Gigantic Nile dam prompts clash between Egypt and Ethiopia
Dr Kevin Wheeler discusses rainfall and impact to the GERD dam.
Dr Kevin Wheeler discusses rainfall and impact to the GERD dam.
This year, the Oxford Water Network is organizing a seminar series on water quality, led by Dr Katrina Charles. The series focuses on the interdisciplinary challenge of achieving safe water quality. Some might think of water quality as a technical subject, focused on how to measure or treat dangerous chemicals or pathogens. Actually, water quality research is much broader and has political, environmental, and behavioural aspects that must be considered. All of which will be taken into account throughout the series this year.
People’s behaviour and water quality in households was the focus of the first talk in the series, given by Dr Robert Dreilbelbis of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Because expanding piped water access is expensive and progress is slow, intermediate options for pathogen treatment for household water use have been explored. While these options include filtration, solar disinfection, and purifiers, the most widely used option is simply boiling the water at the point of use. But the bigger issue is not how to clean the water, it’s how to get people to make the effort to clean it. This is where Dr Dreilbelbis’s research comes in.
Very few households that need to improve their water quality make an effort to do so, and previous work on ‘education’ around these issues has not produced significant behavioural change. Dr Dreilbelbis thus wanted to explore how changing a household’s understanding of the threat from their water could impact behavioural change by examining three options of outreach: firstly, just using standard educational messaging; secondly, using education plus laboratory confirmed results for their household water; and thirdly, using education plus providing test kits and training so households could evaluate their own water quality. Behavioural modelling indicates people are most likely to make changes when they feel there is a high threat and they have the agency to take impactful action. This project in rural India found that demonstrating that there was a real threat through either laboratory or at home testing did lead more participants (28-38%) to change their behaviours and use adequate water purification methods. Given the low costs of test kits and how that allows households to participate in the tests themselves, this seems like an effective way forward to improve water quality in households. However, more research is needed to demonstrate what is needed to sustain those changes.
The sky was overcast and raindrops, emboldened by fierce winds, dashed against our faces. For the twenty-five new students from Oxford University’s MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management (WSPM) 2019-20 cohort, October 3, the first of the three-day induction field trip to Dorset was just as forecasted – cold and rainy. We were in Dorset to learn about what lay beneath the earth—chalk and water. The field trip was also an introduction to the many ways in which people – particularly in Dorset – view water and its uses.
First, we stopped at Wessex Water’s Groundwater Pumping Station at Friar Waddon. The pumping station made thunderous noises as boreholes that were dug deep into the earth sucked up the water resting in the underground chalk. The machines grunted and groaned as the water gushed to the surface to be cleaned and piped out to surrounding towns in Dorset. Wessex Water is a water supply and sewerage services company operational across southwest England. A quick look at the website flashes the words “value for money,” “investment,” “fair return”.[i] Through Wessex Waters’ lens, as a utility company, water is a commodity.
Standing in front of the tree, Professor David Bradley, a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Oxford University Centre for the Environment (OUCE), spoke of the Well’s history. “You see, water is more than just a commodity,” he said, and our ears perked up. Suddenly, the narrative had shifted from water being perceived as a commodity to water being “more” than “just” that.
In Dorset, we were introduced to watercress, an aquatic plant used in salads and soups, the production of which is closely associated with the chalk streams central to Dorset. Dr Jocelyne Hughes, the WSPM Course Director, briefed us on how watercress was once harvested in winter by “traditional growers”. There are no traditional growers of watercress left in Dorset. Now, driven by the market, the plant is produced in Dorset mainly in the summer and imported from Spain, Portugal and Florida, USA, for the winter market. The commercial production is more water intensive than traditional methods, which creates significant strain of the unique chalk waters in the area. In Dorset, tradition has clearly been dumped for commerce.
From holy water and cultural traditions to ecological services and dependable utility services, our trip to Dorset illuminated the depth and breadth of how our society views and manages water. In the process, we found ourselves entangled in the perennial debate of whether water should be viewed as a commodity. If so, then to what extent? Also, how does the placing of water as a commodity or “more than” a commodity translate into water management? There were no easy answers.
[i] Wessex Water. “About Us: Our Purpose and Values.” Available at: https://www.wessexwater.co.uk/corporate/the-company/about-us/our-purpose-and-values
Bright and early in early October, the new students of Oxford’s Water Science, Policy and Management MSc program gathered for a three-day intensive field trip to Dorset. I was most excited to learn about a familiar water management challenge from another region’s perspective: namely, Atlantic salmon research and management on the River Frome.
Until last week, I worked for a watershed nonprofit in the U.S. called the Lake Champlain Basin Program. At the time of Euro-American settlement in the Lake Champlain region, landlocked Atlantic salmon were plentiful in the lake and its tributaries; however, the prized sportfish was soon extirpated due to overfishing. Since then, Vermont, New York, and Quebec have spent decades, and millions of dollars, on expensive Atlantic salmon restoration efforts: constructing hatcheries, reintroducing a similar strain of landlocked salmon from nearby Sebago Lake in Maine, and conducting chemical treatments in the lake’s tributaries to decrease the population of parasitic, invasive sea lamprey. In 2017, when salmon began naturally spawning in several of the Lake’s tributaries for the first time in 150 years, it was a huge victory.
