my last blog :(

Well this is a very sad moment indeed! My very last blog! Well all I can say is this has been a marvellous experience. It has been the only work I have actually had a motivation to get down and do, and now Iv got to go back to all the other boring coursework styles. Oh dear! Well can't make this all about me, this blog too does have to have a intellectual edge to it even though its my last one. However I shall add nothing new to frizzasellll your brains. 

This shall simply be a summary of all the major points. 

Ok well the world water situation is undergoing significant changes and it looks like it is going to continue to do so. There are large geographical differences in water stress as well as different causes as can be seen through my four little case studies. 

• Sub Saharan Africa has demonstrated the point that climate change has impacts everywhere, but lack of development has seriously impeded its ability to adapt to this.
•  Australia on the other hand demonstrates that although perhaps facing one of the toughest conditions to freshwater scarcity- drought( which is getting worse by climate change) it has  managed to overcome these obstacles by using substantial funds. 
• Brazil just goes to demonstrate how easily it is to fall into conditions of water stress despite having the most freshwater.
• Seychelles goes to demonstrate islands should not be forgotten. Although we might soon be submerged in water does not mean we don't need more.    

However all these places as with every place on Earth are influenced by climate change as well as human factors despite being to differing degrees. Hence it is no wonder it is hard to assess what plays a bigger influence. Nevertheless my verdict was still reach and that was humans has the over riding factor in determining freshwater scarcity. Although this sounds depressing it means we are even more prepared first hand to defeat freshwater scarcity- well not quite defeat it but reduce it! I know we can also do this with climate change but I feel this makes it slightly more personal. 
If we all read my lovely blog on suggestions how to do so I believe we can reduce our water footprint sufficiently to make the future world a less thirsty place. 
Looking at projections on  future on freshwater scarcity it already seems like some of the solutions will make some difference i.e, technical improvements in industrialising countries as well as in the agriculture sector. Despite this the situation is not projected to be getting better in the future apart from slight improvements, which indicate we really must be taking the whole situation a lot more seriously!
 Oh gosh I feel I am getting too big for my boots preaching here. So I'll leave now and start doing those other courseworks I've been putting off. 

Thank you to everyone who has commented on my blog, I hope my replies have been useful in some way....
and and and I really hope you have learnt as much a I have, I know my mum has!
Take care everyone. Will miss you. 

increasing water stress: humans or climate change?

From my four case studies I have used and from various reading around I think my answer would be:  

This obviously is not the case everywhere and in some regions climate change may be the overriding influence on water stress but generally the increase in consumption has been the major factor responsible for water stress.

For future global stress however there has been solid investigations into this! 

As I discussed last week depending on the scenario and climate model about two -thirds to three -quarters of future tiver basin areas will have increasing water stress up to the 2050s (relative to current conditions).

Carrying on from Alcamo et al , 2007 global water model ( discussed in last blog) it is found that the principle cause of increasing water stress is growing water withdrawals,( for nearly 90% of river basin area) whereas the principle cause over a much smaller area ( about 10%) is decreasing water availability due to climate change. This is a conclusion reached by most big scholars in the world on water such as Vorosmarty el al 2000 and Oki et al,2003 that future water stress up to 2050 will be more affected by changes in water demand than by climate change. However the factor most responsible for this differs between the scholars. 

For example Alcamo et al, concluded that the increase in the growth of domestic use stimulate by income growth was the most influential factor- check out map below. This is projected to be taking place most fundamentally in developing regions hence it is believed that water stress will be increasing over most developing regions.  

                                              dominant sector of increasing water withdrawals

Whereas Oki et al (2003) estimated that the impact of economic and technological development on increasing water stress up to 2050 was smaller than the effect of population growth. 

So thats that, humans influence is the answer, both now and near future projections on water stress. However will this still be the case in a hundred or thousand of years??  Well just wait for my blog then ....

decreasing water stress in the future?

