infrastructure

2015

Water Security: less talk, more action

Professor Andrew Hamilton, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University © REACH

Water security is an increasingly urgent and complex challenge facing society, both rich and poor. Over 200 people from 20 countries met to debate using a risk-based framework to respond to the global and local challenges at the Water Security 2015 conference held at Oxford University on 9-11 December.

The Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, Professor Andrew Hamilton, welcomed Ministers from Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Kenya who led discussions on the significance and shared challenge of water security for countries in Africa and Asia.

‘Water security is an issue of life or death for Bangladesh’ said Mr MA Mannan MP, State Minister of Finance and Planning. The country’s population, especially the poor, are highly vulnerable to water hazards, including frequent floods, droughts and arsenic-contaminated groundwater.

The World Bank and Oxford University presented new evidence on the global status of water security risks, showing the scale, urgency and cost of the challenge. Findings from the OECD and Global Water Partnership report ‘Securing Water, Sustaining Growth’ provide the economic rationale for investment in infrastructure, institutions and information.

Professor Jim Hall, Director of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University said: ‘investment finance needs to have a sense of where the priorities lie. We have developed a common language to look at the scale of the risk, evaluate the benefits of risk reduction, and make proportionate interventions and investments in water security.’

The conference continued with a focus on water security and poverty in Africa and South Asia, marking the first year of REACH: Improving water security for the poor. The programme is funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), with a £15 million investment in water research. DFID’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Charlotte Watts, flagged the programme as critical to providing robust evidence needed for designing and implementing water security interventions.

Professor Charlotte Watts, Chief Scientific Adviser, UK Department for International Development © REACH

Gaining government support will be key for REACH to bring about transformational change beyond its focussed ‘Water Security Observatories’ or study sites. Attendance from three State Ministers from Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Kenya – the countries where REACH works – was an important step in building these science-policy partnerships with senior academic, enterprise and policy collaborators.

Ato Motuma Mekassa, Minister of Water, Irrigation and Electricity, Ethiopia, shared his country’s vision: ‘It is my Government’s ambition and commitment that all Ethiopians especially women and children have a future where they can live, learn and grow without the burden of water insecurity both in terms of water quality and quantity.’

Mr MA Mannan MP, State Minister of Finance and Planning, Bangladesh (left); Ato Motuma Mekassa, Minister of Water, Irrigation and Electricity, Ethiopia (right) © REACH

The Cabinet Secretary of the Ministry of Water and Irrigation in Kenya, Mr Eugene Wamalwa, spoke of unprecedented floods taking place in his country. Referring also to recent floods in Cumbria in the UK, he said that water is a global issue that connects us all. He tweeted with enthusiasm about his support for REACH and willingness to work in partnership to find new solutions to water insecurity.

Dr Rob Hope, REACH Director, Oxford Universityl (left); Eugene Wamalwa, Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Water and Irrigation, Kenya (right) © REACH

Mr Sanjay Wijesekera, Chief of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene at UNICEF, highlighted the drive towards achieving universal access to water and sanitation, as part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The need to address inequalities and target the poorest and most vulnerable is a priority across the SDGs, and in UNICEF’s work, he said. UNICEF is a global practitioner partner in the REACH programme with strong collaboration across regions and countries in Africa and Asia.

Sanjay Wijesekera, UNICEF © REACH

Three Country Diagnostic Reports on Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Kenya were launched at the conference. The reports illustrate significant but complex interactions between water security risks and poverty. Each Country Diagnostic Report outlines Water Security Observatories where REACH will focus its work over the next seven years.

Speakers from a session on ‘engendering water security’ showed how gender is a thread that weaves its way through all water security issues, from disasters, to water supply and sanitation, water management and technologies, and climate change resilience. The different values, needs and uses of water by men and women, and boys and girls, must be considered, to ensure that policies are effective. Eight parallel sessions convened panel discussions by senior policy, academic and enterprise leaders on issues of finance, monitoring, climate, poverty, health, data science, political accountability and groundwater.

In final remarks, REACH Director Dr Rob Hope said: ‘REACH will generate outstanding science to support policy and practice to improve water security for millions of poor people. The focus is on research with purpose and not producing academic papers that will gather dust.’

A call for partnerships and action was crystallised with the launch of the REACH Partnership Funding.

