Research Challenges arising from the World Water Vision Dr.
Torkil Jonch-Clausen
Eighteen months after the presentation of the World Water Vision in The Hague a number of activities have been launched that will lead to achievement of the Vision for 2025. The third World Water Forum in Kyoto will focus on reporting on these activities. To achieve the Vision, a major contribution was expected through research and development efforts of the science and technology communities. The author reviews the research program of IAHR with comments on elements that could be given a different or greater emphasis based on his experience in the Vision exercise. Among these are: -
Hydroinformatics The author concludes by asking whether it may not be time to resurrect the proposal of the World Water Commission to create a Research and Innovation Fund. 1. The World Water Vision: Where Do We Stand? About eighteen months ago I had the pleasure of being with thousands of participants at the Second World Water Forum in The Hague. To-day I would like to report on the impact of that happening, of the World Water Vision exercise that led to it and on some of the many activities underway around the world to follow up on commitments made in The Hague. I will then turn my attention to reflecting on some of the implications that I see for the research agenda of IAHR that arise from the rapidly evolving approach to managing water. Within weeks of the Forum, Kofi Annan issued his Report to the Millennial Summit of the United Nations. In it he referred to "a set of realistically achievable targets on water and sanitation" recommended by the Ministerial Conference of the World Water Forum. He urged the Summit to adopt the target of reducing by half, between now and 2015, the proportion of people who lack sustainable access to adequate sources of affordable and safe water. And they adopted this target! Obviously also drawing on the Vision and Forum discussions, he stated that to arrest the unsustainable exploitation of water resources, we require water management strategies at national level and local levels. He said these should include pricing structures that promote both equity and efficiency. "We need a "Blue Revolution" in agriculture", he said. "that focuses on increasing productivity per unit of water - "more crop per drop" - together with far better watershed and flood plain management". Just a month after the Forum, then USA Secretary of State Madeleine Albright referred to the Forum in her Earth day address. She said she intended to mobilise; to heighten public awareness; and issue a call for action; because the world has the capacity, and increasingly the will, to create water security for all. These are two examples of rather immediate impact of the Vision exercise and the Forum. 1.1 The World Water Vision Those who participated in the Vision exercise wanted a world in 2025 in which almost every woman and man, girl and boy in the world's cities, towns, and villages will enjoy safe and adequate water and sanitation and have enough food to meet their nutritional requirements. Their Vision could be achieved in a sustainable manner with a 10% increase in water withdrawals and consumption. Nevertheless, food production must increase 40%. This will only be possible within a sustainable water budget if people recognise that water is not only the blue water in rivers and aquifers, but also the green water-in soil. Recognition of its crucial role in the hydrological cycle will help make rain-fed agriculture more productive while conserving aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. The percentage of water delivered to the domestic and industrial uses consumed by evaporation can be reduced, with most being returned after proper treatment to the ecosystems from which it is drawn. Domestic and industrial water reuse should become common, and new methods of ecosanitation not dependent on water as a carrier could be applied in many areas to reduce pollution and make full use of human waste as agricultural fertiliser. Natural and artificial wetlands can be used to improve polluted waters and treat domestic effluents. Countries that face water scarcities early in the century may invest in desalination plants-or reduce the amount of water used in agriculture, transferring it to the other uses, and importing more food. 1.2 Commitments Many commitments were made at the Second World Water Forum to take actions that will help to achieve our Vision. The Netherlands Government has prepared a database of all such commitments that was released in Kyoto in June. They will be writing shortly to those who made commitments, thanking them for their participation in the Forum and asking them to share their progress with us, as inspiration to others to take similar action. This information will be used by the Water Action Unit of the World Water Council to track progress on these commitments along with other actions begun since. For we have passed from the stage of talking about what must be done, to one of action! The Secretariat of the Second World Water Forum has worked closely with the World Water Council and the Secretariat for the Kyoto Forum. It has transferred all of the information in its data bases and the management of its web site so that these may serve the next event. The third Forum will be focussing on the actions that are being taken around the world as a means of raising awareness that solutions are available and actions are being taken by many. This will lead to greater commitment to action coming from the third Forum. 1.3 Focus Themes There are some issues that will benefit from co-ordinated action. Three of these are: -