Whilst I have been reading millions upon millions of articles on water scarcity, one statement has always come up : around 2/3 of the earths population could face water stress of freshwater by the mid century.

But what about this other 1/3 I have wondered to myself? 

Well luckily I have found out. Depending on the scenario and climate model used Alcamo et al , 2007 between 19.7% and 29% of total river basin area has decreasing stress and the remaining area has small changes ( less than 5% increase or decrease). 

What is the cause of this decreasing water stress: climate change or human factors? 

Well the primary factor for most of the area (approximately 50-80%) is the higher annual precipitation related to climate change. Whereas the main factor over a smaller area (about 20–45%) is decreasing withdrawals. The decrease or stabilisation in withdrawals are projected  to be most apparent and extensive at industrialised regions. This is because it is believed that there will be a saturation of per capita water use, stabilising population and continued technological improvements..... so we were right last week about industrialised countries bringing us hope!! As for the major cause go this decrease over most of this area (59.7%- 88%, depending on the scenario) is the agriculture sector. The two most influential factors determine the decrease in agricultural withdrawals are increasing precipitation ( which reduces the demand for irrigation over the growing season) and improving efficiency of irrigation use. 

So conclusion today  is that climate change rather than humans is  the most influential factor for projected REDUCTION in water stress.

So to be tackled in the next blog, the important and finale question: what is the factor most responsible for the INCREASE in water stress??? 

Will it be climate change as in the case of today, or humans… to be revealed next time at www.watersecurityhc.blogspot.co.uk

can we ensure water security in the future?

Can we ensure water security in the future  or is it simply not possible?

Quick little run through of the major points: location does not necessarily wholly determine the availability of water, whereas the ability to pay plays a major role. Like supply, demand varies from place to place, with richer groups often tending to consume more water as well as densely populated regions- urban and industrial locations.  In addition to human factors affecting supply and demand climate change will also increase the pressure on the supply side of water in certain regions and global warming will increase the  demand side pressure due to increased demands in domestic, irrigation, industrial and ecological use(Jakerskog, 2014). 

These two conditions show no sign of abating so it's no wonder various academia and models predict the issue of water scarcity increasing over the years.

 However in the article ' facing the freshwater crisis' Rogers argues that the existing technologies and policy tools are good enough to ensure long term security. I shall discuss the most effective techniques and policy tools to ensure water security in the future (Rogers, 2008):

Techniques and tools to reduce Demand

1) Given the importance of economics and income in water matters, it is clear that reasonable pricing policies that promote greater conservation by domestic and industrial users should be one of the top priorities adopted to conserving freshwater. As he notes which I very much agree with, if a commodity is too cheap no one thinks twice about waste. Another major consequences of pricing water too low is that insufficient funds are generated for future development and preventive upkeep. Hence higher prices may:

• spur the adoption of measures such as the systematic reuse of used water (so-called grey water) for nonpotable applications.

•  encourage water agencies to build recycling and reclamation systems.

• convince municipalities and others to reduce water losses by improving maintenance of water-delivery systems.

2) Considering the fact irrigated agriculture is by far the largest consumer of water, this places  conserving irrigated flows in the bulls eye to conserving the most freshwater. According to the IWMI study, to meet world food requirements in 2050  without any technological improvements to irrigated agriculture methods, farmers will need a rise in irrigated water supplies from 2,700 to 4,000 km3. Given such rising demands it is unlikely that water managers can significantly lower the quantity of water now dedicated to irrigated agriculture. Nevertheless such improvements can help hold any increases to reasonable levels:

•  stopping leaks in the water-delivery infrastructure 

•  implementing low-loss storage of water like underground storage -  the most common use to transfer water from high supply season to the high demand season is to hold surface water behind dams but the exposure evaporates much of this supply. If engineers were to find large subsurface reservoirs that can be recharged readily by surface supplies and that can easily return their contents aboveground when needed for irrigation like in Arizona, California and elsewhere this would solve the problem. 

