chalmers University, Sweden
12:00 Lunch
13:30 Session 2: Social and Ecological Impacts of Closure
– Adaptation Processes to Come to a Soft Landing
Basin Closure and Environmental Flow Requirements.
Dr. Vladimir Smakhtin, IWMI
13:50 Basin Closure and Surface Water Allocations in the
Lerma-Chapala Basin, Mexico. Mr. Flip Wester, Wageningen
University, The Netherlands
14:10 Meeting the River Depletion in the Yellow River. Dr. Hong
Yang, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology
14:30 Coffee
15:00 Large-scale Conjunctive Surface, Groundwater and
Hydropower Development in India: The Swadeshi Ganga
Water Machine. Prof. Mahesh C. Chaturvedi, Indian National
Academy of Engineering
15:20 Why Enough is Not Enough: The Societal Determinants of
River Basin Closing. Dr. Francois Molle, IWMI
15:40 Session 3: General Discussion
16:50 Conclusions
17:00 End of Session
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