Agriculture and environment security It is useful to say a word about each of these. One of the key challenges we face is to ensure food security for the increasing global population. Best estimates by many are that with more efficient irrigation, we can produce the 40% more food that will be needed with 15-20% more water consumed. Some feel that these estimates are too low. Others point out that in some regions, water withdrawals for agriculture and poor agricultural practices have already caused serious harm to the environment. Most recognise that this subject was inadequately addressed at The Hague. Follow-up began almost immediately in a meeting of stakeholders in Stockholm last summer. This led to a workshop on Food and Environmental Security sponsored by eight international organisations and hosted by IWMI in Colombo in December. Once again, all agreed that we have had enough talk, and that solutions will be found only by cross-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder actions taken at the country and basin level. A possible dispute between agriculturists and environmentalists is being replaced by a common effort to respond to the justifiable concerns of each community. It was agreed in Colombo that we have failed to recognise that resolution of this issue (and many other water-related issues) is not just a technical matter, but will be done by politicians. There therefore will be a special exercise to begin to address this factor. The stakeholders present in Colombo have agreed a "loosely co-ordinated" plan of action. Representatives of farmers and the private sector have agreed to join them. A step in their work plan will be to report on success achieved to date at the third Forum. This program of action was launched during the Stockholm Water Symposium in August. The time horizon selected for the Vision exercise was 2025. While this helped us to focus on near-term problems and their solution, we ended up neglecting one of the biggest long-term drivers with respect to water resources management - climate change. The latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirm that the process of climate change caused by human activities is well underway. They further tell that us that changes may be more severe than previously thought and that there are known serious consequences for the management of all natural resources, including water. A preliminary discussion of interested parties at an ad hoc workshop in Colombo noted that present water management approaches needed to better deal with climate variability. New water management strategies may offer solutions to some of the longer-term problems, and if widely adopted, create more resilience in our water management systems. The United Nations University in Tokyo, together with the Secretariat of the third World Water Forum and the World Water Council hosted a more comprehensive workshop early last month. Its objective was to determine whether we might manage water resources better given the increasing predictability of climate variability and climate change and to develop commitment for action by all. There was unanimous agreement that we can manage water better using climate science, and that a program should be developed to this end. A workshop during Water Week in Stockholm this year has provided the framework and support for developing a Dialogue on Water and Climate. A third challenge we face is that we simply are not seeing enough investment in water - neither in infrastructure, nor for that matter in urgently needed research into innovative solutions. The World Commission on Water rightfully was very concerned with this issue. It remains unresolved. It is also very complex, as investment requires returns. This links investment to the questions of valuing and pricing water, to the roles of the public and private sectors and of political stability and transparent governance. Many conferences have been held on the subject. Many books have been written on elements of the subject. Yet total investment levels at best remain stagnant while estimates are that they need to be at least doubled. The World Water Council and the Global Water Partnership have agreed to launch an initiative to create a partnership that will determine the scope of the problem on a national and regional basis and suggest optional approaches to specific local situations. Progress is being made on this front thanks to the co-operation of concerned international financiers. I am confident that we will be able to report concrete suggestions during the Forum in Kyoto. 1.4 World-Wide Movement Thus there is a world-wide movement underway to act to resolve the water management issues displayed in The Hague. It involves cross-disciplinary partnerships and closer collaboration among international organisations. But most importantly, it is based on learning by doing at the local level, so that those so badly hurt by problems of lack of access to water, food and healthy environments may benefit from ACTION. 