Developing hot deserts: opportunities and challenges

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There are very few roads across the huge distances of the desert, so transporting goods and workers is slow and expensive.

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In summer, daytime temperatures in hot deserts can rise above 45 °C, so people working outdoors, for example on building sites or in mines, risk heatstroke and dehydration. This means work often has to stop in the middle of the day, so projects take longer and cost more.

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The Thar Desert has valuable mineral resources. Gypsum, used to make cement and plaster, is mined there, and Rajasthan produces most of India's gypsum. Other minerals include feldspar, phosphorite for fertilisers and kaolin, and Jaisalmer's yellow limestone is used as a building stone. Oil was discovered near Barmer in 2004 at the Mangala field, which has been producing oil since 2009. These resources create jobs in mining and processing, supply raw materials for India's construction and fertiliser industries, and earn money for the state government through royalties and taxes, which can be spent on roads and services.

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In the Thar Desert, water supply is the greatest challenge to development to a large extent, although extreme temperatures and inaccessibility are also important and the challenges are closely linked.

Water is essential for almost every type of development. Rainfall in the Thar is low, often only 100-500 mm a year, and it falls mainly during the monsoon, which is unreliable and sometimes fails. Groundwater is deep and often salty, and where wells are overused the water table is falling. The Indira Gandhi Canal, which carries water about 650 km from Punjab, has allowed farmers to grow wheat, cotton and mustard, but poor management has caused waterlogging and salinisation, damaging the very land it was meant to improve. Growing towns, tourist hotels in Jaisalmer and industries all need water too, so competition for it is increasing.

However, extreme temperatures are also a major challenge. Summer temperatures regularly exceed 45 °C, and Phalodi reached about 51 °C in 2016. The heat limits outdoor work, causes heat stress in livestock and makes tourism very seasonal. It also makes the water challenge worse, because high temperatures cause rapid evaporation from canals and fields.

Inaccessibility is the third challenge. The Thar covers a large area with scattered villages linked by sandy tracks, so it is expensive to build roads, transport goods and provide services. For some developments, such as the oil field at Barmer or large solar parks such as Bhadla, inaccessibility and the cost of pipelines and power lines may be a bigger challenge than water, because these developments need relatively little of it.

Overall, I think water supply is the greatest challenge, because farming, settlements and tourism all depend on it and it affects the largest number of people. Extreme temperatures and inaccessibility are significant, but the high temperatures matter most because they increase water loss. For energy and mining developments, inaccessibility may be more important, so the greatest challenge depends partly on the type of development.