UNESCO Centre For Water Law, Policy and Science

World Water Day series – post by Dr Simon Cook

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.

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.

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.

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.

World Water Day series – Post by Professor Sarah Hendry

It is now half way through the implementation period for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a major UN Water Conference imminent. But there is much to be done, and not just on the WASH agenda.

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.

[1] See https://www.sdg6data.org/en#:~:text=SDG%20target%206.4%20is%3A%20’By,the%20target%2C%20SDG%20indicator%206.4.

As COP27 in Egypt gets ever closer, there is increasing focus on the key issues of loss and damage, adaptation and financing, especially after the recent meeting in Bonn. Financing will be the subject of an upcoming blog on this site, but linking both adaptation and loss and damage to freshwater remains a priority for the Centre. Implementation of the Paris Agreement goals will be the primary focus of COP27 but water is likely to loom large in discussions, given its strategic importance for Egypt.

At the last COP in Glasgow, the Centre tried to draw these issues together, holding an event specifically addressing climate change, adaptation, loss and damage, and water. (“Climate Change and Water: The Missing Agenda at COP26” – details and video of the event are available at https://www.ooskanews.com/story/2021/11/scotland-climate-change-and-water-missing-agenda-climate-conference). The session, held in conjunction with the Scottish Government and UNESCO, was attended by members of the UNESCO Water Family. Although the disciplinary backgrounds of those taking part covered a broad range, the meeting concentrated on ways in which improved governance, rather than scientific advances alone, might help. Governance is a word with multiple meanings depending on context, but we interpreted it to mean the legal, policy and institutional aspects of water. From the COP perspective, water is the key area where the impacts of climate change will be felt, so successful adaptation will depend very much on how effectively water is managed.

Governance approaches to water vary a lot around the world, with solutions often driven by local situations. This is because the impacts of climate change differ depending on location- partly because of climatological reasons, but also in part because the ability of states and communities to respond effectively varies across space and time. This could be because of financial constraints, but it may also be the result of restrictions imposed by state practice elsewhere on international basins. It is difficult for states to be able to compare best practices, so meetings such as this can be useful conduits for communicating across borders and basins. Ensuring governance reflects up-to-date science is critical – the Centre was founded on the principle that the lawyers need to talk to the scientists. The need to better understand and communicate the importance of governance in achieving water security in the context of climate change has been prioritised by UNESCO in its latest water strategy (see the IHP-IX at <https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000381318>).

In addition to the loss and damage event, the Centre also took part in an event held at the University of Strathclyde with the IWRA, “Water solutions for our changing climate” (again, video of the event can be found at <Water solutions for our changing climate>). The focus of this meeting was on nature-based solutions as a way of adapting to climate change, and comparing practice globally. With the assistance of the Tweed Forum (https://tweedforum.org/), a field trip to the Eddleston Water in the Scottish Borders was organised following this event, allowing participants to see examples of nature based solutions in action. Eddleston Water, a 69 sq km sub-catchment of the Tweed, is the subject of the Scottish Government’s long-running research study on the effectiveness of nature-based solutions to reduce the risk of flooding to downstream communities and improve wildlife habitats. Participants on the bus tour were able to see the Natural Flood Management (NFM) measures that have been installed since 2011 . NFM measures which reduce the impact of the increasing frequency and magnitude of floods driven by climate change include the installation of 135 woody-debris dams, planting of over 330,000 native trees, the re-meandering 3.5km of river and the creation of 38 ponds to temporarily store floodwater and improve biodiversity. This has been accompanied by an extensive and very detailed monitoring programme covering hydrological and ecological impacts, spawning a number of novel empirical and model-based research papers (see for example Black et al, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jfr3.12717; and Hankin et al, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468312421000080).

There is a great deal of innovation and good practice in adapting to the effects of climate change, but ensuring that this knowledge is openly available, and that governance frameworks are suitably robust and adaptable, is a much bigger challenge.

Post by Elaine Robinson and Andrew Allan

This week is World Water Week. To honour this event, today’s post will be looking at an example of the relationship between politics and water challenges, one of the issues being covered at the Stockholm event this year.

Getting the attention of political leaders can be difficult, especially if they are not directly affected by the problems. Last month, July 13^th marked the 150th anniversary of the Royal opening of Victoria Embankment, part of the River Thames in London. Featured prominently on a memorial there is a representation of Joseph Bazalgette, chief engineer of London’s Metropolitan Board of Works. His ideas, of which the Victoria Embankment is an integral part, led to the sewer system that still underpins London today. This system only came into being because the politicians in Parliament were so overwhelmed by the stench of the sewage-laden Thames outside their windows.