• extensive use of  drip-irrigation systems, which minimizes consumption by allowing water to seep in slowly either from the soil surface or directly into the root zone( provided demonstration of this below). 

                                               layout of drip irrigation system 

• Investments in new crop varieties that can tolerate low water levels and drought.

And just let me add here there have been vast improvements in these innovations as the world water week in September announced 17 nominees for securing food using less water- check the prize winners here: (USAID, 2014). 

3) Keeping the demand for irrigation water in arid and semiarid areas down while still meeting the world's future food requirements can be supported by supplying “virtual water” to those places. Virtual water means agricultural ( and other ) products that have been produced with large amounts of water not the real water itself. The magnitude of annual global trade in virtual water exceeds 800 billion m³ of water a year; the equivalent of 10 Nile Rivers. 

                                                    virtual water trade in the world 
However in spite of these virtual water transfers, the populations of growing cities need real, flowing water to drink, as well as for hygiene and sanitation. Therefore removal of bulk water is a solution for this hence why it is a common practice in many parts of the world. This refers to the removal of huge volumes of water by man made versions not necessarily form one country to another but from one area to another. However in recent years because of increasing water scarcity and improvements in water transfer technology plans are being made to transfer water from water rich countries to water poor countries(Ojendal, 2014). Personally I think this should be the last point of call considering the many implications it entails: the most known detrimental effect being the Aral Sea example and recently I'v read( which I shall attach the newspaper article here because I'm so nice ;)) about the consequences of Chinas massive water diversion project(Kaiman,2014). We would not want to see these detrimental effects on a international scale, as regional scale consequences demonstrates its bad enough.

                                     An image you may have seen many times: the Aral sea transformation 

Increasing Supply

1)Beyond constraining demand for freshwater, the opposite approach, increasing its supply, will be a critical component of the solution to water shortages. Desalination tools are poised as the most obvious way to increase our supply considering 97% of our water is salty. A recent, substantial reduction in the costs for the most energy-efficient desalination technology—membrane reverse-osmosis systems—means that many coastal cities can now secure new sources of potable water. 

However despite the improvements in energy efficiency the applicability of reverse osmosis is to some degree limited by the fact that the technology is still energy-intensive, so the availability of affordable power is important to significantly expanding its application.

2) As for trying to remedy the effects of climate change on our water resource supply the only hope we have is to try and reduce global warming by reducing our greenhouse gases by all the many ways we all know but primarily entails by being more energy efficient. 

3) Before summing up I will like to add on a further suggestion which does not appear to be suggested in the fight for water security : reducing population growth. I believe if this was tackled by policies and education more seriously we would save ourselves a lot of extra effort and money as well as making the effects of climate change less acute. 

                                       I'm not quite suggesting this but you get my flow

The fight to stave off water shortage fourth and foremost  requires spending money and a
lot of it may I add. Analysts at Booz Allen Hamilton have estimated that to provide water
needed for all uses through 2030, the world will need to invest as much as $1 trillion a
year on applying existing technologies for conserving water, maintaining and replacing infrastructure, and constructing sanitation systems. Although this may appear as a daunting figure, it is only about 1.28%( I calculated this for 2014) of todays annual global gross domestic product, a seemingly achievable expenditure. 

There is, however, at least one cause for optimism: the most populous countries with the largest water infrastructure needs—India and China—are precisely those that are experiencing rapid economic growth. The part of the globe that is most likely to continue suffering from inadequate water access—Africa and its one billion inhabitants—spends the least on water infrastructure and cannot afford to spend much; it is crucial, therefore, that wealthier nations provide more funds to assist the effort.