Presentations, audio and video will be available on the conference website soon – www.watersecurity205.org.

See the social media summary of the conference on Storify

Conference photos

December 22, 2015/0 Comments/by OWN Coordinator

2015

New groundwater monitoring tool wins prize at World Water Week

Topping off a successful week at Stockholm World Water Week 2015, Patrick Thomson and colleagues from the Department of Engineering Science won the prize for the best poster, which presented an innovative new approach to measuring shallow groundwater level using community handpumps.

Using data generated by a low-cost accelerometer fitted to community handpumps, the team has used machine learning methods to measure the groundwater level beneath pumps.

While currently at the proof-of-concept stage, the implications of this work are far-reaching. At scale, the tool could transform the thousands of handpumps across Africa into a large-scale, distributed network for monitoring groundwater supplies, in a continent where there is very little data.

The need for information on the state of groundwater is becoming ever more important in the face of climate change, as groundwater resources may help buffer against changes in rainfall and surface water flows.

The research project is a collaboration between the Smith School of Environment and Enterprise and the Computational Health Informatics Lab in the Department of Engineering Science.

See the electronic poster

Read the briefing note Distributed Monitoring of Shallow Aquifer Level using Community Handpumps

September 3, 2015/0 Comments/by OWN Coordinator

2015

Understanding financial flows for rural water services in Africa

Financial sustainability is a necessary but often forgotten condition to advance global goals of universal, reliable, safe and affordable water services. Oxford University researchers are designing and testing new financial models to find out what works for the rural poor in Kenya.

In rural Africa people are four times more likely to get their water from an unsafe source than those living in urban areas. Around one in three handpumps are broken at any one time.

The Water Programme at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment is trialling novel financial models to improve rural water sustainability and results from ongoing research in Kenya are published in two new Working Papers.

The unpredictable timing and magnitude of costs associated with operation and maintenance is a chronic problem for communities. The first study assesses the case for handpump insurance to reduce financial risks, and is supported by a grant from the UK Department for International Development and the Economic and Social Research Council.

While it seems unlikely that a standalone insurance product would offer a viable business model, the concept of pooling finances and spreading risk across multiple communities could help them pay for services that last.

The second study supported by UNICEF, builds on the teams earlier work and tests a model where water users pre-pay for a professional maintenance service that uses mobile-enabled data on handpump use. The report argues that improved institutional coordination and investment, and improved monitoring systems are necessary conditions for achieving universal rural water services.

The two papers will be launched at World Water Week 2015 in Stockholm, Sweden.

Read the reports

Insuring Against Rural Water Risk – Evidence from Kwale, Kenya
Financial Sustainability for Universal Rural Water Services – Evidence from Kyuso, Kenya

August 21, 2015/0 Comments/by OWN Coordinator

2015

Flood risk: making better infrastructure investments

Researchers at the Environmental Change Institute are helping evaluate and communicate best practice in national-scale flood risk analysis and long-term investment planning for flood management.

Thames barrier © Jack Torcello

The FoRUM project – Flood risk: Building Infrastructure Resilience through better Understanding and Management choices – recently held two workshops to start a dialogue between scientists and stakeholders that make use of flood risk science in their work.

Paul Sayers, leading the project, explained: ‘understanding and assessing risk is a prerequisite to managing it. The ability of alternative investment strategies to reduce risk – at a regional, national or even international scale – presents particular challenges.’

The two workshops helped identify these challenges, compare alternative approaches and distil lessons from across different sectors.

The project has engaged academics and industry partners from the UK and Netherlands (including the Environment Agency, Network Rail, Rijkswaterstaat and Thames Water), as well as leading consultants from the flood and reinsurance sectors.

At the first workshop ‘Broadscale risk models’ stakeholders and researchers took an in-depth look at current methods for modelling national-scale flood risk. A second workshop aimed to get stakeholders up to speed on the most recent advances in planning long-term investment in infrastructure.

There are many different types of infrastructure that help reduce the damage caused by flooding; physical structures such as embankments and floodgates, as well as ‘natural infrastructure’ such as introducing greenspaces or managing beaches. A key challenge for water utilities and government agencies is deciding what investments to make, given uncertainties related to future flood risk.

While there have been significant developments in the last decade in how decision-makers address future uncertainty in investment planning, current practice still lags behind the latest thinking in academia. The FoRUM project is a significant step in bridging this gap.