Atlantic salmon management in the U.K. is quite different: at our visit to the Freshwater Biological Association’s facility on the River Frome, we learned from Rasmus Lauridsen that Atlantic salmon have continued to spawn naturally on the river, and this spawning has been tracked since 1973 (one of the longest-term sources of salmon population data!). Salmon reproduction has decreased since the early 1990s at this location, and the reason for this decline is as-yet unclear. Interestingly, there is no need to manage (chemically or otherwise) for sea lamprey, as the species is native to the region and does not pose a serious threat to the Atlantic salmon population.
This contrast in management foci, challenges, and opportunities was fascinating to me: learning about issues that are personally familiar from a differing international perspective was actually one of the most attractive components of the WSPM program for me. Other incoming WSPM students have other areas of previous expertise: public health and epidemiology, journalism, and shipping and harbor management, to name a few, and I’m looking forward to hearing their comparative perspectives in the months to come as well as developing a working knowledge of subjects related to water that are new to me like groundwater management and geology.
Congrats to OWN DPhil student Safa Fanaian who has recently secured a National Geographic Explorer grant for 10,200$. This grant will contribute towards her fieldwork to build a basic understanding of the network of actors involved in governing water-risks of her case study of India’s Guwahati City and its rivers. This information can provide valid insights to improve responses to water risks. The grant will also include participatory mapping of projections and perceived probabilities for improvement through a workshop carried out with relevant stakeholders in Guwahati. This process will collect recommendations and perceptions of the involved actors for how the governance system can evolve in the future.
What sorts of challenges will Safa explore related to urban water governance? Rivers running through cities in India have become open drains filled with plastic and dark murky waters. India has more than 100 riverine cities. Governing the risks that emerge from the connection between cities and rivers is complex. Because rivers flow beyond city jurisdictions, not only local city departments but also other actors like national departments and interest groups are involved in governance processes. Coordination among various departments and agencies in cities is perceived as one of the biggest challenges to address water risks.
Safa’s DPhil research seeks to identify frameworks and relevant methods that allow context-specific approaches to understand and improve water risk governance for a riverine city in India. Guwahati was chosen as her case study because it is the physical gateway to the North-Eastern part of India and emblematic of growing urbanization on Brahmaputra River. The water risks under examination for Guwahati City and its rivers are linked to the incoming and outgoing waters. They include urban floods, domestic water supply, and waste-water released into rivers.
Recently, Future Climate For Africa hosted the African Climate Risks Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The theme of the conference was dismantling barriers to urgent climate adaptation action. REACH participated by hosting a panel discussion on water-related climate adaptation in Ethiopia and through presenting research on East African rainfall.
Dr Ellen Dyer of REACH hosted a panel discussion centred around understanding opportunities for increased interdisciplinary capacity in water-related climate adaptation in Ethiopia. Dr Dyer wanted to share the REACH project’s experience of working across disciplines by creating a diverse panel that included Ethiopia’s National Meteorological Agency (NMA), its Ministry of Water Irrigation and Energy (MoWIE), and the Awash Basin Development Office (AwBDO). Panellists explored what kind of capacity exists across sectors, institutions, and at the individual level in the context of Ethiopian river basins, and how this affects the use of climate information in water planning.
Several broad themes emerged from the discussion on how to improve capacity to enhance adaptation. One major theme was improving data availability. Panellists highlighted how collaboration between water authorities and meteorological agencies is essential to lessen gaps in data availability. Some users currently have issues with accessing climatological data due to coarse spatial forecast representations and delayed access to forecasts, but meteorologists (NMA) and water experts (MoWIE) recognize the issue and are discussing how to improve data sharing.
Another theme around data was about getting the right type of data to the right users. Tailored hydro-climatic information is necessary, and though it does happen through some case-by-case consultation, this kind of customised information could be scaled up to help different sectors (pastoralists, farmers, dam managers) across East Africa. Forecasts that consider the risks different water users face would also provide better insights into what actions different users should take. Such forecasts would require meteorologists and water practitioners to collaborate more closely on tailored forecasts that respond to different water users’ needs.
Looking into these needs means more collaboration and information exchange between the water and climate sectors. For example, the NMA is now focusing on climate modelling and evaluation and on building that capacity in-house. In fact, increased capacity in using of large-scale model projections for resilience planning would benefit all stakeholders in this space because climate resilience planning requires engagement from all basin sectors from the local to national level.
For example, the Awash River Basin in Ethiopia is a basin of extremes, with flood and drought management historically being the primary concern. Traditionally, the interaction between water and meteorological sectors have revolved around short-term forecasts but that is not enough for long-term resilience planning. More climate information and tighter regulations across sectors like industry and agriculture is needed for water allocation planning and projections under climate change. These changes can only happen with better data availability, more customised data for various water users, and better capacity to engage on this topic for all users. These gaps are ones that REACH hopes to be able to assist with in the future.
REACH is leading research on model projections and evaluation that can assist in this process of capacity building. At the conference, Dr Dyer also presented a poster showcasing REACH’s work on East African model evaluation for the long rains. The REACH team has determined a set of atmospheric diagnostics which they are applying to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) ensemble of global climate models. Using a combination of diagnostics of moisture fluxes into and out of East Africa, this research underscores the importance of the Indian Ocean and Central Africa on rainfall and how that influence is represented in the models. Such measures of model skill will help inform confidence in future climate projections for East Africa, which can help determine what types of urgent climate adaptation are needed. But models alone are not enough to solve barriers to effective action for climate adaptation and REACH continues to value its interdisciplinary partners and approach to this work.
Dr Dustin Garrick is the recipient of the inaugural Philomathia Award.