Water scarcity affects several African countries. The UN estimates that the number of people with insufficient access to water at least one month a year will surpass 5 billion by 2050. Credit: Orazgeldiyew / Creative Commons

By Vladimir Smakhtin
HAMILTON, Canada, Oct 7 2021 (IPS)

It is not uncommon for a water-centric research, policy or development organization or network to declare its long-term vision of the “water-secure world”. It reads nicely and feels great.

And it is intuitive and logical to perceive that a water-secure world is the one where “water security” is ensured. In every country.

The concept of “water security” has emerged on the global stage primarily over the last two decades. Its shortest and most elegant definition says water security is a “tolerable level of water-related risk to society.”

A conceptual framework of water security based on a more comprehensive definition encompasses various needs and conditions that should be taken into account — water for drinking, economic activity, ecosystems, hazard resilience, governance, transboundary cooperation, financing, and political stability.

Hence water security is not just about how much natural water a country has, although this matters a lot, but also how well the resource is managed.

Water security is considered a unifying concept that can help coordinate efforts towards a common goal. This common goal, however, remains unclear. Absolute water security simply does not and will never exist anywhere.

The devil, as usual, is in the details: how do you define “tolerable”, adequate”, “acceptable” — and other adjectives and variables that reflect the uncertainty normally associated with water security measures?

Perhaps the most advanced initiative to measure water security, started almost a decade ago with regular updates, is the Asian Water Development Outlook. It largely follows the principles of the water security conceptual framework noted above and employs over 50 indices to rate various aspects of it.

The most recent Outlook (2020) suggests that New Zealand, Japan and Australia are the most water secure nations in Asia-Pacific region, while Afghanistan is the most water insecure.

This is hardly surprising: the more developed a country is, the more effective its water management, the higher its water security ranking, even if the country’s water resources are limited.

Also, such regionally focused assessments compare a limited selection of countries and essentially reflect relative “status” rather than how close or far the countries are from achieving some global standards or milestones.

The uncertainty surrounding water security measures therefore prevails. All this has implications for development.

An obvious one is that the water-secure world we envision is either a mirage or a “nirvana concept.” The first is deceiving, the second unachievable. Either way, the focus created by imprecision is on movement, not on result, and conveniently excuses not knowing where we are going.

It may be argued, for example, that water security underpins, albeit implicitly, the global development Agenda 2030, including Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 (entirely dedicated to water) and other water-related targets scattered through the SDG continuum.

Yet, similarly to water security itself, such SDG targets are either left “strategically vague” or simply undefined. Only SDG targets 6.1: universal (i.e. 100% in every country) water supply; 6.2: universal (i.e. 100% in every country) sanitation; and 6.3: halving (i.e. 50%, without country specifics) the proportion of untreated wastewater globally are explicitly quantitative.

Unclear, though, is whether their achievement by 2030 was politically or scientifically motivated. (The role of science, or lack thereof, in global water development is another debate).

From this standpoint, it is not surprising that the water-related SDGs set in 2015 have clearly turned out to be over-ambitious; indeed, it was conceded, even before the pandemic hit, that SDG6, for example, is off-track.

Going forward it may be more practical to define and quantify some globally acceptable water security standards — e.g. evolving, functional, optimal, or similar categories.

A country’s water status can then be seen in a context of these standards, and that, in turn, can help define action plans with a visible target.

Furthermore, the visibility horizons should be immediate short-term — five years or less — so that accountability is not passed to succeeding generations of experts, policymakers and politicians.

Water security standards need to relate directly to the number, type and scale of problems. To move from one standard to another, problems need to be eradicated, not just mitigated.

The “movement” towards nirvana water security may then become at least well-structured. Achievements and remaining gaps should be easier to see and articulate. And water science could finally play a central, practical role in the process.

Going even further, a water security philosophy may not even be necessary at all if we simply focus on solving — i.e. eradicating well-known water problems in a process designed with short steps and clearly measurable results, which should be realized in every generation.

Sadly, looking back at the last 50 years, it is hard to see a single global or regional water problem that has been, indeed, eradicated. And, accordingly, not a single country can currently boast that it is, indeed, water secure.

So much for a water-secure world.

Vladimir Smakhtin is the Director at the UN University’s Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health, which is supported by the Government of Canada and hosted at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. The Institute marks its 25th anniversary in 2021.

