23 Need for sustainable Mitigation strategies
Objectives/ Framework
Keywords
Water, Sustainable, Strategies, Global and shortages
Sustainable Mitigation Strategies for Water
Water is one of the most essential substances for the survival of life on the earth. As we all know, the earth is surrounded by 71% of water of which 97% is found in the oceans and only 3% is freshwater. Moreover, two-third of the freshwater is locked in the form of ice at the poles and in the glaciers. Thus, basically only 1% of consumable fresh water is available in the lakes, rivers, ground water and atmosphere. (Figure: 1). However, the rising demand of water due to growing population, resource intensive farming and higher standards of living is putting the available 1% of water at the risk of scarcity.
Source: World Health Organization
http://www.who.int/topics/water/en/
Shortage of water is a recognized global problem with the demand of water expected to exceed by 40% to the supply, forcing half of the world’s population to live in water stress regions by 2030. Climate change is further worsening the situation, with many areas experiencing prolonged droughts and some areas getting flooded with heavy rainfall without adequately refilling the groundwater. According to the SIWI (Stockholm International Water Institute) nearly one fifth of the world’s total population lives in physical water scarcity regions. Water scarcity is declared when the demand of all sectors including industry, agriculture, domestic and even environment cannot be met satisfactorily in terms of quantity or quality or both by the available institutional arrangement of water. (Figure: 2) Water scarcity regions are identified as areas where water resource scarcity has exceeded or about to exceed the sustainable level for consumption and economic development. The projected gap of 40% between demand and supply of water by 2030 makes it indispensable to conserve water for future generations.
Source: United Nations.org 2012
http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/scarcity.shtml
What are the impediments to sustainable management of water?
Conservation of water and its sustainable usage is undoubtedly the most critical aspect that the world needs to consider to save ourselves from water stress situation in the future. However, sustainable management of water is not an easy task with rapidly increasing population, changing climatic pattern, growing economic development and varied distribution of water resources. In fact, economic growth, higher living standard, faster urbanizationand excessive demand by growing population put extra pressure on already burdened water resource. In addition, pollution and wastage of water makes it even tougher to develop sustainable water management practices. Hence, most decision on sustainable mitigation strategies for water nationally or internationally are mainly driven by short term political, social and economic requirements and considerations; neglecting the long term impacts.
Ideally the sustainable management plan for water resource should include the combination of best prevailing practices with innovative scientific developments. The decisions makers need to look beyond the present need and develop long term integrated approach by considering the recommendations of the scientific communities to deal with the water management challenges.
All section of societies need to realize that current water related hardship cannot be addressed by short term measures, everyone needs to work together to solve the impending crises of water scarcity. More funds and technical upgradation is required to collect water related authentic information and data and accordingly new schemes and strategies can be worked out for better future.
Natural Water Resources Status
To understand the status of water resources globally and set water mitigation strategies and policies, we need to appreciate the roles of different component of water cycle (evaporation, precipitation and condensation). Each part of the hydrological cycle has a specific role in varied distribution of water resources. Precipitation in all forms replenishes various sources of water on the earth. For instance, rain water directly replenishes rivers, lakes, seas and ocean and melting snow or glaciers creates seasonal streams. Evaporation provides water vapor into the atmosphere, which plays significant role in regulating the climatic pattern of a region. Agricultural development, economic growth, vibrant ecosystems and biodiversity are supported by water resources, thus a wide-ranging global assessment is required to plan water management strategies or policies.
With the current technological know-how scientists can provide short term solution to control surface runoff in water stress regions; however prediction of climatic changes and its effect on water resources for a longer time period is still a challenge. Rain water harvesting and refilling of groundwater aquifers by excess surface water runoff are some measures that can be taken to ease the impact of climactic variance on water resources. Effective measures such as rain water could be stored in tanks; aquifers could be recharged during wet period or monsoon season to meet the demand during the dry periods.
However, the major obstacle in maintaining the water resources is that not enough data is available especially in developing countries of Africa and Asia, where water monitoring systems are not fully developed. Even monitoring water quality is not an easy task in the developing countries with lack of proper technology, thus human health is at higher risk in these countries. Despite international attention and scientific interventions, collection and compiling of data on pollution level of water is still at a nascent stage.
