Young children and infants are particularly sensitive to the harmful effects of lead. Current statistics suggest that approximately one in three children worldwide have elevated blood lead levels. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS

By Ahmed Rachid El-Khattabi and Aaron Salzburg
CHAPEL HILL, NC, US, May 23 2023 (IPS)

At the UN Water Conference in March 2023, the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina (UNC) along with several key partners, including UNICEF, Water Aid, the World Health Organization, and the governments of Ghana, Uganda, and South Africa, among others, organized a session centered around the elimination of lead in drinking water across the globe.

During the session, the various institutional partners articulated a vision of eliminating lead from all drinking water supplies by 2040. This vision, dubbed the “Global Pledge to Protect Drinking Water from Lead” (Lead-Free Water Pledge, for short), begins by outlining concrete steps for phasing out lead-leaching materials for new drinking water systems by 2030.

As long as lead is present in drinking water, we as a society are condemning millions (if not billions) of people to futures of health issues and reduced earning potentials in the decades to come. The vision articulated by the Lead-Free Water Pledge is one of many necessary steps that we as a global society must take to ensure access to safe drinking water to people around the world

The pledge’s two-pronged approach recognizes the complexity of eliminating lead from drinking water systems. On the one hand, lead is a problem in existing systems. On the other hand, many new drinking water systems are being constructed as much of the Global South develops and urbanizes; these new systems are being constructed with parts or components that contain and leach lead into the water.

As evidenced by efforts to address lead in drinking water in the United States, the first step of identifying areas affected by lead contamination is both financially and technically onerous. Because mitigation is more expensive than prevention, ensuring that new water systems are constructed in accordance to standards the prevent the leaching of lead is low-hanging fruit in the broader effort to eliminate lead from drinking water.

Lead in Drinking Water is a Global Concern

Globally, exposure to lead is responsible for a significant burden of disease, accounting for an estimated 0.9 million deaths per year and 30% of developmental disability from unknown origins. Young children and infants are particularly sensitive to the harmful effects of lead. Current statistics suggest that approximately one in three children worldwide have elevated blood lead levels.

Lead is seldom, if ever, found to be naturally occurring in bodies of water, such as rivers or lakes. Lead is also rarely present in water leaving water treatment plants. Yet, lead in drinking water is a global concern.

Lead in drinking water constitutes a significant portion of a person’s exposure to lead in countries around the world. In the US, lead in drinking water is a significant issue that affects households in almost every state. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that drinking water can account for at least 20% of a person’s total exposure to lead; this estimate can increase up to 60% for infants who mostly consume mixed formula. A 2021 study by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill examining water supplies in sub-Saharan found that nearly 80% of drinking water systems were contaminated with lead. Of these systems, approximately 9% of drinking water samples across several countries had lead concentrations that exceeded the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline value of 10 parts per billion (ppb).

Lead contamination of drinking water supplies is entirely preventable: lead finds its way into drinking water from lead-containing plumbing materials used throughout drinking water systems. Notably, lead can leach into water from lead-based solder used to join pipes, lead-containing brass or chrome-plated brass faucets and fixtures, and the wearing-away of old lead service lines.

Regulations around Lead in Drinking Water are Insufficient

There is no safe level of exposure to lead. Even low levels of exposure can be harmful to human health and can cause damage to the central and peripheral nervous system, cognitive impairments, stunt growth, and impair the formation and function of blood cells, among other harmful effects.

Many countries around the world have regulations in place to reduce or limit the amount of lead in drinking water. The European Union, China, and Japan, for instance, all have statutory limits of 10 ppb; Canada and Australia have published guidelines recommending limits of 5 and 10 ppb, respectively. In the US, the EPA set the maximum contaminant level for lead at 15 ppb.

Except for the US, however, none of the existing national-level regulations have goals place to eliminate lead from drinking water. In 2022, the EPA issued the Revised Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) setting the maximum contaminant level goal for lead in drinking water at zero. As part of the revised LCR, water systems have to create lead service line inventories to better identify areas where they may possible lead in drinking water. Creating this inventory, however, is proving to be financial and technologically onerous for many water systems because it requires both a significant financial investment and having access to staff with technical expertise in GIS or data modeling.

Delivering on the Pledge

The Lead-Free Water Pledge is not the first global initiative to reduce exposure to lead. Notably, one of the most successful public health initiatives over the previous century has been to remove the use of lead in gasoline. For context, lead was commonly used as an additive in gasoline since the 1920s when it was discovered that the addition of lead reduced engine knock allowing engines to run more smoothly.

Though the harmful health effects of lead were almost immediately apparent, it took close to a century for global action to gather any meaningful momentum to eliminate its use. As of 2021, all but one country has banned the use of lead as an additive in fuels because of concerted efforts by the Partnership for Clean Fuels and Vehicles and other like-minded organizations.

As illustrated by the effort to remove lead from gasoline, delivering on the pledge to remove lead from drinking water by 2040 will require non-trivial amounts of effort. First, countries must sign on to the pledge and take it on as a priority. So far, three African countries—Ghana, Uganda, and South Africa—have made firm commitments to eliminating lead from drinking water by 2040. Though the United States’ current policies are largely consistent with the Lead-Free Water Pledge, it has yet to commit.

Second, there must also be a commitment mechanism in place to ensure countries that sign on to the pledge take meaningful actions towards eliminating lead in drinking water. National governments will have to set up systems to ensure new treatment plants follow international standards, support the training and certification of professionals to oversee the construction of safe drinking water systems, ensure affordable access to fittings and other plumbing materials that meet standards for lead in drinking water, among other commitments.

The dual problem of both gathering momentum and implementing a commitment mechanism to ensure progress is not unique to the Lead-Free Water Pledge: the UN Water Conference in 2023 culminated in over 200 similar sorts of commitments, pledges, or agreements.

Given that the next UN Water Conference of the sort that took place in March 2023 wouldn’t take place until 2030 (at the earliest), the need for spaces that decision-makers and researchers from different parts of the world working on particular issues, such as the elimination of lead from drinking water, can use to come together to flesh out details, report on progress, and hold each other accountable is paramount.

A logical step in the right direction would be to take advantage of all the current meetings to create the space for meaningful discussions and actions around lead. To that end, the UNC Water & Health conference is ideally suited to serve as a space to follow-up on the Lead-Free Water Pledge and other commitments made at the UN Water Conference. The yearly conference hosted by the Water Institute each fall is already a gathering place for experts on water sanitation & hygiene in both developing and developed countries.

As long as lead is present in drinking water, we as a society are condemning millions (if not billions) of people to futures of health issues and reduced earning potentials in the decades to come. The vision articulated by the Lead-Free Water Pledge is one of many necessary steps that we as a global society must take to ensure access to safe drinking water to people around the world. We are grateful for the commitments made by Ghana, Uganda, and South Africa and are proud that Africa is taking the lead in tackling such a fundamental issue to ensure a more water secure future.

Dr. El-Khattabi is the Associate Director for Research and Data at the Environmental Finance Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Salzberg serves as the Director of the Water Institute and the Don and Jennifer Holzworth Distinguished Professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering in the Gillings School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

One of the rainwater harvesting systems installed in rural settlements in eastern El Salvador, in the Central American Dry Corridor. It is based on a system of pipes and gutters, which run from the rooftop to a polyethylene bag in a rectangular hole dug in the yard. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, May 22 2023 (IPS)

Chronic water shortages make life increasingly difficult for the more than 10.5 million people who live in the Central American Dry Corridor, an arid strip that covers 35 percent of that region.

In the Dry Corridor, the lack of water complicates not only basic hygiene and household activities like bathing, washing clothes or dishes, but also agriculture and food production.

“This is a very difficult place to live, due to the lack of water,” said Marlene Carballo, a 23-year-old Salvadoran farmer from the Jocote Dulce canton, a rural settlement in the Chinameca municipality, in the eastern El Salvador department of San Miguel.

The municipality is one of the 144 in the country that is located in the Dry Corridor, where more than 73 percent of the rural population lives in poverty and 7.1 million suffer from severe food insecurity, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

But poor rural settlements have not stood idly by.

The scarcity of water has prompted community leaders, especially women, who suffer the brunt of the shortage, to organize themselves in rural associations to promote water projects.

In the various villages in Jocote Dulce, rainwater harvesting projects, reforestation and support for the development of small poultry farms have arrived, with the backing of local and international organizations, and funding from European countries.

Rainwater harvesting is based on systems such as the one installed in Carballo’s house: when it rains, the water that falls on the roof runs through a pipe to a huge waterproof bag in the yard, which functions as a catchment tank that can hold up to 80,000 liters.

Other mechanisms also include plastic-lined rectangular-shaped holes dug in the ground.

The harvested water is used to irrigate family gardens, provide water to livestock used in food production such as cows, oxen and horses, and even for aquaculture.

Similar projects have been carried out in the rest of the Central American countries that form part of the Dry Corridor.

In Guatemala, for example, FAO and other organizations have benefited 5,416 families in 80 rural settlements in two departments of the country.

A rainwater harvesting system was installed in the home of Marlene Carballo, in the town of Jocote Dulce in eastern El Salvador, in the Central American Dry Corridor, in November 2022. The system, with pipes and gutters running from the roof to a polyethylene bag, will start operating in May of this year, at the beginning of Central America’s rainy season. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
CHINAMECA, El Salvador, May 2 2023 (IPS)

“This is a very difficult place to live, because of the lack of water,” said Salvadoran farmer Marlene Carballo, as she cooked corn tortillas for lunch for her family, on a scorching day.

Carballo, 23, lives in the Jocote Dulce canton, a remote rural settlement in the municipality of Chinameca, in the eastern Salvadoran department of San Miguel, a region located in what is known as the Central American Dry Corridor."The husbands go to work in the fields, and as women we stay at home, trying to manage the water supply; only we know if there is enough for bathing or cooking.” -- Santa Gumersinda Crespo

Acute water crisis

This municipality is one of the 144 in the country that is located in the Dry Corridor, which covers 35 percent of Central America and is home to more than 10.5 million people and where over 73 percent of the rural population lives in poverty and 7.1 million people suffer from severe food insecurity, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Food security is particularly threatened because the rains are not always constant, which creates major difficulties for agriculture.

“My grandfather has a water tank, and when he has enough, he gives us water, but when he doesn’t, we’re in trouble,” said the young woman.

When that happens, they have to buy water, which is not only the case in these remote rural Salvadoran areas, but in the rest of the Central American region where water is scarce, as is almost always the case in the Dry Corridor, which stretches north to south across parts of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

When IPS visited several villages in the Jocote Dulce canton in late April, the acute water shortage was evident, since all homes had one or more plastic tanks to store water and many were empty.

A rainwater harvesting system was installed in the home of Marlene Carballo, in the town of Jocote Dulce in eastern El Salvador, in the Central American Dry Corridor, in November 2022. The system, with pipes and gutters running from the roof to a polyethylene bag, will start operating in May of this year, at the beginning of Central America’s rainy season. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Women in the forefront of the struggle for water

The persistent water shortage has led rural women in Central America to organize in recent years in community associations to promote projects that help alleviate the scarcity.

In the villages of Jocote Dulce, rainwater harvesting projects, reforestation and the creation of small poultry farms have the support of local and international organizations and financing from European countries.

In some cases, depending on the project and the country, rainwater harvesting is designed only for domestic tasks at home, while in others it includes irrigation of family gardens or providing water for livestock such as cows and chickens.

In other parts of the country and the rest of Central America, institutions such as FAO have developed water collection systems that in some cases have a filtering mechanism, which makes it potable.

In El Salvador, FAO has been behind the installation of 1,373 of these systems.

Carballo said she and her family are looking forward to the start of the May to November rainy season, to see their new rainwater harvesting system work for the first time.

Through gutters and pipes, the rainwater will run from the roof to a huge polyethylene bag in the yard, which serves as a catchment tank.

Gumersinda Crespo (R) and her daughter Marcela stand next to the kitchen of their house in the Jocote Dulce canton in eastern El Salvador, an area with a chronic water crisis because it is located in the Central American Dry Corridor, where the shortage of rainfall makes life complicated. Almost every household in this remote location has various plastic containers and tanks to capture rain. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

“When the bag fills up, we’ll be so happy because we’ll have plenty of water,” she said, as she cooked corn tortillas in her “comal”, a clay or metal cylinder used to cook this staple of the Central American diet.

Women suffer the brunt

The harsh burden of water scarcity falls disproportionately on rural women, as national and international reports have shown.

In this sexist society, women are expected to stay at home, in charge of the domestic chores, which include securing water for the family.

“The husbands go to work in the fields, and as women we stay at home, trying to manage the water supply; only we know if there is enough for bathing or cooking,” Santa Gumersinda Crespo told IPS.

Crespo, 48, was feeding her cow and goat in her backyard when IPS visited her. In the yard there was a black plastic-covered tank where the family collects water during the rainy season.

“Without water we are nothing,” Crespo said. “In the past, we used to go to the water hole. It was really hard, sometimes we left at 7:00 at night and came back at 1:00 in the morning,” she said.

Marta Moreira is one of the community leaders who has worked the hardest to ensure that in Jocote Dulce, a remote rural settlement in eastern El Salvador, programs are helping supply water and strengthen food security. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

In Guatemala, Gloria Díaz also says it is women who bear the brunt of water scarcity in rural families.

“We are the ones who used to go out to look for water and who faced mistreatment and violence when we tried to fill our jugs in the rivers or springs,” Díaz told IPS by telephone from the Sector Plan del Jocote in the Maraxcó Community, in the southeastern Guatemalan municipality and department of Chiquimula.

In that area of ​​the Dry Corridor, water is the most precious asset.

“It’s been difficult, because drinking water is brought to us from 28 kilometers away and we can only fill our containers for two hours a month,” she said.

Almost all of the homes in the villages located around Chinameca, in the Salvadoran department of San Miguel, have several water storage tanks, given the scarcity of water in that area, which forms part of the Central American Dry Corridor. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Projects that bring relief and hope

Climate forecasts are not at all hopeful for the remainder of 2023.

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate phenomenon is likely to occur, which would bring droughts and loss of crops, as it has before.

“When the weather is good, we sow and harvest, and when it is not, we plant less, to see how winter (the rainy season) will shape up; we don’t plant everything or we would lose it all,” Salvadoran farmer Marta Moreira, also from Jocote Dulce, told IPS.

Most people in these rural regions depend on subsistence farming, especially corn and beans.

Moreira added that last year her family, made up of herself, her husband and their son, lost most of the corn and bean harvest due to the weather.

In Central America climate change has led to longer than usual periods of drought and to excessive rainfall.

A farmer gets ready to fill a jug at one of the water taps located in the Jocote Dulce canton, in the eastern Salvadoran department of San Miguel, where water is always scarce. The community taps are padlocked, so that only people with permission can use them. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

In October 2022, Tropical Storm Julia destroyed 8,000 hectares of corn and bean crops in El Salvador, causing losses of around 17 million dollars.

Given this history of climatic effects, rural families and groups, led mostly by women, have received the support of national and international organizations to carry out projects to alleviate these impacts.

For example, around 100 families from the Jocote Dulce canton benefited in 2010 from a water project financially supported by Luxembourg, to install a dozen community water taps.

Programs for the construction of catchment tanks have also been carried out there, such as the one that supplies water to Crespo’s family.

In addition to using the water for household chores, the family gives it to their cow, which provides them with milk every day, and Crespo also makes cheese.

The water collected in the pond “lasts us for almost five months, but if we use it more, only about three or four months,” she said, as she brought more fodder to the family cow.

If she has any milk left over, she sells a couple of liters, she said, bringing in income that is hard to come by in this remote area reached by steep dirt tracks that are dusty in summer and muddy in the rainy season.

Other families benefited from home poultry farm and fruit tree planting programs.

Drinking water is provided by the community taps, but the water crisis makes it difficult to supply everyone in this rural settlement.

Yamilet Henríquez, 35, shows the reservoir set up outside her home in eastern El Salvador. Water is increasingly scarce in this area of ​​the ecoregion known as the Central American Dry Corridor, and things could become more complicated if the forecasts are right about the looming arrival of the El Niño climate phenomenon, which will bring droughts and damage to crops. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Only 80 percent of rural households in El Salvador have access to piped water, according to official figures.

“The water runs for only three days, then for two days the pipes dry up, and that’s how things go, over and over,” said Moreira, who also has a small tank, whose water is not drinkable.

When the rains fail and the reserves run out, families have to buy water from people who bring it in barrels in their pick-up trucks, from Chinameca, about 30 minutes away by car. Each barrel, which costs them about three dollars, contains some 100 liters of water.

The same is true in the Sector Plan del Jocote in Chiquimula, Guatemala, where Díaz lives, and in neighboring communities. “People who can afford it buy it and those who can’t, don’t,” she said.

Díaz added that families in the area are happy with the rainwater harvesting programs, which make it possible for them to irrigate the collectively farmed gardens, and produce vegetables that are important to their diet.

They also sell their produce to nearby schools.

“We grow vegetables and sell them to the school, that has helped us a lot,” she said.

There are 19 water harvesting systems, each with a capacity of 17,000 liters of water, which is enough to irrigate the gardens for two months. They also have a community tank.

These programs, which have been promoted by FAO and other organizations, with the support of the Guatemalan government, have benefited 5,416 families in 80 settlements in two Guatemalan departments.

However, access to potable drinking water remains a serious problem for the more than eight rural settlements in the Sector Plan del Jocote and the 28,714 families that live there.

The Maipo River on its way from the Andes mountain range to the valley of the same name is surrounded by numerous small towns that depend on tourism, receiving thousands of visitors every weekend. There are restaurants, campgrounds and high-altitude sports facilities. The water comes down from the top of the mountain range and is used by the company Aguas Andinas to supply the Chilean capital. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Apr 19 2023 (IPS)

Good management of the 101 hydrographic basins which run from the Andes mountain range to the Pacific Ocean is key to solving the severe water crisis that threatens the people of Chile and their main productive activities.

This vulnerability extends to the economy. Since 1990 Chile has gradually become wealthier, but along with the growth in GDP, water consumption has also expanded.

Roberto Pizarro, a professor of hydrology at the universities of Chile and Talca, told IPS that this “is an unsustainable equation from the point of view of hydrological engineering because water is a finite resource.”"This decade we have half the water we had in the previous decade. Farmers are seeing their production decline and are losing arable land. Small farmers are hit harder because they have a more difficult time surviving the disaster. Large farmers can dig wells or apply for loans, but small farmers put everything on the line during the growing season.” -- Rodrigo Riveros

According to Pizarro, “there are threats hanging over this process. From a production point of view, Chile’s GDP depends to a large extent on water. According to figures from the presidential delegation of water resources of the second administration of Michelle Bachelet (2014-2018), at least 60 percent of our GDP depends on water.”

This South American country, the longest and narrowest in the world, with a population of 19.6 million people, depends on the production and export of copper, wood, agricultural and sea products, as well as a growing tourism industry. All of which require large quantities of water.

And water is increasingly scarce due to overuse, excessive granting of water rights by the government, and climate change that has led to a decline in rainfall and snow.

To make matters worse, since 1981, during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), water use rights have been privatized in perpetuity, separated from land tenure, and can even be traded or sold. This makes it difficult for the branches of government to control water and is a key point in the current debate on constitutional reform in Chile.

Ecologist Sara Larraín maintains that the water crisis “has its origin in the historical overexploitation of surface and groundwater by the productive sectors and in the generalized degradation of the basins by mining, agro-industry and hydroelectric generation. And the wood pulp industry further compounded the problem.”

Larraín, executive director of the Sustainable Chile organization, adds that the crisis was aggravated by a drought that has lasted for more than a decade.

“There is a drastic decline in rainfall (of 25 percent) as a result of climate change, reduction of the snow surface and increase in temperatures that leads to greater evaporation,” she told IPS.

The small town of El Volcán has just over a hundred inhabitants, 80 kilometers from Santiago and 1,400 meters above sea level, in the Andes foothills. Local residents are witnessing a sharp decrease in snowfall that now rarely exceeds 30 centimeters in the area, a drastic reduction compared to a few years ago. CREDIT: Arturo Allende Peñaloza/IPS

First-hand witnesses

The main hydrographic basin of the 101 that hold the surface and underground water in Chile’s 756,102 square kilometers of territory is the Maipo River basin, since it supplies the Greater Santiago region, home to 7.1 million people.