2.The Research Agenda 2.1 IAHR When I was invited to speak at this conference, I did a little research about IAHR and its research agenda. I learned that scientific exchange is the main activity of IAHR. You develop technology transfer in several ways. Education is, of course, the classical way. You also encourage lifelong learning through exchange between individuals, national and regional groups using workshops, publication of books and manuals. You encourage management of the research program through exchanges among directors of hydraulic research laboratories. Corporate and national members are essential to your organisation. The transfer of new R & D results into engineering practice is accomplished through involvement of consulting and engineering organisations. Finally, you assure the participation of colleagues from developing countries through a Third World membership fund paid by IAHR members. This impressed me. I was even more impressed when I read through the IAHR 1999 Research agenda by its comprehensiveness and the innovative approaches being taken in several sectors. Every area of concern being researched by you will increase the chances of achieving the World Water Vision. Nevertheless, I was motivated by your program to make some comments on areas I think of particular significance. 2.2 Hydroinformatics I was delighted to find the emphasis placed in your research agenda on the concept of Informatics as opposed to Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) only. This reflects the growing understanding of water professionals that our role is to inform and support water stakeholders before and after the decision-making process that is their responsibility. In fact the evolution has been rapid. Without what might be regarded as simple ICT, it would have been impossible to develop the World Water Vision. The use of electronic mail and posting of documents on the Vision website to facilitate sharing of information and opinions that led to the creation of the Vision would not have been possible even two years earlier, especially in Africa and many parts of Asia. Your agenda states that the rationale and purpose of hydroinformatics is to develop a new relationship between the stakeholders and users and suppliers of the systems. It offers the systems that supply useable results, the validity of which cannot be put in any reasonable doubt by any of the stakeholders involved. If the hydroinformation system is objective, the stakeholders may criticise a hypothesis of cultural practice (policies) leading to undesirable results, but not the system or tool. Thus the tool creates a possibility of negotiation and trade-offs based on merit and not on irrational sentiments. It was this type of hydroinformation system or tool that led to the agreement on water resources management that was part of the original Middle East peace agreement. Hydroinformation correspondingly always works in a team, and may indeed create the sociotechnical means through which the team functions. The users become part of the system. An example of this is the system through which the third World Water Forum is being created. The World Water Council's second World Water Forum in The Hague was organised to be a participatory exercise. The Japanese hosts of the third World Water Forum proposed to the Council that the Forum should be created through participation. The main tool or system being used in the process is the Virtual Water Forum. Each group that proposes to hold a session in Kyoto in March 2003 is requested to open a page in the Virtual Water Forum. Through participation in discussions in a virtual session, interested individuals can shape the discussion that will eventually take place in the "real" Forum in 2003, even though they may not be able to be physically present themselves at that time. In addition, the degree of interest expressed in the virtual forum becomes a measure by which the Forum organisers may decide the importance (time and space) that should be given to the real session. 2.3 Usefulness of Indicators in Hydroinformatics One of the principal concerns that is noted in your research agenda is how to make it possible for non-specialist stakeholders to have access to and to interpret the knowledge generated by specialists. A question that is often asked, for example by members of the boards of catchment management associations, is "how do I know whether we are making any progress in the management of our waters?" Or, "are we doing as well as or better than others, and why?" Some "knowledge bases" have already been established. Others are being established, for example in the context of the Dialogue on Water for Food and Environment referred to earlier and in the Dialogue on Water and Climate. However it is unlikely that these will provide the kind of comprehensive and readily understandable information required by the non-specialist decision-maker. Similarly, those who cannot see "common-sense" relationships between various elements of water management and the environment will view sophisticated models with suspicion. Some indicator or indicators such as those provided in UNDP's World Development Report might be developed to inform clearly and avoid suspicion. Efforts are underway to develop such indicators for the environment in general and for water resources in particular. Most are familiar with the excellent work that was done by the World Resources Institute together with the World Bank, UNEP and UNDP in developing indicators for global ecosystems. They classified ecosystems under five main categories for agricultural, coastal, forest, freshwater and grasslands. At the same time they noted three other possible categories: mountains, polar and urban. Case studies illustrated the relationship between people and ecosystems. Their work led to and will be followed by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Another approach to developing a Pilot Environmental Sustainability Index was produced at the Davos Conference in 2000 by the Global Leaders for To-morrow Environment Task Force. The components in the system of indicators they developed were: -