So going back to answering my initial question: I believe the chance of a global water crisis maybe not completely avoided but surely can be reduced to a considerable amount if the the international community puts its collective mind to the challenge. The existing techniques I have discussed I believe are sufficient to do so but we just need to accelerate the adoption of these to conserve and enhance the water supply. 

significance of development on water scarcity

As I promised this blog will be on the significance of development status on the the issue of water scarcity. Now the reference I shall use in this blog came to me by accident, let me explain. For this course on global environmental change we have a reading list. Now me being a keen bean decided to read the readings back in September. However only a week ago I realised that that all the many readings I had done were from last years reading list. This was very annoying at the time because I had to start all over again, but seeing as this reference has been useful, I am less annoyed. So the reference I am using is here:Vorosmarty, 2010 

The question I shall aim to target in this blog is:

Are poor and rich countries or in other words termed developed or developing countries equally at risk of water scarcity?

Well the verdict from this article is that highly developed regions with high incident threat (for example, United States, Western Europe) often show much lower adjusted threat indices as a result of massive investments in water infrastructure. Now when I mean massive I mean the total value is in the trillions of US dollars, so Im not exaggerating. These 'massive'  investments by  high-income countries benefits 850 million people by lowering their exposure to high incident threat by 95%. As we move to upper middle income countries the  corresponding values are 140 million people and 23%. Whereas developing countries vulnerability remains high due to minimal investment, with 3.4 billion people in these areas ( for example most of Africa, large areas in central Asia and countries including China, India , Peru  or Bolivia) showing the highest adjusted threat category. So what we see is that incident human water security threat is a rising but saturating function of per capita GDP. On the other hand adjusted human water security declines sharply in affluent countries in response to technological investments: the latter closely

resembles the environmental Kuznet curve as shown below.

                                               

This Kuznetsk curve describes rising ambient stressors loads during early to middle stages of economic growth followed by reduced loading through environmental controls established as developments continues. 

So the long and short of my answer is: more developed countries are the most threatened as seen by the table below ( as a result of high development and high population using more water) however technological investments mean they can offset high stressor levels whilst not necessarily remedying their underlying causes- hence shifting them from most to least threatened. Whereas a lack of water infrastructure in less wealthy nations mean they remain vulnerable.  

To add salt to a wound this lack of water infrastructure creates dire economic impacts in developing countries. For example Ethiopia  has 150 times less reservoir storage per capita than North America 32 and its climate and hydrological variability takes a 38% toll on gross domestic product (GDP).Therefore without major policy and financial commitments, these stark contrasts in human water security will continue to separate rich from poor. 

water stress in Seychelles

When I thought of looking at case studies I was very unsure where to start, no surprise really considering the amount of countries to chose from. Therefore instead I decided to chose my destination according to places that have a relevant status in accordance to freshwater. Now looking at these three places I have chosen: Brazil, Sub Saharan Africa and Australia, I've just realised by accident I have chosen three areas with three different development statuses.

Sub Saharan Africa being a developing region, Australia as developed and Brazil as an emerging economy. Even before realising this I was already thinking of doing my last case study blog on my very own Seychelles, and quite wonderfully this fits in perfectly as adds in a new status :  a small developing island state (SID): a middle income country. This is probably not that much of a big deal but seeing as I am studying geography everything kind of links back to the development status, and I might also relate back to this as well in another blog. 

But first lets have a look at the freshwater case in the Seychelles: 

                                          I'm not showing off or anything :D

Water supply in Seychelles is primarily from river sources, combined with groundwater extraction and desalination plants in some locations. Water distribution on the three main islands: Mahe, Praline and La Digue is extensive, serving more than 87% of the population with treated water supply. Despite these efforts, water restriction are common on the three main islands. The technical executive and project director of dams, hydropower and undergrounds works, Gibbs, noted: the islands are experiencing water shortages, with only 60% of the current demand being met on average (Boralho, 2013).The water shortage crisis is worse during the dry season (June to November), with water restrictions and rationing being more frequent and consistent in recent years. Why is this? Lets first take a look at the climate change. 

