World Water Day series – post by Dr Nandan Mukherjee
More than 40% of people on earth reside in coastal regions that are less than 100 kilometres from the ocean, where they are subject to climate challenges like rising sea levels, intense rainfall, and extreme flooding. Each year, this results in $40 billion in losses and damages. According to the UN’s Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, these disasters resulted in 700,000 fatalities, more than 1.4 million injuries, and roughly 23 million people becoming homeless between 2002 and 2012. About 45 million people in Bangladesh reside in regions where powerful cyclones frequently destroy homes and means of livelihood. While the IPCC’s sixth assessment report highlights the weakness of infrastructure-based water management solutions to address climate change impacts, nature-based approaches have the potential to overcome the barriers and constraints to adaptation by addressing avoidable and irreparable loss and damage.
Figure 1: Key features of the climate resilient home in Bangladesh
UNESCO centre Dundee’s ongoing flagship action research in Bangladesh offering ‘one water management solution for SDG’ has the potential to overcome the critical challenges to achieve sustainable development around implementation, instability, and governance. The ultra-low cost, climate-resilient, livelihood-inclusive, nature-based, co-designed and co-developed integrated water management solution around a net zero building envelope cost only 3.5% (£3500) of the estimated annual budget for implementing the SDGs ($5-7 trillion per year) by offering the solutions to all the homeless families in the world (est. 30 million). Apart from addressing resilience to climatic hazards, for example, flood, drought, storm surge, sea level rise and salinity intrusion, the home offers devolved and decentralised water management solutions to individual climate-vulnerable families to address the root causes around structural inequality, powerlessness, and poor governance etc.
Primarily locally sourced carbon neutral materials used in the construction of the building aims to target the most significant greenhouse gas emission sector, i.e., the construction industry, which causes more than 40% of greenhouse gas emission of the full account. The off-grid home ensures the uninterrupted provision of essential lifeline services (water-energy-food nexus) and climate-insensitive, gender-inclusive livelihood options to a vulnerable family to adapt against poverty and hunger. Capturing black carbons in the form of handmade tiles, and substituting carbon-intensive building materials, for instance, Portland cement, steel and wood with lime and bamboo, helps achieve the global and national target for nationally determined contribution (NDC) under the Paris agreement and net zero ambition.
University of Dundee’s beacon research institution Centre for Water Law Policy and Science has been invited to participate in the United Nations Water Conference, considered the most important water event since 1977. The critical agenda for the event is the comprehensive midterm review of the implementation for the international decade (2008 to 2018) for action with the slogan ‘water for sustainable development’. Professor John Rowan, Director of the UNESCO centre, is going to present this concept in a very high-level event on 23rd March along with other ministerial delegations and UNESCO centre representatives.
The 2023 World Water Day comes with the theme ‘accelerating change’. Accelerating progress towards universal access to water has never become more urgent considering the COVID-19 pandemic and the possibility of future outbreaks. Adequate supply of suitable water is vital to improving sanitation and quality hygiene and is central to public health management. Global estimates indicate over a billion people lack access to improved drinking water supplies, and 2.6 billion people do not have adequate sanitation. WHO and UNICEF estimate the greatest numbers (c. 80%) of those without access to these services are in Eastern and Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). These represent serious global health burdens in terms of the consequences associated with a lack of access to drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene (WaSH). Movement towards the UN’s 2030 targets are very mixed, with some evidencing great progress and others less impressive.
In regions like Latin America and the Caribbean, northern Africa and much of Asia, 90% or more of their populations have access to clean drinking water. This compares to c. 60% of people in SSA overall, but which also has strong regional and socio-economic differentiation. In 35 countries over 90% of the richest quintile in urban areas have improved water sources and over 60% have piped water on their premises (Salaam-Blyther, 2012). The corollary is that in rural areas such services are often non-existent. South Asia (led by India) recorded substantial progress, having halved the proportion of its population using unsafe sanitary systems. In 2010, 69% of people had access to improved sanitation services up from 46% in 1990, with the result that only c. 4% still practiced open defecation as opposed to 67% in the previous two decades. The equivalent data in SSA points to more modest gains and unsanitary practices fell only by 15% overall.