Environmental Systems This system was developed with the idea that, when refined, it could be used to measure environmental sustainability and even compare environmental sustainability practices of nations - an indicator similar to the UNDP's development indicators. The World Water Assessment Program is in the process of developing indicators for the state of the world's water. This is not an easy task, as it must deal with the issues of scale and of boundaries that do not match the world's administrative and national boundaries. A methodology is being developed that will attempt to develop indicators that will link water availability with water uses needs and demands while taking account of the ability to cope with water-related stress. Preliminary results of this work will be published at the third World Water Forum. As has been stated by the National Research Council (USA): "Indicators used to report on a transition toward sustainability are likely to be biased, incorrect, inadequate, and indispensable. Getting the indicators right is likely to be impossible in the short term. But not trying to get the indicators right will surely compound the difficulty of enabling people to navigate through the transition to sustainability." The task of developing these indicators will not be an easy one. Beyond a doubt it should clearly be on the research agenda of IAHR. As your research agenda has noted, the presentation of comprehensive and understandable "encapsulated" information placed a great responsibility on those who prepare and provide it. Guidance on the ethics of this process will require the participation of philosophers as well as scientists. Given the extent of work required in the field of hydroinformatics, I am inclined to take exception to the statement in your research agenda that "Hydroinformatics is a technology - not a science". Like other sciences, it will evolve, but the basics will remain the same. We must develop means to inform all stakeholders of the issues concerning water resources management so that they may take informed decisions; not only decisions directly concerning water management but also those social and economic decisions that impact water resources and environmental sustainability. 2.4 Probabilistic Methods Probabilistic approaches provide basic analytic tools to systematically integrate involved uncertainties, to quantify performance reliability of a hydraulic system, and to incorporate uncertainty and reliability information in decision-making for a more comprehensive project design and evaluation. What has been missing until now in conceptualising water management projects (as well as other infrastructure projects) is recognition of the number of associated risks. A recent research project that examined 60 infrastructure projects found that the complex relationship described in Figure 1 below. Systematic unbundling of these factors makes it possible to understand their importance and variation during the life cycle of a project.
As this research covered infrastructure projects in general, researchers associated with IAHR might usefully extend the analysis to examine risks related specifically to water infrastructure projects. This might provide information on risk reduction that we lead to increasing investments in the sector. 2.5 Data acquisition The current research agenda refers mostly to technology issues related to the installation of data acquisition equipment in the field. Yet there is a world-wide decline in water monitoring. The number of monitoring stations for water flow and quantity in Africa, for example, declined 90% between 1990 and 2000 (Johnson et al, 2000). Fully understanding the complex interrelationships between man's actions and global and local systems depends on better knowledge about such issues as minimum in-stream flows for maintaining biodiversity and groundwater recharge, maximum thresholds for common pollutants, and the relation of land use to hydrologic functions. Rain and stream gauges around the world are disappearing, victims of loss of funding for monitoring programs. Better basic hydrological information about river discharge, flood frequency, dry season flows, condition of wetlands, and location of dams would help planners meet the growing human demand for water. Increased funding for data gathering is essential. However given modern satellite and other technological systems, more research is needed to determine the appropriate density and type of monitoring stations necessary to-day to ensure the least-cost approach to obtaining the data required on weather, runoff, water quality and other parameters for integrated water management at different geographic scales. This too should be a challenge for IAHR member institutions. 