Climate change: 

Seychelles like many other small island states, has been affected by climate change which includes a shift in weather patterns of rainy and dry seasons. There is strong evidence that under most climate change scenarios, water resources in small islands are likely to be seriously compromised (SNCCS, 2009). Results from four global circulation models, indicate that climate change is expected to increase the severity of water shortages on Mahé, Praslin and La Digue because of the following factors : 

• decreases in rainfall during the dry southeast monsoon which will reduce stream flow, groundwater recharge and therefore water supply

• increases in surface air temperatures which will increase rates of evapotranspiration and consequently reduce stream flow, ground water recharge and further exacerbate the water supply problem

• and increases in rainfall intensity which will result in greater surface runoff and reduced water capture in existing storage facilities. 

Data from Seychelles national climate change strategy shows that annual rainfall anomaly trends on Mahe for the period 1972- 2006 are upward by 13.7 mm a year from the average annual rainfall of 2,200 millimetre, indicating a wetter climate.  

                                     annual precipitation anomalies for Mahe : 1972 1997

However as Payet and Agricole (2006) note : a warmer and wetter climate for the Seychelles will not necessarily translate into a greater availability of water. Dry spells are likely to be longer, and precipitation events more intense. These predicted changes will affect water supply adversely because of greater variation in stream flow (SNCCS, 2009). At the moment the water supply system is highly vulnerable to meteorological conditions which are becoming increasingly variable as a result of climate change. However if there were adequate storage capacity to transfer water resources from the wet to the dry season the situation the vulnerability to climate change in Seychelles would not be as intense (UNDP, no date) which leads us onto our human factors. 

Human factors

The issue of insufficient storage facilities is constantly being raised by the general public in the Seychelles. The main reservoir that supplies water to the population on the main island of Mahe (where I live) is La Gogue dam can presently hold one million cubic metres of water. During the rainy season the dam often fills to the brim and then overflows, causing the loss of water which during the subsequent dry season is then sorely missed. Added to this  a high percentage of water – about 44% – is unaccounted for and, therefore, lost, owing to an ageing reticulation system. 

                                                         La Gogue dam 

So what we see here is humans being to blame for the water insecurity as a result of underinvestment in water infrastructure. Consequently a dam which was built in 1976 is still the major supplier to a population which has grown to  90,000 and furthermore in addition to on average 200,000 tourist arrivals a year. However physical factors has partly to blame for the lack in water storage in Seychelles. 

Physical factors: 

Because of the hilly topography of the Seychelles islands it is difficult to create sufficient storage capacity at reasonable cost.  Furthermore groundwater resources are limited as not much water is stored at the feet of the hills and the water available is often hard and contains traces of salt (Feow, no date). 

However the limited opportunities to expand storage capacity should not be a complete obstruction to the development of better storage capacity especially as continuous population growth, tourism activities and other commercial developments will result in an increase of 6% to 8% a year in the estimated demand for potable water in the Seychelles, meaning at that rate, the current water supply will soon be exceeded. 

                 Mahe projected Daily water demands, yields and shortfall in supply (revised October 2004)

  Thankfully the Seychelles government has finally decided to expand the capacity of the main water storage dam by at least 60%. The work is 'believed' ( don't know about actually happening) to start next year and construction of the project is estimated to take up to 3 years. Although building a second major dam would be more substantial to sustain water resources in the future this option for the time being has been put aside due to the cost involved. Seychelles Public Utilities corporation is also hoping to boost its desalination capacity to cope with emergency situation, linked to freak patterns (La blache, 2014).

In conclusion it is apparent to see that climate change has definitely affected the water supply in Seychelles. However the inefficiency of the provision of water as well as the decline in water service quality has no doubt been generated by the underinvestment in water supply infrastructure which has been under increased pressure from increase in population, tourism and industry. Therefore time will only see whether these new improvements will redeem the periodic water problem in Seychelles, which in my view is equally a result of climate change as it of human influence.

country with largest freshwater supply

The previous two regions I've looked at (Sub Saharan Africa and Australia) are both naturally dry regions that are experiencing water scarcity. So I thought it would be interesting for this post to look at a region in the world that is the complete opposite and, in fact, has the largest supply of freshwater in the world... take a guess?? 