Climate change is expected to harm the quantity and quality of available drinking water and negatively impact sanitation and hygiene provision. Increased flooding (magnitudes and frequency) will damage critical WaSH infrastructures and may contaminate much relied upon sources such as open wells or surface waters, especially as most settlements (rural and urban) in SSA depend on pit latrines for excreta disposal. Eradicating open defecation in such contexts therefore becomes more pressing. However, the reality of having to negotiate between basic needs for existence and the financial and time commitments to build and maintain an effective pit latrine hampers progress. This has been the practical dilemma of rural Malawi especially the vulnerable communities, such as Chikwawa, Chilwa, Chikale, and several others. On the other hand, prolonged seasonal drought in Malawi and northern Nigeria are already severely limiting citizens’ access to drinking water supplies and further raising the risk of infectious diseases outbreak including cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, etc.
The WaSH sector in SSA is performing less well than in other regions of the world. Visible progress may be recorded in isolated and organised settlements with networked facilities vis a vis urban outskirt, emergency settlements (independent persons displaced camps-IDPs), open markets, rural, riverine and other settlements in difficult locations. Beyond geography, access inequality across gender, age, disability, sexuality and economic circumstances is still a major issue. With these statistics, progress toward achieving the goal and targets set out by the SDGs by 2030 is less guaranteed. Generally, the common factors leading to underperformance are poor institutional capacity and weak governance; excessive influence from external actors; socio-economic challenges and the impact of cultural and religious values and practices.
While the WaSH sector elements include drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, policies and programmes excessively focus on drinking water supplies and the productive uses of water. Sanitation and hygiene are rarely integrated in policy priority. For instance, over 90% of Nigeria’s and Malawi’s WaSH sector spending is consumed by the water component (for drinking and irrigation). For instance, national WaSH sector budget for Malawi is typically < 1% and mainly focusing on drinking water services. Specific budgetary commitment to sanitation and hygiene is rare except dedicated funds from donor support. Newspapers in Nigeria report spending on the WaSH sector fallen to 0.27% of GDP as compared to 0.7% in 1990. Where sub-units exist for sanitation, interest centres on human excreta disposal, whereas hygiene issues rarely have policy visibility. Across SSA there is evidence of what is possible, with Malawi often singled out for attention because of good progress being made as a result of relative political stability and less ethnocentric and religious interests in public governance.
All too typical scene on untreated waste going into a neighbourhood stream
Limited political attention on the links between WaSH activities and public health is widely blamed for a lack of holistic, effective and pro-poor improvement policies and a lack of agency amongst civil society, especially the most vulnerable, to assert their needs. International agencies will invariably approach the issues through the lens of the UN SDG (especially SDG 6.1 water and sanitation for all) or through the public health emergency arising from the global COVID-19 pandemic or regional transmissible disease crises such as the Ebola outbreak in West African which captured the public imagination and catalysed some behavioural changes including hand washing before and after toilet use.
The biggest challenge to WaSH sector performance is the influence of cultural beliefs and religious values that tend to work against behavioural changes and innovative practices. Socio-cultural practices and beliefs in water deities and sanitary taboos are widely recognised and can often present a barrier to the adoption of engineering-based approaches to traditional practices (Akpabio, 2012; Akpabio & Rowan, 2021). Similarly, straightforward scientific logic regarding risk of disease transmission is often subordinated to deep-rooted cultural beliefs hindering progress in improving public awareness and behavioural change. An anonymized interview quote is offered by way of illustration:
“… in the Nsanje district… females during menstruation (M’bvade, meaning unclean woman)… are prohibited from using communal latrines, stemming from the belief that males may develop a fat leg (elephantiasis of lymphocele) if they inadvertently tread or cross where an M’bvade has defecated or urinated…; in areas where custom frowns upon the use of the same latrine by daughters-in-law and fathers-in-law or some sons-in-law and mothers-in-law, the provision of separate latrines is favoured rather than attempting to change people’s attitudes…”.
In some cases, the fear of sorcerers and black magicians gaining access to human excreta (faeces) was the primary reason why people in the rural areas refuse to own latrines, preferring open defecation in the bush (Akpabio 2012, Akpabio and Takara 2014).