2.6 Urban Water Management I was pleased to read under your research agenda that urban drainage systems should be designed to convey storm water runoff and sewage flows of magnitudes varying from dry-weather flows to floods, control fluxes of pollutants resulting from human activities, and contribute to the general well-being of the human population. This is to be achieved within the framework of integrated management of urban waters, with minimal impacts on receiving waters in a cost-effective way, and under conditions of increasing populations of large cities. I presume that a further condition would be to have minimal impact on the upstream sources of water required for urban agglomerations. The objective of IAHR/IHA is to promote an ecosystem approach to the planning, design and operation of urban storm drainage. I could not agree more with this enlightened concept. However, I wonder if it goes far enough? One of the concerns that I had while working on the World Water Vision exercise was the tendency to automatically link issues of sanitation to water. Thus we tend to say that there are over 1.2 billion people without access to safe drinking water, and in the next breath, that nearly half the world population lacks access to sanitation. In our minds when we say this, sanitation is water-borne sewerage. I think this is a serious mistake. The developing world is falling further and further behind in the provision of means to dispose of its wastes. As communities develop water supplies, generally without provision for sewerage, the volume of waste grows. To the nearly three billion people that do not have access to sanitation must be added the billions of equivalent population from industrial and agricultural wastes. Where waste is collected, much of it is discharged without treatment. This situation impacts on health and on the environment. One of the effects is the pollution of surface and groundwater, sometimes rendering them unsuitable for domestic purposes even through treatment. The cost of correcting this situation through conventional collection and treatment processes will be thousands of billions of dollars. The less developed economies cannot afford these solutions or they have higher priorities for economic development. Inhabitants of rural and marginalized urban areas in particular are not able to pay, even if they were willing. In the industrialised world, much of the urban infrastructure, particularly the sewage collection systems, will need to be replaced over the coming decades. In the constrained budget environment faced by all countries, it is not at all clear how these replacements will be financed, as the burden on taxpayers has often reached its limit. To improve the efficiency of sewage treatment and reduce the volume of residual pollutants reaching the environment, responsible authorities are having recourse to increasingly expensive treatment processes (e.g. chemical treatment) with increased operating costs. Many of the older sewer systems carry both sewage and storm water. Most of what is said above may appear to apply only to sanitary sewerage (the collection and disposal of human excrement). However there are clear linkages with the disposal of industrial and toxic liquid and even solid wastes. The basic processes for the collection and treatment of wastes have been in use for two thousand years. Modern engineering and science have focused on methods to make them more effective and efficient, rather than on finding alternatives. Processes to treat or eliminate wastes at the source, rather than at the outlet from a transportation system, could drastically reduce the costs of sanitation. Indirectly this would reduce the costs of surface drainage. Such processes would likely ensure better protection of the environment. While there is a wide range of sanitation issues that would benefit from shared research, the basic concept which needs challenging is that of water-borne sewerage. An alternative to this would open the field for innovative thinking with regard to the disposal of other wastes. Benefits that would result from finding such an alternative would include: 1.Elimination or reduction of the costs of construction, maintenance and operation of collection (sewer) systems, treatment works and final disposal; 2.Reduced water consumption; 3.Reduced costs of storm water drainage systems; 4.Elimination of residual pollutants currently discharged by treatment works; and as a consequence, 5.Protection of ground and surface waters, and their environment. I invite researchers in this field to consider whether the approach to management of human waste that we began to use thousands of years ago is still appropriate and economical in this age of modern technology and natural resource constraints. 2.7 Water Resources Management The IAHR Section for water resources Management has adopted, as a primary long-range goal, to promote the use of advanced technologies to address problems of environmentally sound water resources management, and has committed itself to encourage interdisciplinary approaches in hydraulic engineering with special regard to ecological concerns. Moreover, the Section wants to promote the adoption of appropriate methodologies for developing countries by education and training. Most of those involved in the management of water now accept the principle of integrated water resource management (IWRM). I will not expound on those here. However, no matter how well-founded this principle is - and it is well-founded - what we often fail to recognise is that we have arrived at this principle and this approach in the countries of the North through a gradual process over the past 150 years. The economic development of the industrialised world took place in the first hundred years of this period driven by the "enlightened" belief that using science and under capitalism system nature could be controlled. It was in response to the Green movement in the