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Open sewage in Uganda slum. Credit: I. Jurga, SuSanA

By Vladimir Smakhtin
HAMILTON, Canada, Mar 19 2020 (IPS)

As the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic spreads, guidance on how wash your hands and other measures intensifies.

These recommendations are important, but they are hardly of value to the 40% of humanity lacking access to even the most basic hand washing requirements — soap and water ¹.

In most African countries or India, the proportion is even higher – between 50% and 80% of the population.

Even many health centres lack facilities for hand hygiene and safe segregation and disposal of health care waste ².

In the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), basic water services are absent in 55% of health centers, used by an estimated 900 million people — more than the population of the USA and Europe combined.

More than 1 million deaths each year – newborns and mothers – are associated with unclean births. Overall, poor sanitation and a lack of safe drinking water take the lives of an estimated 4.3 million people annually ³.

This ongoing health crisis — a “water illness pandemic” in all but official definition — has been around for generations but, unlike COVID-19, hardly makes a ripple in international news.

It is unfair to say nothing has been done about it, but progress is so slow ^{4 5} that many members of vulnerable groups are likely to continue dying without ever having known what it means to have clean water within a five minute walk, much less a home tap.

Since the year 2000, this hidden water pandemic has quietly killed more people than World War II ⁶.

And it is on pace to kill over 40 million more — roughly equal to the population of Canada — in the next 10 years, by which time the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN’s Agenda 2030 are supposed to have been met.

Those 17 goals include one that aims to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.”

During the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) crisis of 2002-2003, nearly 8,100 people were infected and nearly 800 died. COVID-19 is much less deadly but has already infected 25 times as many people. So, human losses are now over 10 times more than those due to SARS and they keep growing.

Be that as it may, even as COVID-19 takes more lives in the remainder of 2020 despite all efforts of health care providers, and all the measures already taken by governments around the world, the toll will almost surely be dwarfed by the four million people likely to die this year from the lack of safe WAter, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH).

And the water pandemic deaths will not make headlines.

Those who die due to the water pandemic are, naturally, poor. They do not trade or travel internationally, they do not have mortgages, they do not buy insurance. Callous world financial markets pay little attention.

The ongoing water pandemic is even more distressing because many prerequisites for eradicating it already exist. We know how many people do not have WASH, and we know where they live. We even know precisely what to do — the technologies needed are available, including low-cost ones.

The problem is primarily a lack of political will and finance, and each, of course, connects to the other.

The water pandemic is not particularly “sexy,” nor visible in the myriad of other problems that many countries face. Even a decent politician who makes it a priority issue will likely be distracted within her or his term.

As for financing, about 20 years ago we needed an estimated USD 24 billion per year on average over 10 years to bring low-cost, safe water and sanitation to all those who needed it then (inclusive of population growth) ⁷.

That was probably an underestimate, but even that number was never met. And the shortfall of some USD 17 billion was about equal to annual pet food purchases in Europe and USA…

The absolute numbers required now have not changed much — roughly USD 28 billion per year (from 2015 to 2030) to extend basic WASH services to all those unserved ⁸. With “safely managed” “continuously available,” and “improved” services, the annual requirement rises to USD 114 billion. Yet, four years into the SDG era, we have not been able to meet the required financing levels even for basic services.

To meet the goals by 2030, we will, naturally, need more in the remaining decade, but it is difficult to express optimism that this will be achieved, even though the investment required represents just around 3% of NATO’s total annual military spending.

It would also be naive to think that suddenly the world would focus entirely on the water pandemic.

And, let’s face it, resolving a big development problem like the lack of WASH requires political stability and the absence of corruption, neither of which is the case in many of the most acute problem areas. So, most likely and unfortunately, progress will only continue slowly.

Can today’s coronavirus crisis “help” accelerate this progress? It might, if the virus seriously hits the countries with low levels of WASH and that, in turn, elevates even higher the risks and levels of infection in wealthier countries.

Only then funds might flow, motivated by self-interest of the world’s most fortunate people. The world really needs to “internalize” caring about the lack of WASH to resolve it. One wonders if it ever will.

So, for the time being, at the very least, stay safe from COVID-19 yourself. Wipe your desk and wash your hands, if you are lucky enough to have water.