In this basin, in the town of El Volcán, part of the San José de Maipo municipality on the outskirts of Santiago, on the eastern border with Argentina, lives Francisco Rojo, 62, a wrangler of pack animals at heart, who farms and also works in a small mine.

“The (inactive) San José volcano has no snow on it anymore, no more glaciers. In the 1990s I worked near the sluices of the Volcán water intake and there was a surplus of over 40 meters of water. In 2003 the snow was 12 to 14 meters high. Today it’s barely two meters high,” Rojo told IPS.

“The climate has been changing. It does not rain or snow, but the temperatures drop. The mornings and evenings are freezing and in the daytime it’s hot,” he added.

Rojo gets his water supply from a nearby spring. And using hoses, he is responsible for distributing water to 22 families, only for consumption, not for irrigation.

“We cut off the water at night so there is enough in the tanks the next day. Eight years ago we had a surplus of water. Now we have had to reduce the size of the hoses from two inches to one inch,” he explained.

“We were used to a meter of snow. Now I’m glad when 40 centimeters fall. It rarely rains and the rains are always late,” he said, describing another clear effect of climate change.

Agronomist Rodrigo Riveros, manager of one of the water monitoring boards for the Aconcagua River in the Valparaíso region in central Chile, told IPS that the historical average at the Chacabuquito rainfall station, at the headwaters of the river, is 40 or 50 cubic meters, a level that has never been surpassed in 12 years.

“This decade we have half the water we had in the previous decade,” he said.

“Farmers are seeing their production decline and are losing arable land. Small farmers are hit harder because they have a more difficult time surviving the disaster. Large farmers can dig wells or apply for loans, but small farmers put everything on the line during the growing season,” he said.

Large, medium and small users participate in the Aconcagua water board, 80 percent of whom are small farmers with less than 10 hectares. But they coexist with large water users such as the Anglo American mining company, the state-owned copper company Codelco and Esval, the region’s sanitation and drinking water distribution company.

“The decrease in rainfall is the main problem,” said Riveros..”The level of snow dropped a lot because the snow line rose – the altitude where it starts to snow. And the heavy rains increased flooding. Warm rain also falls in October or November (in the southern hemisphere springtime), melting the snow, and the water flows violently, carrying a lot of sediment and damaging infrastructure.

“It used to snow a lot more. Now three meters fall and we celebrate. In that same place, 10 meters used to fall, and the snow would pile up as a kind of reserve, even until the following year,” he said.

In Chile, the water boards were created by the Water Code and bring together natural and legal persons together with user associations. Their purpose is the administration, distribution, use and conservation of riverbeds and the surrounding water basins.

Many residents of El Volcán, in the foothills of the Andes mountains, lack drinking water and have built  tanks to collect water from a nearby spring. They have also reduced the diameter of their hoses to a minimum because the flow of water is steadily shrinking, only providing a supply for domestic use and not enough to irrigate their crops and trees. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Enormous economic impact

Larraín cited figures from the National Emergency Office of the Ministry of the Interior and Public Security and from regional governments that reveal that State spending on renting tanker trucks in the last decade (2010-2020) was equivalent to 277.5 million dollars in 196 of the total of 346 municipalities that depend on this method of providing drinking water.

“The population served in its essential needs is approximately half a million people, almost all of them from the rural sector and shantytowns and slums,” said Larraín.

According to the environmentalist, Chile has not taken actions to mitigate the drought.

“Although the challenge is structural and requires a substantial change in water management and the protection of sources, the official discourse insists on the construction of dams, canals and aqueducts, even though the reservoirs are not filled due to lack of rainfall and there is no availability in the regions from which water is to be extracted and diverted,” she said.

She added that the mining industry is advancing in desalination to reduce its dependence on the water basins, “although there is still no specific regulation for the industry, which would prevent the impacts of seawater suction and brine deposits.”

Larraín acknowledged that the last two governments established sectoral and inter-ministerial water boards, but said that coordination between users and State entities did not improve, nor did it improve among government agencies themselves.

“Each sector faces the shortage on its own terms and we lack a national plan for water security, even though this is the biggest problem Chile faces in the context of the impacts of climate change,” the environmental expert asserted.

Chile’s Colina hot springs, in the open air in the middle of the Andes mountains and just 17 kilometers from the border with Argentina, in the east of the country, can now be visited almost year-round. In the past, it was impossible to go up in the southern hemisphere winter because the route was cut off by constant rain and snow storms. CREDIT: Arturo Allende Peñaloza/IPS

Government action

The Ministry of the Environment admits that “there is still an important debt in terms of access to drinking water and sanitation for the rural population.”

“There is also a lack of governance that would make it possible to integrate the different stakeholders in each area for them to take part in water decisions and planning,” the ministry responded to questions from IPS.

In addition, it recognized that it is necessary to “continue to advance in integrated planning instruments that coordinate public and private initiatives.

“We coordinated the Inter-Ministerial Committee for a Just Water Transition which has the mandate to outline a short, medium and long-term roadmap in this matter, which is such a major priority for the country,” the ministry stated.

The committee, it explained, “assumed the challenge of the water crisis and worked on the coordination of immediate actions, which make it possible to face the risk of water and energy rationing, the need for rural drinking water, water for small-scale agriculture and productive activities, as well as ecosystem preservation.”

The ministry also reported that it is drafting regulatory frameworks to authorize and promote the efficiency of water use and reuse.

Furthermore, it stressed that the Framework Law on Climate Change, passed in June 2022, created Strategic Plans for Water Resources in Basins to “identify problems related to water resources and propose actions to address the effects of climate change.”

The government of Gabriel Boric, in office since March 2022, is also promoting a law on the use of gray water for agricultural irrigation, with a focus on small-scale agriculture and the installation of 16 Pilot Basin Councils to achieve, with the participation and coordination of the different stakeholders, “an integrated management of water resources.”

Only 55 percent of people across the Pacific Islands have access to basic drinking water and just 30 percent have sanitation services – the lowest rate in the world. Photo Credit: UN Samoa

By Simona Marinescu
APIA, Samoa, Apr 14 2023 (IPS)

Water is life. No other definition captures quite so aptly what this essential element means for our lives, livelihoods and the natural environment.

Although it is considered both a renewable and a non-renewable resource, water is becoming scarce and is expected to reach a critical point by 2040.

Out of the total volume of water present on earth, 97.5% is saline- coming from the seas and oceans, while only 2.5% is freshwater, of which only 0.3% is present in liquid form on the surface, including in rivers, lakes, swamps, reservoirs, creeks, and streams.

Due to irresponsible usage, including pollution from agriculture and the construction of dams, liquid freshwater on the surface of the earth is rapidly diminishing. We are the only known planet to have consistent, stable bodies of liquid water on its surface, yet we are not doing enough to preserve and provide access to all people everywhere to this critical source of life.

According to the 2021 UN Water report, in 2020, around 2 billion people (26% of the global population) lacked safely managed drinking water services and around 3.6 billion people lacked safely managed sanitation.

Some 2.3 billion people live in countries facing water stress of whom 733 million are in high and critically water-scarce environments.

Credit: UN Samoa

Samoa’s connected crises

In Samoa and other Pacific Small Island Developing States, access to clean water represents a huge challenge. Although these islands enjoy abundant rainfall – 2 to 4 times the average global annual precipitation, poor waste management systems and lack of adequate infrastructure means that the availability of clean water is severely limited.

Only 55 percent of people across the Pacific Islands have access to basic drinking water, and just 30 percent have sanitation services—the lowest rate in the world.

According to a joint study by the National University of Samoa, the Ministry of Natural Resources and other partners, water sources tested contained a high concentration of minerals, toxic pesticides, microplastics and bacteria such as e-coli, which increases the rate of water-borne diseases and poses significant health risks.

For our UN country team in Samoa, improving water quality is a central, cross-cutting priority which not only protects communities and helps prevent disease, but also feeds into our broader efforts to address the Triple Planetary Crisis of climate disruption, nature loss and pollution.

The use of the Triple Planetary Crisis framework provides a valuable basis for the measurement of losses and damages which countries like Samoa experience due to climate change and pollution including deterioration of water ecosystem services.

With this in mind, we have engaged extensively with communities and partners across Samoa over the past six months to develop the Vai O Le Ola (Water of Life) Report.

Launched ahead of the UN Water Conference in New York (22-24 March), the report draws on insights from these consultations to set out a response to the Triple Planetary Crisis and propose integrated approaches of restoring the quality and resilience of Samoa’s water system.

An integrated path forward

From rivers, mangrove swamps, lakes, wetlands, territorial waters, and the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) – water represents a major part of the environment system which supports the livelihoods for over 200,000 people in Samoa and also forms a significant part of Samoan cultural identity. Improving the quality of this critical source of life must begin with the integration of all relevant policies and strategies on climate change, ocean management, socio-economic development, waste management, and biodiversity conservation into one overarching framework.

Targeted interventions including the Vai O Le Ola Trust Fund and Knowledge Crowdsourcing Platform, and programmes on Innovative Climate and Nature Financing, Social Entrepreneurship for Climate Resilience, Community Access to Clean Energy, Zero Plastic Waste, are central to the Triple Planetary Crisis Response Plan in Samoa and across the Pacific.

Nature-based Watershed Management is another key initiative outlined in the Vai O Le Ola report which will support agro-forestry, reforestation and invasive species management, flood management and biodiversity conservation linked to water systems.

On the legislative side as well, new opportunities to strengthen environmental protection and conservation are emerging. Last year, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution recognizing for the first-time access to a clean, safe, and sustainable environment including water as a fundamental human right.

With the adoption of this resolution, global attention on the legal rights of ecosystems and natural resources has significantly increased.

In 2022, Ecuador was the first country in the world to recognize and implement the “rights of nature” followed by Colombia which established legal personality for the Atrato River in recognition of the biocultural rights of indigenous communities.

In Samoa, the National Human Rights Institution is already discussing how the right to a clean, safe and sustainable environment will be operationalized into law.

As an ‘ocean state’, water is a defining feature of Samoa’s national wealth and people’s way of living – known as ‘Fa’a Samoa.’ To find long lasting solutions to water scarcity and pollution across Samoa and other Pacific Islands, we must therefore look not only towards science, technology and innovation, but also to the centuries of wisdom and experience of the communities who live here.

We must recognize that for the people of Samoa, as Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa explains below, their waters are a source of life as well as a source of beauty.

Simona Marinescu, PhD, is UN Resident Coordinator in Samoa, Cook Island, Nieu, and Tokelau. Editorial support by UNDCO.

Source: UNDCO

DCO is based in New York, with regional teams in Addis Ababa, Amman, Bangkok, Istanbul and Panama, supporting 130 Resident Coordinators and 132 Resident Coordinator’s offices covering 162 countries and territories.

IPS UN Bureau

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"Drop by drop, this precious lifeblood is being poisoned by pollution and drained by vampiric overuse, with water demand expected to exceed supply by 40% by decade’s end" Credit: Bigstock.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Mar 21 2023 (IPS)

Shockingly, the human suicidal war on Nature not only continues unabated but is also set to become even more virulent. Just to start with, please be reminded that groundwater accounts for 99% of all liquid freshwater on Earth, according to the 2022 UN World Water Development Report.

And that groundwater already provides half of the volume of water withdrawn for domestic use by the global population, including the drinking water for the vast majority of the rural population who do not get their water delivered to them via public or private supply systems.

Also that around 25% of all water withdrawn for irrigation, being this a major cause of the fast depletion and pollution of this vital source.

There are two main reasons behind such a dangerous over-exploitation and poisoning of the world’s groundwater:

Vampiric draining…

Water is the lifeblood of our world. From health and nutrition to education and infrastructure, water is vital to every aspect of human survival and wellbeing, and the economic development and prosperity of every nation. But drop by drop, this precious lifeblood is being poisoned by pollution and drained by vampiric overuse, with water demand expected to exceed supply by 40% by decade’s end

António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General

The industrial agriculture and food supplies systems, imposed by giant private corporations for the sake of increasing their profits, leads to the “vampiric” draining of the world’s groundwater.

Such money-making systems also lead to a growing, deadly poisoning of water, through the irrational abuse of chemicals in intensive agriculture.

… and deadly poisoning

Coinciding with World Water Day, the United Nations inaugurated in its headquarters in New You a two-day Water Conference (22-24 March), which warns that decades of “mismanagement and misuse” have intensified water stress, threatening the many aspects of life that depend on this crucial resource.

According to a joint report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the International Water Management Institute, human settlements, industries and agriculture are the major sources of water pollution.

Much so that, globally, 80% of municipal wastewater is discharged into water bodies untreated.

Learn also that:

Industry is responsible for dumping millions of tonnes of heavy metals, solvents, toxic sludge and other wastes into water bodies each year.

Agriculture, which accounts for 70% of water abstractions worldwide, plays a major role in water pollution. Farms discharge large quantities of agrochemicals, organic matter, drug residues, sediments and saline drainage into water bodies.

The level of water poisoning has largely increased since this joint report was issued in 2017.

The resultant water pollution poses demonstrated risks to aquatic ecosystems, human health and productive activities.

FAO further reports that in most high-income countries and many emerging economies, “agricultural pollution has already overtaken contamination from settlements and industries as the major factor in the degradation of inland and coastal waters.”

“Nitrate from agriculture is the most common chemical contaminant in the world’s groundwater aquifers.”

In addition to poisoned crops, billions of people around the world still lack access to water. It is estimated that more than 800.000 people die each year from diseases directly attributed to unsafe water.

More alarm bells

No wonder then that the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, has sounded the following alarm bells in his message on the occasion of this year’s World Water Day (22 March):

“Water is the lifeblood of our world. From health and nutrition to education and infrastructure, water is vital to every aspect of human survival and wellbeing, and the economic development and prosperity of every nation.”

”But drop by drop, this precious lifeblood is being poisoned by pollution and drained by vampiric overuse, with water demand expected to exceed supply by 40% by decade’s end.”

“Meanwhile, climate change is wreaking havoc on water’s natural cycle. Greenhouse gas pollution continues to rise to all-time record levels, heating the world’s climate to dangerous levels,” warns the UN Chief.

“This is worsening water-related disasters, disease outbreaks, water shortages and droughts while inflicting damage to infrastructure, food production, and supply chains.”

More than 1 in 3 people lack basic hand washing facilities at home. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

Key facts

Perhaps a look at some of the key facts and figures about this grim picture, which have been released by major international specialised organisations, would suffice to realise the pernicious dimensions of such a war.

See what they report on the occasion of the 2023 World Water Day:

• A quarter of the global population – 2 billion people – use unsafe drinking water sources. Half of humanity – 3.6 billion people – live without safely managed sanitation.
• More than 1 in 3 people lack basic hand washing facilities at home. For at least 3 billion people, mostly in developing countries, the quality of the water they depend on is unknown because the data is not collected routinely.
• Almost half of the schools in the world do not have proper handwashing facilities with soap and water. Every day, more than 700 children under the age of five die from diarrhoea linked to unsafe water, sanitation and poor hygiene.
• Eight out of 10 people who lack even basic drinking water service live in rural areas, and about half of them live in least developed countries. In 2019, more than 733 million people lived in countries with high and critical levels of water stress.
• Water-related hazards have increased in frequency over the past 20 years. Since 2000, flood-related disasters have increased by 134 per cent, and the number and duration of droughts also increased by 29 per cent.
• Agricultural and untreated wastewater pose two of the gravest threats to environmental water quality globally. With a well-developed monitoring system, water-quality issues could be identified at an early stage, allowing mitigation measures to be introduced before severe deterioration occurs.
• The number of city inhabitants lacking safely managed drinking water has increased by more than 50% since 2000. While 86% of people in urban areas have safely managed drinking water services, only 60% of people in rural areas have them.

Survival of the innocent victims

Meanwhile, the drilling of local wells to meet the vital needs of the world’s impoverished communities, in particular areas, who suffer the devastating impacts of severe, long-standing droughts, heat waves, unprecedented floods caused by climate emergencies that they have not caused.

Did you know that one of the continents most hit by such devastation is Africa, which contributes to greenhouse gas emissions with a negligible 3%, while bearing the brunt of 80% of its consequences?

What else to say?

                                        Needed to provide safe water to roughly 2 billion people without it:
                                         an annual investment less than half the US$ 270 billion
                                                    now spent each year on bottled water
 
In brief:
* The bottled water industry is helping to mask a crippling world problem: the failure of public systems to supply reliable drinking water for all, a key SDG target.
* Some private firms take a public good at little cost, treat it, and sell it back to those who can afford it. Ironically, many cases from 40 countries show the product is not always safe, with companies largely scrutinized far less than public utilities
* The fast-growing problem of water bottle plastic waste is already enough every year to fill a line of 40-ton trucks from New York to Bangkok
* With global sales of bottled water expected to almost double to half a trillion dollars by 2030, it is more important than ever to strengthen regulation of the overall industry
* The industry's growth further underlines global inequities and the need for universal access to safe, sufficient, and affordable water as a basic human right

By External Source
HAMILTON, Canada , Mar 16 2023 (IPS-Partners)

The rapidly-growing bottled water industry can undermine progress towards a key sustainable development goal: safe water for all, says a new United Nations report.

Based on an analysis of literature and data from 109 countries, the report says that in just five decades bottled water has developed into “a major and essentially standalone economic sector,” experiencing 73% growth from 2010 to 2020. And sales are expected to almost double by 2030, from US$ 270 billion to $500 billion.

Released a few days prior to World Water Day (March 22), the report by UN University’s Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health concludes that the unrestricted expansion of the bottled water industry “is not aligned strategically with the goal of providing universal access to drinking water or at least slows global progress in this regard, distracting development efforts and redirecting attention to a less reliable and less affordable option for many, while remaining highly profitable for producers.”

Says Kaveh Madani, UNU-INWEH’s new Director: “The rise in bottled water consumption reflects decades of limited progress in and many failures of public water supply systems.”

When the Sustainable Development Goals were agreed in 2015, he notes, experts elsewhere estimated an annual investment of US$ 114 billion was needed from 2015 to 2030 to achieve a key target: universal safe drinking water.

The report says providing safe water to the roughly 2 billion people without it woulds require an annual investment of less than half the US$ 270 billion now spent every year on bottled water.

“This points to a global case of extreme social injustice, whereby billions of people worldwide do not have access to reliable water services while others enjoy water luxury.”

Tap water perceptions

The study quotes surveys showing bottled water is often perceived in the Global North as a healthier and tastier product than tap water – more a luxury good than a necessity. In the Global South, sales are driven by the lack or absence of reliable public water supplies and water delivery infrastructure limitations due to rapid urbanization.

In mid- and low-income countries, bottled water consumption is linked to poor tap water quality and often unreliable public water supply systems – problems often caused by corruption and chronic underinvestment in piped water infrastructure.

Beverage corporations are adept at marketing bottled water as a safe alternative to tap water by drawing attention to isolated public water system failures, says UNU-INWEH researcher and lead author Zeineb Bouhlel, adding that “even if in certain countries piped water is or can be of good quality, restoring public trust in tap water is likely to require substantial marketing and advocacy efforts.”

Not necessarily safe

Dr. Bouhlel notes that the source of bottled water (municipal system, surface, etc.) the treatment processes used (e.g. chlorination, ultraviolet disinfection, ozonation, reverse osmosis), the storage conditions (duration, light exposure, temperature), and packaging (plastic, glass), can all potentially alter water quality. This may be inorganic (e.g. heavy metals, pH, turbidity etc.), organic (benzene, pesticides, microplastics, etc.) and microbiological (pathogenic bacteria, viruses, fungus and parasitic protozoa).

According to the report, “the mineral composition of bottled water can vary significantly between different brands, within the same brand in different countries, and even between different bottles of the same batch.”

The report lists examples from over 40 countries in every world region of contamination of hundreds of bottled water brands and all bottled water types.

“This review constitutes strong evidence against the misleading perception that bottled water is an unquestionably safe drinking water source,” says Dr. Bouhlel.

Water bottlers generally face less scrutiny than public water utilities

Co-author Vladimir Smakhtin, past Director of UNU-INWEH, underscores the report’s finding that “bottled water is generally not nearly as well-regulated and is tested less frequently and for fewer parameters. Strict water quality standards for tap water are rarely applied to bottled water, and even if such analyses are carried out, the results seldom make it to the public domain.”

