Access to clean, affordable and safe drinking water is far from universal across Africa. Credit: Joyce Chimbi

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Mar 23 2022 (IPS)

Joan Waweru was among villagers on their regular trek to the river to fetch water when they discovered a neighbour’s dead body, believed to have committed suicide by drowning in river Kamiti.

She was thirteen years old and recalls how even after the traumatizing incident, the village, and many others along river Kamiti, which runs along coffee plantations in Kiambu County of Kenya’s Central region, continued to rely on the river as their primary source of water for all domestic purposes.

Ten years on, she tells IPS that the river is still the primary water source for her family and many other households in Kiaibabu village.

“My mother still walks about three kilometres to the river and back, one trip in the morning and another in the evening. So, in total, she walks six kilometres every day to fetch 60 litres of water. She carries a 20-litre container on her back and two 5-litre containers on each hand,” she says.

“River Maing’oroti is about a kilometre away from our house, but over the years, the river has become a small stream, and it takes a lot of time to fill up a 20-litre container.”

The UN estimates show that just like Waweru’s mother, the average woman in rural Africa walks six kilometres every day to fetch 40 litres of water. Kenya is classified as a water-scarce country as only approximately 56 percent of the population has access to clean water.

As the global community marks World Water Day on March 22 under the theme ‘Groundwater: making the invisible visible’, UN research predicts water scarcity in Africa could reach dangerously high levels by 2025.

With one in three people in Africa facing water scarcity, access to clean, affordable, and safe drinking water is far from universal across the continent.

On average, people in sub-Saharan Africa travel 30 minutes daily to access water. According to UN estimates, the sub-Saharan Africa region loses 40 billion hours per year collecting water.

In the absence of clean and easily accessible water, research shows families and communities, particularly in rural Africa and informal urban settlements, will remain locked in generational poverty.

In August 2021, UNICEF revealed that “nearly nine of 10 children in North Africa live in areas of high or extremely high-water stresses with serious consequences on their health, nutrition, cognitive development and future livelihoods.”

Against this backdrop, the World Health Organization says that there is an economic gain or return of between three to 34 US dollars for every dollar invested in water sanitation.

The capital cost required to secure safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene for all people in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI) estimates, is 35 billion US dollars per year.

Experts in natural resources such as Simon Peter Njuguna from Kenya’s Ministry of Water, Sanitation and Irrigation say securing safe drinking water for all requires exploring, protecting, and sustainably using groundwater.

Groundwater, he says, is critical to human survival and in adapting to climate change because it holds vast quantities of water and feeds springs, rivers, lakes, wetlands, and oceans.

Home to 677 lakes, Njuguna tells IPS that Africa has the largest volume of non-frozen water and that two-thirds of sub-Saharan Africa rely on surface water from lakes, rivers, wetlands and even oceans.

Despite large volumes of surface water, WRI research shows 400 million people in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to basic drinking water and that African countries face some of the highest water risks in the world.

Water scarcity in Africa, Njuguna tells IPS, is largely driven by a lack of investment in water infrastructure such as piping to bring water closer to the people.

In Kampala and Lagos, for instance, WRI estimates show only 15 percent of city residents have access to piped water.

“Water scarcity is also a consequence of changing weather patterns including unpredictable rainfall, low rainfall and rising temperatures,” he says.

Nairobi based food safety and security expert Evans Kori tells IPS that water drives Africa’s GDP and is central to food security.

WRI estimates show for 90 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s rural population, agriculture is the primary source of income. Water stresses due to changing weather patterns spell doom for the region because more than 95 percent of farming in sub-Saharan Africa relies on rainfall.

Kori says water is a major and critical factor of agricultural production and stresses that escalating water insecurity is as much a health and nutrition issue as it is a development issue.

“Serious investment in water-related infrastructure is urgently needed to ensure all people, and more so the most vulnerable households, have access to clean water. In Kenya, for instance, despite rivers increasingly becoming crime scenes where murdered people are dumped, for many rural households, the river is the only option,” he says.

He references river Yala which rises from the Rift Valley region and flows for approximately 219 kilometres into Lake Victoria in Kisumu County.

In January 2022, more than 20 bodies in various states of decomposition were retrieved from the river Yala after locals saw bodies floating on the surface.

“Yala is not an isolated incident. In June 2021, for example, more than 15 bodies were found in rivers within Murang’a County, and for many locals, these rivers are a primary source of water. Urgent intervention is needed because this is a health disaster,” Kori observes.

Even though surface water is considered unfit for human consumption unless first filtered and disinfected, safety is not a priority for millions of poor and vulnerable households across the African continent.

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Whether they like it or not, many Africans faced with the possibility of having to access water through prepaid meters have resorted to unprotected and often unclean sources of water because they cannot afford to pay. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 22 2018 (IPS)

As old and new challenges continue to threaten its access, the UN has dedicated the next decade in order to protect a crucial but fragile natural resource: water.

On World Water Day, the UN launched the “International Decade for Action: Water for Sustainable Development” which aims to mobilize implementation and cooperation on water issues as it relates to sustainable development.

Already, many are hopeful that the initiative will boost international commitment.

“It is an important initiative because it shines a light on water and sustainable development which came out of the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” Global Water Partnership’s (GWP) Head of Communications Steven Downey told IPS.

Unlike the previous Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the globally-adopted SDGs have a dedicated water goal that moves beyond issues of drinking water supply and sanitation. It includes targets to improve water quality by reducing pollution, increase water-use efficiency, implement integrated water resources management, and expand international cooperation and capacity-building.

Along with the MDGs was its own Water Action Decade from 2005-2015, which End Water Poverty’s International Coordinator Al-Hassan Adam said was insufficient.

Though such initiatives give political momentum to global water crises, it is also a time for reflection, he told IPS.

“The success of this decade depends on not repeating the same focus and messages that we had in the last decade,” Adam said.

Global Crises

Around the world, in both developed and developing countries, communities are coping with numerous dimensions of water crises.

“There’s not a place in the world that you can go to that isn’t having some kind of, if not crisis, water challenge,” Downey said.

According to a High Level Panel on Water (HLPW), more than two billion people live without safe drinking water, affecting their health, education, and livelihoods.

In the United States, the city of Flint, Michigan drew international attention when its drinking water was found to contains dangerously high levels of lead. Lead, which has a particularly damaging effect on children’s development, has threatened the health of more than 25,000 children in the area.

But unsafe drinking water is not unique to Flint. A new study found that more than 20 million Americans from California to New York used water from systems that did not meet quality levels in 2015. Contaminants found in the water included lead, arsenic, and fecal matter.

HLPW also found that approximately 3 billion people, almost half of the world’s population, are affected by water scarcity. Without action, this figure could rise to almost 6 billion by 2050, with as many as 700 million that could be displaced by severe water scarcity by 2030.

With limited water, the risk of conflicts is heightened.

While events in Syria have sparked fears about water scarcity driving civil war, tensions have been brewing in northeastern Africa over an Ethiopian mega-dam.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), being built on the Nile river, is set to be Africa’s largest hydroelectric power plant, which will boost Ethiopia’s energy production and economic growth.

Approximately 70 million Ethiopians lack access to electricity and one-third of its population live below the global poverty line.

With the energy-producing dam, industries and employment will be able to flourish, which will be crucial as Africa’s population is estimated to double by 2050.

However, the project is threatening to spark a geopolitical war over water between Ethiopia and Egypt, which has long relied on the Nile river.

The Nile supplies nearly 85 percent of all water in Egypt. While Egypt is already expected to see water shortages by 2025, the dam could exacerbate the issue.

“Water is a security issue,” Adam told IPS. “You can’t treat [water] as a zero sum game…there is room for cooperation,” he added.

Turning to Nature, Calling for Ownership

In order to meet emerging challenges to water security, new solutions are required.

“Sustainable water security will not be achieved through business-as-usual approaches,” UN World Water Development Report’s Editor-in-Chief Richard Connor told IPS.

In the new report, Connor and the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) proposes solutions that are based on nature to manage water better.

Such nature-based solutions (NBS) use and mimic natural processes to enhance water availability and improve water quality such as soil moisture retention, groundwater recharge, and natural and constructed wetlands.

Connor noted that communities have long relied on “grey” or man-made infrastructure such as dams which will not be enough to solve water-related issues.

NBS, which include green infrastructure, can substitute or work in parallel with grey infrastructure in a more sustainable, cost-effective way, he said.

The report pointed to the success of NBS in Rajasthan, India which saw excessive logging and one of the worst droughts in its history. Using NBS, the local community was able to replenish their rivers, boost groundwater levels, and increase productive farmland.

“Without a more rapid uptake of NBS, water security will continue to decline, and probably rapidly so,” Connor said.

Adam told IPS that while NBS is important, governments must also take action and ownership in working towards water-security.

“If you say nature-based solutions and governments sign a mining contract where mining companies can pollute water with impunity…if that’s the attitude, then it’s just rhetoric,” he said.

“It’s about governments having the guts to hold big polluters accountable…if we don’t have that ownership from governments, we will end up with the same results as we had previously,” Adam added.

Downey echoed similar sentiments, highlighting that water management has to be a national priority and that all stakeholders across sectors must be involved.

“Water is linked to every sector—energy, food, health, education,” he told IPS.

For Water Action Decade, GWP has already begun a series of support programs on water-related issues, including integrated water resource management and integrated drought management.

“Water is irreplaceable…If you don’t have water, what are you going to do? You can’t go drink diesel,” Adam said.

The Water Action Decade commences on World Water Day 22 March 2018 and ends on World Water Day, 22 March 2028.

Excerpt:

Clean water is still a pipe dream for more than 300 million Africans. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Doug Brown
TAMPA, Florida, Mar 21 2018 (IPS)

On World Water Day, March 22, universal access to clean water continues to be a privilege, when it should be a right. Experts predict that by 2030 the global water demand will exceed supply by 40%.

Despite the fact that our oceans and seas make up more than 97% of the earth’s water resources and half the world’s population lives no further than 40 miles from the water, we’re experiencing one water crisis after another. Adding to that frustration is the fact that solutions exist today which could ameliorate our water issues.

From the water shortage in Cape Town, South Africa — where the current supply is less than 90 days — to the well-documented issues in Flint, Michigan — where an outdated water delivery system delivered lead-tainted water to the city’s population — it is clear that steps must be taken to ensure an ongoing supply of clean water not only to drink, but to maintain the fabric of our society.

We rely on clean water to produce food, electricity, cars, clothing and myriad other things that are difficult to live without. In fact, even if you exclude irrigation, less than five percent of purified water is used for consumption; most of the supply is used for washing, flushing and manufacturing.

For centuries, people prayed for rain and collected it but that alone is no longer an option. There simply isn’t enough. What’s more, rain is unpredictable; it may or may not come. But with a limitless supply of water in the ocean, there is a viable option: desalination.

Back in the 1700’s ocean going ships had their own desalination plants in order for them to have a continuous fresh water supply while at sea. In the early days, seawater was boiled and then condensed. The condensate had little to no salt and the remaining brine was then disposed.

In the 1960’s technical advances in reverse osmosis made this form of water purification more widely available. Today, more than 18,000 desalination plants operate in over 150 countries, and the process requires 80 percent less energy than it did 20 years ago.

According to the International Water Association, the energy required to produce a year’s worth of fresh water from sea water for one household is less than that consumed by the family’s refrigerator.

We must also look at delivery systems. As was evidenced in Flint, much of our underground piping systems are in disrepair and can produce contamination from lead and other toxins. , Disinfectants are used to control biological growth but they can pose an increased risk of cancer and create bad tasting water.

While conventional wisdom would say we need to fix the crumbling infrastructure, there is another option: point-of-use (POU) purification. Since typically only 5% of the water in a distribution system is actually used for drinking water, it is far more efficient to use POU filtration to purify that water at the point it is being consumed.

Additionally, POU filtration is much more environmentally friendly than delivering purified water – from the plastics used in 5-gallon jugs to the greenhouse gasses emitted by the delivery trucks — point of use eliminates those issues and purifies only what is needed, when it is needed.

Finally, we must still stress conservation and using existing water supplies more thoughtfully and efficiently. However, conservation and reuse alone will not avoid water crises around the world. Desalination and point of use systems must supplement conservation.

With the technology available to us today, there shouldn’t ever be a water shortage, particularly when private industry can work in partnership with local, state and federal governments to help supply clean drinking water.

As an example, the mining industry is a key economic driver in South America and it is heavily reliant on clean water to operate its mines. Population and industrial growth have put major strains on the natural supply of clean water, leading to a scarcity that has pitted industry, government and citizenry against each other.

In one example in Chile, rather than putting more pressure on the already limited supply, the Caserones mining company opted to not only supply desalinated seawater to its mine but also provide desalinated drinking water to the local population in Caldera thereby creating a crucial resource for the community.

As a society – our objective should be that every human has access to clean drinking water. It is no longer sustainable – from an environmental, social or civic perspective – for private industry to rely solely on municipalities for their water needs.

The diversification of our water supplies is required to bring the unlimited water in our oceans and seas to our tables and businesses, and guarantee fresh water for all.

Excerpt:

"Waters of the Planet," an installation of the Museum of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro, exhibited in the Citizen’s Village at the 8th Water Forum, held in the capital of Brazil, is a large cube with satellite photos showing the Earth’s seas, rivers and lakes from space. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

By Mario Osava
BRASILIA, Mar 21 2018 (IPS)

Confidence in large rivers and giant aquifers plummeted in many parts of the world, in the face of the expansion of water crises after intense and prolonged droughts in the last decade.

Water resources in the soil and subsoil do not hold up if the dry season lasts longer than usual for several years, as seen in several parts of Brazil and in other countries such as India, South Africa and Australia.

Brasilia, which hosts the 8th World Water Forum on Mar. 18-23, is a prime example, because no one could have imagined that the Brazilian capital, nicknamed the “birthplace of the waters” for its three large basins, would have to endure water rationing since early 2017.

“High levels of population growth, scarce investment in infrastructure and three years of below-average rainfall caused a water crisis,” said the governor of the Federal District, Rodrigo Rollemberg, at the official opening of the Forum, on Mar. 19, before highlighting works carried out by his government to ensure supply in the near future.

“Rain is the source of fresh water, sometimes moisture in the air is overlooked, because it’s not visible to the eye,” said Gerard Moss, a pilot who from 2007 to 2015 conducted the Flying Rivers project, which studied the air currents that carry water vapour through the Amazon basin.

“It is essential to maintain the rains and forests are indispensable in this sense, helping the moisture from the ocean to reach the interior of the continent. The ocean water would not travel 2,500 or 3,000 km to produce the rains that allow estate owners in Mato Grosso (in east-central Brazil) to produce two or three harvests a year,” he told IPS.

Moss’s research, which identified “flying rivers” in the Amazon rainforest that supplied several cities in Brazil, was discontinued, but it serves as a tool for the environmental education of children and adults, promoted by his wife Margi Moss, an initiative that will be moved to Europe.