¹ www.washdata.org
² https://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/publications/wash-in-health-care-facilities-global-report/en/
³ https://www.voanews.com/archive/who-waterborne-disease-worlds-leading-killer
⁴ https://www.unwater.org/publication_categories/sdg-6-synthesis-report-2018-on-water-and-sanitation/
⁵ https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/24978Report_of_the_SG_on_SDG_Progress_2019.pdf
⁶ https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/casualties-of-world-war-ii/
⁷ http://archive.unu.edu/env/water/2000-waterday.html
⁸ Hutton, G. and Varughese, M. (2016) The Costs of Meeting the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal Targets on Drinking Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene. Summary Report. World Bank Group, 11 pp

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Though most developed countries treat sewage, treatment levels do not generally remove nutrients from the wastewater that is discharged. One exception is the state of Maryland (U.S.) where all major sewage treatment plants are required to upgrade to enhanced nutrient removal technologies that will remove most of the nutrients from the wastewater. Credit: Chesapeake Bay Program

By Manzoor Qadir and Vladimir Smakhtin
HAMILTON, Canada, Feb 5 2020 (IPS)

Vast amounts of valuable energy, agricultural nutrients, and water could be recovered from the world’s fast-growing volume of municipal wastewater.

Some 380 billion cubic meters (1 m3 = 1000 litres) of wastewater are produced annually worldwide — five times the amount of water passing over Niagara Falls annually. That’s enough to fill Africa’s Lake Victoria in roughly seven years, Lake Ontario in four.

Furthermore, wastewater volumes are increasing quickly, with a projected rise of roughly 24% by 2030, 51% by 2050.

Looked at another way, the volume of wastewater roughly equals the annual discharge from the Ganges River in India. By the mid-2030s, it will roughly equal the annual volume flowing through the St. Lawrence River, which drains North America’s five Great Lakes.

Among major nutrients, 16.6 million metric tonnes of nitrogen are embedded in the world’s current annual volume of wastewater, together with 3 million metric tonnes of phosphorus and 6.3 million metric tonnes of potassium.

Theoretically, the recovery of these nutrients could offset 13.4% of global agricultural demand for them.

Recovery of these nutrients in that quantity could generate revenue of $13.6 billion globally at current prices: $9.0 billion in nitrogen, $2.3 billion in phosphorus, and $2.3 billion in potassium.

The energy embedded in wastewater, meanwhile, could provide electricity to 158 million households — roughly the number of households in the USA and Mexico combined.

Beyond the economic gains, environmental benefits of recovering these nutrients include minimizing eutrophication — the phenomenon of excess nutrients causing dense plant growth and aquatic animal deaths due to lack of oxygen.

In its new study, funded by the Government of Canada, the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) provide these estimates and projections based on a new analysis of the world’s total annual wastewater production.

In many countries, official data on wastewater is often scattered, poorly monitored and reported, or simply unavailable. Nonetheless, our study offers important approximations of global and regional wastewater volumes and insights into its potential benefits.

Our study found that Asia is the largest wastewater producing region by volume — an estimated 159 billion cubic meters, representing 42% of urban wastewater generated globally, with that proportion expected to rise to 44% by 2030.

Other top wastewater-producing regions: North America (67 billion cubic meters) and Europe (68 billion cubic meters) — virtually equal volumes despite Europe’s higher urban population (547 million vs. North America’s 295 million).

The difference is explained by per capita generation: Europeans 124 cubic meters; North Americans 231 cubic meters).

By contrast, Sub-Saharan Africa produces 46 cubic meters of wastewater per capita — about half the global average (95 cubic meters), reflecting limited water supply and poorly-managed wastewater collection systems in most urban settings.

Achieving a high rate of return on wastewater resource recovery will require overcoming a range of constraints. But success would significantly advance progress against the Sustainable Development Goals and others, including adaptation to climate change, ‘net-zero’ energy processes, and a green, circular economy.

It is important to note that many innovative technologies are available today and are being refined to narrow the gap between current and potential resource recovery levels. In the case of phosphorous, for example, recovery rates of up to 90% are already possible.

Also needed to advance progress: to leverage private capital by creating a supportive regulatory and financial environment, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where most municipal wastewater still goes into the environment untreated.

Municipal wastewater was and often still is simply deemed to be filth. However, attitudes are changing with the growing recognition of the enormous potential economic returns and other environmental benefits its proper management represents.

As the demands for freshwater grow and scarce water resources are increasingly stressed, ignoring the opportunity for greater use of safely-managed wastewater is an unthinkable waste.