Bottled water producers, he says, have largely avoided the scrutiny governments impose on public water utilities, and amid the market’s rapid growth, it is “probably more important than ever to strengthen legislation that regulates the industry overall, and its water quality standards in particular.”

With respect to the industry’s environmental impacts, the report says there is “little data available on water volumes extracted,” largely due to the lack of transparency and legal foundation that would have forced bottling companies to disclose that information publicly and assess the environmental consequences.”

“Local impacts on water resources may be significant,” the report says.

In the USA, for example, Nestlé Waters extracts 3 million litres a day from Florida Springs; in France, Danone extracts up to 10 million litres a day from Evian-les-Bains in the French Alps; and in China, the Hangzhou Wahaha Group extracts up to 12 million litres daily from Changbai Mountains springs.

Regarding plastic pollution, the researchers cite estimates that the industry produced around 600 billion plastic bottles and containers in 2021, which converts to some 25 million tonnes of PET waste – most of it not recycled and destined for landfills – a mass of plastic equal to the weight of 625,000 40-ton trucks, enough to form a bumper-to-bumper line from New York to Bangkok.

According to the report, the bottled water sector used 35% of the PET bottles produced globally in 2019; 85% wind up in landfills or unregulated waste.

By the numbers

Among the report’s many insights, derived from data analysis and other information assembled from global studies and literature:

• Over 1 million bottles of water are sold worldwide every minute

• Annual spending per capita worldwide is US$ 34

• Worldwide annual consumption of the three main bottled water types – treated, mineral, and natural – is estimated at 350 billion litres

• The estimated US $1.225 trillion in bottled water revenues represent 17 to 24% of the global market for non-alcoholic packaged beverages

• The biggest market segment (with 47% of global sales) is treated bottled water, which could originate from public water systems or surface water, and that undergoes a disinfection treatment such as chlorination

• Citizens of Asia-Pacific are the biggest bottled water consumers, followed by North Americans and Europeans

• 60% of global sales are in the “Global South” (Asia-Pacific, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean)

• By country, the USA is the largest market, with around US$ 64 billion in sales, followed by China (almost US$ 45 billion) and Indonesia (US$ 22 billion). Together, these three countries constitute almost half of the world market. Other top countries by sales: Canada, Australia, Singapore, Germany, Thailand, Mexico, Thailand, Italy, Japan

• The average cost of a bottle of water in North America and Europe is around US$ 2.50, more than double the price in Asia, Africa and LAC ($0.80, $0.90 and $1, respectively). Australia, the fifth largest market, has the highest average price: $3.57 per unit.

• Bottled water per litre can cost 150 to 1,000 times more than the price a municipality charges for tap water.

• Biggest per capita consumers: Singapore and Australia. Citizens of Singapore spent $1,348 per capita on bottled water in 2021, Australians $386

• According to previous studies, about 31% of Canadians, 38% of Americans, and 60% of Italians use bottled water as their primary drinking source. In the Dominican Republic, 60% of households use bottled water as their primary water source, with a strong correlation between income and bottled water consumption. About 80% of Mexicans use bottled water, and 10% use home-purified water as their primary drinking water source; roughly 90% cite health concerns for doing so

• Egypt is the fastest-growing market for treated bottled water (40% per year). Seven other countries from the Global South are among the top 10 fastest-growing markets: Algeria, Brazil, Indonesia, United Arab Emirates, India, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia.

• In Europe, Germany is the biggest bottled water market; in Latin America and the Caribbean, Mexico is the biggest market; in Africa, it’s South Africa.

• Treated water appears to be the market’s largest component by volume, while natural waters appear to generate the most profit.

• Five companies – PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Nestlé S.A., Danone S.A, and Primo Corporation have combined sales of $65 billion, over 25% of the global total

• Earlier studies of water withdrawals declared in India, Pakistan, Mexico and Nepal showed total estimated withdrawals by Coca-Cola and Nestlé in 2021 at 300 and 100 billion litres, respectively

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A staggering 40% of groundwater is used for global irrigation, this alone indicates the importance of this precious resource in navigating the population through impacts of climate change. Credit: SADC Groundwater Management Institute.

By Thokozani Dlamini
PRETORIA, South Africa, Mar 15 2023 (IPS)

In contrast to its strategic role as an essential resource to help achieve community development and poverty alleviation globally, groundwater has remained a poorly understood and managed resource.

This is according to a scoping study pertaining to the status of groundwater resources management in SADC. The study continues to say that over a staggering 40% of groundwater is used for global irrigation, this alone indicates the importance of this precious resource in navigating the population through impacts of climate change.

More food needs to be produced to meet future demands due to population growth, lifestyle change and dietary changes and this calls for robust agricultural water solutions to sustainably manage water resources

Dr Manuel Magombeyi, Regional Researcher at the International Water Management Institute
Groundwater has become indispensable particularly for agriculture production in many countries, and it is said that it accounts for half of South Asia’s irrigation and China where it supports two-thirds of grain crops produced.

Sustainable groundwater development for water and food security can never be over emphasized in mitigating against the worsening impacts of climate change. As surface water becomes more variable and uncertain, groundwater provides a crucial buffer for commercial and small holder farmers – who rely on groundwater to keep their crops green.

Therefore, it is imperative that sustainable and innovative strategies are developed to ensure sustainable supply of groundwater resource for improved livelihoods.

Groundwater responds to the water demands in a more flexible and reliable way, which allows farmers to increase their yields and mitigate effects of extreme water shortages. While water in general is a critical input for agricultural production and plays a significant role in food security, science reveals that Sub-Saharan Africa is not on track to reach the sustainable development goal on eradicating hunger.

The Synthesis Report on the State of Food and Nutrition Security and Vulnerability in Southern Africa 2022 says food and nutrition insecurity in the region continues to be unacceptably high and concerted efforts are required to build resilience to address the multiple and increasing shocks the region faces.

The report further asserts that the number of food insecure people is estimated to increase to 55.7million during the period 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023 in the 12 Member States that provided data for the 2022 Regional Synthesis Report on Food Security, Nutrition and Vulnerability.

“More food needs to be produced to meet future demands due to population growth, lifestyle change and dietary changes and this calls for robust agricultural water solutions to sustainably manage water resources,” says Dr Manuel Magombeyi Regional Researcher at the International Water Management Institute.

Dr. Magombeyi further asserts that it is critical that people in general understand that as the food demand increases, so the water usage, and all these increases happen amidst climate change, therefore, thorough reconsideration of how water is managed in the agricultural sector, and how it can be repositioned in the broader context of overall water resources management and water security is critical.

Unfortunately, according to the United Nations Development Programme, at least 821 million people were estimated to be chronically under-nourished as of 2017, often as a direct consequence of environmental degradation, drought, and biodiversity loss.

Under-nourishment and severe food insecurity appear to be increasing in almost all regions of Africa. Several studies indicate that innovative Agricultural Water Solutions are urgently needed if we want to meet Sustainable Development Goal 2, Zero Hunger for everyone by 2030 as promulgated by the United Nations.

In the SADC region alone, at least 11 million people are facing critical food shortages due to drought caused by climate change. This situation calls for groundwater practitioners to think deeper and look for innovative solutions to support agricultural sector to improve food security.

According to Agricultural Water Management in Southern Africa Report, investments by both public and private sectors in Ag-water solutions represent an untapped opportunity. It is important that both sectors invest in Ag-water solutions to achieve the overall objective of poverty alleviation and broad-based agricultural growth. Most of these ag-water solutions have been implemented at a smaller scale. It is now important that they get upscaled for the benefits of larger communities, especially if the solution is working well.

The SADC Groundwater Management Institute has in the past years managed to help rural communities in some SADC Member States to ensure that they get access to water resources by tapping into groundwater resources available in respective countries.

Through the Sustainable Groundwater Management in SADC Member States project supported by the World Bank Group between 2016 and 2021, SADC-GMI managed to reach communities in Eswatini, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe and assisted them to unlock groundwater resources for improved livelihoods.

Thokozani Dlamini is Communication and Knowledge Management Specialist for SADC Groundwater Management Institute

Credit: United Nations

By Armand Houanye
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, Mar 14 2023 (IPS)

Burkina Faso’s interim President Captain Ibrahim Traoré spoke late last year of the conflicts that are now blighting his country and much of his region. He described the situation in Burkina Faso as predictable given the endemic weaknesses in governance that he believes have led to the economic abandonment of many young people, particularly outside of urban areas.

He delivered these remarks on November 13th to political parties, civil society organizations, and traditional and customary leaders in Ouagadougou to raise awareness of Burkina Faso’s rapidly degrading security situation. Of particular note was his focus on water, as he described seeing people throughout the Southwest, Northwest and Sahel regions including Gorom-Gorom, Tinasane and Markoye carrying jerry cans to fetch water.

This led him to question why there were no development projects in these impoverished regions. The people walk, he lamented, for miles to get water for the cattle that die on the way.

There are no roads for trucks to even transport livestock feed to sustain livestock, he reflected, before referring to the Kongoussi-Djibo road bridge built in the 1950s that has fallen into such dilapidation that it can no longer support the trucks that would otherwise take the now rotting local produce to market.

All he says, because of a lack of investment in the construction and the maintenance of essential infrastructure.

His speech depicts a reality across the Sahel region where terrorist attacks have been rampant since 2012, following Mouammar Kadhafi’s assassination and the subsequent looting of Libya’s weapons deposits. Many villages have since been abandoned in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, with thousands of people having been displaced with no proper government intervention to curb the violence.

As clean drinking water is a basic need, lack of access to it triggers many problems at every level of society. Traditionally, villages are located close to waterways to allow for the smooth provisioning of water, as well as the practice of gardening to produce basic ingredients for food which can be consumed and sold for cash for the community.

With the rise of terrorist attacks mostly in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso but reaching coastal countries such as Côte d’Ivoire, Togo and Benin, many villages have been abandoned or are under the control of armed terrorist groups who impose their own rules and dictates on the local people.

Displaced populations are deprived of their traditional water sources, be they natural water courses, standpipes or boreholes, cutting off their water supply and therefore the access to their means of physical and economic sustenance.

“They lay down the law for the management and use of water and other natural resources by delimiting areas to be exploited,” said a local elected authority to me in a terrorist dominated zone in the Central-Southern part of Mali, adding that, “the cultivable areas are reduced and they [terrorist groups] occupy the wooded areas suitable for agriculture and which contain the local water reserves.”

The chiefs of villages occupied under duress are obliged to cooperate with these groups. They are therefore the preferred interlocutors of all those who “seek permission to operate” in these controlled areas.

The opinion of the village chief is conditional to the prior agreement of the group to which the village belongs. There are real negotiations with these terrorist groups before any projects or partners are allowed to enter the territory.

The reality in Sahelian countries in general is that successive governments since independence have concentrated their “administration” on urban areas. But once you leave the urban areas the populations are left to their own devices with an administration that is more oppressive and not in the least concerned with providing sustainable responses to the development needs of these localities.

The agents of the land registry (customs), law enforcement (police, gendarmes), and nature protection (water and forests) are quicker to find ways to engage in racketeering than to offer the poor the services they require.

“We have lost a lot of funding which has been transferred to other localities deemed more accessible,” explained a local government official to me recently in one of the areas under control. “Given the fact that the groups themselves need to have privileged access to drinking water, they facilitate the arrival of certain partners to install water supply systems,” he added.

GWP West Africa is implementing the European Union funded project “water for growth and poverty reduction in the Mekrou sub catchment in Niger” but it was not been able to launch the project as planned in August 2020 due to a terrorist attack that tragically killed eight people.

Water management and development is but one of many sectors affected by terrorist activities in the region, but water, unlike some other sectors, is a matter of survival.

There is therefore a critical need to enhance and improve the governance of water resources and land while ensuring that required investments are put in place to sustainably respond to the water related development needs of people living in urban and rural areas at all levels in Sahelian countries.

IPS UN Bureau

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Excerpt:

Mangroves in Tai O, Hong Kong. Coastal wetland protection and restoration is an example of the kind of multifunctional solution that is needed to address multiple global crises together. Credit: Chunyip Wong / iStock

By Paula Harrison, Pamela McElwee and David Obura
BONN, Mar 2 2023 (IPS)

When global crises are interlinked, they overlap and compound each other. In such cases, the most effective solutions are those that work at the nexus of all these challenges.

In September, almost every Government on Earth will gather at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in New York to take stock at the halfway mark of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of what has been achieved and what remains to be done.

Despite some progress, global development efforts have been hamstrung by unprecedented environmental, social and economic crises, in particular biodiversity loss and climate change, compounded of course by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tackling these interlinked challenges separately risks creating situations even more damaging to people and communities around the world, and exacerbates the already high risk of not meeting the goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

This is especially true because the myriad drivers of risk and damage affect many different sectors at once, across scales from local to global, and can result in negative impacts being compounded. For example, when demands for food and timber combine with the effects of pollution and climate change, they can decimate already degraded ecosystems, driving species to extinction and severely reducing nature’s contributions to people.

The global food system offers another example of this negative spiral of interlocking crises – where food that is produced unsustainably leads to water overconsumption and waste, pollution, increased health risks and loss of biodiversity. It also leads to excessive greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to climate change.

Yet policies often treat each of these global threats in isolation, resulting in separate, uncoordinated actions that typically address only one of the root causes and fail to take advantage of the many potential solution synergies. In the worst cases, actions taken on one challenge directly undermine those needed to tackle another because they fail to account for trade-offs, resulting in unintended consequences, or the impacts being externalised, as someone else’s problem.

This is why almost 140 Governments turned to the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) – requesting IPBES to undertake a major multiyear assessment of the interlinkages among biodiversity, water, food and health in the context of the rapidly-changing climate. This ‘Nexus Assessment’ is among the most complex and important expert assessments ever undertaken – crossing key biophysical domains of climate and biodiversity and elements central to human wellbeing like food, water and health. It will also address how interactions are affected by energy, pollution, conflict and other socio-political challenges.

To fully address this ‘nexus’, the assessment is considering interactions across scales, geographic regions and ecosystems. It also covers past, present and future trends in these interlinkages. And, most importantly, it will offer concrete options for responses to the crises that address the interactions of risk and damage jointly and equitably – providing a vital set of possible solutions for the more sustainable future we want for people and our planet.

One example of the mutifunctional solutions that will be explored is nature-based solutions – such as coastal wetland protection and restoration. When coastal wetland ecosystems are healthy – whether conserved or where necessary, restored – they are a refuge and habitat for biodiversity, improving fish stocks for greater food security and contributing to improve human health and wellbeing. They can also sequester carbon, helping to mitigate climate change, and protect adjacent communities and settlements from flooding and sea level rise.

To develop and implement these kinds of multi-functional solutions, responses for dealing with the major global crises need to be better coordinated, integrated, and made more synergistic across sectors, both public and private. Decision-makers at all levels need better evidence and knowledge to implement such solutions.

Work on the nexus assessment began in 2021 – with the final report expected to be considered and adopted by IPBES member States in 2024. A majority of the 170 expert authors and review editors from around the world are meeting in March in the Kruger National Park in South Africa to further strengthen the draft report, responding to the many thousands of comments received during a first external review period.

The assessment will also include evidence and expertise contributed by indigenous peoples and local communities – whose rich and varied direct experiences and knowledge systems that consider humans and nature as an interconnected whole have embodied a nexus approach for generations.

The Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the recently-agreed Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework provide the roadmaps for tackling the climate and biodiversity crises. The IPBES nexus assessment will offer policymakers a practical guide to bridge the vital interlinkages across the two challenges, to other relevant frameworks, and link to the sustainable development agenda.

For more information about IPBES or about the ongoing progress on the nexus assessment, go to www.ipbes.net or follow @ipbes on social media.

Prof. Paula Harrison is a Principal Natural Capital Scientist and Professor of Land and Water Modelling at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, United Kingdom.

Dr. David Obura is a Founding Director of CORDIO (Coastal Oceans Research and Development – Indian Ocean) East Africa, Kenya.

IPS UN Bureau

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A photo of a field with parched grass in the province of Buenos Aires, an agricultural area par excellence in Argentina. The countryside is the source of more than half of the exports of this South American country, which is in dire need of foreign exchange to ease its economic crisis. CREDIT: Argentine Rural Confederations

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Jan 30 2023 (IPS)

Martín Rapetti, a fourth generation farmer in the province of Corrientes in northeastern Argentina, has already lost more than 30 cows due to lack of food and water, as a result of the long drought that is plaguing a large part of the country. “There is no grass; the animals have to sink their teeth into the dry earth,” he says with resignation.

This extreme climatic phenomenon, which according to experts will become increasingly common, is much more than a threat of an uncertain future and already represents concrete damage: it will make Argentina, a global agricultural powerhouse, lose billions of dollars in exports this year, aggravating its economic crisis.

“The accumulation of three years with little rain makes the situation worse and worse. The streams and rivers are running dry and now the groundwater is also drying up,” Rapetti told IPS from the town of Curuzú Cuatía.“We also have to move forward with actions that go beyond the immediacy and that incorporate a climate perspective. In addition, we need political responses that strengthen our capacities, promote innovation and, ultimately, promote sustainable development.” -- Cecilia Nicolini

“The cows are in very poor body condition. And the production of grains, citrus fruits and vegetables is suffering…Of the 300 hectares that we have for growing rice, we were able to plant only 35 due to lack of water,” added Rapetti, who has a medium-sized farm.

The consequences go far beyond rural areas because this South American country, which faces a delicate economic situation with inflation soaring to almost 100 percent per year and 40 percent of the population living in poverty, depends heavily on the countryside to bring in foreign exchange and sustain the value of its devalued currency.

During the first half of 2022, according to the latest official data, 57.6 percent of national exports came from the production of soy and the main grains (corn, wheat, sunflower and barley) and from beef and by-products like leather and dairy products.

The drought will reduce exports in 2023 by nearly eight billion dollars and this will have a heavy direct impact on the state coffers, which will receive more than one billion dollars less in taxes on exports of soy, corn and wheat, the three crops that cover the largest agricultural area in the country.

These figures were released on Jan. 17 by the Rosario Stock Exchange, a reference point in Argentina’s agricultural economy.

This South American country of 46.2 million inhabitants depends to a great extent on the countryside to sustain its economy. Argentina is the third world producer of soy, behind the United States and Brazil, and the second producer of beef, according to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Soy alone, which is the current star of Argentine exports, generated sales of 12.1 billion dollars (27.3 percent of total exports), according to the official statistics agency. This includes soybeans, soybean oil and meal and soy flour.

A plant in a vineyard suffering from the lack of water, in the province of Mendoza in western Argentina. That area of ​​the country, where crops depend on irrigation, is suffering the consequences of low levels in the reservoirs. CREDIT: Coninagro

How to prepare for the future?

Due to climate change, extreme events such as droughts or floods will occur with increasing frequency and intensity, the national secretary for Climate Change, Sustainable Development and Innovation, Cecilia Nicolini, told IPS.

“But these problems are not scenarios that we have to get used to or resign ourselves to. We need to adapt to their effects and transform our productive sectors to make them more resilient, while reducing their greenhouse gas emissions,” she added.

Argentina presented its National Plan for Adaptation and Mitigation to Climate Change in November.

The over 400-page document proposes managing agroforestry climate risks (from investments in infrastructure or promoting insurance for small farmers), bolstering water efficiency in industries and strengthening the meteorological monitoring network.

“We also have to move forward with actions that go beyond the immediacy and that incorporate a climate perspective. In addition, we need political responses that strengthen our capacities, promote innovation and, ultimately, promote sustainable development,” the official acknowledged.

Perhaps the most delicate aspect is that Nicolini herself estimated that the country needs 185 billion dollars in financing up to 2030 to implement the plan.

That is four times more than the record loan that the International Monetary Fund granted Argentina in 2018, a debt that since then has strangled economic growth. Nobody knows where this financing would come from, which Argentina demanded from developed countries at the last Conference of the Parties (COP27) on Climate Change, held in November in Egypt.

Cows and calves gather in search of food in the department of Curuzú Cuatiá, in the Argentine province of Corrientes. The drought has dragged on for three years now and in 2022 it was the main cause of forest fires, which affected more than 800,000 hectares in that northeastern province. CREDIT: CR

Financial assistance

On Jan. 20 Economy Minister Sergio Massa met with with the Liaison Board, which brings together the main agricultural business chambers, and promised to study a package of economic relief measures to be announced on Feb. 1.