During the 1800s, various types of waste flushed into the River Thames, resulting in diseases such as cholera as well as producing a terrible odour. Such was the state of the river that it was featured in newspapers of the time, and major figures such as Charles Dickens wrote about the “offensive smells” of the river in letters to friends. In an especially prescient letter titled Observations on the Filth of the Thames, Michael Faraday described the foul-smelling, dark sludge that the river had become, and warned: “I fear it is rapidly becoming the general condition. If we neglect this subject, we cannot expect to do so with impunity; nor ought we to be surprised if ere, many years are over, a hot season give us sad proof of the folly of our carelessness.” Faraday sent this both to The Times and the Houses of Parliament in 1855. In 1858, the resulting summer’s hot weather caused the effluence in the Thames to produce a powerful stench, dubbed The Great Stink.

The work of Dr John Snow and Rev Henry Whitehead suggested that outbreaks of cholera could be caused by a dirty water supply, but the theory held at the time was that of miasma – airborne disease caused by foul smells – and thus the idea was not paid much heed. The miasma theory may have been incorrect for outbreaks of waterborne disease such as cholera, but crucially, it led to Parliament agreeing on the construction of a new sewer system for London. The development of the London sewers was part of a mid-19^th Century process to improve sanitation in cities, after a number of cholera outbreaks occurred across Europe.

Bazalgette created a new network of sewers, collecting both waste and rainwater. Pumping stations were built, and the Chelsea, Albert, and Victoria embankments were created to aid the development of the sewer system. Over 1,000 miles of underground sewers now cater to London. Bazalgette had the foresight to incorporate a degree of adaptability, to cope with an expanding population, but London’s growth has become such that new development is needed. The Thames Tideway Tunnel – London’s new “super sewer” which began construction in 2016, aims to service this need. Although Bazalgette’s sewer system helped to ensure that diseases such as cholera did not have such a hold on the citizens of London, the sewage was carried out to sea rather than treated.

One the of the remarkable things about the construction of Bazalgette’s system was the lack of action on the part of the politicians at the time: they were only willing to agree to his proposed plans when it directly affected them, rather than the thousands of other Londoners already suffering. In a fiery article on the 18^th of June 1858 The Times noted this self-interest: “We can bear the calamities of our neighbours with remarkable self-possession, but when the black ox sets his hoof upon our own foot it is wonderful how filled we are with sympathy for all mankind.”

Work on ensuring access to clean water and sanitation continues at a much greater scale, most notably in the context of SDG Targets 6.2 and 6.3, which focus on sanitation and hygiene, and water quality and wastewater.  2.4 billion people still lack access to basic sanitation services. Diarrhoeal diseases resulting from water-borne contaminants infect millions every year and are one of the most severe threats to childhood health. Ensuring that politicians understand the need for action not only in their own countries but globally is crucial – the fact that Water and Politics is one of the key themes in Stockholm this week highlights how much work still has to be done.

Post by Sean Whittaker

This week sees the sixty-seventh Compliance Committee to the Aarhus Convention. The Aarhus Convention, adopted in 1998, establishes environmental information rights to the public. Today’s post is by Sean Whittaker, one of the research members of the Uncovering the Environment project at the University of Dundee. His post looks at the co-production of information in relation to managing flood risk in Scotland.

Urban and rural flooding is a significant issue in Scotland. Flooding can damage buildings and infrastructure, disrupt communities, inflict economic losses and cause fatalities. This risk is further heightened by the impacts of climate change. The Scottish Government’s approach to mitigating flood risk relies on the public engaging with flood risk mitigation measures. Yet this engagement, and the necessary flow of environmental information, is more nuanced than may be originally expected.

The primary direction of environmental information under such measures is from the Government to interested individuals. This can be seen in the Aarhus Convention, which guarantees the right for individuals to request the disclosure of environmental information from the state. In Scotland this has been implemented by the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004. Under the Regulations individuals are viewed as passive recipients of environmental information: they are granted access to the requested information by a government which is implied to hold all of the relevant information.

However, viewing the relationship between the state and citizens as a “one-way street” unduly reduces the potential role of citizens in providing information to the state. In reality governments often do not hold every piece of relevant information, and individual citizens can hold or create information which is of great value to flood risk mitigation efforts. This broader approach to the role of citizens in relation to information can be seen in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, which places citizens at the heart of disaster risk mitigation efforts.

Recognising the role of citizens in providing environmental information can take many forms. A common method of seeking information from citizens is the use of Environmental Impact Assessments, which enables the public to provide their opinion on proposed plans and highlight any information they feel has been omitted. Another method used by SEPA is Report A Flood, which enables individuals to report localised flooding incidents to SEPA.

Yet an often-overlooked method of citizens producing environmental information is citizen science initiatives. Citizen science is defined as collaborative research involving the public into scientific projects, and differs from the previously discussed forms of public engagement due to the formal partnership between scientists and the public impacting how the data is collected and presented. In Scotland citizen science has been used to monitor rivers that are at risk of flooding, providing data to public authorities which cannot generate this data themselves.

In this way, it is important to not underplay the role of individuals in providing and generating environmental information themselves. While the Government does act as the primary source of information, this does not mean that citizens cannot contribute or create valuable information of their own. Indeed, citizens contributing environmental information, either held or generated by them, can improve environmental protection efforts and bridge the gaps in the state’s own knowledge. This is not always easy: the different forms of citizen participation each have their own benefits and risks, which must be managed. However, the benefits of opening up the “one-way street” can be significant, and the Government should not be quick to discount the information that can be provided or created by citizens.