Knowledge of the phenomenon of humid air currents that carry water to the rainforest provides a further argument to the theme adopted by UN-Water this year for World Water Day, which is celebrated on Mar. 22: “Nature for Water”.

UN-Water says nature-based solutions are the answer to many problems related to water, such as droughts and floods that are alternating with increasing frequency around the world, and to pollution.

The 8th World Water Forum began on Monday, Mar. 19, in the Ulysses Guimarães Convention Centre in the capital of Brazil. Credit: EBC

Reforesting and conserving forests, restoring wetlands and reconnecting rivers with floodplains are some of its recommendations.

It’s about “not reinventing the wheel to deal with extreme weather events,” Glauco Kimura, a World Water Forum consultant, said regarding the campaign. “There is natural infrastructure, such as mangroves and other ecosystems, that help curb the impacts of hurricanes and excess rainfall,” he told IPS.

“Without forests around the springs and aquifers, there is less water, as discovered by São Paulo,” which was hit by severe shortages in 2014 and 2015, Kimura said.

To coexist with drought, the consultant recommended learning from the inhabitants of Brazil’s semi-arid Northeast, who have built tanks to collect and store rainwater to get them through the dry season. “In central and southern Brazil that culture does not exist,” he lamented.

During the drought that has lasted since 2012 in the Northeast, there has been no massive exodus of desperate people to cities to the south, where they even looted shops during earlier, less severe, droughts.

This is largely due to social programmes such as Bolsa Familia and pensions for workers and disabled people, but also to the more than one million water tanks built mainly by the Articulação no Semi-Árido Brasileiro (roughly, Networking in Brazil’s Semiarid Region – ASA), a movement of some 3,000 social organisations working on behalf of rural families vulnerable to drought.

Another example of nature-based solutions is the Cultivating Good Water Programme, promoted by Itaipú Binacional, the company that operates the second largest hydroelectric plant in the world (in terms of installed capacity), shared by Brazil and Paraguay on the Paraná River.

Some 23 million trees were planted, restoring 1,322 km of riverbank forests, and 30,000 hectares of land received protection, on the Brazilian side, said Newton Kaminski, director of coordination in Itaipu.

Protests against the governor of the Federal District, Rodrigo Rollemberg, accused of being responsible for water rationing in Brasilia. The water crisis broke out after he took office in 2014, but it was an inherited problem, which now resonates in the 8th World Water Forum, held Mar. 18-23 in the capital of Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

“The key was the river basin management, with integrated actions on all fronts, not just restoration of water sources and groundwater recharge areas. Reforestation without conservation of the soil does not bring about major results. Also necessary are social participation, education, and agriculture that does not deteriorate the soil,” Kaminsky told IPS.

The president of Cape Verde, Jorge Carlos Fonseca, stressed in his speech before nine other government leaders participating in the opening of the World Water Forum that learning to “live in symbiotic harmony with nature” was fundamental to overcoming the hunger and thirst suffered by his people in recent years because of drought.

“Preserving nature and making rational use of the resources that it provides us, changing the relation of human beings with nature,” is the lesson learned from this experience, he said. “We broke the dry season-hunger tandem,” he said.

Sea water desalination and rainwater collection contributed to the improvement of the water situation, and the goal is to ensure 90 liters per person per day, below the 110 liters recommended by the United Nations.

Reforesting and conserving recharge areas and combating the degradation of soil due to change in use are the recommendations of Fabiola Tábora, executive secretary of the Global Water Partnership (GWP) in Central America.

Droughts in Central America have a worse impact along the Pacific west coast, which concentrates 70 percent of the sub-region’s population and is known as “the dry corridor”. That hurts food security and hydropower generation, which accounts for half of the national energy supply, she told IPS.

Another positive experience was the recovery of the La Poza micro-basin, in the southwest of El Salvador, involving broad community participation in integrated management, Tábora mentioned.

In Costa Rica and Guatemala, she highlighted the work with private companies and the government to generate environmental funds, which are invested in the management and conservation of watersheds.

These were cited as solutions in response to numerous references to world tragedies during the initial sessions of the 8th World Water Forum: nearly 700 million people without access to water in the world, two billion people drinking contaminated water, 3.5 billion without sanitation, a thousand children dying a day because of poor water quality and projections that the situation will worsen in the future.

The government leaders that were present followed the World Water Forum theme “Sharing Water”,by making continuous calls for cooperation and exchange of knowledge and experiences, since 40 percent of the world’s population depends on transboundary waters.

Excerpt:

Drinking water in Gaza is causing a rising number of its residents to fall ill and the UN says scarcity and pollution of water resources are at the forefront of the territory's scourges.

By Matthias Schmale
GAZA CITY, Mar 21 2018 (IPS)

World Water Day (March 22) could not come at a more critical time for the people of Gaza who are facing a humanitarian catastrophe The recent decision by the United States to reduce funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), jeopardizes its role as a critical source of clean drinking water when Gaza’s supplies slow to a drip.

An estimated 1.2 million Gaza residents have no access to running water. For those who do, up to 97 percent of the water they receive is too polluted with salt and sewage to drink. The salt comes from seawater, which penetrates Gaza’s only aquifer when the water table drops too low. Palestinians in Gaza consume on average fewer liters per person per day than the World Health Organization recommends, and less than a quarter of the average per capita consumption in Israel.

Nevertheless, the combination of rapid population growth and regional climate change extracts 200 million cubic feet of freshwater each year from an aquifer that receives only 60 million cubic feet of diminishing rainfall annually.

As the water level steadily drops, more seawater seeps in, increasing the aquifer’s salinity. Only around 22 percent of wells in Gaza produce water with acceptable salt concentrations. The rest are anywhere from two to eight times saltier than global standards, with some wells exceeding the official standard for “brackish.” The high salinity puts Gazans in jeopardy of kidney stones and urinary tract problems.

But high salinity is not the worst of Gaza’s water problems. Years of conflict have damaged or destroyed much of its critical water and sanitation facilities—including wells, pumps, desalinization plants and sewage treatment plants.

The crippled infrastructure that survives can only be used the few hours a day Gaza receives electrical service. A newly completed World Bank wastewater treatment plant in Beit Lahia, for example, sits idle much of the time because Gaza doesn’t have enough electricity to run it.

Without adequate facilities, untreated sewage backflows onto Gaza’s streets, and the equivalent of 40 Olympic-size swimming pools—more than 100 million liters—discharges into the Mediterranean Sea every day.

The raw sewage contaminates 75 percent of Gaza’s beaches and washes ashore in adjacent Israeli coastal cities, elevating the risk that waterborne diseases like cholera or typhoid could trigger an epidemic.

For 70 years, UNRWA has been fulfilling its mandate delivered by the UN General Assembly, including the United States, to provide humanitarian assistance, food, health care, and education and emergency assistance to Palestine refugees registered with us.

When Gaza’s water situation grows dire, UNRWA provides clean water as emergency assistance in the best interests of its beneficiaries in Gaza. During the 2014 conflict, when hostilities destroyed critical facilities, and the flow of water to much of Gaza slowed to a trickle, UNRWA was there, trucking water twice a day to more than 90 UNRWA schools, where nearly 300,000 Palestinians sought shelter until the violence subdued.

When Palestinians in Gaza struggle to access clean water, sanitation suffers and every child in Gaza is put at risk of contracting waterborne diseases. Last summer, the incidence of diarrhea in children under three doubled.

UNRWA responded by teaming with humanitarian aid organization Mercy Corps on a project to provide the 30,000 refugees in the Maghazi camp—which experienced some of the highest incidences of diarrhea—with at least three liters of potable water per day.

When, despite these efforts, poor sanitation triggers an outbreak of waterborne, communicable disease, UNRWA is there as well, employing over 1,000 individuals at 22 medical clinics in Gaza, caring for the sick and facilitating more than four million patient visits each year.

The long-term solution to Gaza’s water crisis is a robust sewer and drainage system and restored water treatment facilities. But efforts to rebuild water facilities are limited because up to 70 percent of the materials required raise alleged “dual use” security concerns by Israel authorities and are either rejected or delayed from entering Gaza.

Since 2014, only 16 percent of the nearly 3,000 items requested to rebuild Gaza’s water infrastructure have been approved for entry into Gaza. Until Gaza’s infrastructure is rebuilt, the area remains in constant crisis as demand for water increases, conditions worsen and functional infrastructure deteriorates.

Yet, in January, the United States—UNRWA’s single largest and generous supporter for more than six decades—unexpectedly reduced its annual contribution by 83 percent (from $360 million to $60 million).

UNRWA has a humanitarian mandate that is beyond politics and UNRWA implements this mandate in accordance with the four humanitarian principles adopted by the UN General Assembly.

We function based on the mandate affirmed by the UN General Assembly, which has consistently renewed our charge since UNRWA was created, confirming the need for UNRWA to continue providing assistance pending a just and lasting resolution to the question of Palestine refugees.

Humanitarian funding should be preserved from political considerations and remain consistent with universal principles of humanitarian assistance—humanity, neutrality, impartiality and operational independence.

The U.S. funding reduction also jeopardizes UNRWA’s operations, including our life-saving provision of emergency water to Palestine refugees, our critical sanitation programs and the international community’s long-term efforts to rebuild Gaza’s water treatment infrastructure.

When you are without it, water is more valuable than gold, even the limited amounts UNRWA provides during an emergency. Without UNRWA acting as an essential back-stop, Gaza’s ongoing water crisis could quickly devolve into a dramatic humanitarian catastrophe, affecting regional stability and undermining efforts to establish a lasting peace.

The U.S. should reconsider its reduction of funding. It is in the interests of Gaza’s neighbors and would restore some hope for a life of greater dignity for many of the civilians living in Gaza.

Excerpt:

Malika pours water in front of her home in Tillabéri region, Niger. Niger is among the countries with lowest rates of access to clean water close to home. Credit: WaterAid/Aisha Augie-Kuta

By Tim Wainwright
LONDON, Mar 21 2018 (IPS)

For the past weeks, many have been anxiously tracking the approach of Cape Town’s Day Zero: the day its taps will run dry. To everyone’s relief, current predictions are that careful conservation may stave off such a catastrophe in the coastal South African city until the rains arrive.

It is not nearly often enough that a water crisis makes headlines around the world. The Mozambican capital of Maputo, home to nearly 1.2 million people, is facing a severe drought and water shortage that, despite the urgency, has received little attention.

A new WaterAid report, The Water Gap: The State of the World’s Water 2018, reveals that more than 60 percent of the world’s population lives in areas where the water supply does not, or will not, consistently meet demand. There are 844 million people struggling to access what everyone needs most to live: water.

Uganda, Niger, Mozambique, India and Pakistan are among the countries where the highest percentages or largest numbers of people cannot get clean water within a half hour trip. This means millions of people with long walks for water, which is often dirty and likely to make them ill.

Those without power are the worst affected

The report also shows disturbing new data on the often-sizeable gap between rich and poor when it comes to access to water, demonstrating that even those countries making progress are leaving the poorest behind. The least powerful, such as those who are older, ill, or disabled, are most affected because they may be more susceptible to illness and infections from the use of dirty water, with potential fatal consequences.

In Mali and Niger, land-locked nations exposed to drought and flooding in the barren lands of the Sahel, the gap in access to water between rich and poor is vast. In Niger, ranked second least-developed nation in the world in 2016 by the UN, 72% of the wealthiest people have access to water, compared to only 41% of the poorest. While neighbouring Mali made significant progress and secured access for 93% of the rich, only less than half of the country’s poorest can say the same.

This inequality impacts women and girls more, because they bear the brunt of water fetching responsibilities. Think about this: the UN-recommended amount of water per person per day is 50 litres. If it takes 30 minutes round-trip to collect water from the nearest water source, that is two and a half months a year to collect the minimum amount for a family of four – 75,000 litres. That is a lot of time during which young girls should study, and when adult women might be able to care for families or earn an income.

Only 12 years left to fulfil our promise

First and foremost, political will and financing are critical in addressing the water crisis. This year, there is an opportunity to change that.

Nearly three years ago, the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals and thus made a promise to end extreme poverty. This summer, world leaders will convene at the UN to review the progress made on Global Goal 6; to deliver water and decent toilets to everyone, everywhere by 2030.

In this, however, the world is dramatically far behind. At the current pace, global access to clean water will happen only by 2066 and global access to decent toilets not until the next century. Meanwhile, nearly 300,000 children under five continue to die every year because of diarrhoea linked to dirty water, poor toilets and poor hygiene.

If we don’t achieve the water goal, other Global Goals for progress in education, nutrition, health, equality and stability will most certainly fail too. Ending extreme poverty is impossible without universal access to clean water and decent toilets.

India has shown us that swift progress is possible. Since 2000, India has reached over 300 million people with clean water close to home; that is nearly the entire population of the United States.

But to make this kind of progress requires focus and political prioritisation – it does not happen by accident. So as world leaders prepare to meet later this year it is an absolute priority that they move to provide water, sanitation and hygiene to everyone, everywhere by 2030, regardless of social or economic standing.

Excerpt:

While Cape Town may be in the spotlight, more and more urban centres, especially in Africa, are facing or on the brink of a similar crisis. Credit: Bigstock

By Mxolisi Ncube
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 20 2018 (IPS)

April 12 is expected to be the infamous “Day Zero” in South Africa’s second largest city of Cape Town, a tourist hub which attracts millions of visitors every year.

Just last year, the city reported a record-breaking increase in its tourist arrivals, with a slew of attractions that include Table Mountain Cableway, Robben Island and Cape Point — overall, about 28 percent more visitors than the previous year. Tourism provides more than 300,000 jobs in South Africa’s Western Cape Province, but they could soon be under threat as a water crisis threatens to put paid the city’s booming service industry.“In some places there is too little water, in some there is too much, and almost everywhere the water is dirtier than we would want. " --Jens Berggren of SIWI

Among a slew of new rules as taps began to close, residents are now being forced to limit their water use to as little as 50 liters a day — in other words, bathe for a few seconds and flush the toilets once a day — or face stiff penalties

Patricia de Lille, the mayor of South Africa’s troubled “Mother City”, recently warned that the time to beg residents to save water had elapsed, meaning the city would now force residents to comply. Businesses, including hotels, are also not being spared the stringent water rationing measures.

Sisa Ntshona, head of South Africa’s tourism marketing arm, recently told the press that although tourists were still welcome in Cape Town, they were expected to save water “like locals” due to the fast-drying of the city’s water sources, which stood at 19 percent of their total capacity last week, following months of droughts.

City experts warn that without a substantive amount of rain within the next few months, Cape Town could run out of water by July 9.

That would grossly affect South Africa’s economic prospects. Tourism contributes more than 3 billion dollars to the Western Cape’s coffers every year, according to the Tourism Business Council of South Africa.

Population growth, drought and climate change are among the key causes of the water crisis, according to a report from Groundup, a joint project of Community Media Trust and the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Social Science Research, who state that since 1995 the city’s population has grown 79 percent, from about 2.4 million to an expected 4.3 million in 2018. Over the same period dam storage has increased by only 15 percent.

