Pakistani woman Roma Juma makes tea for guests using her smoke-free stove. Fuel-efficient stoves can help prevent deforestation and conserve watersheds. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

By Jewel Fraser
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Jul 7 2014 (IPS)

Global institutions are still in the learning phase when it comes to successfully managing water and energy in an integrated manner as part of the quest for sustainable development.

According to World Bank official Daryl Fields, understanding the water-energy nexus is critical for addressing growth and human development, urbanisation and climate change, but many policy-makers are finding it challenging to transform this concept into a reality."There is no escape from the fact that the need and demand for finite and vulnerable water resources will continue to expand and so will competition for it." -- Dr. Mohamed Ait-Kadi

Fields, who is also a Technical Committee member of the Global Water Partnership, was speaking at a recent meeting of the GWP Consulting Partners, held in Trinidad for the first time.

“We are left with a lot of opportunities and many questions and a fair amount of work to do,” she said.

According to the Stockholm Environment Institute, “Climate change is also likely to aggravate pressure on resources and so add to the vulnerability of people and ecosystems, particularly in water scarce and [water] marginal regions.”

Fields said “network” was a more appropriate term than “nexus” because of the many linkages involved and the mutual dependence of energy and water. Energy affects water quality through discharges and effluence, as well as through its impact on the reliability of water supply and the cost of maintaining that supply, because energy is needed to pump water to consumers.

On the other hand, she said, water quality affects the ability to provide energy. As an example, she cited a hydropower plant in India whose equipment suffered erosion because of sediment in the water used by its turbines. As well, there was the issue of salinisation.

Hence, she said, there is “a virtuous cycle. You reduce the need for water and you reduce the need for energy.”

She said that the challenge of managing water and energy in an integrated fashion was compounded by the extreme differences between the two. Those working in the two industries often spoke different “languages”, had different perspectives and a different way of looking at things.

Stressing the urgent water challenges facing nations, Dr. Mohamed Ait-Kadi, chair of the GWP Technical Committee, pointed out that water-scarce regions now account for about 36 percent of the global population and 22 percent of global GDP. He said demand for water had grown 600 times during the 21st century.

“Good water management is important to [sustainable] growth and for building resilience to climate change,” he said. “There is no escape from the fact that the need and demand for finite and vulnerable water resources will continue to expand and so will competition for it.”

Nevertheless, GWP’s experience in Africa shows that water managers are finding practical, yet simple solutions to the water crisis, while taking into account the energy needs of communities.

Andrew Takawira, senior programme officer, GWP-Africa, Water, Climate and Development Programme (WACDEP) Coordination Unit, was in Trinidad for the conference and shared with IPS the work GWP-Africa is doing to successfully integrate water management with energy needs.

The WACDEP programme in Africa comprises Tunisia, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Rwanda, Burundi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. It seeks to ensure that water issues and the capacity to deal with climate change issues that affect water within those countries are strengthened.

Takawira told IPS that in the Lake Cyhoha catchment, a basin shared by Burundi and Rwanda, people were cutting down trees for fuel, leading to deforestation that adversely affected the watershed.

WACDEP created a buffer zone around the watershed by planting trees, and with the help of partners in the two countries provided alternative sources of energy for the people in the area, namely, more fuel-efficient stoves and biogas digesters.

He said his organisation realised that water management requires a broad-based approach to meet the vital needs a community may have.

“They still need the energy. We are learning that you have to go broader. That is why it is important to tackle water, food and energy issues together. What you want to do as water managers is ensure the watersheds are managed properly. [But] if you tell them to stop cutting trees, what are they going to cook with?”

He cited a second example showing the interconnection of water and energy. In Cameroon, people wanted to be close to the river to easily access water, which created problems like siltation and reduction of plant coverage. Those problems could become disastrous in times of flood or drought.

Takawira explained that intensive activity near the riverbank loosens the soil and causes siltation. Siltation in turn reduces the amount of water stored in river dams, which would prove detrimental during times of drought.

Moving people away from the river is important for dealing with floods also, he explained, since occupation of river banks tends to reduce the vegetation that slows down and absorbs flood waters.

To deal with the problem, WACDEP in Africa encouraged the Cameroonians to move farther inland by providing them with pipes so that they could easily get water. However, energy was needed to move the water through the pipes and so the organization also provided solar energy to pump the water to people’s properties.

Takawira said WACDEP in Africa was “delivering on the ground” as far as working with communities and government institutions to ensure water security and reduce vulnerabilities to climate variability and change.

GWP-C’s Dr. Natalie Boodram said GWP in the Caribbean had learnt much from the experiences of their partners in Africa, since there were many similarities in the two regions’ situation. She said GWP-C had particularly benefited from learning about the capacity-building strategy of GWP-Africa.

