Despite the critical role of lake ecosystems in urban sustainability, lakes in Bengaluru are in sad shape today. Poor governance, real estate greed and irresponsible civic behaviour have killed many water bodies and pushed the remaining to the brink. Huge amounts of money are reportedly spent on their rejuvenation and restoration; yet barring a few examples, there is little by way of visible results.
At Oorvani Foundation, we believe that citizen awareness and involvement are central to the revival of lakes. Bengaluru has a vibrant volunteering spirit and a large number of committed lake volunteers who are passionate about their local waterbodies. They also have a deep knowledge on the ground reality but their authentic voices are not always used to design policy and in decision making. We took up a project to document the state of lakes, bring attention and drive change, through a collaborative project with citizens and experts.
In September 2023, we collaborated with Friends of Lakes (FoL) to organise a two part masterclass on lakes. Participants learnt about FoL’s framework for lake governance and lake assets. Alongside, over a dozen lakes were audited by the participants: A deep dive into understanding lake assets.
In late 2024, we took up a more involved exercise on Bengaluru’s lakes. We had a refresher learning session on the lake framework followed by groups of lake volunteers documenting observations for 5 sets of lakes, totally around 28.
They then joined a number of other participants (skilled in urban planning, data, geospatial tech and analysis) at a datajam, where each team collated information, both ground observations as well as secondary data to analyze the state of the lakes in each set: Data jam on lakes. This activity was conducted in parternship with Biome Environment Trust, Friends of Lakes, Paani.Earth and WELL Labs, and supported by venue partner Samagata Foundation.
Over early 2025, we reviewed the observations, findings and secondary research to collate the first ever community-sourced State of Bengaluru Lakes Report.
We are happy to share the draft version of this report. Please do read it, share it in your networks. If you find any issues in the information or have additional points to share, please do write to us.