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ing ‘who is going to be impacted and who’s going to implement it’. She firmly
believes ‘looking at it from a holistic perspective is the best way to go about
it’. In her view, effective decision-making cannot be based on siloed observa
tions; it always has to integrate data and strategy and draw lessons from real
case examples. What approach is not working? What are the failures? What are
the setbacks of certain approaches? It is vital to ‘put them holistically together
and understand every bit of it. And it’s not rocket science. It’s just elementary
science. This pragmatic understanding underscores that complex sustainability
problems often yield fundamental, integrated solutions
This interconnectedness became clear to Lipi through a case study she observed
closely: an urban housing society grappling with water scarcity. Despite being in
habited by “very well off people who can afford water from outside”, the society
over-exploited groundwater by drilling boreholes. It relied heavily on “informal
water markets” via tankers at a “huge economic cost”. Though built, a manda
tory water treatment plant for grey water recycling was non-operational for “4
or 5 years”. Upon its revival, the society’s “dependency on the external water
tank is drastically reduced,” and the “economic cost” decreased. This economic