The Berg River Dam, which began storing water in 2007, has been Cape Town’s only significant addition to water storage infrastructure since 1995. Its 130,000 megalitre capacity is over 14 percent of the 898,000 megalitres that can be held in Cape Town’s large dams. Had it not been for good water consumption management by the City, the current crisis could have hit much earlier, adds the organisation.

Cape Town is in the middle of a drought, with decreased rainfall during the past two years for Theewaterskloof, the dam supplying more than half our water, adds the report.

While Cape Town may be in the global spotlight at the moment, the water crisis is not limited to the South African city, as more and more urban centres, especially in Africa, are facing or on the brink of a similar crisis.

The African non-governmental organization, the Water Project, estimates that at any given time, half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from diseases associated with lack of access to clean water. The number rises to about 80 percent in developing countries.

Beyond natural causes and consumption levels, experts say that water waste, poor water conservation policies and lack of political goodwill are some of the main reasons behind the water crisis afflicting most major cities.

South Africa, for example, is losing 37 percent of its water supply through leaks across its many cities, according to a 2017 GreenCape market intelligence report.

“The main cause of water crises in urban centres, and in almost every place, is poor water management,” Steven Downey, Global Water Partnership Head of Communications, told IPS.

“Sure, droughts are bad, but they are not impossible to deal with. It takes a combination of planning, prevention, and mitigation, not waiting until the crisis actually happens. Global Water Partnership calls for action in three areas: participation (involve stakeholders in decision-making), integration (taking into account all sectors), and finance (provide money for infrastructure and for good governance of the resource),” he said.

Jens Berggren, the Director of Communications for the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), notes that there are several different types of water crises in urban centres across the world and in Africa.

“In some places there is too little water, in some there is too much and almost everywhere the water is dirtier than we would want. With so many different types of water challenges it is impossible pinpoint the main cause,” says Berggren, who also notes that mismanagement is one of the causes.

“On a very general level, the cause is that water is not being sufficiently well managed. In some places there is a lack of appropriate infrastructure, for example dams, treatment plants, boreholes, rainwater harvesting systems, pumps and pipes. In other places there is a lack of policies and/or of their enforcement resulting in poor service delivery, inefficient use, pollution, bad planning and/or implementation of projects. In many places, there is a lack of both governance and infrastructure.”

There is also increasing water variability, especially in the transition areas between wetter and dryer climate zones (very roughly around 10 degrees and 30 degrees north and south of the equator), adds Berggren.

There is also an increase in both the frequency and the intensity of extreme water and weather events, like downpours and droughts, increasing the need for both governance and infrastructure, while great inequality within urban areas in Africa and elsewhere — where some citizens are well served with and protected from water while others are struggling to get by on small and variable amounts of unsafe drinking water and get unsanitary floods when it rains — are also some of the causes.

Ways of alleviating the problem depend a lot on the local situation.

“Generally, improvements in governance and infrastructure need to go hand in hand, one without the other doesn’t work. The scope and size of the challenge also varies a lot,” Berggren said.

“In places with very unequal water situations, some citizens must be incentivized to reduce their water use while others are encouraged to increase theirs (in order to stay healthy),” adds the SIWI official, who says in some places supply and demand doesn’t match up over the year, for example during short but intense rainy seasons. That means different methods and techniques exist for storing water.

Where current demands exceed supplies, the possibilities for managing demand may include tiered pricing and expanding supply- transferring water from other basins, looking for new sources like ground- or rainwater, or treating “wastewater” for reuse. In view of the rising water variability, good water management will increasingly be about planning for the unexpected.

“There is a lot to be learned but also a lot to be taught. Experiences and knowledge from urban water management in Africa seems increasingly sought after. For example, water reuse was pioneered in Windhoek, Namibia, and there is a huge interest in how Cape Town has managed the current drought but also in how they managed to reduce the water intensity – per capita as well as per economic activity, of the city before that,” says Breggren.

“Once again, it is impossible to generalize, but a lesson that I think and hope is dawning on the western and northern parts of the world is that there has been overreliance on and overconfidence in infrastructure made of concrete and metal. Working with nature, e.g. avoiding floods by having spongy surfaces in and around cities, using so called green infrastructure or nature-based solutions is becoming more important. The key here is of course to know when to use what how and having governance structures (institutions, laws, guidelines, etc.) that allows and supports both kinds of infrastructure. I am sure that this is an area where African cities could both learn and lead the way.”

While Cape Town’s water problems have attracted international headlines, South Africa’s northern neighbor, Zimbabwe, has silently lived with a serious water crisis for more than two decades. Zimbabwe’s capital city, Harare, has for close to two decades struggled with water  purification problems that resulted in a serious outbreak of typhoid fever a few years ago.

The country’s second largest city, Bulawayo, is forced to ration its water supply almost every year, due to siltation in its supply dams, all located in the drought-stricken southern parts of the country.

A recent BBC report warned that 11 other cities in the world, which include Sao Paulo (Brazil), Cairo (Egypt) and Beijing China, could be headed to equally stormy waters. It would therefore, be fundamental for the city authorities to heed the advice from experts.

Excerpt:

Credit: Bigstock

By Torgny Holmgren
STOCKHOLM, Mar 20 2018 (IPS)

Going into World Water Day, I have an ambivalent feeling. This year’s theme The Answer is in Nature can sound almost like mockery considering how badly parts of the world have been hit in recent years due to water-related natural disasters, be it floods, storms or droughts.

The relationship between humans and the rest of nature is not always easy. We have entered the Anthropocene – an era in which our species has emerged as a major force of nature. This is particularly visible in relation to water, where human interventions occur throughout the hydrological cycle: Change in land use alters evaporation which in turn can change atmospheric movements of moisture and cause droughts or floods in distant river basins.

Once on the ground, the fate of rainwater is largely determined by human activities, culture and infrastructure. Who gets how much water, and of what quality, often depends as much on human laws as it depends on the laws of nature.

And now we are supposed to look back at nature for answers? It might seem contradictory, but there are two things to keep in mind. The first is that, in this era of ‘alternative truths’, nature is a fact. It doesn’t budge, scare or care. The second thing to remember is that nature’s solutions are tried and tested over thousands of years.

Torgny Holmgren

The smart thing is to work with nature and learn as much as we can from it.  One important step in that direction is to guide the so called ‘human nature’ to align with the rest of nature. This is a matter of water governance, balancing our demands and activities against what nature can sustainably provide and withstand.

We cannot, for example, influence the frequency of hurricanes in the short term, but by restoring or retaining spongy surfaces in and around cities we can decrease the risk of storms resulting in flooding.

Green spaces in a city can also help to capture rain and allow infiltration. Paving over the saw-grass prairie around Houston reduced the city’s ability to absorb the water that hurricane Harvey brought in August 2017.

In Singapore, green spaces have become a vital tool for capturing rainfall. Ranked as one of the most water-stressed countries in the world 2015, the city-state is turning into a poster town for urban water management, partly because of its decision to invest in expanding urban greenery.

A wonderful thing about these green infrastructure solutions is that they are inherently multi-functional. City parks capture rain, but they also boost quality of life, improve the city’s microclimate and often look good doing so.

Another great feature is that green infrastructure solutions are often much more resilient. They tend to bend under pressure, rather than break, and they can repair themselves and restore their functionality even after significant damage.

The smart thing is to work with nature and learn as much as we can from it. One important step in that direction is to guide the so called ‘human nature’ to align with the rest of nature. This is a matter of water governance, balancing our demands and activities against what nature can sustainably provide and withstand.

Around the world, we have long acted under the assumption that grey infrastructure, purpose-built by humans, is superior to what nature itself can bring us in the form of mangroves, marshes and meadows. To some extent and under certain circumstances it may well be.

Grey infrastructure in the form of dams, levees, pipes and canals, are very efficient at fulfilling a single purpose, such as transporting water. Storing water in liquid form against the pull of gravity high up in a catchment for power production isn’t what nature does best.

Although trees have an incredible system for extracting soil moisture from the ground and lifting it – sometimes a hundred meters up-  pumps and pipes are unmatched when it comes to supplying residents of the top floors of high-rises with water.

The point is that it isn’t a question of either/or. We need both green or grey, and we need to be wise in choosing what serves our current and potential future set of purposes best. To make sure that this deliberation takes place, we need governance systems that help us by posing the right questions and by incentivizing behaviours that align individual desires with societal good.

In addition to the current governance systems, increasing water variability with more frequent and intense extreme water events requires us to plan more for the unexpected. It may become necessary to have parallel water governance strategies: one that guides us in times when water availability is close to the historical normal and one that helps us get through times that are abnormally wet or dry.

Water management in the Anthropocene will require smart combinations of green and grey infrastructure. Technology and infrastructure to manage water is desperately neededto enablehuman and economic growth and development. It is needed to service people and businesses with the right amount of water at the right time and of the right quality.

But inorganic infrastructure solutions are often inflexible making them less suitable in changing environments and increasingly uncertain times. Nature and ecosystems can offer softer, more malleable solutions.

Biotechnology offers an illustrating example of working with nature: by creating suitable conditions for the kind of microorganisms that carry out functions that we are after, we can make water treatment more efficient and transform a pollution problem into valuable resources. Finding the right physical structures that match the microbes demands, and the desired difference in quality between incoming and outgoing water requires knowledge, skills and patience.

Here lies the crux of the matter. The wonderful diversity in ecosystems, in political preferences, and in the way water varies within and between years, makes it impossible to pinpoint a singleright balance between grey and green.

Managing water will always be as much about politics as it is about physics.If we can manage it, the payback will come in the form of reliable, rich and resilient lives and livelihoods for all of us.

Excerpt:

Huilo-Huilo Biological Reserve, Chile - Photo credit: Santiago Antonio Castro (Flickr)

By Yeonju Jeong
NAIROBI, Mar 20 2018 (IPS)

Freshwater makes up only 2.5% of all water we have on earth. Readily accessible freshwater – which is found in rivers, lakes, wetlands and aquifers – accounts for less than one per cent of the world’s water supply. It is vital for the existence of nearly every species on earth.

We use it for drinking, bathing, growing our food and sustaining our livestock, and to keep our industries running. Yet when we turn on our taps or take a hot shower, most of us don’t realize just how precious the water that comes out truly is.

We are seeing global water supply dwindle to critical lows. Today, around 1.9 billion people live in severely water-scarce areas. By 2050, this could increase to around 3 billion people.

Some of the world’s biggest cities, like Sao Paolo, Jakarta and Mexico City are facing water challenges. In Cape Town, threatened freshwater supplies could force the government to shut down the water supply, leaving citizens to collect water at ration points.

Some of the world’s biggest cities, like Sao Paolo, Jakarta and Mexico City are facing water challenges.  In Cape Town, threatened freshwater supplies could force the government to shut down the water supply, leaving citizens to collect water at ration points.

We simply cannot afford to be careless with this vital resource. So how did we get here? And more importantly, how can we get back to a stable water situation?

As global population grows, freshwater supplies are threatened by industrial development, demand for more agricultural and meat production, pollution and climate change. Consecutive years of drought have reduced water reservoirs to critical lows, sparking water emergencies. Now, water scientists are looking to nature for the answer.

Forests need water, water needs forests

Liquiñe, a rural town in the Los Ríos region of Chile, had a once lush, natural environment with abundant vegetation and fast flowing rivers. A combination of climate change and deforestation depleted the region’s natural watercourses.

But when Chile’s National Forest Corporation (CONAF) intervened with the support of the UN-REDD programme, part of the native forest around the town has since been restored.

The case of Liquiñe demonstrates how Nature-Based Solutions such as reforestation can revive our freshwater ecosystems. As Fabián Carrasco, president of the Rural Drinking Water Committee of Liquiñe, puts it: “If there are no forests, there is no water. Sometimes people understand it backwards, so that is why it is necessary to make the population understand that the whole earth is in a tight balance and we must protect it.”

Only part of the solution:

Reforestation is just one example of how protecting natural resources can be a powerful solution to address global water challenges. Of course, Nature-Based Solutions cannot solve every water problem, but they can provide innovative and cost-effective options to supplement insufficient or ageing water infrastructure.

Smartly managed natural landscapes can improve water availability, supply and quality, while managing future risks. For example, there is ample evidence that natural wetlands and “green” groundwater reservoirs, can be more sustainable and cost-effective than building “grey infrastructure”, like dams and canals. Forests and sustainably-managed fields can regulate and improve water quality.

Green infrastructure, such as strips of land along watercourses planted with native trees, can help buffer pollution from agriculture. Cities can be made more resilient against extreme weather events and the effects of climate change, averting future risks to freshwater supplies, by connecting rivers to floodplains, or by planting vegetation along riverways.

World Water Day

On World Water Day March 22, UNESCO, the Convention on Biological Diversity and UN Environment will be celebrating Nature Based Solutions and how they can help us manage threats to our freshwater ecosystems in the 21st century.

The commemoration is meant to inspire people to take actions, and share their personal connection to water and nature around the world, as well as to encourage further research on nature-based solutions among academia and the business sector.

Nature-Based Solutions don’t solve every water problem. Sometimes grey infrastructure such as dams and concrete reservoirs provide effective relief for overstretched water sources. But incorporating solutions which nature can offer is vital for long-term freshwater sustainability – and averting future threats.

There is no question that freshwater is one of the earth’s most vital resources. And as we look to protect our communities from droughts and floods, and ensure that we have enough water to keep us thriving for generations to come, the answer is in nature.

Excerpt:

The President of the General Assembly of the United Nations, Miroslav Lajčák, briefed the press on his priorities for the Assembly's seventy-second session, on 10 October 2017 at the United Nations Office at Geneva. ©UNIS/GENEVA

By Miroslav Lajčák
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 20 2018 (IPS)

At the start of the seventy-second session of the General Assembly of the United Nations I emphasized our common goal: peace and a decent life for all people on a sustainable planet. Many leaders echoed this overarching priority at the general debate and beyond.

One very important element of this is universal access to water and sanitation. At a most basic level, human beings cannot survive without water. Equally important is sanitation, a lack of which negatively affects our quality of life and claims the lives of millions each year.

One thing is clear: we all share a common goal of achieving universal access to water and sanitation. We have come a long way towards achieving this goal but we have much further to go.

The statistics on water and sanitation are alarming. In 2015, 844 million people still lacked access to safe drinking water. More than 2.3 billion people still did not have basic sanitation services and 892 million people practised open defecation.
Water runs through every single United Nations priority. Lack of access to water and sanitation can undo progress made in the areas of development, human dignity, and peace and security.

The pressing question is: how can we meet the existential challenge of ensuring access to water and sanitation for everyone once and for all?

I would like to reflect on three things: many problems in accessing water and sanitation still exist; we have come a long way in combating these problems; and we have a lot more work to do. The launch in March of the International Decade for Action, “Water for Sustainable Development”, 2018-2018 will propel us to reach further.

Where we are today

The statistics on water and sanitation are alarming. In 2015, 844 million people still lacked access to safe drinking water. More than 2.3 billion people still did not have basic sanitation services and 892 million people practised open defecation.

