Introduction
The Water Heritage Working Group was formed in 2018, and activated in 2019, following the formation of the international working group on water and heritage in 2017 at the Triennial ICOMOS General Assembly.
The primary role of the national working group is to highlight the ‘intrinsic’ values of water heritage, alongside its value to the future of sustainable development, as a means of improved safeguarding, conservation and management of this heritage in all its tangible and intangible forms.
India has been a witness to a rich interaction of water with heritage- both cultural and natural- from sustenance, services and security, to reverence, and recreation, amongst many others. India’s sheer expanse, geographic diversity, millennia of inhabitation, conquests and trade has meant that the interaction with this life giving resource has been diverse, dynamic, and unique to this part of the world. This interaction has been steeped in an intrinsic understanding, familiarity and knowledge of the hydrogeology, rainfall patterns and associated interactions with ecology which have in turn created complex and layered traditional knowledge systems which find manifestations in tangible and intangible heritage.
The diversity of traditional water systems is thus, vast and is co-dependent on water availability- spatially and temporally. Traditional knowledge and traditional management systems on water heritage, have the potential to be leveraged to address critical contemporary concerns of climate change, water scarcity, water management, the urban water cycle, gender and sanitation, developing risk resilience amongst others. An important focus of the group, therefore, is to build an inter-sector and inter-disciplinary dialogue and collaboration for water heritage in India.
Objectives
Key objectives to achieve the vision are:
Vision
The vision of the water heritage working group is to:
Past activities
Priyanka Singh is a founder member of the national Water Heritage Working Group.
Her experience and perspective on water heritage stems from practice and research on Qanat water systems in the Deccan (IHA Research Grant), conservation of Kundi Bhandara in Burhanpur (WMF- Govt of Madhya Pradesh), conservation and management strategy for historic water structures in Jaipur (Jaipur Smart Cities Ltd), conservation of kunds at Kuchaman Fort (MRS Group), city level plan for Amritsar’s heritage (HRIDAY scheme under Ministry of Urban Affairs & Housing), Landscape plans for Gobindgarh Fort, Punjab (ADB funded- Govt of Punjab) and the World Heritage Site of Ellora Caves (UNESCO- ASI), amongst a number of other projects in over a decade of practice.
In addition to her post graduate studies in conservation (pursued on a full scholarship from the Charles Wallace India Trust), she has further training in watershed and groundwater management, urban water management, global perspectives on the water crisis and the SDGs, preparation of nominations of mixed sites to UNESCO’s world heritage list, amongst others.