In any case, he warned about the limits that the government faces in providing answers: “Perhaps there are solutions that are out of our hands. Argentina is not a country with a great capacity for State intervention, for reasons that we already know: indebtedness and difficulties in accessing markets.”

Beyond the difficult current situation, today agricultural producers themselves know that fundamental strategies will be needed to face extreme phenomena that are here to stay.

Mario Raiteri, a medium-sized producer of potatoes, beef, wheat, corn, soy and sunflowers in the town of Mechongué, 460 kilometers south of Buenos Aires, tells IPS that he grew up listening to his grandfather talk about the big floods in the 1940s and withering droughts in the 1950s, but that he had never experienced a phenomenon like the one seen in the last three years.

“My biggest worry is if this is just an occasional occurrence or if there really is starting to be a more frequent repetition of these events,” he said.

“In the second case, we need scientific organizations to give us new technologies designed to help us adapt. Knowledge is going to play a very important role, beyond other necessary issues, such as comprehensive agricultural insurance for family farms, because small producers will suffer the most,” he said.

In Argentina, 54.48 percent of the land area has been affected by water stress, according to the Drought Information System for Southern South America (SISSA), an institution created by governments and organizations to provide information and reduce vulnerability to this type of phenomena.

However, hydrologist Juan Borus, deputy manager of Information Systems of the National Water Institute (INA), said that in the last three years “there is not a single square centimeter of the territory that has not faced scarcity.”

Borus warns IPS that the country is currently plagued by dry rivers and lagoons that have shrunk and disappeared, and that the situation is not likely to improve for the remainder of the southern hemisphere summer and the fall.

The expert also warns about the impact on issues that have received less attention than agricultural production. One is the generation of electrical energy due to lack of water in the reservoirs, in a country that has committed to increasing hydropower generation as part of its climate change mitigation objectives.

Another issue is drinking water.

“Large cities on the banks of rivers should invest more money in pumping and purifying the water, because with lower levels of water in the rivers, the amount of pollutants and sediment is greater. And small towns that take water from drilling wells must deal with the decline of groundwater tables,” Borus said.

The crisis, he said, presents a great opportunity: “It is time for those who live in the humid part of the country to become aware of the need to take care of drinking water.”

Cholera ward in a health centre in Blantyre. Malawi has experienced a massive rise in cholera in the past year. Credit: Charles Mpaka/IPS

By Charles Mpaka
BLANTYRE, Jan 9 2023 (IPS)

On March 3, 2022, Malawi declared a cholera outbreak after a district hospital in the southern region reported a case. This was the first case in the 2021 to 2022 cholera season.

That single case was a warning for what would become Malawi’s worst cholera outbreak in decades.

For nearly a year now, cholera has gripped the country, with cases reported in all 29 districts and rising.

In an unprecedented occurrence, the cases rose sharply even through the summer months when cholera is least expected and the country least prepared for it.

As of January 4, 2023, up to 704 people were killed, and 21,000 cases were registered, government data shows. The case fatality rate stands at 3.4 percent, higher than the recommended rate of less than one percent.

Maziko Matemba, Executive Director for Health and Rights Education Programme (HREP), a local civil society organisation, says the situation is alarming and keeps the country in a “spiral of health crisis”.

“We started the year 2022 hoping to recover from the devastation of Covid-19. Then Tropical Storm Ana knocked us back in January. In March, cholera hit, and it hasn’t left for ten months, worsening as time passes. We have not had this kind of cholera outbreak for a long time,” Matemba tells IPS.

And there are growing fears that the disease could spread further now that the rainy season when it usually breaks out in Malawi, has begun.

Tropical Storm Ana has played a significant part in this outbreak, experts say. The rainstorm affected 16 districts, including Machinga, where the first cholera case was reported in March, and Nsanje, a flood-prone district and one of the first areas to report cholera cases in this outbreak.

A final situation report on the impact of the storm by the Department of Disaster Management Affairs found that over 53,000 latrines collapsed, while 337 boreholes, 206 water taps and eight gravity-fed water schemes were damaged in those 16 districts.

The department said this resulted in low sanitation coverage, limited access to safe water and poor hygienic practices, with some sites and communities reporting open defecation and contamination of the few available water sources.

The report said the situation increased the risk of cholera and other communicable diseases.

“As such, safe water supply, sanitation and hygiene services are immediately needed to address water, sanitation and hygiene issues. Furthermore, there is a need for rehabilitation of toilets to avoid infectious and waterborne diseases,” it said.

But Malawi has not fully recovered from this disaster since, Matemba says.

“So lack of recovery on water and sanitation infrastructure destroyed during that time have created good conditions for cholera to thrive. That comes into an existing frame of a weak prevention system. We usually take prevention rather casually,” he says.

Save Kumwenda, an environmental health expert, says alongside the water, sanitation and hygiene issues, there is also evidence of temperature and precipitation being influential in cholera outbreaks – with temperature driving epidemics and rainfall acting as a dispersal mechanism.

“Then there are also socio-economic conditions which are key drivers for outbreaks, as these increase pathogen exposure,” says Kumwenda, an associate professor at the Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences (MUBAS).

He says the situation could worsen as the rainy season spreads the bacteria through contamination of water bodies and food.

The outbreak has hit the hardest Malawi’s two major cities of Lilongwe, the capital city, and Blantyre, the commercial city.

For instance, in the 7 days between December 29, 2022, and January 4, 2023, the country recorded 2,773 cases and 137 deaths. Out of these, Blantyre and Lilongwe contributed 47 percent of the new cases and 53 percent of the new deaths.

Kumwenda says this is the case because the two cities, struggling with solid waste management and aged sewer systems, have large peri-urban areas where residents depend on wells, boreholes and river water which is highly contaminated by faecal matter from toilets, broken septic tanks, broken sewer pipes and open defaecation.

He says most houses in these areas do not have adequate toilets, and many depend on sharing.

In addition, most of these households cannot afford to pay for water from waterboards for both drinking and domestic use. They, therefore, prioritise safe water for drinking only and unsafe water for other uses, which leads to contamination of foods and utensils and also contamination of the available safe water.

“The other reason for the high numbers of cholera cases in these cities is the high number of people who rely on piece works, and these rely on foods sold in markets where hygiene and sanitation conditions are compromised,” he says.

In response, the government has delayed by two weeks the opening of schools in the two cities and surrounding areas. Malawi opened the 2022 academic year on January 3.

Minister of Health Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda says in a statement that opening schools in the two cities would affect containment efforts for the outbreak, considering that cholera is passed from one person to another through contaminated food, water and inadequate sanitation facilities, a feature that exists in school settings.

“The converging of learners, especially in the nursery, primary and secondary schools, increases the chances of uncontrolled spread of the vibrio bacteria that causes cholera disease,” she says.

During the two weeks delay, the government will be conducting a thorough assessment and improving the water and sanitation situation in the schools in both cities.

For a national response, among other measures, the government says it will be opening more treatment centres in the cholera hotspots, employing more staff in the treatment centres, intensifying hygiene promotion and undertaking water quality assessments in targeted areas.

In November last year, Malawi rolled out the oral cholera vaccination reactive campaign targeting 2.9 million people aged one year and above.

Kumwenda says Malawi needed to act quickly to stop the outbreak before the onset of the rainy season as there was clear evidence of the impending emergency due to the rising of the cases through the hot months.

But for long-term control of the disease, Malawi needs to invest in research in order to come up with interventions based on evidence.

“This will ensure that we always invest in interventions which yield maximum benefits. We need to understand the main drivers of the epidemic and also identify reservoirs of the bacteria causing cholera. The knowledge of the reservoirs will help us to easily prevent the re-occurrence of the outbreak,” says Kumwenda, president of the Malawi Environmental Health Association, a group of environmental health experts.

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By 2050, droughts may affect an estimated three-quarters of the world’s population. Credit: Miriet Abrego / IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Dec 1 2022 (IPS)

Drought is one of the ‘most destructive’ natural disasters in terms of the loss of life, arising from impacts, such as wide-scale crop failure, wildfires and water stress.

In other words, droughts are one of the “most feared natural phenomena in the world;” they devastate farmland, destroy livelihoods and cause untold suffering, as reported by the world’s top specialised bodies: the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

They occur when an area experiences a shortage of water supply due to a lack of rainfall or lack of surface or groundwater. And they can last for weeks, months or years.

Exacerbated by land degradation and climate change, droughts are increasing in frequency and severity, up 29% since 2000, with 55 million people affected every year.

The impacts of climate change are often felt through water – more intense and frequent droughts, more extreme flooding, more erratic seasonal rainfall and accelerated melting of glaciers – with cascading effects on economies, ecosystems and all aspects of our daily lives,

Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General

By 2050, droughts may affect an estimated three-quarters of the world’s population. This means that agricultural production will have to increase by 60% to meet the global food demand in 2050.

This means that about 71% of the world’s irrigated area and 47% of major cities are to experience at least periodic water shortages. If this trend continues, the scarcity and associated water quality problems will lead to competition and conflicts among water users, adds the Convention.

Most of the world already impacted

The alert is loud and strong and it comes from a number of the world’s most knowledgeable organisations.

To begin with, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on 29 November 2022 reported that most of the globe was drier than normal in 2021, with “cascading effects on economies, ecosystems and our daily lives.”

Water

Between 2001 and 2018, UN-Water reported that a staggering 74% of all-natural disasters were water-related.

Currently, over 3.6 billion people have inadequate access to water at least one month per year and this is expected to increase to more than five billion by 2050.

Moreover, areas that were unusually dry included South America’s Rio de la Plata area, where a persistent drought has affected the region since 2019, according to WMO’s The State of Global Water Resources report.

Drying rivers, lakes

In Africa, major rivers such as the Niger, Volta, Nile and Congo had below-average water flow in 2021.

The same trend was observed in rivers in parts of Russia, West Siberia and in Central Asia.

On the other hand, there were above-normal river volumes in some North American basins, the North Amazon and South Africa, as well as in China’s Amur river basin, and northern India.

Cascading effects

The impacts of climate change are often felt through water – more intense and frequent droughts, more extreme flooding, more erratic seasonal rainfall and accelerated melting of glaciers – with cascading effects on economies, ecosystems and all aspects of our daily lives, said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

“Changes to Cryosphere water resources affect food security, human health, ecosystem integrity and maintenance, and lead to significant impacts on economic and social development”, said WMO, sometimes causing river flooding and flash floods due to glacier lake outbursts.

The cryosphere – namely glaciers, snow cover, ice caps and, where present, permafrost – is the world’s biggest natural reservoir of freshwater.

Soils

Being water –or rather the lack of it– a major cause-effect of the fast-growing deterioration of natural resources, and the consequent damage to the world’s food production, the theme of World Soil Day 2022, marked 5 December, is “Soils: Where food begins.”

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO):

• 95% of our food comes from soils.
• 18 naturally occurring chemical elements are essential to plants. Soils supply 15.
• Agricultural production will have to increase by 60% to meet the global food demand in 2050.
• 33% of soils are degraded.

Dangerously poisoned

In addition to the life of humans, animals, and plants, one of the sectors that most depend on water–crops is now highly endangered.

Indeed, since the 1950s, reminds the United Nations, innovations like synthetic fertilisers, chemical pesticides and high-yield cereals have helped humanity dramatically increase the amount of food it grows.

“But those inventions would be moot without agriculture’s most precious commodity: fresh water. And it, say researchers, is now under threat.”

Moreover, pollution, climate change and over-abstraction are beginning to compromise the lakes, rivers, and aquifers that underpin farming globally, reports the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

Salinised and plastified

Such is the case, among many others, of the growing salinisation and ‘plastification’ of the world’s soils.

In fact, currently, it is estimated that there are more than 833 million hectares of salt-affected soils around the globe (8.7% of the planet). This implies the loss of soil’s capacity to grow food and also increasing impacts on water and the ability to filter pollution.

Soil salinisation and sodification are major soil degradation processes threatening ecosystems and are recognised as being among the most important problems at a global level for agricultural production, food security and sustainability in arid and semi-arid regions, said the UN on occasion of the 2021 World Soil Day.

Wastewater

Among the major causes that this international body highlights is that in some arid areas, there has been an increase in the amount of wastewater used to grow crops.

“The problem can be exacerbated by flooding, which can inundate sewage systems or stores of fertiliser, polluting both surface water and groundwater.” Fertiliser run-off can cause algal blooms in lakes.

Meanwhile, the amount of freshwater per capita has fallen by 20% over the last two decades and nearly 60% of irrigated cropland is water-stressed.

The implications of those shortages are far-reaching: irrigated agriculture contributes 40% of total food produced worldwide.

Soils are highly living organisms

“Did you know that there are more living organisms in a tablespoon of soil than people on Earth?”

Soil is a world made up of organisms, minerals, and organic components that provide food for humans and animals through plant growth, explains this year’s World Soils Day.

Agricultural systems lose nutrients with each harvest, and if soils are not managed sustainably, fertility is progressively lost, and soils will produce nutrient-deficient plants.

Soil nutrient loss is a major soil degradation process threatening nutrition. It is recognised as being among the most critical problems at a global level for food security and sustainability all around the globe.

‘Hidden’ hunger

Over the last 70 years, the level of vitamins and nutrients in food has drastically decreased, and it is estimated that 2 billion people worldwide suffer from a lack of micronutrients, known as hidden hunger because it is difficult to detect.

“Soil degradation induces some soils to be nutrient depleted, losing their capacity to support crops, while others have such a high nutrient concentration that represents a toxic environment to plants and animals, pollutes the environment and causes climate change.”

Water scarcity in the Middle East is impacting on lives and causing diplomatic tensions in between countries. The Turkish dam project, which includes the large Ataturk and Ilisu dams, has reduced water flow to the Tigris River’s natural channel impacting Syria and Iraq. Pictured here is Koctepe - a village covered by water in the Ilisu dam project. Credit: Mustafa Bilge Satkın/Climate Visuals Countdown

By Hisham Allam
Sharm El Sheikh, Nov 17 2022 (IPS)

The Middle East and North Africa are the world’s most water-scarce regions – with 11 of the 17 water-stressed countries on the globe.

According to UNICEF, nine out of 10 children live in areas with high or very high-water stress, resulting in significant consequences for their health, cognitive development, and future livelihoods.

Now climate change is resulting in less rain for agriculture and a decline in the quality of freshwater reserves due to saltwater transfer to fresh aquifers and increased pollution concentrations.

Maha Rashid, Middle East managing committee member for Blue Peace, which works for water cooperation among borders, sectors, and generations to foster peace, stability, and sustainable development, says the situation in the region is dire.

“More than 60% of this region’s population lives in areas of high or very high-water stress, compared to the global average of about 35%. While the Middle East and North Africa have continued to experience water scarcity for thousands of years, several interconnected challenges today threaten environmental sustainability and security for the region’s water supply.”

Water scarcity is expected to impact development in the Middle East. Credit: Hisham Allam/IPS

As COP27 negotiations continue at Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt, people in the Middle East are dealing with the impacts of climate change. Rashid explained that Iraq relies on water from Turkey and Iran, as well as rain and snow, to feed its rivers, especially in the spring. Water revenues to Iraq’s rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, dropped for the third season in succession. The current season has experienced a more severe and unprecedented fall not seen for several years, and water levels in the Euphrates and Tigris rivers declined, and drought conditions are experienced in the rivers and lakes in Diyala Governorate.

The Turkish dam system, which includes the large Ataturk and Ilisu dams, has reduced water flow to the Tigris River’s natural channel. It will result in a 10 billion cubic metre annual reduction in water flow for downstream countries – like Syria and Iraq.

Despite having large amounts of arable land, Iraq will not be able to achieve food and water security. Instead, over the long term, water will confine development, plans, and programs and not bring food or water security, says Rashid, who is also a professor at Tigris University, told IPS.

Water insecurity in the region had also impacted international relations, with tensions arising over Ethiopia’s building of the Renaissance Dam for irrigation and electricity generation without considering the significant effects on Egypt and Sudan. Now the threat of water scarcity is growing for the two countries, followed by food security and potential future natural disasters.

The Middle East is now experiencing rising temperatures, which is one of the effects of climate change. As a result, North Africa is now experiencing drought in some regions and torrential downpours in others.

According to Rashid, since 2010, which set new temperature records in 19 countries, many of which were Arab nations, countries are experiencing summertime temperatures of up to 54 degrees Celsius, including in Iraq and Morocco, where two-thirds of the oases have vanished as a result of decreased precipitation and increased evaporation. Saudi Arabia and Sudan are also experiencing fierce sandstorms.

These climatic changes are predicted to get worse unless the inhabitants and governments of the area deal with them properly and urgently over the course of the next fifty years.

Rashid contended that doing this calls for more prudent resource management as well as adjustments to sectoral and economic models, mindsets, and behaviours. While she is optimistic about the outcome of the climate negotiations, most countries have not committed to implementing the recommendations and reducing carbon emissions since the COP 26 climate summit in Scotland.

“I believe that COP27 will address climate change issues and, in the end, will insist on finding a method that works to save poor communities.”

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A Dalit woman stands outside a dry toilet located in an upper caste villager’s home in Mainpuri, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Credit: Shai Venkatraman/IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Nov 14 2022 (IPS)

For those who have it, a toilet is that ‘thing’ in the bathroom, next to the bidet, the hand-washing sink with hot and cold water faucets, and the bathtub.

Given their ‘unprestigious’ function, some billionaires, in particular in the Gulf oil-producer kingdoms, fancy to pose their buttocks on a solid-gold toilet. Once they are there, why not also solid-gold faucets?

Many others prefer a more comfortable use of their toilets, thus endowing them with both automatic heating and flushing. And anyway, being given-for-granted, nobody would give a thought to the high importance of all these ‘things’.

The other side of the coin shows an entirely different picture. A shocking one by the way.

Billions of humans without one

And it is a fact that close to 4 billion people –or about half of the world’s total population of 8 billion– still live without access to a safe toilet and other sanitation facilities.

Nearly a full decade ago, the international community, represented in the United Nations General Assembly, decided to declare 19 November every single year, as a world day to address such a staggering problem.

And year after year, the UN continues to behave ‘politically correct’ by saying that progress and achievements were anyway made, however much would still be to do.

Despite such ‘correctness,’ the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, stated on the Day that the world is “seriously off track to keep our promise of safe toilets for all by 2030 – a crucial indicator in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Investment in sanitation systems is too low and progress remains too slow.”

Photo courtesy: Shelter Associates

The facts

Well, this year’s World Toilet Day (19 November) provides some shocking facts:

Death of the children: Every day, over 800 children under age five years old die from diarrhoea linked to unsafe water, sanitation and poor hygiene.

Poor sanitation is linked to the transmission of diarrhoeal diseases such as cholera and dysentery, as well as typhoid, intestinal worm infections and polio. It exacerbates stunting and contributes to the spread of antimicrobial resistance.

Globally, 1 in 3 schools do not have adequate toilets, and 23% of schools have no toilets at all. Schools without toilets can cause girls to miss out on their education. Without proper sanitation facilities, many are forced to miss school when they are on their period.

Open defecation: about 900 million people worldwide practice open defecation, meaning they go outside – on the side of the road, in bushes or rubbish heaps. It’s often a matter of where they live: 90% of people who practice open defecation live in rural areas.

Of these, 494 million still defecate in the open, for example in street gutters, behind bushes or into open bodies of water.

Moreover, the lack of sanitation services, just in the year 2020, stood behind the fact that 45% of the household wastewater generated globally was discharged without safe treatment.

Consequently, at least 10% of the world’s population is thought to consume food irrigated by wastewater.

Safely managed sanitation protects groundwater from human waste pollution. Credit: Lova Rabary-Rakontondravony/IPS

The impact on underground water

Should all this not be enough, the 2022 World Toilet Day focuses on another invisible fact: the grave impacts of such a sanitation crisis on groundwater, which is the source of up to 99% of the world’s fresh water.

The 2022 campaign ‘Making the invisible visible’ explores how inadequate sanitation systems spread human waste into rivers, lakes and soil, polluting underground water resources.

However, this problem seems to be invisible. Invisible because it happens underground. Invisible because it happens in the poorest and most marginalised communities.