Accelerating change and improvement calls for better and holistic understanding of WaSH in relation to local socio-environmental, economic, geographical and cultural circumstances as a guide to evolving flexible engagements with local actors and communities for the purpose of evolving solutions that work. Unfortunately, the WaSH sector is poorly governed across sub-Saharan Africa. Different organizations and governmental levels pursue diverse and sometimes overlapping management interest with minimal or no specific mechanism for coordinating activities. The WaSH sector has no clear governance platform and institutional domain. In many countries, a multitude of organizations and sub-units are involved, yet performance progress in the sector is less satisfactory. As most agencies are politically created, it has always been difficult to pursue a common agenda due to conflicts of interest:
“I think we have so many agencies associated with WaSH…and sad to say most of them are not necessary…the politicians just wake up and create agencies to provide jobs for their supporters and people…”, declared by a senior Nigerian public official.
Inter-agency conflict and competition complicate the governance challenge and generate opportunities for external actor involvement. Over the years, a greater proportion of WaSH sector funding, projects and policies are driven by donor agencies and multilateral/regional organizations including the WHO, UNICEF, AFDB, etc. Donor-driven WaSH projects have a strong presence in Malawi through several top funding agencies and organizations including the Scottish Government. Implementation of funding projects, though in most cases in collaboration with national governments, follow mostly specific funding agency’s visions and ideologies, which serve specific purposes at a specific time span. However, their long-term sustainability are hardly guaranteed as funding dries up. In another perspective, most policy reforms in the WaSH sector follow the IMF/World Bank neoliberal templates of individualization, privatization/commercialization, deregulation, internationalization, neo-commodification and liberalizations. Public WaSH services in SSA countries, for instance, are run on a commercial basis (and at most times subsidized by public funds), and the cost of specific services, in most cases are beyond the financial reach of the citizens. Under this circumstance, the rich are more likely to benefit, while the poor are left to work out daily means of gaining access to improved WaSH services. These visions hardly cohere with local socio-economic needs and cultural values and, in some cases, produce tension and increase the rate of inequality in access to simple drinking water.
Addressing the existing gaps needs close working relationships with local stakeholders to co-evolve cost-effective, sustainable and community-driven management solutions. There is need to improve the relationship between the formal and informal actors and institutions through continuous dialogue and public consultation to improve the effectiveness of WaSH related policies and project implementation. Managing WaSH services in catchment-based context holds the prospect of encouraging such collaboration and inclusive management. The national public policies of imposing single and uniform WaSH management plans based on technological and neoliberal options across ecological boundaries hardly recognize environmental, cultural and socio-economic differences that shape access to essential WaSH services. In the context of limited budgetary resources, different ecological regions need different options that reflect local ecological circumstances. A catchment-based WaSH management approach is more likely to account for ecological differences and focus on solutions that work within the limits of available resources.
Dr Emmanuel M. Akpabio (http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6105-1782) is the Ag Director of International Programmes, University of Uyo. He received a Marie Sklodowsca-Curie Action Fellowship from the EU, based in the University of Dundee, where he continues to engage an International Associate of the UNESCO Dundee Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science. He is also a Life Fellow (FIWRA) of the International Water Resources Association (IWRA).
Akpabio, E. M. and K. Takara (2014). Understanding and confronting cultural complexities characterizing water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in sub-Saharan Africa. Water International 39 (7): 921-932. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02508060.2015.981782.
Akpabio E. M. (2012). Water meanings, sanitation practices and hygiene behaviours in the cultural mirror: a perspective from Nigeria. Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development 02(3): 168-181.
Salaam-Blyther T. (2012). Global access to clean drinking water and sanitation: US and International programs. Congressional Research Service. Research Report for Congress. www.crs.gov
“Accelerating change” is the theme for World Water Day 2023. Quoting the WWD organisers, “billions of people and countless schools, businesses, healthcare centres, farms and factories are being held back because their human rights to water and sanitation have not yet been fulfilled”. Against this backdrop, it’s surprising that the availability of water in many parts of the world is often poorly known: it’s much clearer to know when water is insufficient, or of poor quality, than to know in absolute terms how much is present. After all, water is continually varying in its quantities in groundwater, soil water, ice caps, glaciers, lakes and rivers, as well as showing considerable variations in space, sometimes even over short distances.
