Junagadh Municipal Corporation becomes 1st Civic Body from Asia to trade Water Credits
Original Published on Jun 10, 2024
The project activity by JuMC, is a man-made construction structure involving a large catchment area that conserves and stores excess rainwater for future requirements in Junagadh, Gujarat. Revenue from water credits will help create similar earth dams across the district to build climate resilience before 2030 at the speed and scale the crisis demands.
Original Published on Jun 10, 2024
On 09/06/2024, Junagadh Municipal Corporation, became the 1st civic body in Asia to trade water credits from its Hasnapur water conservation project which was recently registered under the Universal Water Registry program.
The objective of the voluntary water offset program is supported by the UWR Rainwater Standard that aims to drive water harvesting, recharge and conservation efforts, which are defined as positive actions taken for capturing/recycling/reusing unutilized sources of water that is socially and culturally equitable, environmentally sustainable and economically beneficial, achieved through site and catchment based actions independent of water quality parameters.
The UWR program is designed to complement the ‘green credit’ water programme notified by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change on October 13, 2023, however, while the green credits program focuses on new project activities, the UWR program allows early water/wastewater projects to earn water credit from 2014 onwards, thereby ensuring sufficient credits are earned to compensate for investments completed and needed to build scale.
UWR now intends to bring a revolutionary higher price discovery mechanism to convert water credits into financial instruments, thereby attracting finance from non-corporate entities such as retail investors, impact funds, ESG funds, HNIs and banking institutions.
UWR understands that climate change is primarily a water crisis and recognizes that climate change will exacerbate both water scarcity and water-related hazards (such as floods and droughts), as rising temperatures disrupt precipitation patterns and the entire water cycle.
Today, individuals and corporates need an incentive to harvest rainwater, recharge existing groundwater resources and secure India’s groundwater for future generations at the speed and scale the climate crisis demands. Water credits will soon become a new asset class for investors to add to their existing portfolio that currently includes shares, mutual funds, gold and real estate.