We hope this study helps inspire the development of national action plans leading to wastewater collection and resource recovery and reuse.

Safely managed, wastewater is a key achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 6.3, which calls on the world to halve the proportion of untreated wastewater, and to substantially increase its recycling and safe reuse globally by 2030.

*The paper, “Global and regional potential of wastewater as water, nutrient, and energy source,” is published by Wiley in Natural Resources Forum, a UN Sustainable Development Journal. Co-authors: Manzoor Qadir, Praem Mehta, UNU-INWEH, Canada; Younggy Kim, McMaster University, Canada; Blanca Jiménez Cisneros, UNAM, Mexico; Pay Drechsel, IWMI, Sri Lanka; Amit Pramanik, Water Research Foundation, USA; Oluwabusola Olaniyan, Winnipeg Water and Waste Department, Canada.

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The Aral Sea Basin, defined in red, straddles six countries in Central Asia. See detailed map in full at http://bit.ly/2BQPpRm. Credit: UNU-INWEH

By Stefanos Xenarios, Iskandar Abdullaev and Vladimir Smakhtin
NUR-SULTAN CITY, Kazakhstan, Nov 7 2019 (IPS)

The water resources in Central Asia’s Aral Sea Basin support the lives and livelihoods of about 70 million people — a population greater than Thailand, France, or South Africa.

And unless well-funded and coordinated joint efforts are stepped up, with competition replaced by cooperation, ongoing over-withdrawals compounded by climate change will cause dangerous water shortages in this huge, highly complex watershed spanning six nations: Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

That’s the key message of a new book co-authored by 57 regional and international experts from 14 countries and the United Nations, who spent years examining a suite of challenges in the Aral Sea Basin.

The new book assembles the views of nearly all major regional and international experts on the great challenges faced in the Aral Sea Basin. They include three co-authors from the UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health, in Hamilton, Canada.

And almost half of the authors are based in Central Asia, creating a unique blend of regional and international voices and expertise on these critical issues.

The Basin’s two major rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, discharge now only about 10% of what flowed into the Aral Sea until the 1960s, shrinking the sea by more than 80 percent — “one of the world’s most severe and emblematic environmental disasters.”

Freshwater is key to food, energy, environmental security and social stability among the six Aral Basin countries. And given the countries’ prospective economic and population growth, reliance on water resources will increase, compelling cooperation in sharing benefits and reducing costs.

Intensive, wasteful irrigated farming when the nations were part of the Soviet Union was the main cause of the Aral Sea drying up and irrigation continues to consume about 90 percent of the total water withdrawal in the Basin, with agriculture contributing from 10 to 45 percent of GDP, and 20 to 50 percent of rural employment.

Most irrigation, hydropower and other water-related infrastructural systems and facilities are in transition, a blend today of past and present. Unfortunately, the existing observational meteorological and hydrological networks in the Basin, which declined in the 1990s when the Soviet period ended, are insufficient to support informed water management, and regional water data sharing is suboptimal.

Degradation of land and water are among the major hindrances to sustainable development in the region, with land degradation alone estimated to cost about US$3 billion of losses in ecosystem services annually.

There has been uneven progress across the countries on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and particularly Goal 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), with contrasting progress also between urban and rural populations within each nation, most particularly Afghanistan.

The new book suggests a number of interventions and initiatives to end and reverse deterioration of the Aral Basin. For example, if existing large hydropower projects were managed in a collaborative manner, they can bring all countries multiple benefits, including improved reliability of supply and availability of water for agriculture, domestic use and electricity generation.

Monitoring of snow and glaciers in high altitude mountain areas, as well as permafrost, is essential for sound estimates of water availability and water-related hazards. Such systems need to be re-installed.

Also needed: institutions for decentralized management of natural resources, such as water user associations to promote cooperative, sustainable, intra-regional management between upstream and downstream countries and integrated rural development approaches.

Existing regional frameworks must either be reformed or replaced by new mechanisms of cooperation in order to successfully translate political will into highly effective, integrated regional water management.

Reforming the water sector, however, goes well beyond new policies and initiatives, updating the legislative framework, and building new institutions. A key challenge is to achieve continuous, strong, high-level political engagement throughout the Basin countries, the active participation of stakeholders, and technical and financial support.