Groundwater is the world’s most abundant source of freshwater. It supports drinking water supplies, sanitation systems, farming, industry and ecosystems. As climate change worsens and populations grow, groundwater is vital for human survival.

The invisible dangers

The central message of World Toilet Day 2022 is that safely managed sanitation protects groundwater from human waste pollution.

See why:

Safe sanitation protects groundwater. Toilets that are properly located and connected to safely managed sanitation systems, collect, treat and dispose of human waste, and help prevent human waste from spreading into groundwater.

Sanitation must withstand climate change. Toilets and sanitation systems must be built or adapted to cope with extreme weather events, so that services always function and groundwater is protected.

The above shows how those ‘things’ in the bathroom can be life-saving.

Moreover, for those who are obsessed with measuring human suffering in purely money-making terms, it should be enough to know that providing adequate sanitation is a good business: each 1 US dollar invested in it means 5 US dollars saved in health services.

By Edgardo Ayala
SUCHITOTO, El Salvador, Nov 11 2022 (IPS)

Several community-run water projects powered by solar energy have improved the quality of life of thousands of rural families in areas that were the scene of heavy fighting during El Salvador’s civil war in the 1980s.

The families now have running water, thanks to a collective effort launched when the war ended in 1992, after they returned to their former homes, which they had fled years earlier because of the intense fighting.

The largest of these community water systems driven by solar power is located in the canton of El Zapote, Suchitoto municipality, in the central Salvadoran department of Cuscatlán.

“The first step was to come together and buy this place to drill the well, do tests and build the tank, and we had a lot of help from other organizations that supported us,” Ángela Pineda, president of the Zapote-Platanares Community-Rural Association for Water, Health and the Environment, told IPS.

The association is a “junta de agua” or water board, which are community organizations that bring water to remote areas of El Salvador where the government does not have the capacity to supply it, such as the one installed in the canton of El Zapote.

There are an estimated 2,500 water boards in the country, providing service to 25 percent of the population, or some 1.6 million people. The vast majority of them operate with energy from the national power grid.

But five of the boards, located in the vicinity of Suchitoto, obtained financial support from organizations such as Companion Communities Development Alternatives (CoCoDA), based in Indianapolis, Indiana, for taking a technological leap towards operating with solar energy.

“The advantage is that the systems are powered by clean, renewable energies that do not pollute the environment,” Karilyn Vides, director of operations in El Salvador for the U.S.-based CoCoDA, told IPS.

Four previous projects of this type, supported since 2010 by CoCoDA, were small, with less than 10 solar panels. But the one mounted in the canton of El Zapote was planned to be equipped with 96 panels, when it was conceived in 2021.

It was inaugurated in June 2022, although it had been operating since 2004, with hydropower from the national grid.

This effort benefits more than 2,500 families settled around Suchitoto and on the slopes of Guazapa mountain which during the 12-year civil war was a stronghold of the then guerrilla Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), now a political party that governed the country between 2009 and 2019.

However, when including the four other small solar water projects, plus five that continue to operate with electricity from the national grid, all financially supported by CoCoDA after the end of the war, the total number of beneficiaries climbs to 10,000 people.

El Salvador’s bloody armed conflict left some 75,000 people dead and more than 8,000 missing. between 1980 and 1992.

Aerial view of the community water system located in the canton of El Zapote, in the municipality of Suchitoto in central El Salvador. Mounted on the roof are the 96 solar panels that generate the electricity needed to power the entire electrical and hydraulic mechanism that brings water to more than 2,500 families in this rural area of the country, which in the 1980s was the scene of heavy fighting during the Salvadoran civil war. CREDIT: Alex Leiva/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SUCHITOTO, El Salvador , Nov 3 2022 (IPS)

The need for potable water led several rural settlements in El Salvador, at the end of the 12-year civil war in 1992, to rebuild what was destroyed and to innovate with technologies that at the time seemed unattainable, but which now benefit hundreds of families.

Several communities located in areas that were once the scene of armed conflict are now supplied with water through community systems powered by clean energy, such as solar power."The advantage is that the systems are powered by clean, renewable energies that do not pollute the environment.” -- Karilyn Vides

“The advantage is that the systems are powered by clean, renewable energies that do not pollute the environment,” Karilyn Vides, director of operations in El Salvador for the U.S.-based organization Companion Community Development Alternatives (CoCoDA), told IPS.

Hope where there was once war

The organization, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, has supported the development of 10 community water systems in El Salvador since 1992, five of them powered by solar energy.

These initiatives have benefited some 10,000 people whose water systems were destroyed during the conflict. Local residents had to start from scratch after returning years later.

A local resident of the Sitio el Zapotal community in El Zapote canton, El Salvador, turns on the tap to fill his sink to collect the water he will need for the day. A total of 10,000 people have benefited from the five solar-powered community water projects in El Salvador since 2010. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

This small Central American country experienced a bloody civil war between 1980 and 1992, which left some 75,000 people dead and more than 8,000 missing.

“Before leaving their communities, some families had water systems, but when they returned they had been completely destroyed, and they had to be rebuilt,” Vides said, during a tour by IPS to the Junta Administradora de Agua Potable or water board in the canton of El Zapote, Suchitoto municipality, in the central Salvadoran department of Cuscatlán.

In El Salvador, the term Junta Administradora de Agua Potable refers to community associations that, on their own initiative, manage to drill a well, build a tank and the entire distribution structure to provide service where the government has not had the capacity to do so.

There are an estimated 2,500 such water boards in the country, which provide service to 25 percent of the population, or some 1.6 million people, according to local environmental organizations.

But most of the water boards operate with hydroelectric power provided by the national grid, while the villages around Suchitoto have managed, with the support of CoCoDA and local organizations, to run on solar energy.

The community water project in the Salvadoran community of Sitio El Zapotal was driven by the efforts of local residents and international donors. At the foot of the catchment tank stand Karilyn Vides of CoCoDA, consultant and former guerrilla fighter René Luarca (front) – a member of the project’s water board – and former guerrilla Luis Antonio Landaverde (left), together with two technicians. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

This area is located on the slopes of the Guazapa mountain north of San Salvador, which during the civil war was a key stronghold of the then guerrilla Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), now a political party that governed the country between 2009 and 2019.

Some of the people behind the creation of the water board in the canton of El Zapote were part of the guerrilla units entrenched on Guazapa mountain.

“This area was heavily bombed and shelled, day and night,” Luis Antonio Landaverde, 56, a former guerrilla fighter who had to leave the front lines when a bomb explosion fractured his leg in July 1985, told IPS.

“A bomb dropped by an A37 plane fell nearby and broke my right leg, and I could no longer fight,” said Landaverde, who sits on the El Zapote water board.

The Junta de Agua del Cantón El Zapote, in central El Salvador, is the largest solar-powered community water project in the country, although it uses electricity from the national grid, from hydroelectric sources, as backup. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Peasant farmers in the technological vanguard

At the end of the war in 1992, communities in the foothills of Guazapa began to organize themselves to set up their community water systems, at first using the national power grid, generated by hydroelectric sources.

Then they realized that the cost of the electricity and bringing the grid to remote villages was too high, and necessity and creativity drove them to look for other options.

“I was already very involved in alternative energy, and we thought that bringing in electricity would be as expensive as installing a solar energy system,” René Luarca, one of the architects of the use of sunlight in the community systems, told IPS.

The first solar-powered water system was built in 2010 in the Zacamil II community, in the Suchitoto area, benefiting some 40 families.

And because it worked so well, four similar projects followed in 2017.

Two were carried out around that municipality, and another in the rural area of the department of Cabañas, in the north of the country.

Given the project’s success, an effort was even made to develop a similar system in the community of Zacataloza, in the municipality of Ciudad Antigua, in the department of Nueva Segovia in northwestern Nicaragua.

The total investment exceeded 200,000 dollars, financed by CoCoDA’s U.S. partner organizations.

However, these were smallscale initiatives, benefiting an average of 100 families per project.

“There were eight panels, they were tiny, like little toys,” said Luarca, 80, known in the area as “Jerry,” his pseudonym during the war when he was a guerrilla in the National Resistance, one of the five organizations that made up the FMLN.

Then came the big challenge: to set up the project in the canton of El Zapote, which would require more panels and would provide water to a much larger number of families.

“This has been the biggest challenge, because there are no longer four panels – there are 96,” said Luarca.

A valve connected to the pump of the community water system in central El Salvador measures the pressure at which the liquid is being pumped to a catchment tank, located on a hill five kilometers away. The water flows down by gravity to the beneficiary families, who pay a monthly fee of six dollars for 12 cubic meters of water. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

The water system in El Zapote is a hybrid setup. This allows it to use solar energy as the main source, but it is backed up by the national grid, fueled by hydropower, when there is no sunshine or there are other types of failures.

“Since it is a fairly large system, it is not 100 percent solar, but is hybrid, so that it has both options,” explained Eliseo Zamora, 42, who is in charge of monitoring the operation of the equipment.

Using the pump, driven by a 30-horsepower motor, water is piped from the well to a tank perched on top of a hill, about five kilometers away as the crow flies.

From there, water flows by gravity down to the villages through a 25-kilometer network of pipes that zigzag under the subsoil, until reaching the families’ taps.

The project started when the armed conflict ended, but it took several years to buy the land, with resources from the six communities involved, and to acquire the machinery for the hydraulic system. It began operating in 2004 with electricity from the national grid, before CoCoDA switched to supporting the solar infrastructure.

For the installation of the panels and the adaptation of the system, the water board contributed 14,000 dollars, part of it from the hours worked by the villagers.

The new solar power system was inaugurated in June 2022 and benefits some 10 communities in the area – more than 2,500 families.

The service fee is six dollars per month for 12 cubic meters of water. For each additional cubic meter, the users are charged 0.55 cents.

“Our water is excellent, it is good for all kinds of human consumption,” the president of the water board, Ángela Pineda, told IPS.

Credit: United Nations

By Guillaume Baggio and Manzoor Qadir
HAMILTON, Canada, Oct 20 2022 (IPS)

Global progress has been staggeringly inadequate against Sustainable Development Goal 6, “clean water and sanitation for all.”

According to the latest SDGs progress assessment, 2 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water, 3.6 billion lack sanitation services, and 3 billion lack basic hygiene services.

Waterborne diseases continue to take a heavy toll on the global community, with hotspots in developing countries most acutely affected.

To address this crisis, the United Nations launched the SDG 6 Global Acceleration Framework in 2020 to fast-track progress. The framework is a roadmap for aligning national policies and financial resources and scaling up action at all levels, but it has two fundamental flaws that need to be addressed.

Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic

First, the Framework largely overlooks the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the means by which safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene services will be provided where needed.

The pandemic badly affected and continues to affect the financial, political, and institutional structures and the social fabric of countries. Debt and inflation in many countries are rising while foreign investment declined by 35 per cent from 2019 to 2021.

The ability to make critical capital improvements has also been drastically affected during the pandemic, causing a delay in completing planned water and sanitation infrastructure and further enfeebling already underfunded services in developing countries.

Global and national financial, political, and institutional structures need to be reshaped, and the social fabric repaired as part of a truly transformative sustainability agenda.

Undervaluing SDGs interlinkages

Second, the SDG 6 Global Acceleration Framework undervalues the potential of strengthening interlinkages across SDGs. While it recognizes the importance of SDG 6 interlinkages, it does not call for systematic change in traditional forms of decision-making in the water and sanitation sector.

The risks of addressing SDGs individually without considering their interlinkages was the subject of warnings early in this global process. Moreover, SDG interlinkages are context-specific and depend on several factors, such as geography, governance, or socio-economic conditions.

The current economic slowdown could push another 263 million people into extreme poverty in 2022 — a number roughly equal to the combined populations of Germany, France, the UK and Spain — further compounding challenges across critical dimensions of sustainable development, such as health, education, gender, and water and sanitation.

Policy coherence is indispensable to sustainable development. A post-pandemic framework for sustainability requires policies that are mutually supportive across multiple sectors. Countries must move on from merely identifying interlinkages between SDGs to strengthening and acting on them.

Two actions to bridge the gaps

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic clearly necessitate better coordinated multi-sectoral policies. Next year, UN Member States meet at the UN 2023 Water Conference for the midterm review of the Water Action Decade 2018-2028, an effort to galvanize social, economic, and environmental action.

National decision-makers and development actors need to act on the following recommendations:

1. Prioritizing critical SDG 6 targets in the post-pandemic context. This means reshaping and strengthening today’s inadequate means of implementation and coming to the UN 2023 Water Conference with bold pledges, concentrating resources on bringing drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene services to the most vulnerable people — women and girls, migrants, the urban poor, schools, and hospitals, by 2030.

2. Harnessing the potential of SDGs interlinkages in policies and implementation plans at all levels. Accelerating the achievement of SDG 6 supports many other SDGs, particularly those related to health, education, food, gender equality, energy, and climate change. In the context of scarce financial resources and insufficient capacity, countries can prioritize strongly interlinked SDGs to yield achievements across multiple sectors.

We have seen and heard continuous global commitments to support the necessary conditions for sustainable development. In the post-pandemic context, progress in the water and sanitation sector has a new multifaceted purpose offering a wealth of benefits. It is time to realize them.

Guillaume Baggio is a Research Assistant at the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences, University of Toronto, and Manzoor Qadir is Assistant Director at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.

UNU-INWEH is supported by the Government of Canada and hosted by McMaster University.

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Aug 24 2022 (IPS)

When I was a child, a friend asked me: “How would you describe a tree to someone who has never seen one?” I looked at the trees surrounding us and realised it was impossible, considering their versatility, beauty and utter strangeness. Since that time, I have often wondered about trees, as well as I have been worried by the indiscriminate destruction of trees and forests.

Trees are a prerequisite for life and intimately connected with humans’ existence. In these times of climate change, many of us are becoming increasingly aware of the life-promoting function of trees. How they produce oxygen, fix the carbon content of the atmosphere, clean and cool the air, regulate precipitation, purify the water, and control the water flow.

Throughout history, humans have been intertwined with the trees. Our shared cultural history bears witness to the fascination humanity has felt when it comes to the power and mystery of trees. Trees are present in many mythologies and religions: – Yggdrasil, the cosmic tree of Nordic mythology, Yaxche, the Mayan peoples’ Tree of the World, the Sycamore, Isis’ (godess of all feminine divine powers) sacred tree in ancient Egypt, Asvattha, the sacred fig tree in Southern India, the Bodhi tree, Tree of Awakening, among Buddhists, the Kien Mou, Tree of Renewal, among the Chinese, and the Sidrat al-Muntaha, Tree of the Farthest Boundary, in Islam.

The shape of the tree has for the human mind come to represent logical systems and helped us to bring order into chaos. As thought models we still use trees to depict genealogy, or explain the course of evolution and the grammar and origins of languages. Even our body structure seems to mimic the trees; skeleton, lungs, blood vessels, lymphatic vessels and neural pathways. We breathe through the tree-like network of the lungs – the bronchioles.

A walk through a forest can in a mysterious manner confirm our intimate connection with trees. If we are attentive enough, we might be seized by the feeling of another presence; incomprehensible, though nevertheless mighty and complete. It is as if the forest embraces us, observes us, speaks to us. The wind makes the forest foliage speak. Trees and bushes feed and protect songbirds and other animals. Trees thus contain the miraculous power of music – most musical instruments are made of wood.

There are several indications that our ancestors were arboreal creatures. Something our way of thinking and not least our physical constitution testify to – a flexible spine, extended arms and highly efficient hands. Claws have turned into fingernails and delicate fingertips. Our set of teeth and digestive organs have been adapted to food found among the trees – nuts, fruits, eggs, small animals. We have become omnivores and unlike cattle who feel the solid ground beneath their feet, and whose bodies have been adapted to it, human beings have developed their thinking, hearing, sight, and sense of smell to the unstable reality of tree crowns.

The creatures we descended from were constantly at risk of missteps leading to fatal falls, something that sharpened their minds and made them plan for uncertainty, danger and the unexpected. They learned to notice subtle, environmental changes and observe how other creatures adapted to them. They didn’t feel safe in open landscapes, feared the void, and only felt relatively safe if surrounded by the reassuring enclosure of greenery. We still prefer to walk among trees, rather than along sterile transport routes, filled with noise and air ollution, lined by ugly facades, supermarkets, industries, and parking lots.

The presence of trees pleases and calms us. A forest walk, or a restful time spent in a leafy park, invigorate us. Studies carried out in offices and hospitals have proven that people who do not have a view of and/or access to leafy surroundings are more prone to stress and depression, while sick people surrounded by a sterile environment, without an open view to greenery, recover more slowly than those who perceive the closeness of nature. Perhaps one reason to why older hospitals and sanatoriums generally were surrounded by tree-rich parks and flower plantations. It is energising to find oneself within a natural realm, far away from computer screens, plastic and concrete.

Contrary to humans, who generally exploit nature for their own benefit, trees take and give. They receive power and nourishment from the heat and energy of the sun, which through the photosynthesis is converted into oxygen and organic matter. The root system connects trees to earth’s nutrients, which in the open are converted into leaves, wood, and fertilisers.

Trees make up the main part of the earth’s biomass, both above and below ground. Through branches and leaves they create a maximum contact surface with the air and their wide-spread roots provide them with a firm anchorage, while helping them to assimilate nutrients. Trees support and provide for themselves, at the same time as they support and provide for the entire world.

A tree is never alone, it merges with its environment. It adapts to the atmosphere’s mixture of gases and the earth´s subterranean water. Through a constant symbiosis with its environment a tree contributes to the creation and maintenance of its life- preserving substances.

Each branch and leaf adapt itself to the presence of its neighbours. Plants support each other. They unite death and life. Dead branches and leaves fertilize the soil, while roots and capillaries pump water out of the ground. A life-giving cycle that transforms, regulates and creates. Through evapotranspiration forested areas charge the atmosphere with water vapour and thus create rains, nourishing vegetation and replenishing the groundwater. Leaves capture part of the solar energy, which they transform into organic matter saturated with cosmic energy. The life cycle of trees is determined by the length of the days and varied temperatures. They constitute a living source, which flow of oxygen and nutrients is consumed by animals and humans. Furthermore, trees contribute to the formation of an ozone layer, which protects us from the sun’s excessively strong ultraviolet rays.

Roots intertwine/communicate with other roots. Together with the mycelial threads of fungi, an underground life-promoting biosphere is created—the mycorrhiza, where bacteria fix nitrogen and supply the trees with minerals that otherwise would be difficult to obtain, such as phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, copper, zinc and manganese. If you give the plants nutritional supplements in the form of artificial fertilizers, they stop feeding the symbiotic fungi, which die and disappear. A growing tree becomes increasingly complex. Filled as its crown is with buds and new shoots it is constantly renewed. It spreads out and protects the earth. Flowers, leaves and fruits flourish within its crown. Trees are always directed towards the future. They are never completed, growing and developing in unison with the time
cycles of Cosmos. Quietly, they compromise with the forces surrounding them. The patient adaptability of trees is completely different from humans’ everyday life, which increasingly is built up from fragments in the form of e-mails, text messages and tweets, communication processes that alienate us from life, from closeness to nature and our fellow human beings.

The tree has an inner time, manifested through its annual rings. When we experience how a tree we have planted begins to grow we sense the future and gain confidence in it. Trees adapt to difficult conditions and can provide us with life and beauty. They meet our expectations.

Leaves are the elementary, structural and functional unit of a tree. A large tree carries millions of leaves diligently transforming light and water into matter and not the least fruits and seeds. Trees are firmly rooted in the earth, though that hasn’t hindered them from spreading across the world. Their seeds break free from the anchorage of roots and branches, to be carried away by animals, people, wind and water.

Even though trees sustain life and provide us with joy and inspiration, we do not revere them. Instead, we abuse them, exploit them mercilessly, killing them for personal gain and profit. We have left the geological epoch of Holocene behind and entered Anthropocene (when everything is changed by humans). Even if we, against all odds, were to experience a population decline and if agriculture became dependent on sustainable farming methods, we have irreversibly altered our living conditions – the atmosphere, the hydrosphere and the biosphere. Is there any hope for humanity to survive? Can trees give us hope?