Rainwater harvesting is practised in the rural areas of Trinidad, though this open, unfiltered method poses hazards that the design promoted by the Global Water Partnership-Caribbean seeks to avoid. Credit: Jewel Fraser/IPS

By Jewel Fraser
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Oct 27 2013 (IPS)

A centuries-old system for ensuring water security is making a comeback in the Caribbean.

It’s known as rainwater harvesting, and it is now becoming a formal part of the region’s strategic planning in the face of not only more and stronger storms, but droughts as well. By 2100, there could be a 20 to 30 percent decrease in precipitation, research shows, making every drop count."The first thing to go in hurricanes is the water." -- Lovaan Superville of NIHERST

“Rainwater harvesting is, in fact, seen as one of the important tools to ensure resilience and redundancy in Caribbean water supplies, in particular to augment existing municipal water supplies,” Dr. Natalie Boodram, manager of the Global Water Partnership-Caribbean (GWP-C), told IPS. “Rainwater can provide a backup water supply in case of disruption.”

One advantage is that the technology is already in place, with many householders, especially in rural areas, creating catchments for rainwater running off of their roofs to supply them with water for daily household use. In the Virgin Islands, slightly more than half of homes use RWH to supply all their water needs.

An estimated 500,000 people in the region at least partially depend on RWH, with the heaviest users including Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, the Turks and Caicos and the Grenadines.

Earlier this month, ministers from the Caribbean Community meeting in Barbados launched a Water, Climate and Development Programme for the Caribbean (WACDEP) that promotes rainwater harvesting as one of the approaches to secure the region’s water supplies.

While RWH has existed for hundreds of years, Boodram says that municipal systems which depend on surface water supplies have displaced it in many parts of the Caribbean, so there’s a need to “re-establish a rainwater harvesting culture in the region.”

The GWP-C has undertaken a number of Caribbean rainwater harvesting projects, as part of its parent body’s worldwide initiative to support the integration of water security and climate change adaptation into development planning.

The aim was to eliminate some of the common problems associated with rainwater harvesting, such as “exposure to air pollution, animal droppings, contaminants from poorly maintained roofs, among other debris,” Boodram explained.

The technology promoted by GWP-C with the help of its partners, particularly the Caribbean Environmental Health Institute, involves a first-flush diverter.

“The first-flush system which forms the bottom part of the downpipe is used to divert the initial water with pollutants from the roof, ensuring that these do not enter the water tank/storage device being used. The first flow of water containing roof debris would then settle at the bottom of the downpipe with the cleaner water settling on top, allowing clean water to enter the storage component,” she explained.

That design was used by Trinidad and Tobago’s National Institute of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology (NIHERST), which partnered with GWP-C to introduce rainwater harvesting technology to rural communities in Trinidad “with a focus on outfitting disaster shelters, namely, schools,” said NIHERST Senior Project Officer Lovaan Superville.

“Because of climate change, we need to be disaster prepared,” she said, adding that “the first thing to go in hurricanes is the water.”

NIHERST outfitted 15 schools with the rainwater harvesting technology, and provided a few of them with solar panels as a backup energy source as well. To ensure maintenance, Superville said they trained about 25 persons in each community, that is, Toco, Moruga, and Barrackpore.

“The materials used to make the rainwater harvesters are easily available, easy to clean. It’s out of local materials and so it is not expensive,” she said. “Any plumber or electrician, once trained in how our system works, can easily duplicate them.”

Interviews with the principals of some of the schools in Trinidad’s southeast communities of Moruga and Barrackpore confirm that the rainwater harvesters have thus far been a success.

Benjamin Santoo, the principal of Rochard Douglas Presbyterian school, told IPS that when the school cleaned the tap water tank, “it has four inches of slush. When we clean the rainwater tanks, we have no such problem.”

“Water used to come once a month [through the mains],” he added. “We depended on water trucks to give us water Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Because of the school population, 500-plus, the water that we had was not enough for both drinking and flushing toilets.”

In many instances, schools received pipeborne water from the municipal supply only twice a week, sometimes less. With the installation of the rainwater harvesters, they have been able to save the pipeborne water for drinking and use the rainwater for flushing toilets, watering gardens, and carrying out school projects.

Dr.  Henry Smith is director of the Water Resources Research Institute, University of the Virgin Islands, where low groundwater resources have made it difficult to ensure a steady water supply.

“Rainwater harvesting at individual installations allows users access to a source that they can manage independently to their benefit as they develop a good understanding of their own needs, what they can expect from rainfall in their local area, and also what other sources of water might be available to them,” he told IPS.

“Harvesting can be a low-cost alternative, or supplement, that is based on relatively simple technology that could make a major difference to many people who might otherwise not be provided for as a result of climate change.”