The findings of these workshops are already influencing the future development of the tools used by the Environment Agency to support its Long Term Investment Scenarios (LTIS). Dr Jon Wicks, CH2M HILL, who is leading an Environment Agency project to scope the next generation LTIS tools, said: ‘the FoRUM workshops have been very helpful in highlighting alternative approaches and how they might be taken forward into practical application.’

The project is led by Paul Sayers and Jim Hall at the Environmental Change Institute, with support from Edmund Penning Rowsell (School of Geography and the Environment) and Rob Nicholls (University of Southampton). It is funded by Natural Environment Research Council’s Environmental Risk to Infrastructure Programme (ERIIP).

Presentations from speakers at the workshops are available to download via the links below.

Visit the FoRUM project webpages
See presentations from FoRUM Workshop 1: Broadscale risk models, Tuesday 17 March 2015
See presentations from FoRUM Workshop 2: Long term investment planning | Tuesday 5 May 2015

July 2, 2015/0 Comments/by OWN Coordinator

2015

Water, Civilisation and Power in Sudan

At the launch of his book ‘Water, Civilisation and Power in Sudan’ in Oxford on 18 May 2015, Harry Verhoeven gave a snapshot of Africa’s most ambitious state-building projects in the modern era, where water played an important role. The book is the result of Harry’s doctoral research at Oxford University, and remarkable access to politicians, generals and intellectuals in Sudan over many years.

Worker clearing logs during the heightening of the Roseires Dam, August 2009. Photo by Harry Verhoeven

On 30 June 1989, a secretive movement of Islamists led by Dr Hassan Al-Turabi allied itself to a military group to violently take power in Africa’s biggest country.

Turabi organised a coup to prevent an anti-Islamist backlash in Egypt or America and formed the Al-Ingaz regime, the first modern Sunni Islamic Revolution since the seventh century AD.

The alliance of Islamists and generals sought to transform Sudan from one of the world’s poorest nations into a beacon of Islamic civilisation and prosperity across the Muslim world.

Harry Verhoeven’s book “Water, Civilization and Power in Sudan: The Political Economy of Military-Islamist State Building” reveals the centrality of water in Sudanese politics under military-Islamic rule.

The Al-Ingaz regime promised ‘Economic Salvation’ – the rescue of Sudan’s economy through a ‘hydro-agricultural mission’ with massive investment in water infrastructure and irrigated agriculture. The Nile River was seen as Sudan’s lifeline and its most important political artery.

Verhoeven describes the vast Merowe Dam as the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the hydro-agricultural mission. His analysis shows how the Al-Ingaz Revolution’s use of water and agriculture to consolidate power is linked to twenty-first-century globalisation, Islamist ideology, and intensifying geopolitics of the Nile.

Harry Verhoeven is Assistant Professor of Government at the School of Foreign Service (Qatar), Georgetown University. He is an Associate Member of the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford and the Convenor of the Oxford University China-Africa Network (OUCAN).

June 4, 2015/0 Comments/by OWN Coordinator

2015

Corporate investment in water: a fix for the California drought?

Dr Alex Money, Research Fellow at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, explains the lack of appeal of water for investors, in a feature ‘California Drought: Finding a Fix’ on BBC World Service Business Daily.

California is amidst a historic fourth year of drought. In April their Governor Jerry Brown ordered the state’s first ever mandatory water restrictions, directing cities and communities to reduce water usage by 25%.

Aired on Thursday 28 May 2015, the BBC World Service reports on how citizens and the government are coping with the drought, featuring an interview with the state’s Governor Jerry Brown and comment from Oxford University’s Dr Alex Money.

The programme asks: what is the role of business in tackling the water shortage problem? Why isn’t Silcon Valley – California’s global hub for high-tech innovation and development – leaping to find fixes to the Californian drought?

Dr Money explains that return on investments in water infrastructure is made through water fees paid by companies and individuals at the point of use. The problem is that the infrastructure required to deliver water is typically expensive. High upfront capital expenditure is coupled with a return over a long period of time, making water a risky investment.

While clever technologies such as desalination and membranes for water purification exist, investment is lagging because of the risk-return problem, according to Dr Money.