Effects
Sub-standard water quality and irregular supply of water are major obstacles to economic development of a region and can have severe impact on living standard and health of its people. Moreover interferences and changes on the earth’s landscape by humans disrupts the flow of the natural water cycle and functioning of the ecosystem, which makes it more difficult to predict the effects of climate change on water resources.
We understand the difficulties to estimate impact of climate changes on water resources at global level due to inadequate data on water resources. However, analyzing the impacts on water quality and quantity due to excessive pollution, excessive wastages and surface water removal can now be done at local level with current technical knowledge. In the developing countries apart from technological advancement and innovation, adequate funding is required to reduce impact on water quantity and quality. In General, water management programs need to emerge with emphasis on sustainable practices to save the water resource for a safe and better tomorrow.
Sustainable and efficient usage of water
The most important strategy for sustainable and efficient usage of water is to prevent unnecessary wastage of water. In addition, increase in the existing natural resources, reduction in water pollution, reduction in demand, innovative technologies, more attention and higher efficiency in management of water resources is needed for its sustainable usage and meeting the current and future demand of water. Following (Figure-3) shows water saving tips for households.
Figure 3.
http://www.irvingtonny.gov/index.aspx?NID=422
Traditionally, the water shortages have been handled by storing surface runoff in basins, by taking out water from groundwater aquifers and by diverting water flow in channels from water surplus to water stress regions. These methods provide short term reliefs to societies or communities from water scarcity. These conventional methods are still used as part of water management tactics along with new innovative approaches such as desalination (salt and minerals are removed from sea water to get fresh water), artificial refilling of groundwater aquifers, water reuses and rainwater harvesting (rainwater is captured or stored for future usage). These methods help in replenishing the quantity of naturally available water resource. In extreme cases some drastic steps are also taken such as extraction of under groundwater for developmental purposes, this is mainly common in arid areas, where water is insufficiently available. Water conservation and managing demands still need efficiency as more focus is given to infrastructure development. Conservation is the most effective tool of sustainable and effective management of water.
In recent years, due to public awareness and government initiative steps have been taken to reduce wastewater as part of conservation strategy but still more efficiency is required in water conservation. Saving water by demand reduction and less wastage helps in reducing the cost factor involved in water treatment plants and infrastructural development for increasing water supply and thus brings economic benefits. Conservation of water by reducing its demand should be accepted whole heartedly and made an important part of contemporary water management technique. Its benefits should be promoted and people, societies and institutes should be educated about the same for effective application. Many countries have applied new regulations and policies for protecting natural water sources. Several nations are implementing newer technical practices and local customary approaches to protect the available stock of water resources as part of efficient water management initiative.
The benefits
According to UNESCO-IHE, “Water Resource Assessments (WRA’s) aims to measure quantity and quality of the water in the system, including data collection, data validation and water accounting techniques using both ground and remote sensing”. Periodic WRAs carried out on all basins and groundwater in a nation or a region brings environmental, social and economic benefits. Water Resource Assessment is done using contemporary approaches, age-old hydraulic methods are not followed. For collection of actual data on water resources for WRA’s, Water Cycle components data is required, without which the evaluation report will be not reliable. WRA’s should incorporate well drafted demand report of users in terms of both quality and quantity, accurate data on consumption, approximate data on volumes of environmental flow to maintain ecosystems, identification of both the point and non-point sources of contamination of water and the quality of the water used by the consumers. WRA’s report should look for new technologies to increase the natural water resources to meet growing demand of the same. A detailed WRA must consider economic and social factors along with the need of biodiversity and ecosystems. Climatic changes can brings in more erratic weather conditions such as varied distribution of precipitation, which will lead to lesser crop yield, while putting more than a billion people at risk of water scarcity. Thus understanding the water cycle is very important to be able to handle all kind of climatic challenges.
Saving water and reduction on demand are measures in water stress regions to overcome the problem. Water Demand Management approach is crucial for effective management of water. Unlike the earlier method of supplying all existing water, WDM offers incentives for efficient and sustainable usages of water. It focuses on water saving measures by raising people’s awareness about scarcity of freshwater on the earth.
Unfortunately the conservation measures are restricted only to water stress regions and have not been applied in areas with water abundance. On the environmental front, water conservation methods supports the diversion of the extra volumes of water to cultivate ecosystems, maintain ecological balance and also reduce the level of loads of pollution in rivers, groundwater and lakes and thus protects the fresh water.