For people on the ground, especially the vulnerable, these numbers translate into hardship, insecurity and loss of livelihoods. For instance, women and girls in some developing countries still embark on dangerous journeys in search of drinking water or to defecate in the open because they do not have access to toilet facilities, which exposes them to violence, including sexual abuse.

Further, children are dying from entirely preventable diseases, resulting from poor quality water and sanitation. Diarrhoea is the second leading cause of death in children under 5 years of age.

Water can also be the source of disasters and conflicts, presenting an obstacle to meeting many Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The frequency and severity of water-related disasters are increasing dramatically. They claim lives and disproportionately affect progress towards achieving the SDGs in developing countries, in particular the most vulnerable, such as small island developing States and the least developed countries.

Due to the constantly growing demand for water provoked by many factors, including population growth, food and energy production, and the adverse impacts of climate change, water resources will become increasingly scarce. Therefore, it is expected that tensions over access to water could intensify at both the national and international levels.

In this context, the Global High-level Panel on Water and Peace estimates that by mid-century, close to 4 billion people, which represents about 40 per cent of the world’s population, will live in water-stressed basins.

Progress Made

Despite these alarming projections, providing access to water and sanitation is possible and we have made some improvement. However, the progress achieved has been uneven and many people are still being left behind.

It is against this backdrop that Member States of the United Nations have put a special focus on the critical issue of access to water and sanitation during the last few decades, starting from the first United Nations Water Conference, held in 1977, in Mar del Plata, Argentina.

More and more, the United Nations General Assembly has been recognizing the centrality of water to sustainable development. From the Millennium Development Goals, which established a target of halving the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water to the General Assembly’s recognition of water and sanitation as a human right, the United Nations has laid the foundations.

Mindful of the critical importance of water and sanitation, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has a dedicated goal to this issue, SDG 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

This goal, as well as other related goals and targets, aims to address all issues related to the water cycle, including access to adequate water and sanitation, improving quality and efficiency of water delivery, sustainable water management as well as strengthening international cooperation. At the upcoming high-level political forum on sustainable development, we will learn of progress being made on SDG 6, including at the national level.

International Decade for Action, “Water for Sustainable Development”, 2018-2028

More recently, the General Assembly unanimously proclaimed the period from 2018 to 2028 the International Decade for Action, “Water for Sustainable Development”, to commence on World Water Day, 22 March 2018. The formal launch of this Water Decade, which is the second of its kind, will be an important opportunity for the international community to reiterate its commitment to achieving water-related goals and targets. It will also offer an opportunity to contribute to the follow-up and review of SDG 6, at the high-level political forum in July 2018.

Throughout the Decade, our focus should be on people. The true measure of the relevance of the United Nations is the meaningful change it brings to people’s lives around the world. We should emphasize the implementation of the various frameworks related to water and sanitation, with a particular focus on women and children, who are disproportionately affected by the lack of access to these services.

The Decade should also be catalytic in building new and innovative partnerships to achieve water-related goals. It should offer a platform for advocacy and networking in support of our universally agreed goals.

I look forward to the opportunity to launch the International Decade for Action, “Water for Sustainable Development”, 2018-2028. On 22 March, at the launch, we will present the Action Plan for the Decade and have a dialogue about how the International Decade for Action can help to advance the implementation of water-related goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda.

Let us ensure that no one is left without access to water and sanitation by the end of this decade.

Looking Ahead: We Need All Hands on Deck

We have the tools to achieve access to water and sanitation for all. In some cases, the tools need to be enhanced; in other cases, we need simply to use them.

Meeting water and sanitation goals and targets means taking action, both nationally and internationally, and adopting a holistic approach that addresses the entire water cycle. Further, we must treat water as a cross-cutting issue, the scope of which extends beyond SDG 6.

At the international level, the United Nations system must continue to play a leading role in promoting cooperation and building partnerships, and should offer a platform for continued discussion, policymaking and mainstreaming of water-related issues to relevant processes.

We must also address international governance issues related to water. Within the United Nations system, water and sanitation is addressed in a fragmented and poorly coordinated manner.

This is despite efforts by the UN-Water mechanism as well as the work undertaken by different agencies, funds and programmes. Going forward, we need a platform for regular intergovernmental deliberations to keep track of and push for progress on the implementation of water-related goals.

The alignment of the agendas of the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council and their subsidiary bodies with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as well as the repositioning of the United Nations development system, could offer solutions to this challenging situation.

The conclusions and recommendations of the working dialogue, convened during the seventy-first session of the General Assembly, on: “Improving the integration and coordination of the work of the United Nations on the water-related goals and targets under its sustainable development pillar, with particular emphasis on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, could also contribute to resolving the governance challenges.

While cooperation at the international level remains important, governments bear the primary responsibility to meet water and sanitation needs of their populations. Water and sanitation need to be mainstreamed into national development planning and budgeting processes, and must include sustainable use and efficiency, address wastewater, promote education and raise awareness.

For effective cooperation nationally and internationally, involvement of all stakeholders is critical. Financial institutions, the private sector, civil society and high water-use sectors, such as energy, agriculture and industry must all be involved in developing plans and policies.

Importantly, we must mobilize financing for infrastructure and building capacities for access to water and sanitation. Traditional financial sources, including official development assistance, are not sufficient, even though critical for many developing countries. We must rely on all sources available, national and international, public and private, as well as blended and innovative financing.

Finally, prevention of water-related conflicts is essential. As always, we need to promote dialogue, international cooperation, hydro-diplomacy and water-related mediation to address transboundary water issues.

This could contribute to strengthening regional peace and security in the long run. Cooperation between States to establish frameworks on the use, management and benefit-sharing of water resources, should be pursued. This concerted action will help prevent tensions from escalating into violence.

The United Nations, Governments and all stakeholders have an obligation to people to deliver on water-related goals and targets. I am committed to maintaining momentum towards this end.

This article first appeared in the UN Chronicle, published by the Department of Public Information. The link follows: https://unchronicle.un.org/article/achieving-universal-access-water-and-sanitation

Excerpt:

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.

Excerpt:

Two young women row in Lake Titicaca, the highest commercially navigable body of water in the world, near the Uros Islands, Puno, Peru.

By Ramu Damodaran
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 2018 (IPS)

One of the first resolutions adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, on the location of the headquarters of the Organization, gives the United Nations “exclusive rights over the subsoil of land conveyed to it, and in particular the right to make constructions underground and to obtain therefrom supplies of water.”

That was, in many ways, a metaphor for the rights of “we the peoples” who had constituted the United Nations and their legitimate claim to the fertile wealth of the land that was their home. It was also a metaphor in another sense, a reminder that no matter how vast the visible, the invisible can too be attained.

Water is visible in Juba, South Sudan’s capital on the southern edge of the Nile, but just shy of its city limits, in the community of Munuki, wells are dug deep into for invisible, and often contaminated, drinking water. UNMISS, the UN Mission in South Sudan, created a wholly new hydrosystem in the area, bringing clean water to the surface with the turn of a tap.

An ocean away, in Vietnam, the UNICEF Tap Project encourages patrons in restaurants to donate a dollar or more for the tap water they usually enjoy for free, creating funds to bring the same water to children denied its access.

Just west, the National University of Singapore devises a “drainage block” to “improve water harvesting, and to create a much larger base flow that is required for beautification of urban canals” as part of the World Intellectual Property Organization’s “WIPO Green” database.

Arc north to Tashtak, in Kyrgyzstan, where children had to cross the country’s busiest road to fetch water from nearby villages; every few weeks a child was struck and injured by a car or truck. Despite contributions from every resident of Tashtak, a project to put standpipes in the street was still short of the total needed. UNHCR then stepped up to fill the funding gap under the peacebuilding project, supported by the UN Peacebuilding Fund; the refurbishment took about seven months to complete and provided 12 standpipes throughout the village which now provide clean, fresh water to about 800 people.

These vignettes, of how each UN office or agency has its contribution to make to a universal need and, like our cover, quest for water, find echo in this issue. When the General Assembly requested its President to convene a working-level dialogue to discuss improving the integration and coordination of the work of the United Nations on the water-related goals and targets under its sustainable development pillar, it decided that it “shall be ad hoc, informal, inclusive, open-ended and interactive.” We hope this issue too is informal, inclusive and open-ended. And that, with your shared thoughts and responses on the Water Action Decade and Sustainable Development Goal 6, it will be interactive as well.

“People are saying that the next war will be about water,” President of the General Assembly Miroslav Lajčák said at a gathering of students at Seton Hall University, a member of the United Nations Academic Impact, a few months ago. “Let’s make sure there will be no next war and let’s make sure that we treat water the way it deserves.”

From the UN chronicle
https://unchronicle.un.org/

Excerpt:

Sanjay Wijesekera, UNICEF's global Chief of WASH, visits Rohingya refugee children at a learning center in Kutupolong refugee camp, Cox's Bazaar District, Bangladesh on 12 March 2018. Credit: UNICEF

By Sanjay Wijesekera
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 2018 (IPS)

When disaster strikes, or conflict rages, families soon discover their most urgent need – water. In such precarious situations, access is usually limited or non-existent, and children and their families are forced to put themselves in further danger in the quest for water.

During such times, water and sanitation experts are often the first responders to communities affected by conflict and natural disasters. They work to ensure safe access to water, which paves the way for other vital interventions such as health, nutrition, education and protection.

As a young engineer, I was deployed by an international aid agency to Rwanda in 1994 in the aftermath of the civil war and horrific genocide. I arrived in Kibeho in the wake of suffering and great loss: shallow graves on roadsides; blood-stained walls in the local church; the unmistakable smell of rotting flesh.

Amid the death and destruction, it was vital to focus on the immediate needs of the children whose lives remained at risk from malnutrition, waterborne diseases and diarrhea.

For those of us lucky enough to have easy access to drinking water and a functioning toilet – the lack of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) is not a major concern. But for the one in four children around the world who live in countries affected by conflict or disaster, it is an overwhelming preoccupation and a matter of survival.

In times of conflict, more children tend to die from diseases caused by unclean water and poor sanitation than from direct violence.

In Kibeho, children walked up and down steep hillsides to fetch drinking water from streams and unprotected springs polluted with human and animal feces. I remember meeting Aimee, an emaciated little girl, in a makeshift shelter made of branches and thatched with dried leaves. Aimee was malnourished, severely dehydrated, and in desperate need of medical attention.

Sanjay Wijesekera, UNICEF’s global Chief of WASH, visits Kutupolong camp for Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazaar District, Bangladesh on 12 March 2018. Since an outbreak of violence began on 25 August 2017, more than 670,000 Rohingya people have sought refuge in neighboring Bangladesh. UNICEF and partners are working to provide for the needs of this enormous refugee population who will be all the more vulnerable during the upcoming monsoon and cyclone seasons. Credit: UNICEF

Despite her condition, she managed a smile as we hurried to get her the urgent medical care she needed. Her resilience gave fresh meaning to our job – to install a water supply in her village – which was a major camp for thousands of Rwanda’s internally displaced people.

I saw the same strength and resilience in Myanmar when I visited displaced populations of Rohingya in Rakhine state in 2013. The ground on which people pitched their tents – their makeshift homes – was low-lying and waterlogged.

The lack of sanitation and hygiene made living conditions not just unbearable, but a huge risk to life especially for children and their families living on hard-to-reach islands that were only accessible by boat.

Children, once again, were visibly malnourished and although UNICEF and partner organisations were providing water, children and families still had to walk long distances to collect it. It was an overwhelming task that called for commitment and persistence.

In the face of this adversity I was amazed by the great resilience demonstrated by women who described their shared care system which helped them cope with their difficult circumstances.

United by their loss and grief, households partnered with each other to cook, fetch water, gather firewood, care for children and tend to the sick. There was no complaining, no anger. Just hope, pragmatism, and a pooling of meagre resources.

Since the outbreak of violence on 25 August 2017, more than 670,000 Rohingya people have sought refuge in Bangladesh. During my visit, there this month, I was reminded yet again of the importance of maintaining the humanitarian response of providing safe water and sanitation to people affected by conflict while sitting with refugee children in a learning center in Kutupolong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazaar.

Their smiles and laughter were echoes of resilience that must be bolstered by those working to meet the needs of this enormous refugee population, particularly as the approaching monsoon and cyclone season brings with it health risks and hygiene challenges.

Over the past six years, I have witnessed the humanitarian response of delivering water, sanitation and hygiene in times of conflict and disaster. I’ve seen the profound impact it has for children who have lost so much and yet remain incredibly resilient.

We share the strength and determination of children like Aimee and the women and girls in Myanmar and Bangladesh, and we remain committed to preserving the rights of every child to water, sanitation and hygiene.

*UNICEF launched a fundraising appeal to support children and families affected by conflict and disaster globally. More than a fifth of the appeal will go towards UNICEF’s work on WASH. UNICEF is the leading humanitarian WASH agency in emergencies, providing over half of the emergency WASH services in humanitarian crises around the world.

Excerpt:

By IPS World Desk
ROME, Mar 19 2018 (IPS)

The UN General Assembly will launch the International Decade for Action: Water for sustainable development (2018-2028) on World Water Day, 22 March 2018. According to UNGA President Miroslav Lajcak, outlining his priorities for 2018, the event will “contribute to the review of SDG 6” during the 2018 session of the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF).

Today, there are over 663 million people living without a safe water supply close to home, spending countless hours queuing or trekking to distant sources, and coping with the health impacts of using contaminated water.

This year’s theme Nature for Water explores how we can use nature to overcome the water challenges of the 21st century.

Environmental damage, together with climate change, is driving the water-related crises we see around the world. Floods, drought and water pollution are all made worse by degraded vegetation, soil, rivers and lakes.

When we neglect our ecosystems, we make it harder to provide everyone with the water we need to survive and thrive.

Nature-based solutions have the potential to solve many of our water challenges. We need to do so much more with ‘green’ infrastructure and harmonize it with ‘grey’ infrastructure wherever possible. Planting new forests, reconnecting rivers to floodplains, and restoring wetlands will rebalance the water cycle and improve human health and livelihoods.

Sustainable Development Goal 6 – ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030 – includes a target to halve the proportion of untreated wastewater and increase water recycling and safe reuse.

World Water Day is coordinated by UN-Water – the UN’s inter-agency collaboration mechanism for all freshwater related issues – in collaboration with governments and partners.

Kottayam in the southern state of Kerala. India's water bodies and fresh water sources are threat from pollution, industrialization, human waste disposal and governmental neglect. Credit: Neeta Lal/IPS

By Neeta Lal
NEW DELHI, Mar 16 2018 (IPS)

As Cape Town inches towards ‘Zero Hour’ set for July 15, 2018, the real threat of water scarcity is finally hitting millions of people worldwide. For on that day, the South African city’s 3.78 million citizens — rich and poor, young and old, men and women — will be forced to queue up with their jerry cans at public outlets for their quota of 25 litres of water per day.