Yes Brazil you guessed right. Brazil has less than 3% of the worlds populations and 12% of the worlds freshwater resources (Watts, 2014).  Nevertheless at the moment the central , south eastern region of Brazil and most dramatically in its largest and most economically important city Sau Paulo  is suffering a water crisis, which is having  devastating effects on agriculture, energy and domestic water supplies. It is very perplexing to me that the region in the world with the most freshwater reserves is still vulnerable to water scarcity so lets take a look at why this is: 

So what I have found out is the underlying factor responsible for the water crisis is the worst  drought Brazil has experienced in the last 80 years (Davies, November 2014).The drought began last austral summer ( December to February), when Sao Paulo state received about one third to half of its usual amount of rain during what should have been its wettest month. In the seven months since, rainfall has been about 40 % of normal (Plumer , October 2014). Some Brazilian scientists say the current drought is a result of a combination of global warming and deforestation. 

Despite Brazil being recently congratulated on its efforts to reduce deforestation in the past two years  deforestation all over Brazil has reached alarming proportions: 22 percent of the Amazon rainforest (an area larger than Portugal, Italy and Germany combined), 47 percent of the Cerrado in central Brazil, and 91.5 percent of the Atlantic forest that used to cover the entire length of the coastal area has now been wiped out.

                                                        forest clearance in the Amazon

The combination of global warming and deforestation, they say, is reducing the role of the Amazon rainforest as a giant “water pump,” releasing billions of litres of humidity from the trees into the air in the form of vapour which then circulate west and south, falling as rain to irrigate Brazil’s central and southern regions. In January and February of this year, when rain is usually abundant in central and southern Brazil, the flying rivers ( which is the term for the vapour clouds from the Amazon) failed to flow south, according to data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) (Maddocks et al, November 2014). 

                                                             Flying rivers animation

However in an article I read recently, Marshall ( the writer) argues that the extreme drought in Sau Paulo is not the result of deforestation. He contests this for two reasons. Firstly he argues that the deforestation is insufficiently large to account for the drought levels. Although according to Nobre - Brazils top climate scientist -the role of the Amazon rainforest in producing rain has been underestimated (Rocha , September 2014 ). In a single day, the Amazon region evaporates 20 billion tonnes of vapour − more than the 17 million tonnes of water that the Amazon River discharges each day into the Atlantic. 

Secondly Marshall argues that there is evidence which points to a natural southerly shift in the current year in the easterly winds coming ashore in Brazil from near the Amazon delta to the much drier coast of Bahia (Marshall , 2014).

However time for something which is not contestable and that is the current drought should not have brought such havoc to regions of Brazil seeing the very important fact that Brazil holds the largest freshwater reserves in the world. This could only be a fault of humans, boom boom boom. Its hindered ability to adapt was a result  of a series of interconnected water management failures across the metropolitan areas. 

As climate scientist Marcos Heil Costa told Nasa, '"It is now clear that our policies on management of water resources are unsustainable, no city in southeast Brazil seems prepared to handle a drought like this one. It is a mix of a lack of preparation for low levels of rain and a lack of environmental education in the population. Most people continue to use water as if we were in a normal year"(Plumer , October 2014). 

But I think I may have forgotten. what is my verdict : climate change or human influence. Well I definitely think climate change had a substantial part to do with the drought( as this drought would be considered extreme weather: a major feature of climate change). However to what extent deforestation also had an influence( which would then shift this to human influence in the case of my blog)  is contestable at the moment. Therefore I will conclude with this: Climate change ( and perhaps deforestation) was the catalyst in the way that it caused the drought however it was the human influence that was the predominant factor in making this a water issue, as those involved were ill equipped to handle such an event.