Many of us assume that tropical forests generate their abundance from fertile soil. But the soil they grow upon is generally quite poor and constantly washed by abundant rains. It is not on the ground that we find the greatest fertility, but in the tree crowns. Jungles believed to be primeval forests have often taken over land earlier used for agriculture. Large parts of the Amazon Forest were once populated by farmers who perished and disappeared through smallpox and other deadly diseases brought to them by the Europeans. Many of today’s lush and abundant tropical forests grow upon on land that has been depleted either by rain, or intensive agriculture.

The adaptability of trees is amazing. Deserted land, even if it has been devastated by industrial/harmful mono-cultivation and/or once harboured forests subjected to reckless depredation, have demonstrated a remarkable ability to revive itself, creating hybrid ecosystems where life of the old kind mix with newly introduced plants while adapting to drastically changing environmental conditions. Such regenerated, self-planted forests exhibit an unexpected diversity of species that protect soil and plant life, fix atmospheric carbon, and begin to produce timber, wood and charcoal. For example, in the Brazilian District of Para, 25 percent of the area taken from the Amazon jungle has become forest land again and strangely enough its capacity to bind carbon dioxide is twenty times greater than that of the old forests, while birds and other animals have returned.

However, this cannot mean that we can continue exterminating earth’s essential life-sustainers. i.e. trees and forests. Soon it will be far too late to save them, ourselves and our descendants.

Main source : Tassin, Jacques (2018) Penser comme un arbre. Paris: Odile Jacob.

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Ecuador, Peru and their three shared water basins: the Puyango-Tumbes, Catamayo-Chira and Zarumilla Watersheds and Aquifers. Credit: UNDP Ecuador

By Andrew Hudson and Katharina Davis
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 23 2022 (IPS)

We tend to associate rivers and lakes with the countries in which they are located. Yet a little-known fact is that more than half of the world’s freshwater bodies are shared.

Indeed, 153 countries share at least one of the world’s 256 transboundary river and lake basins. In an age of rapid development and climate change, the equitable and sustainable management of precious natural resources such as water are essential to global food security, economic development, and to reducing poverty.

Freshwater systems also provide the vital basis for energy production, transport, tourism and other economic activities. Around the world, many shared freshwater ecosystems face severe degradation, having been battered by poorly planned dams, pollution, habitat loss, overfishing, climate change, and the introduction of invasive species.

That’s why the UN Water Convention is so significant, and worth commemorating on its 30th anniversary, as the United Nations did on June 30th. Formally known as “The Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes,” it outlines how to improve transboundary cooperation.

Opened in 2003 for global membership, the Water Convention has 44 parties, and many more have asked to join. According to progress tracked for the UN Global Goal on transboundary waters, barely more than half of the shared waters are covered by an operational arrangement.

Given the degraded state of shared freshwater ecosystems and knock-on socio-economic effects, it is critical that we put proper cooperative arrangements in place.

Beyond the formal commitment to cooperate on transboundary waters, the convention has in many cases served as inspiration and a model for the development, negotiation, adoption and coming into force of individual shared waterbody legal frameworks and their associated institutional mechanisms.

The benefits go beyond the equitable and sustainable use of water resources. The convention has promoted and advanced regional economic integration, reduced the risk of multi-country conflict, contributing to regional security and peace.

UNDP is active in more than 30 transboundary river and lake basins, and groundwater systems in four continents. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) created dedicated support for the political aspects of transboundary water cooperation, or water diplomacy, through the Shared Waters Partnership.

To assist countries to operationalize management on shared water systems, UNDP supports joint waterbody assessments and diagnostics; the establishment of multi-country institutions and their secretariats; joint development and management of a vision, strategy and action plans; institutionalization of regular exchange of data and information; and exchange of regular, formal communication between countries.

Cooperation between neighbours can affect water management and broader peace and security. UNDP’s transboundary waters portfolio, largely financed by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), includes many projects:

1. The Drin Basin in the southeast Balkans: Connecting five countries and five water bodies in Albania, Greece, Kosovo*, Montenegro and North Macedonia, the Drin Basin sustains unique ecosystems and endemic biodiversity, while supporting the economic activity of over 1.6 million people. This initiative addressed increasing ecological degradation and climate change in the basin through the Drin Coordinated Action agreement developed in 2011. Key achievements include the Drin Core Group, the de facto joint coordination body; the Transboundary Diagnostic Analysis as well as the endorsement of the Strategic Action Programme, including the steps to address the main transboundary problems.

2. Ecuador, Peru and their three shared water basins: the Puyango-Tumbes, Catamayo-Chira and Zarumilla Watersheds and Aquifers: This collaboration takes place in the context of a long history of border disputes in the Amazon basin.

In 2017, a Binational Commission for Integrated Water Resources Management in the Ecuadorian-Peruvian transboundary basins were established to consolidate bilateral cooperation for peace, as well as for the use and management of water resources. The project strengthened the Binational Commission to facilitate cooperation and joint action and developed stakeholder capacities to improve the management of water resources.

As we consider the mounting pressures facing our rivers and lakes, it is important that all transboundary water basins are governed and managed collaboratively.

The Water Convention has set formal transboundary cooperation in motion, and the 2030 Global Goals, with a dedicated target – SDG 6.5 – on integrated water resources management at all levels, including through transboundary waters, represents an important goalpost.

Given that nearly half of the world’s transboundary waters still lack an operational cooperative arrangement less than eight years before the 2030 mark, there is an urgent need to support countries to develop the capacity to sustainably manage shared waters.

The UN Water Convention will continue to inspire and support progress towards this key target.

* References to Kosovo shall be understood to be in the context of Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999)

Andrew Hudson is Head of Water and Ocean Governance Programme, UNDP and Katharina Davis is Thematic Expert on Water, Climate and Urban Resilience, UNDP.

Source: UNDP Blog

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Over 2 billion people live in water-stressed countries, which is expected to be exacerbated in some regions as a result of climate change and population growth. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS.

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Aug 22 2022 (IPS)

This is how the Muslims’ Holy Book – the Quran refers to the most precious element of life.

Religions apart, also UNESCO underlines the fact that “water is a unique and non-substitutable resource.”

Now comes the question if water is finite or infinite? UNESCO says that it is “of limited quantity.” And the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that water use has been growing globally at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century.

Globally, at least 2 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces. Microbial contamination of drinking-water as a result of contamination with faeces poses the greatest risk to drinking-water safety

Essentially, it says, demographic growth and economic development are putting unprecedented pressure on renewable, but “finite” water resources.

Anyway, the reality is that, over the last decades, Planet Earth has been facing an alarming problem of water scarcity.

Indeed, it is estimated that over 2 billion people live in water-stressed countries, which is expected to be exacerbated in some regions as a result of climate change and population growth.

Why is water scarce?

Before going further, it might be convenient to report that there are several dimensions of water scarcity that can be summarised as follows:

– Scarcity in availability of fresh water of acceptable quality with respect to aggregated demand, in the simple case of physical water shortage;

– Scarcity in access to water services, because of the failure of institutions in place to ensure reliable supply of water to users;

– Scarcity due to the lack of adequate infrastructure, irrespective of the level of water resources, due to financial constraints.

Dangerously polluted

These three explanations are aggravated by another fact: water is not only scarce – it is also highly contaminated. See these findings by the World Health Organization (WHO) and other UN bodies:

• Globally, at least 2 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces. Microbial contamination of drinking-water as a result of contamination with faeces poses the greatest risk to drinking-water safety.
• While the most important chemical risks in drinking water arise from arsenic, fluoride or nitrate, emerging contaminants such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and microplastics generate public concern.
• Safe and sufficient water facilitates the practice of hygiene, which is a key measure to prevent not only diarrhoeal diseases, but acute respiratory infections and numerous neglected tropical diseases.
• Microbiologically contaminated drinking water can transmit diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio and is estimated to cause 485.000 diarrhoeal deaths each year.

To the above data, UNESCO reports that 80% of all industrial and municipal wastewater is released into the environment. And that 50% of all malnutrition is due to the lack of water, sanitation and hygiene.

Food under threat

This already catastrophic situation is so grim that, in addition to the life of humans, animals, plants -–in short ‘Every Living Thing’–, one of the sectors that most depend on water–crops is now highly endangered.

Indeed, since the 1950s, reminds the United Nations, innovations like synthetic fertilisers, chemical pesticides and high-yield cereals have helped humanity dramatically increase the amount of food it grows.

“But those inventions would be moot without agriculture’s most precious commodity: fresh water. And it, say researchers, is now under threat.”

Moreover, pollution, climate change and over-abstraction are beginning to compromise the lakes, rivers, and aquifers that underpin farming globally, reports the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

Wastewater

Among the major causes that this international body highlights is that in some arid areas, there has been an increase in the amount of wastewater used to grow crops.

“The problem can be exacerbated by flooding, which can inundate sewage systems or stores of fertiliser, polluting both surface water and groundwater.”

Mounting risks

• Fertiliser run-off can cause algal blooms in lakes, killing fish. Storm run-off and forest fires are further risks to farming and food security.
• In some places around the world, pollution is also seeping into groundwater, with potential long-term impacts on crops, though more research is needed to establish the precise effects on plants and human health.
• The amount of freshwater per capita has fallen by 20% over the last two decades and nearly 60% of irrigated cropland is water-stressed.
• The implications of those shortages are far-reaching: irrigated agriculture contributes 40% of total food produced worldwide.

Now take a closer look at what is behind the decline of the world’s per capita freshwater reserves and how this is affecting farmers, as explained by the world body specialised in environmental issues.

Drought and aridification

Research shows that global warming is sparking longer-lasting droughts, like the record-setting dry spells that have gripped East Africa and the Western United States. This, say experts, is a prime example of climate change in the flesh.

According to the Global Land Outlook, a report by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), over one-third of the world’s population currently lives in water-scarce regions.

Groundwater

Groundwater supplies 43% of the water used for irrigation. But improvements in drilling technology over the last few decades have led to its unsustainable extraction in parts of the world, such as India.

FAO estimates that 10% of the global grain harvest is being produced by depleting groundwater resources.

Saltwater intrusion

Intensive irrigation can lead to a rise in the water table, syphoning salt into the soil and the roots of plants, affecting their growth.

As well, the overuse of groundwater can combine with climate-change-induced sea-level rise to cause saltwater to penetrate coastal groundwater aquifers. This can damage crops and their yields and affect drinking water supplies.

UNEP estimates that around one-tenth of rivers around the world are affected by salinity pollution.

Land degradation

Humanity has altered more than 70% of the Earth’s land area, causing what the Global Land Outlook called “unparalleled environmental degradation”. In many places, the ability of soils to store and filter water is waning, making it harder to grow crops and raise livestock.

All the above also leads to the steady loss of biodiversity.

The markets and the short-term profits

The way nature is valued in political and economic decisions is both a key driver of the global biodiversity crisis and a vital opportunity to address it, according to a four-year methodological assessment by 82 top scientists and experts from every region of the world.

The Assessment Report on the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature, released on 11 July 2022 by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), finds that:

• There is a “dominant global focus on short-term profits and economic growth, often excluding the consideration of multiple values of nature in policy decisions.”
• Economic and political decisions have predominantly prioritised certain values of nature, particularly market-based instrumental values of nature, such as those associated with food produced intensively.
• Although often privileged in policymaking, these market values do not adequately reflect how changes in nature affect people’s quality of life. Furthermore, policymaking overlooks the many non-market values associated with nature’s contributions to people, such as climate regulation and cultural identity.

Why is it now degraded faster than ever?

“Biodiversity is being lost and nature’s contributions to people are being degraded faster now than at any other point in human history,” said Ana María Hernández Salgar, Chair of IPBES.

“This is largely because our current approach to political and economic decisions does not sufficiently account for the diversity of nature’s values.”

During the first three months of the year, the Quebrada Santander Rural Sanitation System supplied three to four truckloads of water daily to supply the empty tanks in the neighboring town of Pichasca - solidarity typical of these systems in Chile, which did not endanger the supply of its members and was supported by special subsidies to cover the water emergency. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
RENGO, Chile, Aug 16 2022 (IPS)

Local leaders of the Rural Sanitation Services (RSS) warn that the digging of illegal wells by large agro-export companies in Chile is aggravating the effects of drought and threatening drinking water supplies and social peace.

Leaders of these programs also emphasize that the new constitution that may emerge from the Sept. 4 plebiscite would guarantee the human right to water, which would strengthen its management and that of river basins, in addition to facilitating a response to the water crisis to prevent it from triggering protests and social conflict.

Water rights were commercialized during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, and between 1994 and 2006 the governments in power during the democratic transition sold the large water utilities to foreign companies, which have controlled the water supply in Chile’s cities since then.

The water supply in rural areas, considered unprofitable by these companies, was left in the hands of the country’s 2,306 RSS, which were institutionalized and transformed into Rural Sanitation Services in 2020 by a legal reform. They operate throughout this long narrow South American country of 19.5 million people and have 7,000 leaders and 6,000 workers.

The RSS, made up of cooperatives, local residents’ committees and other social organizations of different sizes, have the role of guaranteeing the drinking water supply in rural areas, with the State as supervisor and infrastructure provider. It is possible that in the future they will also take on responsibility for sanitation.

These systems benefit 2.1 million people, to whom they provide water at a lower price than the distribution and sanitation companies.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, 90 percent of the RSS never stopped serving their users, and despite the quarantine most of them paid their monthly fees, to maintain the system.

The Directorate of Hydraulic Works (DOH) of the Public Works Ministry told IPS that during the 2021-2022 period it will invest some 57 million dollars in seeking new sources of supply, and in the conservation and integral improvement of the systems. For 2023 the projected investment is 14 million dollars.

Maintenance is an ongoing job at the La Alianza RSS in the town of Choapino, some 105 km south of Santiago, Chile. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Relief for growing water stress

The Chilean economy is based on mining, especially copper, and large agricultural exports, two industries that require large amounts of water in a country with limited water resources.

The result is growing water stress, which accentuates the tension between powerful industries and human consumption and small-scale agriculture, aggravated by the private management of an essential resource such as water.

Against this backdrop, the RSS have alleviated access to water, but as recurrent droughts and other climatic impacts accentuate the water deficit, their role is becoming more difficult, without a substantial change in the right to water.

Francisco Santander, treasurer of the RSS in Quebrada Santander, in the Andes foothills 450 km north of Santiago, told IPS that “the first well we drilled by hand with 20 members in 1999. Now there are 45 of us.”

“The largest 50-meter well was dug five years ago. It is one of the deepest in the municipality of Río Hurtado. We bought a piece of land and applied for a drilling project. The money was provided by the DOH,” he said in an interview from his hometown.

The investment included pumps, a solar panel for energy, gabions (a basket or container filled with earth, stones, or other material), a well and a 50,000 liter tank.

“Last summer, faced with the drought crisis, we sold water to Pichasca (a neighboring town). They asked us for help. We gave them up to four truckloads a day for their tanks and they paid with an emergency subsidy. Our well is holding up well under a moderate level of consumption,” Santander proudly explained.

The solar panel was the first in Rio Hurtado and reduced energy costs by one-sixth. It contributes to the low price charged for water: 1.3 dollars per cubic meter and 2.2 dollars as a basic service fee.

Gloria Alvarado with the RSS in El Patagual, which serves 800 members in Pichidegua, a municipality of 18,000 inhabitants 165 km south of Santiago, was president of the National Federation of Rural Drinking Water and was a member of the Constitutional Convention that drafted the new constitution that voters will approve or reject in next month’s plebiscite.

Speaking to IPS from El Patagual, as a national expert, she warned about the critical water situation caused by climate change and drought, which is aggravated by overuse, poor distribution of rights and deficient watershed management.

A view of the 75-cubic-meter water storage tank installed at La Alianza, in Choapino, where the office also operates to attend to the needs of members and receive payment of their bills. The users of these rural sanitation systems, which are common in Chile, are not usually late with their payments, because thanks to these systems they have water in a country where water management has mostly been privatized. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

“Petorca (a municipality 205 km north of Santiago) has a very green side with avocado plantations, but has another where the people have no water to drink and are supplied by water trucks. It is difficult for a 50-meter RSS well to compete with a 200-meter well,” she said, complaining about the agro-export companies.

She also alluded to the heavy use of water by forestry companies in southern Chile and mining companies “which until recently had no obligation to report their water use,” as they now do thanks to Article 56 of the new Water Code.

In Chile’s central valley, the plantations of fruit exporters have expanded exponentially, without any limits on their expansion, which has left many areas at water risk, Alvarado said.

“There is no land use planning or protection of the ecological function of the land. Today rural drinking water is at serious risk because there is unequal competition between those who extract for human consumption and those who extract for commercial and industrial use,” she said.

“Seventy-nine percent of water rights are in the hands of one percent of Chileans. It is inequitable and many families suffer the consequences,” she said, complaining that an essential resource has been transformed in Chile into a tradable commodity.

José Rivera is the administrator of the 500-family RSS in La Alianza in Choapino, in the municipality of Rengo, 105 km south of Santiago.

The town is part of the central region of O’Higgins, the largest exporter of fruit, wine, pork and chicken, “which basically means it exports water,” he said during a visit by IPS to the La Alianza facilities. As a result, he said, “we used to make 30-meter wells here, today we dig 100-meter wells, and in the nearby municipality of Machalí we dig 200 meters.”

According to Rivera, who is secretary of the National Federation of RSS Chile, another problem in O’Higgins is that for the last 10 years wells have been dug stealthily and without oversight.

“Farmers have so many plantations that they began to extract groundwater and make clandestine wells. There are thousands of wells” that nothing is known about and which are subject to no controls, he said.

Their RSS has two wells: one is 80 meters deep and the other 100. One collects water in a 75,000-liter metal tank and the other in a 200,000-liter concrete tank. A third 200,000-liter tank is planned.

“Before, we were basically the only ones who used groundwater. Today the agribusiness companies are replacing river water with groundwater and we have no inspectors in the General Water Directorate. They have no resources and no authorization to enter a farm,” Rivera said.

One solution, in his opinion, would be the use of drones to investigate unregistered wells.

“The biggest problem, and I’m speaking for the association, is that there is a war of wells. If I dig a 40-meter well, the farm will dig a 100-meter well and so on and so forth. The State will not have resources and neither will we. And there will be another outbreak of social unrest,” he predicted.

Rivera calls the situation “a silent water earthquake,” after touring the region and seeing the thousands of hectares of land planted.

“The coastal dry land is full of olive trees, where there were none before. Pichidegua is full of avocado trees. It is a crime because we have no water. The powerful, who own 500 or 1000 hectares, take water from here and transport it to the hills, where there are more and more plantations,” he said.

Meanwhile, “there are small farmers with five or six hectares who are without water,” he said, describing the situation as “serious, a powderkeg.”

José Rivera, administrator of the La Alianza RSS, checks the instruments of the new flow measurement system that indicates, second by second, how much water is in the tank and how much is being consumed in the water starters installed in the houses of each of the members of this rural sanitation system, a social organization unique to Chile, which alleviates the water deficit in the country. CREDIT: Orlando Milesi/IPS

Water as a human right

Alvarado said the solution to water management lies in the new constitution.

The text approved by the Constitutional Convention “will redistribute the right to use water,” she said. “It will put an end to the ownership of rights, which will be converted into use authorizations.”

She said that one of the origins of the water crisis is that there is an over-granting of rights that exceed the actual water sources and that there are very few water inspectors.

“An autonomous National Water Agency will be created and there will be integrated basin management in which users will be on an equal footing,” she said.

Rivera said the large landowners deceive small farmers by telling them that if the new constitution is approved they will be left without water, while “the constitutional proposal actually states that water is a public good.”

A step in the right direction

He highlighted, as a positive step, the promulgation in April of this year, under the government of leftwing President Gabriel Boric, of the reformed Water Code “for which we fought for 15 years.”

“The new law is very good because it protects rural areas and indicates that no one can ask for a concession in a rural area. They cannot privatize. Urban sanitation companies cannot enlarge their area of operation,” he stressed.

“We were recognized as RSS and today we can dig wells and draw water if it is for survival and basic consumption,” he added.

“Nobody wanted to change the Water Code, nobody wants to change the constitution…who is ‘nobody’? the economic powers-that-be. They do not want to change. We have to change,” he argued.