Nevertheless, there are many benefits in quantifying water resources, even if doing so is difficult. In fact, in our world of rapidly growing population and rising per capita demands, and against a backdrop of increasing environmental change, it has never been more important. This article examines some of the ways in which staff and students in Dundee are involved in quantifying water and other dimensions of the environment, considers why it’s important and where this work needs to go in the coming years.
At Eddleston in the Scottish Borders, our long-running natural flood management (NFM) project relies on a dense network of rainfall and water level monitoring in order to understand hydrological response to rainfall and snowmelt, and to detect change. The main stem of the river, at 12 km in length, now has 10 river level gauges, which together allow propagation of flood waves to be studied (Fig. 1). Unexpected results have been identified, with river levels peaking at upstream sites after downstream sites – an effect not usually visible in a catchment served by only a single gauge at the catchment outlet. Another surprise is the tendency for many of the largest flood events to be partly caused by snowmelt. We are working with the project managers to target tributaries which would benefit most from NFM interventions. The strongly empirical and detailed focus of our research to date differentiates our work from other studies.
Fig. 1. Propagation of flood peaks on the Eddleston Water, December 2015. Gauging stations are arranged in downstream order from top to bottom of the plot.
For water resources studies, mean annual rainfall is routinely required, but most gauges have always been located in lowland and valley bottom locations. Catchment-averaged rainfall inputs require knowledge of water inputs on the high ground as well as low, and this against a backdrop of expected increases in the westerly component of north European airflows and studies indicating that the rate of climate change in the mountains is accelerating. Reservoir safety assessments and water resource planning need to be informed by the best available information about precipitation in the mountains. Assumptions made regarding the rate of increase of precipitation with elevation may prove to be unsafe under climate change.
In Dundee we operate 10 recording rain gauges at sites above 400 metres elevation, the same number as SEPA, Scotland’s national hydrometric agency do nationally, while our 7 rain gauges above 500 m out-number SEPA’s 4. Many of these gauges are in Glen Feshie, where our rainfall monitoring has been designed to represent the full range of catchment elevations so far as practical considerations allow (Fig. 2), allowing corrections to be made to rainfall estimates.
Fig. 2. Rainfall monitoring sites in the Feshie catchment. Rainfall storage (SG) and tipping bucket (TBR) gauges have been sited to represent the distribution of elevations within the catchment, shown with a hypsometric curve.
There are ecological reasons to focus on the hydrology of these mountains as well as resource planning reasons. Our mountains are our water towers, yielding more water per unit area than anywhere else, and yielding delayed runoff from snowmelt in spring, maintaining low river water temperatures and elevated flows through the often dry months of April and May. Terrestrial environments in the mountains provide habitats for endangered species; multiple aspects of climate impact on their population health.
With a monitoring network which measures more than 15,000 observations every day, there is a danger of being inundated with data. Can there possibly be too much? One thing that stands out from my experience monitoring the environment over the years has been that we can never foresee all the uses which might arise for our data: often uses emerge which had not been anticipated when instruments were first installed. In Glen Feshie, we originally installed our network for the purpose of understanding how hydrological processes at one scale relate to behaviours at another. But in the subsequent 20 years, the estate has changed hands, with the new owner, Anders Holch Povlsen being committed to landscape-scale rewilding, with the Feshie catchment being at the heart of his plans. As woodland regeneration continues and is supplemented by targeted ditch blocking, tree planting and restoration of peat hags, we now have the underpinnings of a longitudinal study.
In a country often perceived as being wet, it is perhaps unsurprising that domestic water consumption is not metered, even though this practice is now widespread in many other (generally drier) parts of the UK. And yet, in 2022 Scotland saw its first-ever application of water abstraction controls since the implementation of the Water Framework Directive, following a dry spring and summer, illustrating that water shortage does occur. With climate change, the risks of shortage are expected to increase. Knowledge is power; the benefits of having quantitative information about water usage would apply equally in Scotland as elsewhere.