WDM applies varied strategies to support sustainable water management by saving the water from getting polluted, by reducing the wastage of water at infrastructural and consumers end by judicial distribution of water and by putting a price mechanism in place as per water usages.
Water conservation methods needs to be stringent in case of wastage due to leakages. Most of the time water is distributed through degraded rusted pipes and that leads to leakages and un-delivery. Leaked water is often unaccounted and results in shortages of water and economic losses. Water management is often impacted by inefficiencies in operation that causes loss of about 40% on an average; many cities have even reported losses up to 70%. This problem is widespread and effect societies of all nations. Furthermore, water can be saved at household levels by controlling usages. Public awareness about water conservation benefits have motivated people world over to reduce water wastages and reduction in 40% of demand has been noted. These observations explain most of the water that is supplied may not necessarily be required. By controlling demands and wastages, volume of the available natural water resource can be maintained. Thus, these aspects should be considered while setting strategies.
The 1992UN conferences at Rio de Janeiro focused on environment and sustainable development, since then in most of the UN conferences water resource scarcity and its sustainable management has been discussed. The International Decade for Action ‘Water for Life’ 2005 -2015 is a decade dedicate to programs and project for sustainable development of water resource globally. Post Dublin conference, water was recognized as economic good for its proper conservation and equitable usage.
These days, water resource is considered in the broader spectrum of social parity, ecosystem balance and economics. The contemporary WRA process can be used to maintain balance among all these. Water resources assessments (WRAs) are done to analyze the availability of water sources and potential demands of the users. WRA requires data collected from different components of hydrological cycle along with other information. However, the challenge is to get accurate hydrological data, as various factors determines the precision of the data including presence of various gauging stations within a region, time given in collection of data, continuity of observations, data processing and quality.
The parameters that are considered in a WRA are precipitation level, evaporation, moisture in the atmosphere, soil, depth of groundwater aquifers and river waters, distribution of water, quality of water and data on contamination of water on a constant basis. However, since the mid-1980s,the reliability and availability of data has witnessed a sharp decline, especially in Africa and Eastern Europe (Rodda, 1998), but situation is more or less similar even in the present century. Availability of funds has declined for development of national network and is still falling. WRA derives its general input from Hydrometric networks, which is expensive to maintain but without which no other WRA data is available.
Fig.5
In Integrated water resources management (IWRM) principle, it was internationally agreed to develop river basin analysis type of approach, which will be decentralized for WRA’s.
The World Water Assessment Program’s aim is to support partner countries in evolving their individual assessment ability. Although independence and healthy competition will remain major aspects in dealing with water resource. The general WRA scope, which describes the magnitude of availability of good quality water, including features related to pollution, water usage and environment, is the foundation for efficient management. This information can be gathered individually or cooperatively by countries sharing the same natural resources. Moreover, information on natural water resources will benefit mankind, society and environment at large.
Improving integration of policies between water, agriculture, environment and energy policies
Most often than not policies in agriculture, environment, water and energy are framed haphazardly without considering their interrelations; this situation has been noticed in many OECD countries (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). Integration of policies at all levels of decision making from international to national and to local areas is still a task for many countries. Policy integration is a part of broader national framework, where decision is also taken about allocation of water to different zones and for different purposes.
More unified policy approaches are now being considered by countries. For instance due to unpredictable climate change countries started to integrate water policies with droughts and flood control policies, which were earlier dealt separately. For example, afforestation in the catchment areas of rivers have not only reduced flood occurrences in that region but also improved bio diversity and water quality of the area.
In Many OEDC countries, the policies related to agriculture and environment provides both motivations and discouragements towards water management. For instance, giving market price for livestock and crop production motivates farmers to increase agricultural production. However, lowering water cost and giving subsidies for irrigation and energy infrastructure as support for farming might increase misuse of water; will lead to water pollution and environmental damages, hence offset the farmers incentives.
In the last two decades however, some changes in agricultural policies have been noticed with most OECD countries reducing supports in farm inputs mainly uncontrolled usages of water (as reported by Producers Support Estimates by OECD countries). This shift in policy approach leading to conservation of quantity and quality of water and protection of the environment is however not clearly identified, as direct cause and impact results here are multifaceted. To what extent the environment will gain from shifting the agricultural policy approach may depend on the use of ‘conserved’ water. For instance, if the conserved water is used for production of water intensive crops, then the environmental might not gain from this approach.