Who knew things would come to such a sorry pass for the rich and beautiful metropolis, ironically lapped by the aquamarine waters of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans? An ominous cocktail of deficient rainfall, devastating droughts and poor planning, say conservationists, have made Cape Town the first major city to run out of fresh water.By 2040, there will be no drinking water in almost all of India.

The issue of water scarcity was first raised in the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. Since then, each year, March 22 is observed across the world to shine the spotlight on different water-related issues. The theme for World Water Day this year is — ‘Nature for Water’ — Exploring nature-based solutions to the water challenges we face in the 21st century.

But even as the world is letting out a collective sigh for Cape Town, spare a thought for India. By 2040, there will be no drinking water in almost all of India. A UN report on water conservation published in March 2017 reveals that due to its unique geographical position in South Asia, the Indian sub-continent will face the brunt of the water crisis and India would be at the epicentre of this conflict.

By 2025, the report predicts, nearly 3.4 billion people worldwide will be living in ‘water-scarce’ countries and that the situation will become even more dire over the next 25 years.

With the planet’s second largest population at 1.3 billion (after China’s 1.4 billion), and expectant growth to reach 1.7 billion by 2050, India is struggling to provide safe, clean water to most of its populace. According to data from India’s Ministry of Water Resources, though the country hosts 18 percent of the world’s population, its share of total usable water resources is only 4 percent. Official data shows that in the past decade, annual per capita availability of water in the country has plummeted significantly.

If that isn’t scary enough, a glance at the World Bank’s latest statistics reveals the magnitude of the problem: 163 million Indians lack access to safe drinking water; 210 m have no access to improved sanitation; 21 percent of communicable diseases are linked to unsafe water and 500 children under age five die from diarrhoea each day in India.

Experts say India’s gargantuan population increases the country’s vulnerability to water shortage and scarcity. Further, the country’s exponentially growing middle-class is raising unprecedented demands on clean, safe water. Long dry spells — with the temperamental monsoons (the seasonal rains that visit south Asia between June and August) — only aggravate this paucity.

In 2016, a whopping 300 districts (or nearly half of India’s 640 districts) were under the spell of an acute drinking water shortage across India. The government then had to operate special trains at great expense just to carry water to the affected places.

Surface water isn’t the only source reaching a breaking point in India. The country’s freshwater is also under great stress. This is largely because State policies have failed to check groundwater development. With continued neglect and bureaucratic mismanagement and indifference, the problem has intensified.

Grassroots efforts like those led by Rajendra Singh, who won the prestigious Stockholm Water Prize, presented annually by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), in 2015, have had a positive effect. His pioneering work in rural development and water conservation, starting in the 1980s, brought some 8,600 rainwater storage tanks, known as johads, to 1,058 villages spread over 6,500 sq km in nine districts of Rajasthan. Five seasonal rivers in the state which had nearly dried up have since become perennial.

But adverse fallouts from water shortage aren’t just limited to people. They impact the Indian economy too.

“As an agrarian economy, India relies heavily on agriculture. There is aggressive irrigation in rural areas where agriculture provides the livelihood for over 600 million Indians, However, technological advances in agriculture haven’t kept pace with the population explosion,” explains economist Probir Choudhury of Reliance Capital.

As a result, he says, even as much of the world has adopted lesser water-intensive crops and sophisticated agricultural techniques, India still uses conventional systems and water-intensive crops. An excessive reliance on monsoons further leads to crop failures and farmer suicides.

The country’s industrialization has brought its own set of woes, say market analysts. Contamination of fresh water sources by industrial waste has sullied the waters of all major rivers. Over 90 percent of the waste water discharged into rivers, lakes, and ponds is untreated that leads to further contamination of fresh water sources.

Wastage by urban population is already a great challenge in Indian cities. By far the greatest waste occurs in electricity-producing power plants which guzzle gargantuan amounts of water to cool down. More than 80 percent of India’s electricity comes from thermal power stations, burning coal, oil, gas and nuclear fuel.

Now researchers from the US-based World Resources Institute, after analysing all of India’s 400 thermal power plants, report that its power supply is under threat from water scarcity.

The researchers found that 90 percent of these thermal power plants are cooled by freshwater, and nearly 40 percent of them experience high water stress. The plants are increasingly vulnerable, while India remains committed to providing electricity to every household by 2019.

“A severe lack of regulation, over privatization and entrenched corruption are the salient reasons pushing the country to a water crisis,” says Dr. Chintamani Reddy, a water expert and former professor of geography at Delhi University.

Worsening the situation, adds Reddy, are regional disputes over access to rivers in the country’s interior. Clashes with neighbours — Pakistan over the River Indus and River Sutley in the west and north and with China to the east with the River Brahmaputra — have become increasingly common.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Thankfully, some measures are underway to improve the scenario. Indian farmers are being sensitized about the latest irrigation techniques such as drip irrigation, and utilizing more rainwater harvesting to stem the loss of freshwater sources. Modern sanitation policies are being drafted that both conserve and prudently utilize water sources.

Massive investments in wind energy and solar energy, along with rejection of fossil fuel facilities in water-stressed places, are also being vigorously pursued. India has a target for 40 percent of its power to come from renewables by 2030 under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

Water conservationists say if these steps are followed strictly, India may be able to minimize its water scarcity. Otherwise, the apocalyptic scenario currently bedeviling South Africa may well become India’s fate.

Excerpt:

“Water is life”—a slogan that arose from the anti-Dakota Access Pipeline movement is one that resonates not only in the U.S., but around the world as millions still lack access to clean, safe water.

At the UN, representatives across sectors gathered to discuss and raise awareness of such issues for World Water Day.

“Water is the foundation of our life…if we don’t have clean water, we will not be healthy,” said Founder of Water for South Sudan Salva Dut to IPS.

According to the UN, approximately 1.8 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water and instead use contaminated water sources. Unsafe water, poor sanitation and hygiene cause around 842,000 deaths each year.

Dut created his organisation after his father became ill from unclean drinking water. Upon drilling the first well in his father’s village, Dut found a trickle down effect.

“I put a well down—now we have a school, a clinic, a market,” he said.

Dut particularly noted its impact on women and girls who are often tasked with collecting and carrying water over long distances.

“Seeing these young girls whose jobs are to go long distances to collect water, now they have the opportunity to go to school,” he told IPS.

Oyun Sanjaasuren

“With population growth, people will need more food. With needing more food, one will need more agricultural products, and 70 percent of all the freshwater used is used for making food,” she told IPS.

Sanjaasuren and Dut both highlighted the need to recycle and save water.

“There is probably enough water resources in the world, but only if it is managed well,” Sanjaasuren said.

She pointed to the need to not only develop innovative, modern technologies to address the issue, but also to identify “simple” places to implement small interventions that can lead to change including food loss and waste.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), approximately one-third of all food produced in the world is lost or wasted. If food loss and waste were a country, it would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter after the U.S. and China. Due to the significant amount of water used in food production, food loss also leads to a loss of one-fourth of all water used to produce food.

Sanjaasuren said the loss of such precious resources must be addressed, and reducing food loss and waste is one path to good water governance and sustainable development.

“The most important thing is to not take water for granted as an unreplenishable resource,” she continued.

Through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in 2015, governments committed to achieving goals on various water issues including universal and equitable access to safe water; access to adequate sanitation and hygiene; and expanding international cooperation and capacity-building support to developing countries.

Dut stressed the need for the international community to continue supporting South Sudan despite its ongoing conflict.

“South Sudan today is the youngest nation in the world—it is a baby. And when you see your baby walk into the fire, you always run and stop it so it doesn’t get hurt. Whatever is going on in South Sudan today, we still need to support them,” he told IPS.

Half of the population in South Sudan does not have access to safe drinking water while more than 70 percent lack access to sanitary latrines. In displacement camps, hygiene and sanitation are inadequate. Mercy Corps found that flooding has collapsed latrines in some camps, forcing people to walk through knee-high, contaminated water.

Dut said that the international community must continue to provide aid not only for relief, but for development as well.

“In some parts of the country, they are stable. We don’t pay enough attention to what part we should support with development [aid] and what part we should support with relief,” he told IPS.

“If we support these people, they will be able to stand up by themselves,” Dut continued.

Sanjaasuren and Dut particularly pointed to the need to stop water contamination and to reduce or reuse waterwaste, the theme for this year’s World Water Day.

Globally, over 80% of generated wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused. Polluted environments, including unsafe water, cause one-fourth of the global burden of disease, particularly affecting children under the age of five.

Most recently, Bangalore’s Bellandur Lake caught on fire due to illegal waste dumping and mass untreated sewage. The pollution has threatened residents’ health and caused a chronic shortage of clean water. Experts have predicted that the health and water crisis may make Bangalore uninhabitable by 2025.

“It is a very crucial time to change the way we deal with things and how we solve problems,” Sanjaasuren told IPS. The use of treated wastewater in agriculture is one such solution, contributing to water, food, health and environmental security.

In order to achieve this, Sanjaasuren called for an integrated water resource management in which actors at all levels gather at the discussion table. Dut highlighted the role that World Water Day plays in bringing such discussions.

“Thanks to the UN for this World Water Day to really pay attention and let the world to be aware that water is very important in our lives,” Dut told IPS.

World Water Day, which is held on 22 March every year, aims to raise awareness and take action on water issues.

683 million people still lack improved drinking water sources.

By IPS World Desk
ROME, Mar 22 2017 (IPS)

World Water Day on March 22nd gives us an opportunity to reflect on the one simple truth: water is life.

Globally, over 80% of the wastewater generated by society flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused.  Today, 1.8 billion people use a source of drinking water contaminated with faeces, putting them at risk of contracting cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio.

Read IPS coverage of World Water Day

Girls by well. Credit: GWP

By Rudolph Cleveringa
STOCKHOLM, Mar 21 2017 (IPS)

I listened to a Haitian farmer share solutions with neighbouring water users on how best to allocate scarce water resources. I learned about the resolution of inter-village water conflicts after sitting in a longboat for hours on the Ganges Delta in Bangladesh. On the dry floodplains of Ethiopia, I heard how local solutions benefitted women and outperformed ‘imported’ ones.

These experiences taught me that one person’s water problem can’t be solved without involving others. I learned that poor water management is a barrier to development. I began to understand that water problems require not just ‘hard’ solutions such as infrastructure but also ‘soft’ ones such as community participation, unbiased information, and strong institutions. I also became convinced that research and knowledge contribute to smart policies and practices.

What can you do to make water an enabler of development? Assert your role as a stakeholder, advocate for an end to fragmented responsibility for water, insisting on an integrated approach to water management across all sectors – agriculture, energy, tourism, education, transport, health, etc.
Every March 22^nd is World Water Day, when people are made aware of the urgent need to provide clean water to 800 million people who lack it and sanitation to 2.5 billion people who have inadequate facilities. It is a day when this violation of human dignity is, rightly, thrust into our faces, urging us to make water resources a top development priority.

My experiences taught me that solving water problems – whether floods or drought or overuse or scarcity – require more than technical fixes. Water problems are usually problems of management or governance: having (or not having) water policies, laws, financing, and institutions that are transparent, accountable, and integrated across sectors. Without inclusive governance processes, there will be little if any agreement on how to solve the problems.

There isn’t a global water crisis; rather, there are multiple water crises around the globe. Water problems manifest themselves in local communities and need to be solved locally. But the solutions are similar no matter the locality: stakeholder inclusion, cross-sector cooperation, institutional capacity building, reliable information, transparent decision-making, benefit-sharing, and, of course, technical expertise and financial resources. These are governance solutions.

Fortunately, this is recognised in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #6: “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.” Aside from the targets for safe water and adequate sanitation, other targets include water quality, water use, a cross-sector (integrated) approach, ecosystem protection, and even transboundary cooperation.

Those targets require massive changes in the way we manage water resources. If we keep doing it the way we always have – usually a fragmented approach with each sector acting unilaterally – then SDG 6 and all water-dependent SDGs risk not being achieved. Water is a key enabler to reach the ambitions of the SDGs.

How is the global community held accountable to deliver on the SDGs? Who is the global community if solutions are mostly local? Surely different levels of government are involved. But so are other actors such as civil society, including faith-based organisations that work at the grassroots, and the private sector.

Rudolph Cleveringa, Executive Secretary, Global Water Partnership

What Global Water Partnership (GWP) wants to say – after 20 years of improving water governance – is that one of the single, most effective ways to hold governments and society accountable is to build broad, diverse, influential multi-stakeholder partnerships. These partnerships are vital to the large-scale transformational change required by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a fact recognised by SDG #17: “Revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.”

One essential component of those global partnerships must be a ‘bottom-up’ mechanism for ensuring that local communities and businesses are heard at national, regional, and international levels. Stakeholder inclusion is paramount to managing water for sustainable economic growth. GWP has consistently called on governments to invest in water by strengthening institutions and financing infrastructure. Foreign aid alone cannot do it. The billions of dollars raised pale in comparison to the trillions needed. Fortunately, the business community is beginning to answer the call of mobilising investment finance.

What can you do to make water an enabler of development? Assert your role as a stakeholder, advocate for an end to fragmented responsibility for water, insisting on an integrated approach to water management across all sectors – agriculture, energy, tourism, education, transport, health, etc. You can also call on your political leaders at all levels to deliver sustainable water management now that the SDGs have made it a political priority.

There’s enough water for the world’s growing needs, but only if it is managed well. That’s why GWP created the SDG Preparedness Facility: to mobilise our partners to support countries in the implementation of water-related SDGs.

Good water governance is the foundation for achieving food and energy security, poverty reduction, creating social stability, reducing disaster risk, and promoting peace. With empowered, active, multi-stakeholder partnerships that are passionate about contributing holistic and lasting solutions, we will get to water security. Join us to get there!

Rudolph Cleveringa is Executive Secretary at Global Water Partnership

Excerpt:

Bellandur Lake, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. Credit: SIWI

By Torgny Holmgren
STOCKHOLM, Mar 21 2017 (IPS)

Water is a finite resource. With a growing population, an expanding global middle class and a rise in energy and industrial production, the demand for water is reaching new levels. According to the OECD, global demand for freshwater will increase by 55 percent between 2000 and 2050. By 2050 it is expected that roughly 6.4 billion people will live in cities, making urban water management an essential building block for resilience and sustainable growth.

A growing number of users with competing demands further propels the issue of global water scarcity. A variable climate with unpredictable precipitation patterns intensifies this issue. It is now more important than ever to find ways to be more careful with the water we have and to better balance competing water needs between different users.

The good news is that we know we can be far more efficient in our use of water, and many actors, such as cities already are.

At SIWI, we believe that a circular economy in which water is reused and waste is managed as an economic asset are important parts of the solution to this challenge.

By 2050 it is expected that roughly 6.4 billion people will live in cities, making urban water management an essential building block for resilience and sustainable growth.
The opportunities for exploiting wastewater are enormous. When properly harnessed, wastewater is an affordable and sustainable source of water, energy, nutrients and other consumables. This is one of the many reasons why the theme of the world’s leading annual event on water and development – World Water Week in Stockholm – is ‘Water and waste: reduce and reuse’.