Monitoring the water environment gives our students the opportunity to undertake practical learning, be engaged with events as they occur, and helps extend the knowledge base which is sure to be used in years to come for assessments of climate change, water resources, flood risks and more. Digital technology allows data to be seen in real time, which allows water users – that’s all of us – to better understand our environment and take informed decisions relating to water today and in the future. Real-time data from our monitoring network can be found at https://hydro-data.dundee.ac.uk/
World Water Day Series – Post by Dr Alexandra Morel
Ghana is one of the largest producers of cocoa (Figure 1b), a perennial tree crop, that is primarily grown by smallholder farmers. Theobroma cacao is native to Central America but was first cultivated in West Africa in the 1800s. Today cocoa beans are one of the major agricultural exports for West Africa and employs 5-6 million farmers across the tropics.
Figure 1 Cocoa production in Ghana. (a) Map of cocoa producing districts (blue outlines) and regions (red outlines) in Ghana. (b) Global cocoa production over the last 60 years. (c) Cocoa pods on a farm in Ghana (photo copyright A.C.M).
Unlike annual crops, which are planted each year (e.g. wheat, corn, soy), perennial crops (e.g. oil palm, cocoa, coffee) can show an impact to their yield the following year or for a number of years following a period of stress. This stress can be related to higher-than-average temperatures, lack of water or a combination of the two. A lack of water can be captured by a metric called “cumulative water deficit”. This estimates the shortfall of rainfall in millimetres compared to the water required to maintain plants’ metabolic and/or reproductive processes (estimated as potential evapotranspiration). It is usually calculated at the monthly scale. Trees may be able to survive this type of stress, but it will likely take a toll on their ability to produce more fruits or invest in growing their trunks, roots and leaves. In extreme cases, this level of stress can also induce a “mass fruiting” event, whereby a plant invests what carbon resources it has left into reproduction, with the assumption it may be about to die. The carbohydrates used for these events are assumed to be stored by the trees and only used in emergency situations; therefore, if a tree does use them but still survives the extreme event, they would likely be significantly less productive or vigorous for the following year or several years. This phenomenon is not well studied nor often observed at larger spatial scales yet will be an important aspect to understand for achieving climate resilience in our agricultural system.
El Niño events, driven by the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), are an example of periods when global temperatures are elevated and, depending on the region, can also cause drier conditions. Conversely, La Niña events are generally cooler with differing influences on rainfall. As ENSO is a Pacific Ocean phenomenon, the impact on West Africa is not always consistent; however, we were interested to explore whether we could observe a yield response in cocoa during and immediately following an ENSO event. For this study, led by Dr Thomas Creedy, we used the Oceanic Nino Index (ONI) as a proxy for the severity of an El Niño or La Niña event. We were able to get a large dataset of cocoa production from the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) of annual production for the 6 cocoa buying regions of the country. This data covered the years 1947-2020. We were also able to analyse higher spatial resolution cocoa production data for 68 cocoa purchasing districts, but for a shorter time period, 1999-2020. See Figure 1a for the outline of regions (red) and districts (blue). These data were paired with gridded climate reanalysis data (ERA-5) for calculating spatially relevant anomalies of mean, minimum and maximum temperatures, total precipitation and cumulative water deficit (CWD) for the two time periods. Anomalies were helpful for understanding how far from “normal” these cocoa trees were experiencing during these climate events.
Using the higher resolution production data from the last 20 years, we saw lower cocoa yields during an El Niño event and higher cocoa yields the year following an El Niño event. This suggested that during the period of stress the cocoa trees were less able to invest in fruit or flower production but may be showing a stress response in the year after. Interestingly, this relationship was not as statistically significant for the coarser resolution production data over the 70-year study period. When we separated the study period into before 1987 and after 1988, we found a flip in the yield responses. In the earlier time period, we see cocoa yields being higher during an El Niño event and decreasing the following year. While from 1987 the yield response shifted to be consistent with the district level results, where yields are lower during the El Niño event and then are elevated the year following. We also noted that yields were higher during a La Niña event and lower the year following a La Niña during the later time period.