To conclude, it can be stated that the policy change has chances of both appreciative as well as deterrent effect on water resources such as lowering subsidies in water usages will lead to reduction of water wastages especially in water stress areas. Energy support given in agriculture, by direct support or help for electricity and diesel use and indirect support in the form of fodder stocks to produce bio-energy and fuel, can put extra load on water resources. Also, subsidies given on pumping expenses for agricultural benefits in some nations have put extra burden on groundwater withdrawal.
Thus, reduction in this type of support may bring in sustainable water use in agriculture. The impact on water quantity for providing fodder support to produce bio-energy and fuel, however, is yet to be determined. Detailed analysis suggests that the water quantity required for generation of each unit of energy from fodder stocks at different location may vary’ thus identifying economic and environmental impact of agro-environmental support on natural water resources, is difficult.
Mitigation strategies to cater to threat of Water Shortages
Sustainable usage of water is important for all water scarce as well as surplus regions. However, those countries, which face acute stress of water, need to follow water management more rigorously to mitigate this risk of water scarcity. Water scarcity impact is not only restricted to the multiple demands of this resource but also widely impacts the environment and food security in the region.Many countries in the world already face extreme water shortage and some are even importing water.
However, unlike natural disasters like flood, earthquake, cyclones etc. water scarcity does not always get immediate responses from governing authorities, thus water risk mitigation strategies to avoid water stress are all the more important to be practiced. Water scarcity might not impact or damage buildings and other structures, but its impact can stretch for a longer period of time.
0Water scarcity apart from impacting domestic, commercial and agricultural sectors majorly affects the environmental balance. Water resource mitigation plan needs to emphasize on sustainability, where in water deficiency risk mitigation should be done in accordance with the other physical and natural resources.
Following are some of the mitigation strategies for dangerous water deficient situations, which can be followed globally as per requirement are:
1. Avoid tapping ground water resource, unless dire need or any emergency situation.
2. Water desalination should be done to get fresh water from ocean and sea water.
3. Rain water harvesting should be practised as water is too precious to be wasted.
4. Controlling pollution especially water pollution at all levels is very important. Waste water should be treated and water resource should be reused wherever possible.
5. Water Footprint need to be measured to assess the amount of fresh water required to produce goods.
6. Water Footprint yardsticks for crop production that will reflect justifiable water usage per production needs to be developed and effective crop management and irrigation techniques need to be worked upon to achieve those sustainable water footprint yardsticks.
7. Water should be judiciously allocated, priority should be given to domestic users and remaining water should be utilized for production of crops and other products, which requires lower amount of water resource.
8. Educate people about lower wastage and sustainable consumption pattern of water.
Apart from the above mentioned strategies, which can be followed to mitigate threats of extreme water shortages, countries can develop their own national water policies and management plans to secure this valuable resource.
Developing Water Management Plans
As we know, the natural fresh water resource is available in a very limited quantity on the earth, hence for judiciously managing the available resource to meet the demand of all sectors (industrial, agricultural and environmental) and to avoid risk of extreme water shortages, a strategic management plan is to be put in place. However, to outline a comprehensive approach, which will support environment, social and economic sectors, as well as endorse sustainable usage of water resource; policy makers need to have options of different management tools including public awareness tools, advocacy, instrumental designs and economic tools into consideration. Moreover, prior attention to the poor weaker section of the society should be given to make-sure they benefit from the management strategies.
Though defining management strategies keeping in mind benefits for all sectors at one attempt will have its own share of constraints, but there are some areas where inter-sectoral strategies or policies can be worked upon such as:
a. Increase public awareness through education and identify the needs of specific sections of the society (such as women, poor section etc.) at all levels from local, regional, to national and international level.
b. Build capability by supporting participatory structures, cultivating water management skills and encouraging community ownership. Also, encouraging private industries to support governmental sectors in water resource management plans will benefit all.
c. Support a facilitating environment by;
- Forming water policy with respect to river basin management;
- Regular observation and assessment of water related plans and policies;
- Building a strong legal and governing framework;
- Implementing strong regulation;
- Implementing suitable mechanisms for resource allocation;
- Sustaining information systems and data on water.
All the above mentioned steps along with other nationally important strategies can be considered by governing authorities of the world countries to support sustainable water management and reduce the risk of water scarcity globally.
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