Using Ecosystem Services in Source Water Protection – Two case studies in India - Case study of Bohal Spring and The Dal Lake

Abstract

A small percentage of the earth’s water is available as freshwater, out of which less than 1% is available for humans and can be used as a source of drinking water. Freshwater in lakes, rivers, and groundwater aquifers provide great values to the society. However, as a result of the human activities such as urbanization, climate change effects etc., these resources are being overexploited and are becoming polluted. Even though many water protection laws are enforced in many parts of the world and are included as one of the main goals in UN’s SDG plans, water protection is complicated as it involves numerous stakeholders and thus many competing interests. Furthermore, the protection of water sources are typically based on the quality of the water from a drinking water perspective (i.e. the quality of water that is used as a source drinking water source). There is typically a lack of consideration given to the additional services provided by these surface water and groundwater ecosystems. There are numerous ongoing research studies that have been undertaken in order to identify and map ecosystem services. For example, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) and the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES) frameworks are well known for evaluating ecosystem services. However, it is a tedious process to apply these Ecosystem Services frameworks for each drinking water source. With the intension of making the assessment easier and specifically tailored to drinking water source, Gärtner et al. (2022) developed a region-specific water system service (WSS) list. The aim of this study was to apply the concept of water system service (WSS) list developed to Gärtner et al. (2022) to two case study sites in India to see how the list can be adapted to other regions. In addition, the identified ecosystem services was integrated into a risk assessment of the drinking water sources. In the results section WSS list, hazard list and risk assessment matrix for both the case study sites are presented. One new ecosystem service was identified for surface water ecosystem apart from WSS list. However, the results clearly illustrates that the WSS list can be transferred to other case study sites irrespective of geographical location and it provides an overview, and guidance on how to protect the drinking water sources.