The Aral Basin’s many water-related issues must be addressed jointly by all involved states within the concept that water, energy, and food issues represent a critical, interlinked nexus of needs.

Major geopolitical and economic development interests are placing increasing pressure on countries of the Basin to end resource competition and find a way to closer cooperation and effective pursuit of their shared interests.

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When a natural disaster strikes, people are sometimes left with no choice but to leave the areas affected. Yet, for some, even this option might not exist. Cyclone survivors in Myanmar shelter in the ruins of their destroyed home. Credit: UNHCR/Taw Naw Htoo

By Vladimir Smakhtin
HAMILTON, Canada, Oct 11 2018 (IPS)

Almost every day we hear news about catastrophic flooding or drought somewhere in the world. And many nations and regions are on track for even more extreme water problems within a generation, the latest IPCC report warns.

Extreme floods and droughts have a profound impact on development, particularly in less developed parts of the world. About 140 million people are affected — displaced by the loss of incomes or homes — and close to 10,000 people worldwide die annually from these twin calamities. Global annual economic losses from floods and droughts exceeds US$ 40 billion; add in damages from storms like America’s recent Hurricanes Florence and Michael, and cost numbers balloon.

Flood and drought economic losses — comparable in dollar terms to all global development aid — strongly affect the water, food and energy security of nations.

To help cope with these problems, massive investments continue to be made in large reservoirs.

However, in certain regions it has started to make little engineering sense to build additional “grey (concrete and steel) infrastructure” due to a lack of suitable sites and / or rapid evaporation. In others, aging grey infrastructure may no longer provide their originally envisioned benefits because hydrological parameters and patterns are changing.

The appropriate response is to recognize the benefits of “green (natural ecosystems) infrastructure” and to design grey and green infrastructure in tandem to maximize benefits for people, nature and the economy.

Such “Nature-Based Solutions” were the theme of this year’s UN World Water Development Report.

Nature-Based Solutions include, for example:
• soil moisture retention systems, and groundwater recharge to enhance water availability
• natural and constructed wetlands and riparian buffer strips to improve water quality, and
• floodplain restoration to reduce risks associated with water‐related disasters and climate change

The role of green water storage infrastructure is particularly important. The enormous potential of such approaches are only now being fully understood but its clear that green infrastructure can directly improve the performance of grey infrastructure for disaster risk reduction.

Indeed, large-scale managed aquifer recharge efforts can, in certain conditions, alleviate both flood and drought risks in the same river basin.

Recent studies suggest that, in a river basin greater than 150,000 km2 in area, with only 200 km2 of land converted for accelerated groundwater recharge in wetter years, agricultural income could be boosted by about US$ 200 million per year. Not only is additional water made available to farmers in drier periods, downstream flooding costs can be eliminated. And the capital investment required could be recouped in a decade or less.

Such sustainable, cost-effective and scalable solutions may be especially relevant in developing countries, where water-related disaster vulnerability has risen to unprecedented levels and the impacts of climate change will be most acutely felt.

Nature-Based Solutions are not feasible everywhere and, where they would help, they alone are not the silver bullet solution for water risks and variability — they cannot be counted on to replace or achieve the full risk reduction effect of grey infrastructure.

Nevertheless, Nature-Based Solutions need to be considered in all water management planning and practiced where possible. Especially at river basin and regional scales, management planning should consider a range of surface and subsurface storage options, not just large concrete dams.

The challenges include:
• an overwhelming dominance of traditional grey infrastructure thinking and practices (and associated inertia against Nature-Based Solutions)
• the need for more quantitative data on the effects of Nature-Based Solutions
• a lack of understanding of how to integrate natural and built infrastructure for managing water extremes
• overall lack of capacity to implement Nature-Based Solutions; and
• a pre-dominantly reactive rather than proactive approach to water-related disaster management. Nature-Based Solutions have much greater potential if included in risk reduction planning and adopted before disaster strikes.

These challenges will take time to overcome, but there is hope.

The UN General Assembly has designated 13 October as the International Day for Disaster Reduction, which this year has taken the theme of reducing economic losses from disasters.

The theme corresponds to a target of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 – which underlines the need to shift from mostly post-disaster planning and recovery to proactive disaster risk reduction and calls for strategies with a range of ecosystem-based solutions.

Meanwhile, some 25 targets within 10 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of UN Agenda 2030 either explicitly or implicitly address various aspects of water-related disaster management.