Asked whether California could learn from Israel’s example where 80% of municipal wastewater is reused for irrigation, he says: “In Israel’s case it reflects quite a long-sighted view that water is a scarce resource. They’ve made some important investments in terms of reclaiming, recycling and reusing water. I think the problem is, in many other places water hasn’t been regarded with the same level of scarcity or value as it has been in Israel.”

Listen on BBC iPlayer (17 minute total, Alex Money from 12:40)

June 2, 2015/0 Comments/by OWN Coordinator

2015

Report shows how water insecurity is a drag on the global economy

A new report shows floods, droughts and a lack of investment in providing good quality, reliable water supplies is dragging down the global economy. The report, published today and entitled ‘Securing Water, Sustaining Growth’, was written by an international Task Force chaired by Claudia Sadoff and co-chaired by Professors Jim Hall and David Grey from the University of Oxford.

The Task Force was established by the Global Water Partnership (GWP) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The report and new scientific analysis examines not only water’s destructive force but also how it contributes to human health and prosperity. It was launched at the start of the Seventh World Water Forum in South Korea, the international summit at which the world’s water challenges are addressed.

The report draws on research led by the University of Oxford and feeds into a policy statement released by GWP and OECD calling on governments to invest in strengthening the world’s institutional capacity to manage water security, with much improved information systems and better water infrastructure. It urges that special attention be paid to social risks, with a focus on vulnerable segments of society.

According to the report, South Asia has the largest concentration of water-related risks. East and Southeast Asia face rapidly increasing flood risk, although the United States has the greatest exposure to flood risk. Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region where the risks of inadequate water supply and sanitation are rising. North Africa has the greatest percentage of population at risk of water scarcity.

The international Task Force is comprised of leading academics, researchers and practitioners from around the world.

Claudia Sadoff, Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Environmental Change Institute, said: ‘Both our empirical and theoretical analyses demonstrate the importance of investment in water security for development and the importance of development for investment in water security.’

‘Effective ways of achieving water security involve combinations of investments in information, institutions and infrastructure’, says Professor Hall, report co-author and Director of the Environmental Change Institute. ‘Not all investments have been beneficial or cost-effective. Investment must be designed to be robust to uncertainties and to support adaptive management as risks, opportunities, and social preferences change. All of this will require refined analytic tools, innovation, and continuous monitoring, assessment, and adaptation.’

Report co-author and Visiting Professor at the School of Geography and the Environment, David Grey said: ‘Our analysis shows that the countries that depend on agriculture for their economies are often the worst affected by floods or water scarcity. Some countries will need to think about how they can diversify from an agriculturally focussed economy to one less dependent on water. They will also focus on how better use can be made of the limited water supplies available to them.’

Read the report
Read the GWP news release
Water insecurity costs global economy billions a year, Bloomberg, 13 April 2015
Water insecurity costing global economy billions, Japan Times, 25 April 2015

April 13, 2015/0 Comments/by OWN Coordinator

2015

A new era of cooperation on the Nile River

Kevin Wheeler, DPhil candidate at the Environmental Change Institute, presented his work on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam at Chatham House of the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

The workshop, held on 25 March 2015, brought together experts to discuss infrastructure developments in the Horn of Africa and whether governments are working with local communities to balance the costs and benefits of these projects.

Kevin’s talk ‘The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and regional energy security’ was particularly timely given the well-publicised ‘Declaration of Principles’ signed between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia last week over future management of the Nile. Now the attention of the region is shifting to how the new Ethiopian dam might be operated and how this might positively or negatively affect the downstream countries of Sudan and Ethiopia.

Kevin presented potential strategies of filling and operating the dam, which is located on the Blue Nile River, and how this new infrastructure might meet the needs and development objectives of these countries. His DPhil research explores the costs and benefits of various degrees of coordinated management of Nile reservoirs, and how these potential agreements might be affected by climate change.

April 1, 2015/0 Comments/by OWN Coordinator

2014

Panel discussion debates the role of dams in Africa’s development

Six distinguished speakers came together on 24 November 2014 to tackle the much debated topic of ‘Africa, Dams and Development’ in a panel discussion organised by the Oxford Water Network and the Oxford Martin Programme on Resource Stewardship.

dams panel

Dr Rob Hope, Director of the Water Programme at the Smith School for Enterprise and the Environment, chaired the event and asked the panellists, “how can dams better balance economic growth, environmental sustainability and human development in Africa?”