Farmer Luis Edgardo Pérez kneels next to a loquat (Eriobotrya japonica) seedling which he just planted using one of the climate-resilient techniques he has learned to retain rainwater and prevent it from being wasted as runoff on his steep terrain in the Hacienda Vieja canton in central El Salvador. CREDIT: Gabriela Carranza/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN PEDRO NONUALCO, El Salvador , Aug 1 2022 (IPS)

With the satisfaction of knowing he was doing something good for himself and the planet, Salvadoran farmer Luis Edgardo Pérez set out to plant a fruit tree on the steepest part of his plot, applying climate change adaptation techniques to retain water.

This is vital for Pérez because of the steep slope of his land, where rainwater used to be wasted as runoff, as it ran downhill and his crops did not thrive.

Before planting the loquat (Eriobotrya japonica) tree, Pérez had previously cut part of the slope to create a small flat circular space to plant it.

This technique is called “individual terraces” and seeks to retain rainwater at the foot of the tree. He has done the same thing with the new citrus trees planted on his small farm.

He learned this technique since he joined a national effort, promoted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), to make farmers resilient to the impacts of climate change.

“In three years this loquat tree will be giving me fruit,” the 50-year-old farmer from the Hacienda Vieja canton in the municipality of San Pedro Nonualco, in the central Salvadoran department of La Paz, told IPS, smiling and perspiring as he stood next to the newly planted tree.

San Pedro Nonualco is one of 114 Salvadoran municipalities located in the so-called Central American Dry Corridor, a strip of land that covers 35 percent of Central America and is home to more than 10.5 million people, whose food security is threatened by inconsistent rainfall cycles that make farming difficult.

The Reclima Project is the name of the program implemented by FAO and financed with 35.8 million dollars from the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which supports climate change mitigation and adaptation in the developing South. The Salvadoran government has also contributed 91.8 million dollars in kind.

The program was launched in August 2019 and in its first phase led to the installation of 639 Field Schools to promote agroecology practices in which 22,732 families are participating in 46 municipalities in the Salvadoran Dry Corridor.

In addition, 352 drip irrigation systems will be installed, and 320 home rainwater harvesting systems have begun to be set up in 12 municipalities in El Salvador.

By the end of the program, it will have reached all 114 municipalities in the Dry Corridor, benefiting some 50,000 families.

Patricia Argueta, 40, plants a green bell pepper (Capsicum annuum) seedling in the community garden of Hoja de Sal, in the municipality of Santiago Nonualco in central El Salvador. She is one of the farmers learning new agroecological techniques as part of a project aimed at helping them combat the impacts of climate change. CREDIT: Gabriela Carranza/IPS

Learning and teaching

Pérez is one of the 639 farmers who, because of their enthusiasm and dedication, have become community promoters of these climate-resilient agricultural practices learned from technicians of the governmental National Center for Agricultural and Forestry Technology.

He meets with them periodically to learn new techniques, and he is responsible for teaching what he learns to a group of 31 other farmers in the Hacienda Vieja canton.

“You’re always learning in this process, you never stop learning. And you have to put it into practice, with other people,” he said.

On his 5.3-hectare plot, he was losing a good part of his citrus crop because the rainwater ran right off the sloping terrain.

“I was losing a lot of my crop, up to 15,000 oranges in one harvest; because of the lack of water, the oranges were falling off the trees,” he said.

On his property he has also followed other methods of rainwater and moisture retention, including living barriers and the conservation of stubble, i.e. leaves, branches and other organic material that cover the soil and help it retain moisture.

Pérez’s citrus production is around 50,000 oranges per harvest, plus some 5,000 lemons. He also grows corn and beans, using a technique that combines these crops with timber and fruit trees. That is why he planted loquat trees.

“I love what I do, I identify with my crops. I like doing it, I’m passionate about it,” he said.

Ruperto Hernández, 72, finishes preparing the organic fertilizer known as bokashi, which he and other families benefiting from a program promoted by FAO in El Salvador use to fertilize their crops in the San Sebastián Arriba canton of the municipality of Santiago Nonualco in central El Salvador. CREDIT: Gabriela Carranza/IPS

Collectively is better

About five kilometers further south down the road, you reach the San Sebastián Arriba canton, in the municipality of Santiago Nonualco, also in the department of La Paz.

Under the harsh midday sun, a group of men and women were planting cucumbers and fertilizing with bokashi, the organic fertilizer that the farmers have learned to produce for use on their crops as part of the FAO program.

“We are tilling the soil really well, we put in a little bit of organic fertilizer, mix it with the soil we tilled and then we put in the cucumber seed,” 72-year-old farmer Ruperto Hernández told IPS.

To make the fertilizer, Hernández explained that they used products such as rice hulls, molasses, charcoal, soil, and chicken and cattle manure.

“The more ingredients the better,” he said.

Hernández also showed the water conservation techniques used on the farm. These included shallow irrigation ditches dug along the hillsides at a specific angle.

The seven-hectare plot is a kind of agroecological school, where they put into practice the knowledge they have learned and then the farmers apply the techniques on their own plots.

Among the women in the group was Leticia Valles, who has been working with a towel over her head to protect herself from the sun.

Valles said this was the first time she was going to try using bokashi to fertilize her milpa – a term that refers to a traditional farming technique that combines staple crops like corn and beans with others, like squash.

“We have always used commercial fertilizer, but now we’re going to try bokashi, and I’m pretty excited, I expect a good harvest,” she said during a break.

They and the other participants in the program have also been taught to produce ecological herbicides and fungicides, which not only benefit the land but also their pocketbooks, as they are cheaper than commercial ones.

Imelda Platero, 54, and Paula Torres, 69, stand in a cornfield in the canton of Hoja de Sal in central El Salvador. They are two of the most active women involved in promoting actions to adapt agriculture to climate change in their village in the Dry Corridor. CREDIT: Gabriela Carranza/IPS

Changing sexist habits

Further south, near the Pacific Ocean, is the village of Hoja de Sal, also in the municipality of Santiago Nonualco, which is taking part in the Reclima Project as well.

The effort in this village is led by Imelda Platero, who coordinates a group of 37 people to whom she teaches climate-resilient practices on the plots of the Hoja de Sal cooperative, created in 1980 as part of the agrarian reform program implemented in El Salvador.

A total of 159 cooperative members collectively farm more than 700 hectares of land, most of which are dedicated to sugarcane production. And the members are entitled to just under one hectare of land to grow grains and vegetables individually.

But she not only teaches them how to plant using agroecological methods to combat the impacts of climate change.

She also teaches the 27 women in the group to become aware of the role they play and to empower them, as part of the program’s focus on gender questions.

“I was outraged when I heard stories about one member putting a padlock on the granary so his wife couldn’t sell corn if he wasn’t there; that is called economic violence,” said Platero, 54.

And she added: “We have been working on this issue, it is a challenge. It is still hard, but the women are more empowered, now they grow their corn and they sell it how they want to.”

Another important aspect is to respect the cosmovision and ancestral knowledge of peasant farmers in the area.

For example, Paula doesn’t plant if she can’t see what phase the moon is in,” said Platero, referring to Paula Torres, a 69-year-old farmer who is one of the most enthusiastic participants in the initiative.

Torres and her husband Felipe de Jesús Mejía, with whom she has raised 15 sons and daughters, are two weeks away from harvesting the first ears of corn from a bright green cornfield that is glowing with life. She is sure that this is due to the organic fertilizer they used.

“I’ve seen the difference, look what a beautiful milpa,” said Torres.

She added that now that she has seen how well the techniques work, she will use them “till I die.” Last year she and her husband produced about 1,133 kilos of corn, and this year they expect to grow more, by the looks of it.

“It’s never too late to learn,” she said, as she bent down and cut zucchini (Cucurbita pepo), which she sells in the community, in addition to cooking them at home.

The Zimbabwe National Water Authority says it will drill 35,000 boreholes by 2025 countrywide, focusing on parched rural areas where erratic rainfall has affected both people and livestock. However, there is concern about groundwater levels. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

By Ignatius Banda
Bulawayo, Jul 22 2022 (IPS)

Faced with cyclical droughts and low water levels in supply dams, Zimbabwe is turning to boreholes for relief, raising concerns about already precarious groundwater levels across the country.

The Zimbabwe National Water Authority says it will drill 35,000 boreholes by 2025 countrywide, focusing on parched rural areas where erratic rainfall has affected both people and livestock.

The climate change-induced water crisis has not spared the country’s national parks, forcing sector officials to turn to groundwater for relief.

A 2021 review by the Southern African Development Community’s Groundwater Management Institute said Zimbabwe’s capital city Harare had 28,000 registered boreholes, with 80 percent of the population “dependent on groundwater for potable supply.”

“With such dependency, it becomes imperative that the resource is well monitored for sustainable management, and to enhance well-informed decisions at policy formulation level,” the report said, adding, “groundwater is a finite source.”

President Emmerson Mnangagwa recently launched a nationwide Presidential Borehole Scheme targeting urban areas where some residents have gone for years without running water.

The drive to turn to underground water supplies comes despite earlier warnings by the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) that the country needed to be cautious in tapping groundwater.

The post-Mugabe administration has upped the drilling despite what experts say is continued poor rainwater seepage to raise the groundwater table, highlighting the country’s struggles with climate change and its adaptation efforts.

This is happening despite concerns from experts regarding what they have called “limited knowledge on aquifer recharge areas and rates,” further exposing the long-term sustainability of groundwater resources.

“If you over-abstract groundwater, you will obviously deplete it,” said Professor Innocent Nhapi, a consultant and climate-resilient development scholar.

“We need to increase our knowledge on groundwater resources by establishing a dedicated institute for training and research on groundwater. We then need to use modern techniques for quantifying the groundwater resources we have. From this knowledge, we need to prepare groundwater management plans for different sub-catchments,” Nhapi told IPS.

The country’s major towns, including the second city Bulawayo, continue to face crippling water shortages, with residents questioning the water quality from the municipality boreholes.

It has become customary for residents to experience rolling water cuts by the local municipality. This has meant long queues at boreholes, with some wondering why the boreholes take so to fill the buckets.

“Water does not pump as quickly as it used to. We take too much time in the queue,” said Nomazulu Nxumalo, a local home keeper.

The situation is even dire in low rainfall rural areas in the country’s southwest, where villagers and civil servants, such as teachers, share one borehole.

“You need plenty of strength to pump water these days,” said Leonard Maphosa, a teacher based in Lupane, about 170km from Bulawayo.

“I think the water is now far, far below. We have a well that has since been filled with sand because it does not have any more water,” Maphosa told IPS.

Officials remain concerned about the ability of the country’s aquifers to store water, considering rainfall’s erratic spells.

“Short, intense rainfall whilst providing a lot of water doesn’t provide enough time for the water to infiltrate and percolate into aquifers. A greater percentage of the water flows away as quick runoff,” said Tirivanhu Muhwati, a climate scientist and project coordinator at the country’s climate and environment ministry.

“This, however, does not mean that the boreholes should not be sunk as an adaptation measure. It simply means that the boreholes have to be fitted with water-use efficiency mechanisms, and demand-side management measures have to be instituted,” Muhwati told IPS.

For years, experts and government officials have noted that a lasting solution to Zimbabwe’s water crisis despite seasonal floods is the construction of dams. Still, as in many other sectors, authorities have cited a lack of resources for constructing them.

Despite population expansion, big cities such as Bulawayo have not built any new dams since the country’s independence in 1980, forcing authorities to sink more boreholes for relief.

“As more surface runoff is expected, the country should intensify the building of dams to capture the surface water,” Muhwati told IPS.

“This should be supported by the associated water conveyance infrastructure to where the water is required for agricultural, commercial, and domestic use. Groundwater can then be used only as a last resort,” he said.

Zimbabwe is not the only country in the region turning to groundwater.

The World Bank says due to climate variability, which has altered the availability of surface water, southern African countries are seeking relief by sinking boreholes, but the resource is already compromised by “threats of depletion.”

According to the World Bank, “at least 70 percent of the people living in southern African countries rely on groundwater as their primary source of water.”

For Zimbabwe, where another estimated 70 percent of the country’s population lives in rural areas, groundwater is the only available resource highlighting the country’s challenges towards meeting Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG6), which seeks to ensure the availability of water for all by 2030.

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Relief workers bring supplies to stranded communities following devastating floods in Bangladesh. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS

By Rafiqul Islam
DHAKA, Jun 28 2022 (IPS)

After losing everything in the recent devastating flood that swept the northeastern districts in Bangladesh, pregnant mother Joynaba Akter, her three children and her husband took refuge in a shelter centre at Gowainghat in Sylhet.

“As the flood damaged all our belongings, my husband took us to Dasgaon Naogaon School shelter centre to escape,” Joynaba said. “I was in the final stages of my pregnancy, and that is why I had no alternative to going to the shelter centre amid this disaster. I was scared, and my husband took me here by boat.”

Joynaba gave birth to a baby girl at the centre last Friday, and she was happy to welcome the new family member, but she did not know how they would survive.

After giving birth to her child, she has been feeling ill but hasn’t any money for treatment, resulting in her newborn child not getting enough breast milk.

When the flooding stopped in the Gowainghat area, she returned to her homestead but found nothing remained as the flood washed away all their belongings.

“My husband had an auto-rickshaw. The flood washed it away too,” Joynaba said.

They built a makeshift shelter with tin sheets and installed a temporary cooking stove at their homestead. But they don’t have enough grain to cook.

“We have only four kilograms of rice and 250 grams of pulses, and one kilogram of potato that we got as relief at the cyclone centre. Once those are finished, we all have to be starving,” she said.

Seventy-year-old farmer, Suruj Ali’s house, was also flooded, and he, with his family members, took shelter at a building which is under construction located nearby his village. He also shifted his domestic cattle.

Eight days after they took shelter, Suruj Ali returned home on Friday. While the floodwater has receded from his house, the homestead’s yard is still under water.

“In front of my eyes, the flood washed away all the rice stored, and cattle feeds (like straw). I could do nothing. I was only able to save my cattle,” said Suruj Ali, a resident of Kaskalika Balaura village at Sylhet Sadar upazila.

The floodwaters have made him destitute, he said. All the rice stored in the house, utensils and even his mattress were washed away.

“I know a dark time (crisis) is waiting for my family and me. We are yet to get any aid,” Suruj Ali said.

Reports from the region say 2,500 millimetres of rainfall in the upstream Assam and Meghalaya of India over three days in the middle of June this year, resulting in floods in Bangladesh’s northeastern region. Many blame climate change for the floods affecting several million across the country.

In Netrakona district, over 554000 families have been affected by the floods in 10 upazilas (administrative regions). Some families have already returned home from shelters as floodwater recedes. But there are still about 112000 people in 353 shelters.

Mozammel Haque, chairman of Pogla Union Parishad (UP), Netrakona, said the official relief provided by the government was inadequate, while over half a million families were affected in the upazila.

The flood situation is improving in Sunamganj and Sylhet, but many homesteads are still under water.

“The water is still waist level in my home, so there was no way to return. All the goods in the house were destroyed,” said Idris Ali, who is staying at the Ikarachai Primary School shelter centre in Sunamganj.

Boats Rushing In Relief

Although the flood has started improving in the northeastern region, many families stuck in the remote haor (wetland) areas are still experiencing a food and drinking water crisis.

“In the remote bordering area in Sunamganj, many were calling for relief. We were taking boats with relief goods for them, but that was not adequate,” said AR Tareq, a volunteer group member involved in relief distribution in Sunamganj.

Bashir Miah, a resident of Darampasha in Sumamganj, said those on the main road received assistance, but few volunteers want to go to remote areas, which is why they are not accessing the relief.

Rajesh Chandro Ghosh, the coordinator of Low Cost Tour Bangladesh, another volunteer group that distributed relief in Sylhet, said: “We have distributed some relief goods under a private arrangement and saw how hopeless the flood victims’ situation is. They need more relief, particularly for those who are living in remote areas.”

But Sylhet Deputy Commissioner Mujibur Rahman told reporters there was no relief crisis.

“Flood situation is getting back normal in Sunamganj gradually. And we are carrying out relief distribution programme too,” Sunamganj Deputy Commissioner Jahangir Alam said.

However, Nurul Haque, convener of Jagannathpur Upazila Citizens Forum, said the pace of relief distribution was slow despite the government allocations, while a lack of coordination meant many were not receiving help.

The government has already allocated over Taka 7.11 crore (about 765 000 US dollars) as humanitarian assistance for the flood victims in 14 flood-hit districts, said Md Selim Hossain, Deputy Chief Information Officer at Disaster Management and Relief Ministry.

Besides, he said 5,820 metric tonnes of rice, 1.23 food packets and baby food. Cattle feed was also allocated across the country.

Waterborne Diseases on the Rise

Bangladesh’s death toll from the flood was estimated at least 84, according to the Health Emergency and Control Room of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).

Most died in floods from May 17 to June 26 in Sylhet, Mymensingh and Rangpur divisions. The most casualties occurred in the Sylhet division, with 52 deaths, while 28 people died in Mymensingh and four in Rangpur.

Diarrhoea outbreak has been reported in these flood-hit districts. Around 6,000 people have been diagnosed with waterborne diseases across the country, according to the DGHS data.

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The confluence of the waters with the distinct colors of the pollution of each one: darker waters reflect the urban sewage of the Arrudas River, while brown reflects erosion coming from the upper Velhas River, a natural effect or product of mining visible in the city of Belo Horizonte, in southern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 7 2022 (IPS)

Acaba Mundo has fallen into oblivion, despite its apocalyptic name – which roughly translates as World’s End – and historical importance as an urban waterway. It is a typical victim of Brazil’s metropolises, which were turned into cemeteries of streams, with their flooded neighborhoods and filthy rivers.

The Acaba Mundo stream disappeared under the asphalt and concrete of Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais in southeast Brazil. It was the main source of water for the first inhabitants of the city founded in 1897 and the first watercourse in the city to be culverted and hidden underground.

Interventions on the riverbed began a century ago, with modifications to adjust it to the geometric layout of the streets and canalizations, and ended with it being completely covered over, except for its headwaters, in the 1970s, geographer Alessandro Borsagli, a professor and researcher who specializes in water issues, told IPS.

It became invisible, like practically all the streams that flow into the Arrudas River, the axis of the main watershed of the planned city of Belo Horizonte, whose limits were exceeded decades ago by urban sprawl and which now has 2.5 million inhabitants.

The water is still dirty when it is returned to the Onça River after passing through the Wastewater Treatment Plant in the city of Belo Horizonte, in southern Brazil. Much remains to be decontaminated, as well as the Velhas River that it flows into. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Forgotten

The existence of the Acaba Mundo stream has also been erased from people’s memories. But its waters still run in clogged culverts under streets and avenues, including the city’s main avenue, Afonso Pena.

The city government does not even mention it in the presentation of the America Rene Giannetti Municipal Park, a large popular space for tourism and nature conservation in the center of the city, which was originally crossed by the stream before it was diverted by canals to another sub-basin.

Only elderly residents such as Carmela Pezzuti, who lived in Belo Horizonte for a few months in 1939, when she was six years old, still remember – as she told IPS – that the park then took its name from Acaba Mundo, when the stream still existed aboveground.

Today, the so-called Dry Bridge is still there, under which the now hidden and forgotten stream used to flow.

“This reflects the history of Belo Horizonte, of increasing interventions in the watercourses and ‘hydrophobia’ in response to the stench from the streams, which were used as sewage outfalls and turned into sources of diseases,” in addition to the increasingly frequent floods, said Borsagli.

Apolo Heringer, a physician and environmentalist who has raised awareness and mobilized local residents in defense of the Velhas River and its watershed with the Manuelzão Project, a university project named after an important literary figure in the culture of the state of Minas Gerais, in southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Business vs streams

Covering up the streams and expanding the underground channels became a demand of society in general, in addition to responding to the interests of real estate businesses that have treated the watercourses as obstacles to the construction of new housing, he said.

The transportation sector, from the automotive industry to bus companies, also pushed for the conversion of riverbeds and their banks into avenues, as has been done since automobiles took over the cities.

“The urban mobility model adopted is incompatible with watercourses,” urban architect Elisa Marques, a researcher and activist on water issues, told IPS. “Avenues are built on the valley bottoms, the riverbeds are blocked and the soil becomes more impermeable. Improving public transport would reduce the space for cars and return it to the waters.”