We were surprised to see the sign of this impact switching from positive to negative over this 70-year data set and are still investigating any differences due to management or planting history of these study regions. However, for this paper, we have also explored whether the climate conditions during extreme ENSO conditions may have changed significantly over this time period. Using the ONI and gridded ERA-5 climate data, we looked at average temperature, total rainfall and CWD anomalies for the major and minor, wet and dry seasons (Figure 2). We found that temperature anomalies were generally higher in the later time period but were consistently higher during the major dry season of an El Niño event (Figure 2b). We also found that the CWD during the major wet season was more negative (e.g. more stressful) during a La Niña than an El Niño event during the later time period, a dramatic shift from the earlier time period (Figure 2k). We drilled a bit further by month and found this shift in pattern to be statistically significant for March, April and May, which are key months for flowering and pollination of the cocoa trees (see Figure 5 of the below linked paper).
Figure 2 The response of climate to maximum annual ONI in different seasons during the purchase year, grouped into time period before 1986/87 (black) and after 1987/88 (yellow). Vertical dashed lines show conditions considered to be La Niña (ONI ≤ − 0.5), Neutral (− 0.5 < ONI < 0.5) and El Niño (ONI ≥ 0.5) conditions. Significance stars denote p-values derived from these models (***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05, .: p < 0.1). The adjusted R squared value is displayed for each model.
These observed shifts, suggest an overall drop in rainfall and increasingly water limited conditions for cocoa trees during both La Niña and El Niño events, with the additional stress of rapidly increasing temperatures. These smallholder farms are generally low input and dependent on rain rather than irrigation. Being able to provide more consistent water during the major wet and dry seasons for both ENSO extremes may help in maintaining more reliable yields; however, it is unclear how financially viable this will be and what the impacts would be for the local hydrology. There are also questions as to the long-term health and productivity of these cocoa trees and farms if these ENSO extremes continue to be increasingly stressful. To date, there has been significantly less investment in the research of perennial crops, which will need to change. Perennial farms today have been managed and planted in locations due to climate conditions of several decades before. They will continue to struggle to adapt to these rapidly changing climate conditions. It will require multi-disciplinary research of agronomists, ecologists, soil scientists, hydrologists, social scientists and climate scientists as well as capacity building and agronomic support for affected farmers.
I am happy to answer any questions about this work. You can reach me at amorel001@dundee.ac.uk
Reference: Creedy, T. J., R. A. Asare, A. C. Morel, M. Hirons, J. Mason, Y. Malhi, C. L. McDermott, E. Opoku & K. Norris (2022) Climate change alters impacts of extreme climate events on a tropical perennial tree crop. Scientific Reports 12, 19653. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-22967-7
Glacier ice covers about 10 % of the Earth’s land surface, and therefore represents a major store of fresh water. Indeed, it is estimated that almost 2 billion people are dependent to some extent on meltwater from snow and glaciers for drinking water, agriculture and hydropower. However, glaciers in most parts of the world are receding and thinning in response to climate change, which threatens the water security of millions of people over this century. At the same time, the loss of glaciers and thawing of permafrost, particularly in high-mountain regions, such as the Andes and Himalaya, often leaves these landscapes in a more dangerous state – they are more prone to landslides, catastrophic floods from meltwater lakes (known as glacial lake outburst floods, or GLOFs) and, alarmingly in recent years, wholesale collapse of glaciers from mountainsides. At the UNESCO water centre in Dundee, we are trying to understand these rapidly changing environments and find solutions to the challenges that these changes present.
A proglacial stream draining Findelengletscher, Swiss Alps.
Starting with the glaciers themselves, we have been working with our partners to quantify rates of glacier shrinkage at different locations around the world. For example, our work has shown that glacier loss in the Himalaya has increased by a factor of ten in recent decades compared to the long-term average measured over several centuries. This is likely a consequence of modern climate change driven by human activity.
Predicting the impact of climate and glacier change on water resources is particularly important. For the Upper Indus Basin, which is crucial for water supply in Pakistan, we have shown that climate change will have complex impacts on precipitation in addition to substantial warming this century. Importantly, our modelling predicts that peak river flows will occur 1 month earlier through this century as ice and snow begin to melt earlier in the year. This will have important implications for irrigation and agriculture in this region. Indeed, our work shows that climate change in this region has already been having an impact on river flows and the seasonality of vegetation productivity.
The rapidly shrinking Rhonegletscher in the Swiss Alps. Note the blankets on the glacier surface designed to protect the ice grotto tourist attraction from melting.