He pointed out that less than 10% of the hydroelectric power potential in Africa is developed. But there are major projects planned to change this, such as the Grand Renaissance Dam in Ethiopia, the High Grand Falls Dam in Kenya, Inga 3 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Kandadji in Niger.

David Grey, Visiting Professor of Water Policy at the School of Geography and the Environment, said that Africa is deeply water insecure, food insecure and energy insecure. The continent faces exceptionally high variability in water both between and within years, and storage is essential for coping with this ‘difficult hydrology’, he said.

Professor Grey argued that “of course Africa needs dams”, but good dams and not bad dams. He highlighted the importance of learning lessons from the 23,427 large dams that have been built worldwide, very few of which are in Africa.

Michael Norton, a civil engineer and Global Water Director at Amec Foster Wheeler said that he supported the construction of large dams in Africa in principle. “Storing water at times when it’s plentiful for times when it isn’t is an extremely effective and sustainable technique to meet mankind’s drinking, food and energy needs,” he said. However, he urged for all forms of storage, not just dams, to be considered in terms of their costs, risks and benefits.

“Dams are simply not worth the cost” was the message given by Dr Atif Ansar, Lecturer at the Blavatnik School of Government. He presented a study of 269 large dam projects across the world which showed excessive cost overruns. The analysis revealed that actual costs more than double for two out of ten dams, and triple for one out of ten dams.

The theme of costs was continued by Dr Judith Plummer who presented her research at Cambridge University on the cost of delays in dam construction. She said that the impact of delays can be devastating for countries that actually need the dams. She also emphasised that the benefits of dams are hugely underestimated as they are difficult to value.

Jamie Skinner, who leads the Water Team at the International Institute for Environment and Development, considered the impacts of dams on biodiversity and ecosystems and asked “who will stand up for the environment?” Where government priorities favour development over environment priorities, there may be more traction in promoting the maintenance of ecosystem services of value to people, he said.

According to Skinner, African countries consider the World Bank as a donor of last resort because of their stringent requirements for ecosystem sustainability, whereas finance from China demands very few, if any environmental safeguards.

Dr David Turton, a Senior Research Fellow at the African Studies Centre, concluded the panel presentations with a case study of the Gibe III Dam in Ethiopia, where the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people in the lower Omo Basin will be affected by the dam.

“Dams must be made into development opportunities for the people that have to get out of the way to make them possible”, said Dr Turton. The principles for achieving this, he said, are widely accepted in theory but ignored in practice: open and transparent information sharing; meaningful consultation; and compensation, benefit sharing and livelihood reconstruction.

The presentation slides and video webcast are available online

November 26, 2014/0 Comments/by OWN Coordinator

2014

Oxford researchers bridge the gap between flood risk science and management

Paul Sayers and Professor Jim Hall at the Environmental Change Institute have been awarded a grant from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to capture current knowledge of methods for assessing flood risk and determining future infrastructure investments.

The past decade has seen significant developments in the approaches to assessing and managing flood risk, with both research and industry-led innovations. This has, however, led to a great number of methods that are difficult for practitioners and researchers to access and build upon. It is not always clear what best practice is, or how credible results are from different approaches.

The project ‘Flood risk: Building Infrastructure Resilience through better Understanding and Management choices ‘ (FoRUM) which is funded by NERC’s Environmental Risks to Infrastructure Innovation Projects call, will gather the current state-of-the-art knowledge on flood risk assessment and long-term investment planning.

The researchers will develop a common understanding of alternative methods and the uncertainties associated with each. This knowledge will be then be shared with stakeholders in the research, private and public sectors. Through the dialogue between researchers and stakeholders, FoRUM will establish the foundation for future advances in this field and collaboration between business and academia, ensuring that scientific developments have relevance to real-world needs.

The research team is led by Professor Jim Hall and Paul Sayers in the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University with support from Professor Rob Nicholls (Southampton University) and Professor Edmund Penning-Rowsell (Oxford University). They are working closely with leading practitioners with an interest in flood risk and ability to make use of innovative science, including from the Environment Agency, Network Rail, Thames Water, JBA, CHM2HILL, AIR and HR Wallingford.

For further information, contact paul.sayers@ouce.ox.ac.uk

November 17, 2014/0 Comments/by OWN Coordinator

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