ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS, SAYS AWARDEE CRISPINO LOBO

“Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. We are all very aware, that when anyone receives an award, it is a recognition not only of his or her contribution but of the fact that he or she has stood on the shoulders of many that have come before them and who are also with them.

So, I accept this honour and recognition by the Rotary Club of Bombay for which I am deeply grateful but I also accept it on behalf of my colleagues and the innumerable number of donors, well wishers and enablers who silently and
behind the scenes have made possible what we have done to date and brought us to where we are today. So, on their
behalf, many thanks.

You may be wondering where the name Watershed Organisation Trust has come from; we call it WOTR, in short. We believe, wherever water or paani is the problem, WOTR is the solution.

It began 30 years ago when we were travelling through rural Maharashtra and we realised the real crisis was the lack of water. But we decided the only way you can bring water to people sustainably is to organise them to catch rain wherever it falls in the landscapes and catchments and villages they live in across the hillscapes and landscapes, stop it in situ and force it underground.

The Watershed Development is, to my understanding and experience, the key to sustainable rural development. It’s based on a very simple mantra: water that is rushing down the hill slopes – you slow it down; water that is running, you make it walk. And walking water, you make it stop and you force it underground.

Once water comes in a village, it kickstarts a whole cycle of transformation and development, the likes of which must be seen to be believed. People who had no food before can suddenly afford three meals. Children who could not be sent to school because they had to look after cattle and tend to the fields could now go to school.

It takes just one generation to walk out of poverty. If you can work as a community to harvest rainwater, across the area it lives in, that is where our journey began and that’s the journey 30 years later. But 15 years ago, something very interesting happened. We noticed that the stream of benefits that were coming to the villages from our work
started going down even though our technical and physical infrastructure was still working. Then, we realised that
climate change was seriously affecting rural communities.

Today it is accepted that it is affecting everything in the country. It was at that time, about 10 years ago, that we
decided, that the only way we could address the challenge posed by climate change is to co-evolve and acquire knowledge and to apply technology to problems. So, we set up the WOTR Centre for Resilience Studies with a two-fold mandate: 1) To co-evolve knowledge with the communities that you wish to serve but in collaboration with all those who could make possible solution pathways and help them realise their dreams.

It was bringing science, practice and governance together in a specific geography on the ground. So that knowledge translates into action. 2) Technology; the next mandate was to identify technologies and then craft them or configure them in innovative ways such that it would enable communities to reduce their risk to climate change, increase efficiencies and increase productivity.

If we are going to impact poverty and more importantly increase the efficiency of water in this country, to apply
cutting edge technology, better social forms of organisation, with appropriate governance and legal institutions, to
make this possible. The journey ahead is exciting and I would welcome all of you who are passionate in taking this
forward across the country. Thank you very much.”