As glaciers shrink, their ability to supply sufficient amounts of water to downstream populations diminishes. At the same time, glacier recession commonly leads to the development of meltwater lakes. These lakes represent both an opportunity and a risk. On the one hand, these lakes represent natural reservoirs that can be used for water supply, or to drive hydropower. On the other, these lakes can burst, causing devastation downstream. We have documented hundreds of such events in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes for the last few hundred years, with some evidence that their frequency has increased in recent years. Our PEGASUS project seeks to work out which of these developing lakes may be used safely for water supply as glaciers shrink in the Peruvian Andes, and which ones may need continued monitoring or remediation to reduce flood risk.
Taking dGPS measurements of creeping landslide motion affected by thinning of the adjacent Mueller Glacier, New Zealand. Aoraki / Mount Cook is shown in the background.
The risks of rapidly changing high-mountain environments are clear. Our work on the February 2021 Chamoli disaster in the Himalaya revealed that a huge wedge of glacier ice and rock detached from a mountainside, cascading 1800 m into the valley below. As it did so, the ice and rock were pulverised, generating a massive debris flow that destroyed two hydropower stations, with the sad loss of about 200 lives. We have been working with international partners to develop techniques and risk assessment protocols that allow us to better anticipate a range of hazard events in high-mountain regions including GLOFs and mass movements, and to highlight areas where more work is still needed.
Finally, it is important to communicate our research findings to the public, as well as provide expert opinion on glacier and climate change-related events as they unfold. Our expertise has featured across local, national and international media to help inform the public about events such as the 2022 Pakistan floods, the 2022 UNESCO report on glacier recession, and the challenges and progress made at the COP26 and COP27 climate summits. We hope that through our science and public engagement, people become more aware of the critical role that ice and snow play in the world’s mountain environments, and in global water, energy and food security, as well as the importance of our collective actions in combating climate change.
Goal 6 has several dimensions, with water and sanitation rightly at the top. The pressing need to provide basic services for the world has been a driver for three decades, but still to reach the targets by 2030 requires a fourfold increase in the pace of change. In 2020, just 74% of the global population had safely managed drinking water, 71% had handwashing facilities and only 54% had safely managed sanitation. Although 72% of monitored waterbodies had good ambient quality, only 56% of wastewater was safely treated. [1]
In the developed world, we are truly blessed – for most of us, the taps run with clean water and the toilets flush our waste away. In England, in 2017-19, 99.95% of the population had drinking water that met regulations for public supply; in Scotland in 2020 the figure was 99.92%. Wastewater is collected and treated, with 99.8% of England’s wastewater treatment plant meeting the required standards. But that is not the whole story. We have only to pick up a newspaper to see stories of storm overflows discharging to rivers and the sea, or pollution by plastics or emerging chemicals of concern; fatbergs lurk in our sewers and housing is built without adequate infrastructure. Water services across the globe have both 19th and 21st century problems.
Our current regulatory framework is based on EU law, which drove investment in the 80s and 90s, by introducing technical standards for drinking water and wastewater treatment. We should not forget what a change that was, or how much was achieved. Now a recast Drinking Water Directive and proposals for a new Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive will shift the agenda again, addressing a wider range of emerging pollutants, requiring wastewater treatment to be energy neutral by 2040 in the move to net zero, and recognising rights to both drinking water and sanitation, neither of which are fully assured even in the EU. These rules may not need to be implemented in the UK, but if not, we will need to find other solutions to the same problems.
Complex and expensive technical rules, appropriate to post-industrial developed countries, will not be applicable everywhere. But the science on which they are based is equally applicable to other places and contexts, and so are the underpinning principles, including the polluter pays, the precautionary principle and public participation. And net zero technology will also drive technologies to recover the valuable resources in wastewater, which must be useable at different scales and with different resources.
The achievement of the whole of Goal 6 also necessitates addressing water scarcity, integrated water resource management with everything that involves, and improving aquatic ecosystems. Along with the necessary investment in services, a focus on these wider goals, which will work along with the climate agenda and the biodiversity crisis, is a critical frame. There will not be meaningful progress in service delivery until the wider environmental picture is also realised, through a principle-based, science-driven regulatory approach to both the water services and the water resources targets.
