When multi-year droughts hit Pune, India, in the coming decades, water access for millions of people in this rapidly growing city will depend on choices made today.
A new study, published March 5 in the journal Earth’s Future , finds that Pune’s reservoirs will likely dry up and groundwater levels will plummet by the middle of this century if the city maintains current policies. Most low-income residents will face water costs approaching nearly one-fifth of their income, while having access to less than half the water needed for basic hygiene and health.
But the research shows these outcomes can be avoided, and it won’t take much more water than the region already has in regular supply. It will, however, require pulling just about every lever within reach to influence water costs and human behaviors as Pune hurtles toward megacity status, with a population expected to reach 11 million people by 2050.
“Finding viable solutions to deal with drought was the product of integrating expert contributions from a remarkably broad range of disciplinary experts,” said Steven Gorelick , a senior author of the study and Stanford professor of Earth system science who has studied water issues in India for well over a decade.
Collaborators brought expertise in economics, urban sociology, hydrology, climate science, agriculture, and “durable engagement with local stakeholders to better understand regional water challenges and potential solutions,” he said.
Pune is an early example of the kinds of challenges likely to hit other fast-growing cities in coming decades as climate change shifts rainfall patterns and intensifies droughts.
Extreme droughts and water shortages have struck more than 80 major cities since 2000, from Cape Town to São Paulo to Chennai. By 2050, one-third to nearly half of the global urban population is projected to face water scarcity, with one-quarter living in India.
Pune enters this era with an aging water supply system, more than a million people living in informal settlements without piped water, a climate already prone to multi-year droughts, and growing tensions between urban water users and a powerful agricultural sector dominated by irrigation-intensive sugarcane production.
The research team worked closely with local current and former civil servants, academics, consultants, and NGOs to secure hydrologic, agricultural, and demographic data. Stakeholders also contributed by identifying potential policy interventions to overcome a multi-year drought.
The scientists developed multiple models to forecast mid-century changes in water supply for people, industry, and agriculture under climate scenarios where global emissions begin to decline around 2040 or remain high through 2100. They projected urban expansion and economic decisions by households, businesses, and farmers, linking these components to represent complex interactions across human and natural systems.
The researchers tested these models against major uncertainties, including climate trajectories, economic development, and Pune’s population. They then analyzed how proposed policy interventions would affect water supply, costs, and access across possible futures.
“Across drought and urbanization scenarios, in the absence of new policies, the model indicates low-income residents would see water costs surge and supply decline to almost half the minimum needed per person per day for basic human needs,” said lead study author Ankun Wang, a PhD student in Earth system science at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability .
“It is just as important to identify which solutions will not work as those that will work, before any are implemented,” added Gorelick, who is the Cyrus F. Tolman Professor and director of the Global Freshwater Initiative at Stanford. “The model provides guidance for policymakers to focus on measures that are beneficial while not adopting seemingly good options that are actually likely to fail.”
The analysis found the proposed interventions are most effective when implemented in concert. Individual interventions, such as fixing leaks and cracking down on water theft, raising water prices for the heaviest users, capping groundwater extractions, or doubling electricity costs for pumping groundwater, could only slightly improve water affordability for the poorest households. Even reallocating water from a major dam provides limited relief when implemented alone.
The single most influential policy change, the modeling suggests, would establish a regulated market where farmers can sell irrigation water to urban households via tanker trucks. This alone could slash water costs for Pune’s poor from 18% to 4% of their income, the authors found.
“We discovered important synergies that identify unseen improvements in equality of water supply and access,” said Wang, who spent five years assembling and testing the complex modeling framework. “This enables planners and policymakers to efficiently achieve their goals.”
Although the researchers did not conduct a formal cost-benefit analysis of interventions, they found that under comprehensive adoption of policy interventions, all Pune residents could gain access to at least 40 liters of water per day with only about a 1% increase in the total water supply.
Several policies are already moving forward in Pune. The city has approved transferring some water from a major dam that currently flows to Mumbai. Officials are installing water meters and licensing tanker trucks, laying a foundation for regulated water transfers from farming regions.
The authors say their new framework could be used to evaluate water policies in other rapidly urbanizing regions facing similar pressures, particularly across the Global South. Gorelick said, “We now have a framework that cities around the world can adapt as urban populations surge, cities expand, and climate pressures intensify.”
Stanford-affiliated authors not mentioned above include Rosamond Naylor, an emeritus professor (active) of environmental social sciences in the Doerr School of Sustainability, and an emeritus senior fellow (active) at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies . Co-author Anjuli Jain Figueroa is a former postdoctoral researcher at the Doerr School of Sustainability.
Additional authors are affiliated with Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, the Austrian Foundation for Development Research-ÖFSE, and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.
This work was conducted as part of the Belmont Forum Sustainable Urbanization Global Initiative (SUGI)/Food-Water-Energy Nexus theme, for which coordination was also supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation. Additional support came from the Austrian Research Promotion Agency and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
Earth's Future
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