The Week will address the challenges presented by two ambitious targets set out in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Goal 6, target 3:
“by 2030, improve water quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping and minimizing release of hazardous chemicals and materials, halving the proportion of untreated wastewater and substantially increasing recycling and safe reuse globally”

Goal 12, target 5:
“by 2030, substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse”.

These are just two of the 169 SDG targets, that along with the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the annual Global Risk Report by the World Economic Forum, highlight our challenge to achieve sustainable development in a changing world.

Water is a great connector and is at the core of sustainable development. It is the ‘blue thread’ that runs through the SDGs – without reliable access to water almost none of the Sustainable Development Goals can be achieved.

In recent years, business leaders and city mayors have become more engaged in water and sustainable development, becoming important partners in achieving a water wise world.

Torgny Holmgren

Cities are increasingly recognized as critical to achieving the SDGs. They are the frontline for institutional, economic and social change; they are the future for humanity and the stage upon which the SDGs will unfold.

While wastewater isn’t only an urban challenge, cities can serve as a hub for wastewater innovation as they present some of the greatest wastewater challenges. Challenges from sewage management, stormwater runoff and urban flooding are further exaggerated by intensified urbanization and climate change.

Water supply, sanitation and stormwater are integral components of the urban water system, yet they are often not planned or operated in an integrated way. Viewing them as a single system can greatly enhance the utility of water, both in the context of everyday use and under stress.

This calls for new approaches to ‘smart cities’, with greater emphasis on integrated urban water and wastewater management, with stronger links to spatial planning and inter-institutional collaboration.

Success in urban water management relies on people, good governance and cross-sectoral collaboration. World Water Week offers a place for addressing this by bringing together scientists, policy makers, and private sector and civil society actors to network, exchange ideas and foster new thinking. I invite you to join SIWI at World Water Week, 27 August – 1 September, to help develop expertise and discuss today’s biggest water-related issues.

Torgny Holmgren is Executive Director at Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI)

Excerpt:

Pastoralists in the Ufeyn region of Puntland are walking further and further to find water for their livestock. Credit: @WFP/K Dhanji

By Baher Kamal
ROME, Mar 21 2017 (IPS)

During the final exams of Spanish official high school of journalists, a student was asked by the panel of professors-examiners: If scientists discover that there is water in Planet Mars, how would you announce this news, what would be your title? The student did not hesitate a second: “There is life in Mars!” The student was graduated with the highest score.

In spite of this simple truth, human beings have been systematically wasting this primordial source of life. So much, that the United Nations has warmed ahead of this year’s World Water Day, marked on March 22, “We’re all wasters when it comes to wastewater.”

In fact, the world body reminds that every time “we use water, we produce wastewater. And instead of reusing it, we let 80 per cent of it just flow down the drain. We all need to reduce and reuse wastewater as much as we can. Here are three ideas for all us wasters!”

“Water is finite. It has to serve the need of more and more people and we only have one ecosystem from which to draw our water, “ says the UN-Water’s Chair Guy Ryder, Director-General of the International Labour Organization.

What to Do Then?

Key organisations involved in the hard task of raising awareness among the world’s seven billion inhabitants on the vital importance of not wasting water, now remind, once more, of some simple, obvious recommendations.

Also to put rubbish, oils, chemicals, and food in the bin, not down the drain. The dirtier your wastewater, the more energy and money it costs to treat it.

And, why not, collect used water from your kitchen sink or bathtub and use it on plants and gardens, and to wash your bike or car.

“The water passing through us and our homes is on a journey through the water cycle. By reducing the quantity and pollution of our wastewater, and by safely reusing it as much as we can, we’re all helping to protect our most precious resource,” says the World Water Day 2017.

Wasting Water in Workplaces

Water wasting is not at all limited to house. Workplaces represent a major focus in the life of workers and employers. Having access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) can contribute greatly to people’s health and productivity, and to making economies grow, says the UN.

Sanitation at the workplace means more than just toilets, it adds. It also refers to proper use and cleaning of toilets, wastewater management, and the promotion of individual employee sanitation behaviour, including the proper use of toilets and prevention of open defecation.

“Sanitation also encompasses interventions that reduce human exposure to diseases by providing a clean environment in which to work.”

There is more to learn about “Wastewater and faecal sludge management” in the International Labour Organization (ILO) toolkit WASH@Work a self-training handbook.

This handbook is a combined training and action tool designed to inform governments, employers, and workers on the needs for WASH at the workplace.

The New Black? What Is That?

The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) launched a book at World Water Week 2016 pushing for a radical rethink of the inefficient way we deal with our excreta and wastewater – and illustrating how it can be done.

Credit: UN Water

“We need to recognize wastewater and sanitation waste for what they are –a valuable resource– and their safe management as an efficient investment in long-term sustainability.”

The book provides shocking data. In fact, the Sanitation, Wastewater Management and Sustainability: From Waste Disposal to Resource Recovery, suggests that just the 330 km3 of municipal wastewater produced globally each year is enough to irrigate 40 million hectares – equivalent to 15 per cent of all currently irrigated land – or to power 130 million households through biogas generation.

UNEP and SEI–an international non-profit research organisation that has worked with environment and development issues from local to global policy levels for a quarter of a century– also say,

“When excreta from on-site systems such as pit latrines – still common across much of the world – and other organic waste such as livestock and agricultural residues and food waste are included, the potential for productive reuse gets much greater.”

Furthermore, the publication adds, these waste streams are a rich source of plant nutrients essential for agriculture; globally produced municipal wastewater alone contains the equivalent of 25 per cent of the nitrogen and 15 per cent of the phosphorus applied as chemical fertilizers, as well as vital micro-nutrients and organic matter that chemical fertilizers lack.

“In just one day, a city of 10 million flushes enough nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium to fertilize about 500,000 hectares of agricultural land. In poor rural areas resource recovery could be a lifeline for small farmers.”

“Throughout history, sanitation has catalysed development,” says Kim Andersson, an SEI Research Fellow and head of the SEI Initiative on Sustainable Sanitation. “We’re at a point where it can really do that again. I’d go so far as to say that a transition to sustainable development cannot happen without a radical rethink of the way we deal with our excreta and wastewater.”

The book promises to be a key text in a growing movement to frame wastewater as a resource issue. This trend is clear not only in the number of sessions this year on wastewater and resource recovery, but also in the theme announced for next year’s gathering: “Why Waste Water”.

“How we deal with excreta and wastewater should be front and centre in discussions about water, food security and health and the future of cities – in fact about development and human well-being,” says Sarah Dickin, Research Fellow at SEI. Download the book.

Don’t know how big are you as water-wasters? Take this quick quiz. You will be amazed!

Excerpt:

Clean drinking water is available to no more than half of Asia’s population. Water is fundamental to the post-2015 development agenda. Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
NEW DELHI, Mar 21 2017 (IPS)

In Asia, it likely will not be straightforward water wars.

Prolonged water scarcity might lead to security situations that are more nuanced, giving rise to a complex set of cascading but unpredictable consequences, with communities and nations reacting in ways that we have not seen in the past because climate change will alter the reliability of current water management systems and infrastructure, say experts.China plays an increasingly dominant role in South Asia’s water politics because it administers the Tibetan Autonomous Region; the Himalayan mountain range contains the largest amount of snow and ice after Antartica and the Arctic.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2016 said a water crisis is the most impactful risk over the next 10 years. The effects of rising populations in developing regions like Asia, alongside growing prosperity, place unsustainable pressure on resources and are starting to manifest themselves in new, sometimes unexpected ways – harming people, institutions and economies, and making water security an urgent political matter.

While the focus is currently on the potential for climate change to exacerbate water crises, with impacts including conflicts and a much greater flow of forced migration that is already on our doorsteps, a 2016 study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) warns Asia not to underestimate impact of industrial and population growth, including spiraling urban growth, on serious water shortages across a broad swath of Asia by 2050.

Asia’s water challenges escalate

To support a global population of 9.7 billion by 2050, food production needs to increase by 60 percent and water demand is projected to go up by 55 percent. But the horizon is challenging for developing regions, especially Asia, whose 3.4 billion population will need 100 percent more food – using the diminishing, non-substitute resource in a warming world said the Asian Water Development Outlook (AWDO) 2016, the latest regional water report card from the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

More than 1.4 billion people – or 42 percent of world’s total active workforce – are heavily water dependent, especially in agriculture-dominant Asia, according to the UN World Water Development Report 2016.

With erratic monsoons on which more than half of all agriculture in Asia is dependent, resorting to groundwater for irrigation, whose extraction is largely unmonitored, is already rampant. A staggering 70 percent of the world’s groundwater extraction is in Asia, with India, China and Pakistan the biggest consumers, estimates UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

By 2050, with a 30 percent increase in extraction, 86 percent of groundwater extracted in Asia will be by these three countries, finds the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

Together India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal use 23 million pumps with an annual energy bill of 3.78 billion dollars for lifting water – an indicator of the critical demand for water, and to an extent of misgovernance and lack of water-saving technologies (AWDO 2016).

AWDO sounds alarm bells warning that we are on the verge of a water crisis, with limited knowledge on when we will tip the balance.

Analysts from the Leadership Group on Water Security in Asia say the start of future transboundary water conflicts will have less to do with the absolute scarcity of water and more to do with the rate of change in water availability.

Water, known as Blue Gold, provides a broad range of livelihoods to communities as in India’s Kerala state. Here coconut farmers ferry a boatload to sell at tourist spots. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

‘Resource nationalism’ already strong in water-stressed Asian neighbours

With just 30 days of buffer fresh water stock, Pakistan’s renewable internal freshwater resources per capita in 2014 measured a perilous 297 cubic metres, Bangladesh’s 660m³ India’s 1116m³ and China’s 2062m³. When annual water access falls below 1700m³ per person, an area is considered water-stressed and when 1000m³ is breached, it faces water scarcity.

ADB describes Asia as “the global hotspot for water insecurity.

By 2050 according to AWDO, 3.4 billion people – or the projected combined population of India, China, Pakistan and Bangladesh in 2050 – making up 40 percent of the world population, could be living in water-stressed areas. In other words, the bulk of the population increase will be in countries already experiencing water shortages.

Underlying geo-political standpoints are slowly but perceptibly hardening in Himalayan Asia nations over shared river basins, even if not intensifying as yet, seen in the latest instances last year. They are, as water conflict analysts predict, spurts of bilateral tension that might or might not suddenly escalate to conflict, the scale of which cannot be predicted. The following, a latest instance, is a pointer to future scenarios of geographical interdependencies that riparian nations can either reduce by sensible hydro-politics or escalate differences by contestations.

There was alarm in Pakistan when Indian Prime Minister took a stand in September last year to review the 57-year-old Indus Water Treaty between the two South Asian neighbours. India was retaliating against a purportedly Pakistan terrorist attack on an Indian army base at Uri in Kashmir that killed 18 soldiers.

By co-incidence or design (several Indian analysts think it is the latter), at the very same time China blocked a tributary of the Yarlung Tsangpo River which is the upper course of the Brahmaputra in India, as part of the construction of its 740-million-dollar Lalho hydro project in the Tibet Autonomous Region.

The Yarlung Tsangpo River originates in the Himalayan ranges, and is called the Brahmaputra as it flows down into India’s Arunachal Pradesh state bordering Tibet and further into Bangladesh.

China’s action caused India alarm on two counts. Some analysts believed Beijing was trying to encourage Dhaka to take up a defensive stand against India over sharing of Brahmaputra waters, thereby destabilizing India-Bangladesh’s cordial ally status in the region.

The second possibility analysts proffered is an alarming and fairly new military risk. River water, when dammed, can be intentionally used as a weapon of destruction during war.

Pakistan had earlier raised the same security concern, that India may exercise a strategic advantage during war by regulating the two major dams on rivers that flow through Kashmir into Pakistan. Indian experts say China is more likely than India to take this recourse and will use the river water as a bargaining chip in diplomatic negotiations.

South Asia as a region is prone to conflict between nations, between non-state actors and the state. Its history of territorial issues, religious and ethnic differences makes it more volatile than most other regions. Historically China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have had territorial wars between them. The  wary and increasingly competitive outlook of their relationships makes technology-grounded and objective discussions over the erupting water disputes difficult.

China already plays an increasingly dominant role in South Asia’s water politics because it administers the Tibetian Autonomous Region with the Tibetan Plateau, around which the Himalayan mountain range contains the largest amount of snow and ice after Antartica and the Arctic. The glacier-fed rivers that emanate from this ‘water tower’ are shared across borders by 40 percent of world population, guaranteeing food, water and energy security to millions of people and nurturing biodiverse ecosystems downstream.

The largest three trans-boundary basins in the region – in terms of area, population, water resources, irrigation and hydropower potential – are the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra.

Both India and China have embarked on massive hydropower energy generation, China for industrialization and India to provide for its population, which will be the world’s largest by 2022.

With growing food and energy needs, broad estimates suggest that more than half of the world’s large rivers are dammed. Dams have enormous benefits, but without comprehensive water-sharing treaties, lower riparian states are disadvantaged and this could turn critical in future.

While there are river-water sharing treaties between India and Pakistan, and with Bangladesh, there is none with China except a hydrological data sharing collaboration.

Security threats emerge when it becomes difficult to solve competition over scarce natural resources by cooperation. Failure may result in violent conflicts. A ‘zero-sum’ situation is reached, when violence is seen as the only option to secure use of the resource, says a 2016 report by the Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change.

When drivers in Asia, like population growth, the need for economic growth, poverty reduction, energy needs, the impact of high rate of urbanization and changing lifestyles, confront resource scarcity, it could bring a zero-sum situation sooner than anticipated.

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Clean water is still a pipe dream for more than 300 million Africans. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Mar 21 2017 (IPS)

Though key to good health and economic wellbeing, water and sanitation remain less of a development priority in Africa, where high costs and poor policy implementation constrain getting clean water and flush toilets to millions.

A signatory to several agreements committing to water security, Africa simply cannot afford the infrastructure to bring water to everyone, argues water expert Mike Muller.Lack of access to clean water can contribute to famine, wars and uncontrolled and irregular migration.

Sub-Saharan Africa uses less than five percent of its water resources, but making water available to all can be prohibitively expensive, Muller, of the Wits University School of Governance in South Africa and a former director general of the South African Department of Water, told IPS.

“Domestic water supply is a political priority in Africa and sanitation has grown in importance,” he said, “but the services cost money.”

According to the World Water Council, a global body with over 300 members founded in 1996 to advocate for world water security, the world needs to spend an estimated 650 billion dollars annually from now to 2030 to build necessary infrastructure to ensure universal water security.

Water woes still running

Africa is still far from enjoying the returns from investments in the water sector; for example, it has more citizens with mobile phones than access to clean water and toilets. A 2016 report published by Afrobarometer, a pan-African research network, which explored access to basic services and infrastructure in 35 African countries, found that only 30 percent of Africans had access to toilets and only 63 percent to piped water – yet 93 percent had mobile phone service.