The obvious synergies between all these targets will increasingly strengthen if Nature-Based Solutions are seen as a supporting concept to all of them.

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The catchment area of the Katse Dam in Lesotho, which flows into South Africa. Credit: Campbell Easton/IPS

By Vladimir Smakhtin
HAMILTON, Canada , Mar 19 2018 (IPS)

“You cannot manage what you do not measure” is a long-familiar saying to many, nowhere more so than in professional water circles at almost every level.

Just as you cannot manage your bank account without knowing how much money you have, it is all but impossible to make informed water management decisions without reliable, sufficient, and freely available water data. Obtaining such data, however (or accessing data from other nations — some of which see security risks in sharing), has always proven difficult.

Knowing the variability of water flows in rivers, for example, requires measurements made over time at many different locations.

Surprisingly, despite its obvious importance and value, river flow data collection has been declining for decades now, with literally thousands of gauging stations in many countries, including large ones like USA, Canada, Russia, and Australia — closed in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.

River flow in most developing countries of the global South has never been measured well (and what was measured was seldom properly archived).

Even more limited observed data are available on groundwater, or on withdrawals and abstractions from aquifers and various other water sources globally.

In “un-gauged” river basins, (i.e. those in most of the world), we typically rely on mathematical models to simulate hydrology, to predict the impact of water management options, or to develop future scenarios based on changing climate or other drivers of change.

Global models help us to “think globally” but do not help to “act locally” — they are just too coarse for that.

And all models are, naturally, simplifications of reality; they require calibration through on-the-ground observations.

Understanding of the importance of various water data seems lacking beyond the water community. It is not a ‘sexy’ subject, does not hit the headlines. Nor does water data collection attract sufficient funding.

It is also not a “quick win.” Observed data collection should span at least 30 years at the same location so that natural variability and / or trends can be captured. Supporting such long-term monitoring is often beyond the short-term interests associated with political careers; and there are, of course, always more burning issues to deal with.

It seems increasingly unlikely, therefore, that the water sector’s need for data can be met by traditional – i.e. on-the-ground – approaches. Satellite technologies offer a promising solution.

Remotely sensed data on land-use and precipitation are already commonly used as input to water models – to simulate river flow and other water components in un-gauged river basins. But it is probably timely to ask if satellite data can help us do switch even more radically from traditional on-the ground observations to direct measurements by satellite of river flow, and all other components of the water cycle and all water uses.

It is not hard to imagine that we could measure water flows using orbiting technology with reliable accuracy. In fact, it is coming close to that. Already a car’s license plate can be read from space, and some remote sensing technologies are able to penetrate water and soil.

Also, the accuracy of on-the-ground “observations” themselves may be overrated. Some of them are not much different from “modelled” ones: water discharge is not regularly measured but essentially derived from measured water level.

Putting new technologies to work at large scale in the water world may have found its time.

Direct water observations obtained via satellites could be made at a much larger number of locations, and will, naturally, cross the national boundaries, making such new data sharing unrestricted. They may also accelerate the sharing of existing conventional observed national water data, as otherwise they could quickly become obsolete.

In a brilliant, witty commentary in 2007, Stuart Hamilton predicted that “…the 2000s will be remembered as the last decade of real hydrology. We entered this decade with hydrology based on data, but we will be leaving this decade with pseudo-hydrology based on pseudo data.”

Looking back today, it indeed looks like that prediction quietly materialized. We are leaving future generations with little new systematically obtained and well-maintained observed data, but just sophisticated models and industrial-scale simulated data. And the sheer volume and variety of such data, which Hamilton referred to as “genetically modified observations,” inhibits our ability to digest them. We moved from one unresolved problem (the need for sufficient, accurate on-the ground observations) to another (regular remote sensing measurements that are not yet entirely fit for purpose).

But there is growing hope that our water data needs will one day be met. Goal 6 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to be achieved by 2030, concerns the global water challenge and includes measurable indicators of progress. These indicators compel countries join the quest for accurate quantification of national water resources – river flow, groundwater and water withdrawals.

And recently the High-Level Panel on Water launched a focused “data initiative” that aims to overcome all data-related hurdles on the way to achieving the SDGs.

We have the means to do much better in measurement of water. And when that potential is realized, perhaps then we will do much better, globally and locally, managing this vital resource as well.

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