The members of URBEN Group are involved in a range of projects on integrated urban planning:

Planning for the urban Water-Energy-Food Nexus in Leh town, Ladakh, India

Dr. Daphne Gondhalekar

With on-going rapid economic growth, demand for water and energy continues to increase. However, countries like India are already facing serious water-related development challenges. Lack of adequate sanitation and wastewater management is causing potential groundwater pollution and impacts on human health. At the same time, groundwater aquifers are often over-exploited to cater to rising water demand. Especially in regions where water and energy are already scarce, integrated urban planning strategies to manage limited water resources more effectively are needed.

Leh Town, in Ladakh in Northeast India is situated in a semi-arid high-altitude region of the Himalayas. In the last few decades, the town and with it demand for freshwater and the amount of accruing wastewater has grown very rapidly. Supplying for freshwater demand and managing wastewater are a huge challenge for the local government. Added to this, climate change is making water availability insecure. Leh is already facing bottlenecks in terms of water and energy supply as well as serious environmental issues due to current lack of comprehensive wastewater management. To deal with this issue, the local government is currently implementing a centralized sewage system, which will require twice as much water per capita to be used and even more energy in order to function.

In this study, we mapped water demand and wastewater production using geographic positioning systems (GPS), conducted questionnaire and interview surveys to identify spatial analysis of water use patterns and future demands and processed this information using geographic information systems (GIS). Most wastewater is produced in the direct vicinity of agricultural fields left barren due amongst other factors a decreasing availability of irrigation water. Barren fields in central Leh constitute 30 % of the agricultural land area a decade ago.

This study advocates a decentralized and adaptive wastewater management system in order to address water resources conservation, energy efficiency, food security, and water-related health risk reduction as an alternative to the development of a centralized sewage system, in the agricultural area of Leh. On such a basis, Leh can act as a model for sustainable and inclusive future city development in the region and internationally.