Governments need to invest in water projects that will avail clean water to all in a world where over 800 million people currently do not have access to safe drinking water, and where water-related diseases account for 3.5 million deaths each year, said the World Water Council in a statement ahead of the World Water Day. The WWC warned that water insecurity costs the global economy an estimated 500 billion dollars annually.

“World leaders realize that sanitation is fundamental to public health, but we need to act now in order to achieve the UN’s Global Sustainable Development Goal Number 6 – to deliver safe water and sanitation to everyone everywhere by 2030,” World Water Council President Benedito Braga said in a statement. “We need commitment at the highest levels, so every town and city in the world can ensure that safe, clean water resources are available.”

Noting the key impact of water access, Braga warned that lack of access to clean water can contribute to famine, wars and uncontrolled and irregular migration.

“Water is an essential ingredient for social and economic development across nearly all sectors. It secures enough food for all, provides sufficient and stable energy supplies, and ensures market and industrial stability amongst others benefits,” he said, adding that the world has missed the sanitation target, leaving 2.4 billion people without access to improved sanitation facilities, necessitating the investment in water and sanitation which the World Water Council said brought an estimated 4.3 dollars in return for every dollar invested through reduced health care costs.

Children fetch water from a canal at the Magwe irrigation scheme in south Matabeleland, Zimbabwe. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

Wealth from wastewater

World Water Day 2017 focuses on waste water, which the United Nations inter-agency entity UN-Water says is an untapped source of wealth if properly treated.

The United Nations defines wastewater as “a combination of domestic effluent consisting of blackwater (excreta, urine and faecal sludge) and greywater (kitchen and bathing wastewater) in addition to water from commercial establishments and institutions, industrial and agricultural effluent.”

According the fourth World Water Development Report, currently only 20 percent of globally produced wastewater receives proper treatment, and this was mainly dependent on a country’s income. This means treatment capacity is 70 percent of the generated wastewater in high-income countries, compared to only 8 percent in low-income countries, according to a UN-Water Analytics Brief, Waste Water Management.

“A paradigm shift is now required in water politics the world over not only to prevent further damage to sensitive ecosystems and the aquatic environment, but also to emphasize that wastewater is a resource (in terms of water and also nutrient for agricultural use) whose effective management is essential for future water security,” said UN-Water.

Muller said Africa cannot talk of waste water without first delivering adequate clean water.

“The focus on waste water reflects the rich world’s desire to reduce pollution, protect the environment and sell technology,” Muller said. “There are some major cities and towns where ‘used’ water is treated and reused, in others untreated water is sought after by peri-urban farmers because it provides valuable fertilizer as well.

“But in places without adequate water supplies or sewers to remove the wastewater, waste water treatment is not yet a priority, [and] without water supply there can be no waste water.”

According to the World Water Council, about 90 percent of the world’s wastewater flows untreated into the environment. More than 923 million people have no access to safe drinking water and 2.4 billion others do not have adequate sanitation.

“Nearly 40 percent of the world’s population already faces water scarcity, which may increase to two-thirds of the population by 2025. In addition, approximately 700 million people are living in urban areas without safe toilets,” the Council said.

Waste water can be a drought-resistant source of water especially for agriculture or industry, nutrients for agriculture, soil conditioner and source of energy.

Some impurities in wastewater are useful as organic fertilizers. With proper treatment, wastewater can be useful in supporting pasture for grazing by livestock.

Clever Mafuta, Africa Coordinator at GRID-Arendal, a Norway-based centre that collaborates with the UN Environment, says an integrated and holistic approach is needed in water management across the world.

“Making strides in safe drinking water alone is a temporary success if other elements such as sanitation and wastewater management are not attended to, especially in urban areas,” Mafuta told IPS. “Wastewater often ends up in drinking sources, and as such if wastewater is not managed well, gains made in the provision of safe drinking water can be eroded.”

The UN estimates that Sub-Saharan Africa alone loses 40 billion hours per year collecting water – the same as an entire year’s labour by the population of France.

The Africa Water Vision 2025 launched by a number of UN agencies and African regional bodies in 2000 noted extreme climate and rainfall variability, inappropriate governance and institutional arrangements in managing national and transactional water basins and unsustainable financing of investments in water supply and sanitation as some of the threats to water security in Africa.

African ministers responsible for sanitation and hygiene adopted the Ngor Declaration on Sanitation and Hygiene in May 2015 in Senegal, committing to access to sanitation and eliminating open defecation by 2030. However, this goal remains extremely distant.

African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW) has developed an African monitoring and reporting system for the water and sanitation sector. Executive Secretary Canisius Kanangire calls it an important step in ensuring effective and efficient management of the continent’s water resources and the provision of adequate and equitable access to safe water and sanitation for all.

Excerpt:

The massive rice industry in Guyana, which provides employment for at least 100,000 people, is just one area of the Caribbean’s agriculture sector under threat from climate change. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Mar 16 2017 (IPS)

As Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries continue to build on the momentum of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and the 22^nd Conference of the Parties (COP22) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Marrakech in 2016, special emphasis is being placed on agriculture as outlined in their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs).

The historic climate agreement was approved on Dec. 12, 2015 at COP21. INDCs is the term used under the UNFCCC for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that all countries which are party to the convention were asked to publish in the lead up to the conference.Nearly all of the countries in the Caribbean have experienced prolonged droughts, posing significant challenges to food production in one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change.

In their INDCs, the countries of CARICOM, a 15-member regional grouping, have prioritized adaptation in the agricultural sector, given the need to support food security.

They are now shifting their focus from climate planning to action and implementation. To this end, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) hosted a Caribbean Climate Smart Agriculture (CCSA) Forum here recently to raise awareness of best practices, by promoting and supporting climate change actions, while providing a space for dialogue among relevant actors and allowing them to discuss the challenges and successes of  Climate Smart Agriculture.

Climate Smart Agriculture has been identified as offering major wins for food security, adaptation and mitigation in the Caribbean.

“Agriculture is a priority sector,” Pankaj Bhatia, Deputy Director of the World Resource Institute’s Climate Programme, told participants.

As countries move forward with their plans, he recommended they participate in NDC Partnership, a global initiative to help countries achieve their national climate commitments and ensure financial and technical assistance is delivered as efficiently as possible.

“Much work still needs to be done by countries to create more detailed road maps, catalyse investment, and implement the plans to deliver on their climate commitments,” said Bhatia, who helps to manage one of the largest climate change projects of the World Resources Institute (WRI).

“It’s worth exploring the options and how the NDC Partnership can offer support,” Bhatia added.

As of February 2017, there were approximately 40 countries involved in the NDC Partnership, as well as intergovernmental and regional organizations such as the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), European Bank, the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

A farmer manually irrigates a cornfield in Barbados. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

The major pillars of the Partnership to drive ambitious climate action include sharing knowledge and information and facilitating both technical and financial support, thus encouraging increased efficiency, accountability and effectiveness of support programmes.

The Partnership develops knowledge products that fill critical information gaps and disseminates them through a knowledge sharing portal.

Another speaker, Climate Change Specialist in the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Climate Change Office, John Furlow, emphasized the importance of participation from multiple sectors in the process of creating Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAPs), using Jamaica as a case study for how this was done effectively.

“In 2012, the then prime minister of Jamaica asked USAID to help Jamaica develop a national climate policy. Rather than starting with climate impacts, we wanted to start with what Jamaica defined as important to them,” Furlow explained.

“The national outcomes in the vision document listed agriculture, manufacturing, mining and quarrying, construction, creative industries, sport, information and communication technology, services and tourism.

“So, we wanted to bring in the actors responsible for those economic sectors for discussion on how they would address climate and hazard risk reduction in a national policy,” he added.

Furlow continued that the goal is to get climate change out of the environment ministry and into the ministries responsible for the sectors that are going to be affected.

This, he said, has the potential of putting developing countries in the driver’s seat in locating “multiple sources of funding – domestic, bilateral aid funding and multi-lateral aid funding” – so countries can take a role in what’s going on within their borders.

The Climate Change Policy Framework for Jamaica outlines the strategies that the country will employ in order to effectively respond to the impacts and challenges of climate change, through measures which are appropriate for varying scales and magnitudes of climate change impacts.

It states that relevant sectors will be required to develop or update, as appropriate, plans addressing climate change adaptation and/or mitigation.

Within the Policy Framework there are also Special Initiatives based on new and existing programmes and activities which will be prioritized for early implementation.

Each year the Caribbean imports 5 billion dollars worth of food and climate change represents a clear and growing threat to its food security with differing rainfall patterns, water scarcity, heat stress and increased climatic variability making it difficult for farmers to meet demand for crops and livestock.

In recent years, nearly all of the countries in the Caribbean have been experiencing prolonged drought, posing significant challenges to food production in one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change.

Organizers of the CCSA Forum say there are many common agriculture-related topics in the NDCs of the English-speaking Caribbean countries, including conservation and forestry, water harvesting and storage, and improved agricultural policies.

All but one of the Caribbean countries included the issue of agriculture in their respective INDC. The sector is addressed in the INDCs with the priority being on adaptation. However, more than half of the countries also included conditional mitigation targets that directly or indirectly relate to agriculture.

The commitments made by all the countries denote the priority of the sector in the region’s development goals and the need to channel technical and financial support for the sector.

IICA said agriculture also has great potential to achieve the integration of mitigation and adaptation approaches into policies, strategies and programmes.

It also noted that the commitments made by each country, both through the Paris Agreement and in their respective INDCs, provide a solid foundation for tackling the global challenge of climate change with concrete actions keyed to national contexts and priorities.

The water table is falling in Egypt's desert oases, raising questions of sustainability. Credit: Cam McGrath/IPS

By Baher Kamal
ROME, Mar 13 2017 (IPS)

New evidence is deepening scientific fears, advanced few years ago, that the Middle East and North Africa risk becoming uninhabitable in a few decades, as accessible fresh water has fallen by two-thirds over the past 40 years.

This sharp water scarcity simply not only affects the already precarious provision of drinking water for most of the region’s 22 countries, home to nearly 400 million inhabitants, but also the availability of water for agriculture and food production for a fast growing population.“Looming water scarcity in the North Africa and Middle East region is a huge challenge requiring an urgent and massive response" – Graziano da Silva.

The new facts are stark: per capita availability of fresh water in the region is now 10 times less than the world average. Moreover, higher temperatures may shorten growing seasons in the region by 18 days and reduce agricultural yields a further 27 per cent to 55 per cent less by the end of this century.

Add to this that the region’s fresh water resources are among the lowest in the world, and are expected to fall over 50 per cent by 2050, according to the United Nations leading agency in the field of food and agriculture.

Moreover, 90 per cent of the total land in the region lies within arid, semi/arid and dry sub/humid areas, while 45 per cent of the total agricultural area is exposed to salinity, soil nutrient depletion and wind water erosion, adds the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Meanwhile, agriculture in the region uses around 85 per cent of the total available freshwater, it reports, adding that over 60 per cent of water resources in the region flows from outside national and regional boundaries.

Recurring droughts have destroyed most harvests in the Sahel. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

This alarming situation has prompted FAO’s director general to call for urgent action. On his recent visit to Cairo, Jose Graziano da Silva said that access to water is a “fundamental need for food security, human health and agriculture”, and its looming scarcity in the North Africa and Middle East region is a huge challenge requiring an “urgent and massive response”.

Meantime, the rising sea level in the Nile Delta –which hosts the most fertile lands in Egypt– is exposing the region’s most inhabited country (almost 100 million people) to the danger of losing substantial parts of the most productive agriculture land due to salinisation.

“Competition between water-usage sectors will only intensify in the future between agriculture, energy, industrial production and household needs,” on March 9 warned Graziano da Silva.

FAO’s chief attended in Cairo a high-level meeting on the Rome-based organisation’s collaboration with Egypt on the “1.5 million feddan initiative” {1 feddan is equivalent to 0.42 hectares, or 1.038 acres}, the Egyptian government’s plan to reclaim eventually up to two million hectares of desert land for agricultural and other uses.

What to Do?

Egypt’s future agenda is particularly tough as the country “needs to look seriously into the choice of crops and the patterns of consumption,” Graziano da Silva also warned, pointing to potential water waste in cultivating wheat in the country.

“Urgent actions supporting it include measures aimed at reducing food loss and waste and bolstering the resilience of smallholders and family farmers, that require implementing a mix of social protection interventions, investments and technology transfers.”

Specialty crops such as fruit and vegetables, here on sale at a Cairo market, have a key role in Egypt’s future. Credit: FAO

The UN specialised agency leads a Near East and North Africa Water Scarcity Initiative that provides both policy advice and best practice ideas on the governance of irrigation schemes. The Initiative is now backed by a network of more than 30 national and international organisations.

The Big Risk

Several scientific studies about ongoing climate change impact on the Middle East region, particularly in the Gulf area, had already sounded loud warning drums.

“Within this century, parts of the Persian Gulf region could be hit with unprecedented events of deadly heat as a result of climate change, according to a study of high-resolution climate models,” a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) research said.

The research–titled “Persian Gulf could experience deadly heat”, reveals details of a business-as-usual scenario for greenhouse gas emissions, but also shows that curbing emissions could forestall these “deadly temperature extremes.”

The study, which was published in detail ahead of the Paris climate summit in the journal Nature Climate Change, was conducted by Elfatih Eltahir, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at MIT, and Jeremy Pal of Loyola Marymount University.

The authors conclude that conditions in the Persian Gulf region, including its shallow water and intense sun, make it “a specific regional hotspot where climate change, in absence of significant mitigation, is likely to severely impact human habitability in the future.”

Running high-resolution versions of standard climate models, Eltahir and Pal found that many major cities in the region could exceed a tipping point for human survival, even in shaded and well-ventilated spaces. Eltahir says this threshold “has, as far as we know … never been reported for any location on Earth.”

For its part, the IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change latest assessment warns that the climate is predicted to become even hotter and drier in most of the Middle East and North of Africa region.

Higher temperatures and reduced precipitation will increase the occurrence of droughts, an effect that is already materializing in the Maghreb,” said the World Bank while citing the IPCC assessment.

Fayaz Ahmad Khanday plucks a lotus stem from Wullar Lake in India’s Kashmir. He says the fish population has fallen drastically in recent years. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

By Umar Shah
SRINAGAR, Feb 22 2017 (IPS)

Mudasir Ahmad says that two decades ago, his father made a prophecy that the lake would vanish after the fish in its waters started dying. Three years ago, he found dead fish floating on the surface, making him worried about its fate.

Like his father, Ahmad, 27, is a boatman on Kashmir’s famed Nigeen Lake, located north of Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar. He says the lake has provided a livelihood to his family for generations, but now things are taking an “ugly turn”.“The floods of September 2014 wreaked havoc and caused heavy loss to property and human lives. That was the first signal of how vulnerable have we become to natural disasters due to environmental degradation." --Researcher Aabid Ahmad

The gradual algae bloom in the lake, otherwise known for its pristine beauty, led to oxygen depletion. Fish began to die. Environmentalists termed the development the first visible signs of environmental stress in the lake.