North that this paradigm has shifted in the North. As Tony Allan has pointed out, the underdeveloped countries of the South are now faced with improving their quality of life while at the same time being expected to shift from the water management paradigm under which developed countries evolved to that which the industrialised countries now espouse. This poses a moral dilemma for the North. But it also poses a research challenge for us - to develop cost-effective ways to provide for economic development under the principle of IWRM that calls for a sustainable environment. One aspect of IWRM that proponents nearly always fail to recognise is that IWRM requires not only a demanding holistic professional and scientific approach but also an unprecedented level of political co-operation. We must recognise that water users and policy makers operate in political systems that determine whether or not the new paradigms can be assimilated that useful debate can take place. Political systems make sense to most of the players who live in them. Such systems have a political rationale. Decision-makers and water users will assimilate IWRM only if the innovation of integration is appreciated as a political process and not just as a technical, investment or information sharing process. Water policy will be transformed if it is politically feasible. Such innovation will be achieved by taking an inclusive approach and emphasising the institutional dimension of the inescapably political the integrated water resource management process. In brief, we must learn how to assess and influence political feasibility. Research into these processes will be sensitive, but is essential. 2.8 Ecohydraulics The environment, especially in terms of water quality, pollution and protection of ecosystems is one of the major concerns of modern civilisation. Research in this field has significantly increased in recent years. However a lot of work remains to be done to improve our knowledge and capacity to understand phenomena, predict the effects of human works on natural ecosystems, and find solutions for maintaining acceptable water quality and biodiversity in our marine and continental environment. During the Vision exercise I often represented this dilemma by asking the question "How much water does a river need?" All these reasons have led IAHR to create a new section on Eco-hydraulics to encourage collaboration between hydraulicians, biologists and chemists and others. I can only applaud this effort, and note a strong linkage to the issue of research in adapting to shifting paradigms of which I have just spoken. 2.9 Maintenance and Development of Research Capabilities With a better understanding of the economic value of water and more public-private-partnerships, there will undoubtedly be more privately funded research. However many of the issues described in your research program will not be attractive to the private sector. One of the conclusions of the Vision exercise was that there should be an increase in public funding for research and development in the public interest. The World Water commission saw that given the potential of the new technologies and the innate abilities of people, enormous gains could be made as new innovations occur in either institutional arrangements or technology application. The latter may be by the rediscovery and deployment of traditional technologies or the emergence of new technologies. A key to get the maximum benefit globally of these new developments would be how quickly they will be adequately evaluated, disseminated and adopted throughout the world. Innovation also requires some assistance in incubation. The Commission recommended the establishment of an Innovation Fund that would help promote environmentally and socially desirable technical and institutional innovations. Some of the institutional innovations that could be considered for support included: -
national "water stamps for the poor" programs; In terms of technology the Commission also saw innumerable opportunities, which include innovations in particular "orphan" areas such as biotechnology for the food crops of the poor in water deprived areas. Finally, they saw geographic areas with problems that cry out for new approaches. For example, the Indo-Gangetic Plains have very large numbers of poor people and hunger, yet so much water badly distributed in space and time. It is a very big challenge to work out a water management paradigm for this area that is environmentally sound, socially responsible and economically productive. Perhaps the time has come to lobby again for the creation of a Research and Innovation Fund with support from both the private and public sectors? References ALAN, ANTHONY. 2000. Millennial water management paradigms: making IWRM work. (SOAS- unpublished) COSGROVE, WILLIAM J. AND FRANK R. RIJSBERMAN for the World Water Council. 2000. World Water Vision: Making Water Everybody's Business. Earthscan. MILLER, ROGER AND DONALD R. LESSARD. 2000. The Strategic Management of Large Engineering Projects - Shaping Institutions, Risks and Governance. MIT Press. NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL (NRC). 1999. Our Common Journey - A Transition toward Sustainability. Washington. National Academy Press. UNDP, UNEP, WORLD BANK, and WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE (2000): World Resources 2000-2001- People and Ecosystems - the Fraying web of Life. World Resources I |
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