Post by Andrew Allan, Chris Spray, and Elaine Robinson

Yesterday was the 202^nd anniversary of the birth of Dr Ignaz Semmelweis, the Hungarian ‘father of infection control’. It was Semmelweis who identified the need for hand washing by surgeons in order to prevent the spread of disease, presaging the later work of Pasteur and Lister on germs. The story of Semmelweis’s innovation, his ultimate failure to convince the authorities and his ignominious death is a tragic one, the reverberations of which are still of great relevance today.

Semmelweis was an obstetric surgeon in Vienna’s main hospital in the 1840s. The hospital ran two maternity units, one doctor-led and the other run by midwives. The mortality rate in the former had risen to three times that of the latter, following the decision by Semmelweis’s superior to introduce autopsies to the hospital. Surgeons in the first clinic would work on cadavers in the morning before moving to the obstetric wards, but crucially would not wash their hands in between. Although he did not fully understand the transmission process, Semmelweis reasoned that some as yet unidentified diseased matter from the autopsies might be the cause, and this could perhaps be removed by effective hand washing. If correct, then the number of women infected with puerperal fever and subsequently dying could be reduced. Despite the observed success of hand washing measures in the hospital in bringing down the number of deaths, the medical establishment refused to accept his findings. There were a number of reasons for this, not least their resistance to change but perhaps also because they could not admit that their malpractice was actually killing women. A frustrated Semmelweis was committed to the brutality of a Vienna asylum which ultimately killed him.

Many analogies and extrapolations can be made from this story in relation to modern day water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) practices and gender imbalances. Applying a liberal degree of artistic licence, there are also possible echoes in the wider area of integrated water resource management. There is an immediate topicality in relation to the benefits of hand washing in the context of COVID-19, but a wider interpretation highlights the need for evidence-based policy. Policy and its implementation need to be responsive to improvements in scientific understanding – recent reporting on the fact that many US flood maps have not been revised for years and therefore no longer accurately reflect flood risks is a case in point. The IWRM paradigm is supposed to be a self-improving system, but this fails if it does not incorporate scientific progress.

The Semmelweis experience also illustrates the need for precautionary approaches. The reason his approach worked was not understood at the time, but the authorities at the hospital rejected his theory despite its demonstrable benefits. A more precautionary response would have sought to capitalise on the advantages for maternal health and to work out the scientific detail later. Many of the reasons that prevented Semmelweis’s conclusions being put into more general practice apply to the governance of water resource management, whether through institutional inertia; knee-jerk responses to indigenous knowledge, foreign expertise and citizen science; or failure to adapt to changing climatic circumstances.

Today we have a guest post from Fortune Gomo, a Hydro Nation scholar at the Centre, about the findings of her PhD thesis, which she successfully defended in March.

Post by Fortune F. Gomo

Our planet Earth is facing increasing environmental pressures, and this has resulted in resource shortages, leading to water, energy and food insecurity, hampering economic development, social and geopolitical tensions and irreparable environmental damage. In addition, there is an imperative need to improve the livelihoods of the ‘bottom billion’ who have no access to clean water, electricity and are undernourished, of which a significant proportion are in sub-Saharan Africa. More than 75% of the population in the region are employed in agriculture, with a significant proportion of smallholder farmers; and 20% of the electricity generated in the basin coming from hydropower. In Malawi, 98% of electricity comes from hydropower, and more than 80% of the population is employed in the agriculture sector.

The water-energy-food (WEF) nexus approach recognises the crucial interdependence of the three sectors. But there is a lack of integrative approaches and tools for policy makers, businesses and land managers that enable better decision making across a range of scales. Through this study, we sought to understand the intersectoral and cross-scale challenges and interactions of the WEF sectors in Malawi.

I interviewed some key national stakeholders in the WEF sectors in Malawi to identify the key challenges in the WEF sectors and understand the WEF system of Malawi (Figure 1). I used the DPSIR (drivers-pressures-states-impacts-responses) framework to understand the intra-sectoral and inter-sectoral interactions of the identified challenges. Understanding the challenges and how they interact can enable policy makers and decision makers to integrate not only across sectors and across scales, from local to regional and address the challenges for sustainable development.

From the interviews with the national level stakeholders, and from reviewing the existing WEF policy framework in Malawi, we found that the responses to the challenges identified, i.e. the policies, strategies and plans, prioritised sectoral expansion for all three sectors to improve access to water and energy and to increase agricultural production and productivity.

The agricultural sector was found to be key to the WEF nexus in Malawi. The sector also utilises a large proportion of land and water resources and needs some energy input for the achievement of its policy objectives, especially the irrigation expansion objective. This makes it imperative for the agricultural sector to work together in an integrated manner with the water and energy sectors to achieve their goals through maximising synergies by collectively addressing common challenges, and minimising trade-offs across sectors.