Another campaign that Agarwal initiated is called ‘Make Water Everybody’s Business’ using the technology of rainwater harvesting. Agarwal while travelling through the desert villages of Rajasthan came across several traditional water harvesting structures that were effective in meeting people’s basic water needs even in bad drought years. Agarwal calculated that if one were to capture just 100 mm of rainfall in a year falling over a catchment of just one hectare, one would get as much as one million litres of water. India’s ancestors also knew that the monsoons give a lot of water but almost all of its comes down in a mere 100 hours in the whole year. They therefore developed an extensive tradition of rainwater harvesting. CSE, therefore, decided to investigate the past in depth to see if there lay a solution for the future. CSE divided the country into 15 ecological regions and documented the water traditions in each of these regions. A comprehensive look into the past and how it has survived into the present. Finally, in 1997, CSE published Dying Wisdom with a clear message that the past still has a lot to teach us. But instead of leaving people to read the book and slowly internalise the message, CSE decided to shorten the fuse on this time bomb. It approached its friends in the civil society across India to organise public meetings to release and discuss the modern relevance of the book. Senior political leaders, judges, editors and other decision-makers and opinion-makers participated and within three months, the nation was discussing the importance of rainwater harvesting.

CSE has since set up a National Water Harvesters Network to strengthen the hands of those who are promoting this new paradigm in water management. In 1998, the President of India requested CSE to help him undertake water harvesting in the Rashtrapati Bhawan (President’s House). In December 1999, when CSE realized that a bad drought was going to hit Gujarat, western Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh it decided to investigate how rainwater harvesting communities were faring in the drought. The study revealed that these communities not only had no drinking water shortage but were even able to grow two crops. The findings were stunning and highly inspiring. As a result, when the national media became conscious of the drought in April 2000, CSE was ready to show the nation living examples of how people can beat the drought. The result: Everybody – from the prime minister to state chief ministers – started talking of and developing programmes for rainwater harvesting. CSE has also set up a Rainwater Harvesting Advisory Service to help schools, colleges, residential colonies, households and industries undertake rainwater harvesting.

Equal Rights to the Atmosphere
At the international level, Agarwal campaigned for Equal Rights to the Atmosphere. Developing countries will be the worst affected by global warming. He advocated that the answer lies in the world moving away from fossil fuels to zero-carbon energy systems. But this means changing the entire energy system on which the modern economy is built. How will we share the cost and burden of this transition? Agarwal’s answer was simple. Each human being should get an equal share to emit global warming-causing gases. Those who emit less than their share – and these will invariably be poor nations like India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and China – can sell their unused share every year to those who emit more than their share. This trade in ‘atmospheric entitlements’ will allow poor nations to access funds to acquire non-carbon producing energy technologies. Thus, both the poor and rich nations can move towards a new energy paradigm that will prevent a disastrous build up of gases that cause global warming. Agarwal was the first person to propose trading in greenhouse gases in the world way back in 1991.