But no one was more worried than Mudasir himself. “We have been rowing boats on the lake for centuries. My grandfather and my father have been fed by this lake. I also have grown up here and my livelihood is directly dependent on the lake,” Ahmad told IPS.

He believes the emergence of rust-coloured waters is the sign of the lake dying a silent death, and he holds everyone responsible. “We have built houses in an unprecedented way around its banks. The drainage from the households directly drifts into the lake, making it more polluted than ever,” Ahmad said.

Blessed with over 1,000 small and large water bodies, the landlocked Kashmir Valley, located northern India, is known as the land of lakes and mountains. However, due to large scale urbanization and unprecedented deforestation, most of the water bodies in the region have disappeared.

A recent study by Kashmir’s renowned environmentalists Gowher Naseem and  Humayun Rashid found that 50 percent of lakes and wetlands in the region’s capital have been lost to other land use/land cover categories. During the last century, deforestation led to excessive siltation and subsequent human activity brought about sustained land use changes in these assets of high ecological value.

The study concludes that the loss of water bodies in Kashmir can be attributed to heavy population pressures.

Research fellow at Kashmir University, Aijaz Hassan, says the Kashmir Valley was always prone to floods but several water bodies in the region used to save the local population from getting marooned.

“All the valley’s lakes and the vast associated swamps played an important role in maintaining the uniformity of flows in the rivers. In the past, during the peak summers, whenever the rivers would flow high, these lakes and swamps used to act as places for storage of excessive water and thereby prevented large areas of the valley from floods,” Hassan said.

Fishermen cover their heads and part of their boats with blankets and straw as they wait to catch fish Kashmir’s Dal Lake. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

India’s largest freshwater lake, Wullar Lake, is located in North Kashmir’s Bandipora area. It too is witnessing severe degradation due to large-scale human intervention. Wullar Lake, which claimed an area of 217.8 sq. km in 1911, has been reduced to about 80 sq. km today, with only 24 sq. km of open water remaining.

Environmentalist Majid Farooq says large areas of the lake have been converted for rice cultivation and tree plantations. According to him, pollution from fertilizers and animal waste, hunting pressure on waterfowl and migratory birds, and weed infestation are other factors contributing to the loss of Wullar Lake’s natural beauty. The fish population in the lake has witnessed a sharp decline due to depletion of oxygen and ingress of pollutants.

Another famed lake known as Dal Lake has shrunk by 24.49 per cent in the past 155 years and its waters are becoming increasingly polluted.

The lake, according to research by the University of Kashmir’s Earth Science Department, is witnessing “multiple pressures” from unplanned urbanisation, high population growth and nutrient load from intensive agriculture and tourism.

Analysis of the demographic data indicated that the human population within the lake areas had shown “more than double the national growth rate.”

Shakil Ahmad Ramshoo, head of Department of Earth Sciences at University of Kashmir, told IPS that the water quality of the lake is deteriorating and no more than 20 percent of the lake’s water is potable.

“As the population increased, all the household sewage, storm runoff goes into the Dal Lake without any treatment — or even if there is treatment done, it is very insufficient. This has increased the pollutant load of the Dal Lake,” he said.

According to Ramshoo, when the study compared the past water quality of the lake with the present, it found ingress of the pollutants has increased and the lake water quality has deteriorated significantly.

According to the region’s tourism department, over one million tourists visit Dal Lake annually and around 300,000 people are directly and indirectly dependent on the lake for their livelihood. The multimillion-dollar handicrafts industry of Kashmir, which gives employment to over 200,000 people, is also heavily dependent upon the arrival of tourists in the region.

A study on the Impact of Tourism Industry on Economic Development of Jammu and Kashmir says that almost 50-60 percent of the total population of Jammu and Kashmir is directly or indirectly engaged in tourism related activities. The industry contributes 15 percent to the state’s GDP.

However, Mudasir Ahmad, whose livelihood is directly dependent on the lake, says every time he takes tourists to explore the lake in his Shikara (a boat), he is asked about the murkier water quality.

“My grandfather and even my father used to drink from this lake. The present situation is worrisome and if this goes unabated, tourists would cease to come. Who would spend money to see cesspools?” Ahmad said.

Fayaz Ahmad Khanday, a fisherman living on Wullar Lake, says the fish production has fallen drastically in the last three years, affecting both him and hundreds of other fishermen.

“Fish used to be present in abundance in the lake but now the scarcity of the species is taking toll. Every day we see dead fish floating on the lake’s waters. We really are concerned about our livelihood and the fate of the lake as well,” Khanday lamented.

The fisherman holds unplanned construction around the lake responsible for its pollution. Aabid Ahmad, a research scholar in Environmental Studies, says Kashmir has become vulnerable to natural disasters as region’s most of the water bodies have either disappeared or are shrinking.

“The floods of September 2014 wreaked havoc and caused heavy loss to property and human lives. That was the first signal of how vulnerable have we become to natural disasters due to environmental degradation,” Ahmad told IPS.

But, for Shakeel Ramshoo, it is still possible to restore the lakes and water bodies of Kashmir.

“Don’t move the people living on these water bodies out.  You just allow them to stay in the lake. We have to control the haphazard constructions that are taking toll around these water bodies,” he said.

“Hutments in the water bodies should be densified with STPs (Sewage Treatment Plants) installed in every household. Land mass can be removed and the area of the water bodies would increase. Also, the sewage treatment mechanism should be better so that the ingress of pollutants is ceased,” Ramshoo said.

Farmers in the Horn of Africa need urgent support to recover from consecutive lost harvests and to keep their livestock healthy and productive. Photo: FAO/Simon Maina

By IPS World Desk
ROME, Feb 15 2017 (IPS)

The most severe drought in decades, which has struck parts of Ethiopia and is exacerbated by a particularly strong El Niño effect, has led to successive failed harvests and widespread livestock deaths in some areas, and humanitarian needs have tripled since the beginning of 2015, the United Nations warns.

East Africa’s ongoing drought has sharply curbed harvests and driven up the prices of cereals and other staple foods to unusually high levels, posing a heavy burden to households and special risks for pastoralists in the region, the United Nations food and agricultural agency on Feb. 14 warned.

“Sharply increasing prices are severely constraining food access for large numbers of households with alarming consequences in terms of food insecurity,” said Mario Zappacosta, a senior economist for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Local prices of maize, sorghum and other cereals are near or at record levels in swathes of Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania, according to the latest Food Price Monitoring and Analysis Bulletin (FPMA).

Poor livestock body conditions due to pasture and water shortages and forcible culls mean animals command lower prices, leaving pastoralists with even less income to purchase basic foodstuffs, FAO adds, while providing some examples:

Somalia’s maize and sorghum harvests are estimated to be 75 per cent down from their usual level. In Tanzania, maize prices in Arusha, Tanzania, have almost doubled since early 2016.

Drought is pushing up food prices in Uganda. Photo: FAO

Beans now cost 40 per cent more in Kenya than a year earlier, while in Uganda, the prices of beans and cassava flour are both about 25 per cent higher than a year ago in the capital city, Kampala.

Pastoral Areas Face Harsher Conditions

Drought-affected pastoral areas in the region face even harsher conditions, the UN specialised agency reports. In Somalia, goat prices have fallen up to 60 per cent compared to a year ago, while in pastoralist areas of Kenya the prices of goats declined by up to 30 per cent over the last 12 months.

Shortages of pasture and water caused livestock deaths and reduced body mass, prompting herders to sell animals while they can, as is also occurring in drought-wracked southern Ethiopia, FAO reports. This also pushes up the price of milk, which is, for instance, up 40 per cent on the year in Somalia’s Gedo region.

According to the Rome-based agency, Ethiopia is responding to a drought emergency, triggered by one of the strongest El Niño events on record.

Humanitarian needs have tripled since the beginning of 2015 as the drought continues to have devastating effects on the lives and livelihoods of farmers and pastoralists — causing successive crop failures and widespread livestock deaths, it reports.

Food insecurity and malnutrition rates are alarming with some 10.2 million people in need of food assistance.

FAO also reports that one-quarter of all districts in Ethiopia are officially classified as facing a food security and nutrition crisis — 435 000 children are suffering severe acute malnutrition and 1.7 million children, pregnant and lactating women are experiencing moderate acute malnutrition.

Livelihood Crisis

More than 80 per cent of people in Ethiopia rely on agriculture and livestock as their primary source of food and income, however, the frequency of droughts over the years has left many communities particularly vulnerable.

Significant production losses, by up to 50-90 percent in some areas, have severely diminished households’ food security and purchasing power, forcing many to sell their remaining agricultural assets and abandon their livelihoods.

Pastoralists in Ethiopia carry butchered meat home. Photo: FAO

Hundreds of thousands of livestock have already died and the animals that remain are becoming weaker and thinner due to poor grazing resources, feed shortages and limited water availability, leading to sharp declines in milk and meat production.

The FAO Ethiopia El Niño Response Plan aims to assist 1.8 million vulnerable pastoralists, agro pastoralists and smallholder farmers in 2016.

To achieve this, the UN food and agriculture will prioritize agricultural production support in order to reduce the food gap, livestock interventions to protect the livelihood assets of pastoralists and agro pastoralists, and activities to enhance the resilience of affected communities through coordinated response.

As part of the emergency response, FAO has been providing planting materials to help seed- and food-insecure households in the worst affected regions plant in the belg and meher seasons.

In an effort to preserve livestock, it has been distributing multi-nutrient blocks in pastoral and agro-pastoral areas to strengthen livestock and bolster the resilience of the cooperatives that produce them.

Survival animal feed is also being provided to help farmers produce fodder and improve access to water for livestock. Herds across the country have also benefited from vaccination and treatment campaigns to address their increasing vulnerability as a result of drought.

In Ethiopia’s Somali Region, FAO is enhancing the financial stability of drought-affected households through the purchase of weak sheep and goats for immediate, local slaughter – and providing the meat – rich in protein – to nutritionally vulnerable drought-affected families.

The intervention will help reduce stress on available feed, enable households to focus their resources on their remaining productive animals, and invest in productive assets.

Women are always hit hardest by water scarcity as they have to travel longer distances to fetch water, which increases their workload and compromises their ability to perform other essential and livelihood functions. Credit: Pem Norbhu

By Athar Parvaiz
GANGTOK, India, Feb 1 2017 (IPS)

Bina Sharma, a member of the Melli Dhara Gram Panchayat Unit in the southern part of India’s northeastern Himalayan state of Sikkim, is a relieved woman.

For the past three years, Sharma said, she has received hardly any complaints from villagers about water disputes.Before the village’s water crisis subsided, students of the local Nelligumpa Secondary School had to regularly take two litres of water from their homes to the school.

“Until a few years back, our springs were staying almost dry for five months from December to April. During those months I often used to get complaints from the villagers against their fellow villagers as they would fight for water,” Sharma told IPS.

People in most parts of the mountainous Sikkim, and those in other mountainous areas across the region, use spring water for their personal consumption, kitchen gardens, farms, cattle and poultry. According to Sikkim First, an economic and political journal, about 80 per cent of Sikkim’s rural households depend on springs for drinking water and irrigation.

From experts in Gangtok to laymen in the far-off villages, everyone agrees that erratic rains and frequent droughts have resulted in the drying up of springs in many parts of the state, especially in south. Some say that the problem became worse after the 2011 earthquake in Sikkim.

Many studies, including the IPCC’s 5^th Assessment Report, have reported changes in precipitation and temperature in the Himalayan region in recent years, but the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) says there is a major need for more research on Himalayan precipitation processes, as most studies have excluded the Himalayan region due to the region’s extreme, complex topography and lack of adequate rain-gauge data.

Adapting to changes, the Sikkim way

Thankfully, Sharma said, the water security scheme of Sikkim’s rural development department for recharging the springs “seems to be working in our village” since it was started in 2012. “We get water all year round now,” she said.

According to the people and the government officials in Sikkim, hundreds of springs and the lakes in Sikkim have been drying up, especially from November to May in recent years. This has compelled the government to think of a scheme to revive the drying springs and lakes by artificially recharging the springs.

The brain behind devising this innovative scheme is Sandeep Thambe, an Indian Forest Service officer with a mechanical engineering background who has also carried out extensive research on water and environmental issues in Sikkim and is currently a professor at the Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIMF), Bhopal.

Hari Maya Pradhan, a woman who lives alone in her home in Melli Dhara, said that she had decided to give up rearing poultry and cattle as a livelihood option because she had to endure so many hardships to access water. “But now I feel a lot better after the villagers worked hard and dug up the ponds [which help in recharging the springs],” Pradhan, who has two cows and a small poultry unit, told IPS.

Before the village’s water crisis subsided, students of the local Nelligumpa Secondary School had to regularly take two litres of water from their homes to the school.

“Many times we protested and were preparing to take all our students to Gangtok to stage a protest demonstration. But our woes got automatically addressed when our springs started producing water in the dry season as well,” said Norbhu Tshering, the school in-charge.

Connected to nature    

In almost all parts of Sikkim, people directly connect plastic pipes to the small springs spread above their habitations to avail the natural water supply. But in the south and western parts of Sikkim, getting water from the springs all through the season has become impossible for more than a decade.

In 2009, this prompted Tambe, who then served in the Sikkim government’s Rural Development Department, to start the Dhara Vikas (or Spring Development) programme for reviving and maintaining the drying springs and lakes particularly in southern and western parts of the state.

The scheme was later launched under the centrally sponsored Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), with technical support from other government agencies and organisations like WWF (India) and People’s Science Institute Dehradun.

According to Tambe, the core thrust of Dhara Vikas is to catch the surface runoff water and use it to recharge groundwater sources after identifying the specific recharge areas of springs accurately through scientific methods by digging staggered contour trenches and percolation pits.

“With increasing population, degrading health of watersheds and impacts of climate change, the lean period discharge of these springs is rapidly declining,” Tambe said, adding that artificial recharging has thankfully shown encouraging results.

He said that less than 15 per cent of the rainwater, as has been estimated in various studies, is able to percolate down to recharge the springs, while the remaining flows down as runoff often causing floods.

“Hence, a need was felt to enhance the contribution of that rainwater in ground water recharge, thereby contributing to rural water security,” Tambe told IPS.

Women, Tambe said, are always hit hardest by water scarcity as they have to travel longer distances to fetch water, which increases their workload and compromises their ability to perform other essential and livelihood functions. Reduced access to water, he said, also impacts health, hygiene, and sanitation.

Sarika Pradhan of Sikkim’s Rural Development Department said that 51 springs and four lakes in 20 drought-prone Gram Panchayats of Sikkim have been revived so far as the rural development department has mapped 704 springs in the village spring atlas, which provides information about all the mapped springs.

Her colleague, Subash Dhakal, said that trenches and percolation pits have been dug over an area of 637 hectares under MGNREGA for reviving these springs and lakes with an average cost of 250,000 rupees (USD 3,787) per spring.

*Research for this story was supported by a grant through The Forum of Environmental Journalists in India (FEJI) in collaboration with the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE) Media Fellowships in Environmental Conservation, 2016.