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.