A residential neighborhood in northern Belo Horizonte, with its distinctive dips and rises that accelerate torrents caused by rainfall, which flood the valleys. The steeper slopes of the Curral mountain range, in the south of this southern Brazilian city, aggravate water disasters. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Floods

The increasing impermeabilization of the soil, due to urban expansion and suppression of vegetation, makes the channels, no matter how much they are enlarged, unable to absorb the increased flow of torrents in the rainiest periods, usually in December and January, said Borsagli.

The topography of Belo Horizonte favors the existence of hundreds of fast-flowing streams and minor watercourses, due to the steep slopes.

The Curral mountain range, where the main tributaries of the Arrudas River rise, which cross the most urbanized part of the city, exceeds 1,400 meters above sea level, while the Arrudas is about 800 meters above sea level.

“It is not known for sure why the Acaba Mundo stream is so named, whether it is because its source is far from the center of the city like the end of the world or because of the destructive force of its torrent,” explained the geographer, author of the book “Invisible Rivers of the Mining Metropolis”.

Flooding worsened as the city grew, especially from the 1940s onwards, and interventions that replaced the streambeds with channels aggravated the problem, according to Borsagli. He explained that channelizing a stream almost always increases the flow that floods the watershed below.

Currently, the most severe flooding continues to be seen along some parts of the Arrudas River, but it has become more frequent in Belo Horizonte’s other basin, that of the Onça River (the Portuguese name for jaguar), in the northern part of the city, whose population has grown more recently and is poorer.

In general, Brazilian cities lack efficient drainage systems. The governmental National Sanitation Information System found that in 2020 only 45.3 percent of the 4107 municipalities that participated in its assessment – out of a national total of 5570 – have exclusive rainwater drainage systems. In the rest the rainwater is mixed with wastewater.

This shortfall exacerbates the recurrent water tragedies. São Paulo also suffers annual flooding in several neighborhoods. And on the outskirts of Recife, in the Northeast, torrential rains in the last days of May left at least 127 dead and 9,000 people affected.

The primacy of automobiles over public transport put pressure on the banks of urban rivers because of streets that invade the space of the water and make the soil impermeable with asphalt, aggravating the floods that recur every year in Brazil’s major cities, according to urban architect Elisa Marques. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Pollution

In addition to the failure of stormwater drainage, there is also the pollution of water resources. For decades Belo Horizonte used the streams as sewage channels, with little treatment of the drainage, spreading filth and disease.

The situation in Belo Horizonte improved with the construction of the Arrudas River Wastewater Treatment Plant (ETE) in 2001 and the Onça Wastewater Treatment Plant in 2006, but it is still insufficient, said Apolo Heringer, a physician, environmentalist and retired professor from the Federal University of Minas Gerais.

Heringer, who was a political exile during the 1964-1985 military dictatorship, founded the Manuelzão Project at the university in 1997, with the aim of cleaning up and revitalizing the Velhas River, the source of half the water consumed in the areas on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte and the recipient of the rivers that cross the capital, the Arrudas and the Onça.

The ETEs respond in part to the strategy advocated by the environmentalist and his project of concentrating efforts where they are most productive.

“Along 30 to 40 kilometers of the Velhas River and the final stretches of the Arrudas and Onça rivers, 80 percent of the pollution produced by 80 percent of the population of the outlying neighborhoods is concentrated, both from sewage and garbage. It is the epicenter of pollution,” Heringer told IPS.

Focusing efforts in this area, which makes up only 20 percent of the city, would practically result in the decontamination of the Velhas River basin, which extends for 800 kilometers and flows into the São Francisco, one of the largest national rivers that crosses a large part of the semiarid Northeast region.

But the goal of being able to swim, fish and boat in the Velhas River requires 100 percent wastewater treatment, and the collection and proper management of all garbage so that the liquid runoff does not go into the rivers. This means it is still a distant dream, the expert acknowledged.

The treatment of sewage by the Minas Gerais Sanitation Company (Copasa) is still incomplete; the water that is returned to the rivers still contains impurities, the environmentalist lamented.

ETE Arrudas removes the main pollutants and complies with national legislation, as shown by laboratory tests. “It is possible to visually verify the difference in quality of the treated sewage in relation to the raw sewage,” Copasa replied to questions from IPS on the matter.

However, in the Onça River ETE, the water returned to the river does not appear to be clean.

The ocean produces 50% of the planet’s oxygen, absorbs 30% of carbon dioxide produced by humans, buffering the impacts of global warming, and is the main source of protein for a billion people around the world. Credit: IPS

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, Jun 7 2022 (IPS)

Imagine a patient connected to a vital oxygen device to keep him or her breathing, thus alive. Then, imagine what would happen if this patient unplugged it. This is exactly what humans have been doing with the source of at least 50% of the whole Planet’s oxygen: the oceans.

But oceans do not only provide half of all the oxygen needed. They also absorb about 30% of carbon dioxide produced by humans, buffering the impacts of global warming while alleviating its consequences on human health and that of all natural resources.

The carbon — and heat– sink

The world’s oceans capture 90% of the additional heat generated from those emissions.

In short, they are not just ‘the lungs of the planet’ but also its largest carbon sink.

The ocean is the main source of protein for more than a billion people around the world.

And over three billion people rely on the ocean for their livelihoods, the vast majority in developing countries.

Oceans also serve as the foundation for much of the world’s economy, supporting sectors from tourism to fisheries to international shipping.

Nevertheless…

Despite being the life source that supports humanity’s sustenance and that of every other organism on Earth, oceans are facing unprecedented real threats as a result of human activity.

While providing the above facts, this year’s World Oceans Day (8 June) warns about some of the major damages caused by human activities, which devastate this source of life and livelihood.

This report is also based on data from several specialised organisations, such as the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), among others, as well as a number of global conservation bodies, including the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Too many causes. And a major one

Oceans as dumping sites: There are several major threats leading to suffocating the world’s lungs.

Such is the case –for example, of overfishing, illegal fishing and ghost fishing–, human activities have been transforming world’s oceans into a giant dumping site: untreated wastewater; poisonous chemicals; electronic waste; oil spills, petrol leaks, oil refineries near rivers and coastal areas, ballast waters, invasive species, and a very long etcetera.

Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

Plastic

Of all these, plastic appears as one of the major sources of harm to oceans. See the following data:

As much as 75 to 199 million tons of plastic are currently found in our oceans.

Unless the world changes the way how to produce, use and dispose of plastic, the amount of plastic waste entering aquatic ecosystems could nearly triple from 9-14 million tonnes per year in 2016 to a projected 23-37 million tonnes per year by 2040.

How does it get there? A lot of it comes from the world’s rivers, which serve as direct conduits of trash into lakes and the ocean.

In fact, around 1.000 rivers are accountable for nearly 80% of global annual riverine plastic emissions into the ocean, which range between 0.8 and 2.7 million tons per year, with small urban rivers amongst the most polluting.

Plastic everywhere: Wherever you look and whatever you see, buy and use, there is plastic: food wrappers, plastic bottles, plastic bottle caps, plastic grocery bags, plastic straws, stirrers, cosmetics, lunch boxes, ballpoints, and thousands of other products.

Cigarette butts: Then you have the case of cigarette butts, whose filters contain tiny plastic fibres, being the most common type of plastic waste found in the environment.

Today, the world produces about 400 million tons of plastic waste … every year.

Plastic addiction: Such human dependence on plastic has been steadily increasing. Since the 1970s, the rate of plastic production has grown faster than that of any other material. If historic growth trends continue, global production of primary plastic is forecasted to reach 1.100 million tonnes by 2050.

“Our seas are choking with plastic waste, which can be found from the remotest atolls to the deepest ocean trenches,” reminds the United Nations chief António Guterres.

Fossil fuel: As importantly, some 98% of single-use plastic products are produced from fossil fuel, or “virgin” feedstock. The level of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production, use and disposal of conventional fossil fuel-based plastics is forecast to grow to 19% of the global carbon budget by 2040.

Mare Nostrum: This small, semi-closed sea –the Mediterranean is considered as one of the most affected regional seas by marine litter.

In fact, the annual plastic leakage is estimated at 229.000 tons, 94% of which consist of macroplastics. Plastics constitute around 95% of waste in the open sea, both on the seabed and on beaches across the Mediterranean.

COVID-19: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) February 2022 publication: Global Plastics Outlook reports that the increase in the use of protective personal equipment and single-use plastics has exacerbated plastic littering on land and in marine environments, with negative environmental consequences.

Rivers: The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reports that, flowing through America’s heartland, the Mississippi River drains 40% of the continental United States – creating a conduit for litter to reach the Gulf of Mexico, and ultimately, the ocean.

Data collected through the Mississippi River Plastic Pollution Initiative shows that more than 74 per cent of the litter catalogued in pilot sites along the river is plastic.

Electronic waste: should all this not be enough, please also know that the world produces 50 million tons of e-waste, a portion of it ends up in the ocean.

Ghost fishing

According to an October 2020 report released by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and authored by Alexander Nicolas, more than 12 million tons of plastic end up in the world’s seas every year.

Fishing gear accounts for roughly 10% of that debris: between 500.000 to 1 million tons of fishing gear are discarded or lost in the ocean every year. Discarded nets, lines, and ropes now make up about 46% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Alexander Nicolas explains.

This marine plastic has a name: ghost fishing gear.

“Ghost fishing gear includes any abandoned, lost, or otherwise discarded fishing gear, much of which often goes unseen.

“Ghost fishing gear is the deadliest form of marine plastic as it un-selectively catches wildlife, entangling marine mammals, seabirds, sea turtles, and sharks, subjecting them to a slow and painful death through exhaustion and suffocation. Ghost fishing gear also damages critical marine habitats such as coral reefs.”

Overfishing

Overfishing is yet another major damage caused to the world’s oceans threatening the stability of fish stocks; nutrient pollution is contributing to the creation of “dead zones.”

Currently, 90% of big fish populations have been depleted, as humans are taking more from the ocean than can be replenished.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing: A fugitive activity that further adds to the abusive overfishing, causing the depletion of 11–26 million tons of fish… each year.

IPS article The Big Theft of the Fish provides extensive information about these two major activities that deplete the oceans vital natural resources.

Untreated wastewater is another example of the damage made by humans to the oceans.

It has been reported that around 80% of the world’s wastewater is discharged without treatment, a big portion of it ends up in the oceans.

The oceans in a conference

All the above facts –and many more– are on the agenda of the United Nations Ocean Conference 2022 (27 June- 1 July), organised in Lisbon and co-hosted by the Governments of Kenya and Portugal.

According to its organisers, the Conference seeks to propel much needed science-based innovative solutions aimed at starting a new chapter of global ocean action. Cross your fingers!

Alex Leiva, holding his baby girl, uses the water he managed to collect in barrels at 4:00 a.m., the only time the service is provided in Lotificación Praderas, in the canton of Cabañas, on the outskirts of the municipality of Apopa, north of the Salvadoran capital. The families of this region are fighting in defense of water, against an urban development project for wealthy families that threatens the water resources in the area. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
APOPA, El Salvador , Jun 6 2022 (IPS)

Alex Leiva woke up at 4:00 a.m. to perform a key task for his family’s survival in the Salvadoran village where he lives: filling several barrels with the water that falls from the tap only at that early hour every other day.

If he does not collect water between 4:00 and 5:00 AM, he will not have another opportunity to fill the barrels for another two days.

“That’s what I have to do. Sometimes I manage to fill three barrels. The service is provided every other day,” Leiva, 32, a video producer, told IPS.

“It’s difficult to be in a situation like this, where the water supply is so inefficient,” he added.

The water is not provided by the government’s National Administration of Aqueducts and Sewers (Anda) but by the Water Administration Board (Acasap).

In El Salvador there are at least 3,000 of these boards, community associations that play an essential role in the supply and management of water resources in rural areas and the peripheries of cities, in the face of the State’s failure to provide these areas with water.

Leiva lives in Lotificación Praderas, in the Cabañas canton, on the outskirts of the municipality of Apopa, north of the country’s capital, San Salvador.

This northern area covering several municipalities has been in conflict in recent years since residents of these communities began to fight against an urban development project by one of the country’s most powerful families, the Dueñas.

The Dueñas clan’s power dates back to the days of the so-called coffee oligarchy, which emerged in the mid-19th century.

Ciudad Valle El Angel is the name of the residential development to be built in this area on 350 hectares, and which will require some 20 million liters of water per day to supply the families that decide to buy one of the 8,000 homes.

The first feasibility permits granted by Anda to the consortium date back to 2015.

The homes are designed for upper middle-class families who decide to leave behind the chaos of San Salvador and to live with all the comforts of modern life, with water 24 hours a day, in the midst of poor communities that lack a steady water supply.

“There are people in my community who manage to fill only one barrel because there isn’t enough water pressure,” said Leiva, the father of a five-year-old boy and a nine-month-old baby girl.

Valle El Angel is an extensive region located on the slopes of the San Salvador volcano, in territories shared by municipalities north of the capital, including Apopa, Nejapa and Opico.

A general view of Parcelación El Ángel, in the Joya Galana canton, in the municipality of Apopa, near San Salvador. The community is fighting to defend the few natural resources that survive in the area, including a stream that originates in the micro-basin of the Chacalapa River. Water in the area is scarce, while Salvadoran authorities endorse an upscale real estate project that will use millions of liters per day. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Unfair justice

Sociedad Dueñas Limitada, the consortium managing the urban development project, received the definitive green light to begin construction: a thumbs-up from the Constitutional court, which on Apr. 29, 2022 rejected an unconstitutionality lawsuit filed in October 2019 by environmental organizations and communities in northern San Salvador.

The lawsuit was against a dubious agreement signed in 2016 between that company and Anda, which manages water in the country. The deal granted the project 240 liters of water per second – that is, about 20 million liters a day.

The consortium intends to dig eight wells in the area. Water will be extracted from the San Juan Opico aquifer, as well as from shallower groundwater from Apopa and Quezaltepeque.

“These agreements open the door to this type of illegal concessions handed over to private companies…it is a situation that is not being addressed from a comprehensive perspective that meets the needs of the people, but rather from a mercantilist perspective,” lawyer Ariela González told IPS.

She is part of the Foundation of Studies for the Application of Law (Fespad), a member of the Water Forum, which brings together some twenty civil organizations that have been fighting for fair and equitable distribution of water in the country.

González added: “It is our public institutions that legalize this dispossession of environmental assets, through these mechanisms that allow the companies to whitewash the environmental impact studies.”

The organizations and local communities argue that water is a human right, for the benefit of the community, and also insisted in the lawsuit that the aquifers are part of the subsoil, property of the State.

Therefore, if any company was to be granted any benefit from that subsoil, the concession could have to be endorsed by the legislature, which did not happen.

Sara García and Martina Vides are members of an ecofeminist collective that has been fighting for five years to prevent the construction of a large residential project in the area, Ciudad Valle El Ángel, owned by one of the most powerful families in El Salvador. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

The resolution handed down by the Constitutional chamber of the Supreme Court comes at a time when people have lost trust in the Constitutional court in this Central American country of 6.7 million people.

The five Constitutional court magistrates were appointed without following the regular procedure on May 1, 2021, when the new legislature was installed, controlled by lawmakers from President Nayib Bukele’s party, Nuevas Ideas, which holds 56 out of 84 seats.

“This government continues to benefit big capital and destroy local territories,” Sara García, of the ecofeminist group Kawoc Women’s Collective and the Let’s Save the Valle El Ángel movement, which forms part of the Water Forum, told IPS.

García´s fellow activist Martina Vides added: “We want protection for the aquifers and to prevent the felling of trees.”

Both women spoke to IPS on a rainy gray afternoon on the last day of May, in the Parcelación El Ángel, where they live, in the Joya Galana canton, also in the municipality of Apopa, which is in the middle of the impact zone.

A short distance away is the river that provides water to this and other communities, which originates in the micro-watershed of the Chacalapa River. Water is supplied under a community management scheme organized by the local water board.

Vides pays six dollars a month for the water service, although she only receives running water three or four days a week.

According to official figures, in this country 96.3 percent of urban households have access to piped water, but the proportion drops to 78.4 percent in the countryside, where 10.8 percent are supplied by well water and 10.7 percent by other means.

Since the Ciudad Valle El Angel project began to be planned, environmentalists and community representatives have been protesting against it with street demonstrations and activities because it will negatively impact the area’s environment, especially the aquifers.

The struggle for water in El Salvador has been going on for a long time, with activists demanding that it be recognized as a human right, with access for the entire population, because the country is one of the hardest hit by the climate crisis, especially the so-called Dry Corridor.

For more than 10 years, environmental and social collectives have been pushing for a water law, reaching preliminary agreements with past governments. But since the populist Bukele came to power, the progress made in this direction has been undone.

In December 2021, the legislature approved a General Water Resources Law, which excluded the already pre-agreed social proposals, although it recognizes the human right to water and establishes that the water supply will not be privatized. However, this is not enforced in practice, as demonstrated by the Dueñas’ urban development project.

A vendor of a traditional ice cream in El Salvador, made with shaved ice bathed in fruit syrup, waits for customers on one of the streets of Parcelación El Ángel, in the municipality of Apopa, north of the capital. The locality is one of the epicenters where poor families have been organizing to block a residential development project, which will affect the local water supply and worsen the water shortage in the area. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Not the only one

The residential development project is neither the first nor the only one in the area.

Residential complexes of this type have already been built in that area for the upper middle class, thanks to investments made by other wealthy families in the country, such as the Poma family.

And the same type of agreements have been reached with these other companies, in which the consortiums receive an endorsement to obtain water for their projects, said González.

The same thing has happened in the surroundings of the Cordillera del Bálsamo, south of the capital, where residential projects have been developed around municipalities such as Zaragoza, close to the beaches of the Pacific Ocean.

In Valle El Ángel there is also at least one company whose main raw material is water. This is Industrias La Constancia, which owns the Coca Cola brand in the country and other brands of juices and energy drinks, located in the municipality of Nejapa.

González, the Fespad lawyer, said that there should be a moratorium in the country in order to stop, for a time, this type of investment that threatens the country’s environmental assets, especially water.

But until that happens, if it ever does, and until the water supply improves, Alex Leiva will continue to get up at 4 a.m. every other day to fill his three barrels.

“What can we do? We have no choice,” he said.

Community organizing is a lynchpin in the lives of environmental defenders in Peru, as in the case of Mirtha Villanueva, pictured here with other activists from the Cajamarca region also involved in the defense of rivers and Mother Earth. CREDIT: Courtesy of Mirtha Villanueva

By Mariela Jara
LIMA, May 30 2022 (IPS)

“Water is part of our culture, it is intrinsic to the Amazon,” said José Manuyama, a member of a river defense committee in his native Requena, a town located in the department of Loreto, the largest in Peru, covering 28 percent of the national territory.

Despite the large size of this Amazon rainforest department or province located in the northeast of the country, data from 2020 indicated that it barely exceeded one million inhabitants, including some 220,000 indigenous people, in a country with a total population of 32.7 million.

A teacher by profession and a member of the Kukama indigenous people, one of the 51 officially recognized in Peru’s Amazon rainforest region, Manuyama reminisced about his childhood near a small river in a conversation with IPS during the Second Interregional Meeting of Defenders of Rivers and Territories, held in Lima on May 25.

“We would wait for the high water season and the floods, because that was our world. When the water comes, it’s used for bathing, for fishing, it’s a whole world adapted to water,” he said.

And he added: “We also waited for the floods to pass, which left us enormous areas of land where the forest would grow and where my mother would plant her cucumbers, her corn. Seeing the river, the transparent water, that beautiful, fertile world: that’s where I grew up.”

Today, approaching the age of 50, Manuyama is also an activist in defense of nature and rivers in the face of continuous aggressions from extractive economic activities that threaten the different forms of life in his home region.

Manuyama is a member of a collective in defense of the Nanay River that runs through the department of Loreto. It is one of the tributaries of the Amazon River that originates in the Andes highlands in southern Peru and which is considered the longest and the biggest in terms of volume in the world, running through eight South American countries.

“We started out as the Water Defense Committee in 2012 when the Nanay watershed was threatened by oil activity,” he said. “Together with other collectives and organizations we managed to block that initiative, but since 2018 there has been a second extractive industry wave, with mining that is damaging the basin and seems to be the latest brutal calamity in the Amazon.”

José Manuyama, a member of the Kukama indigenous people and a teacher committed to the protection of nature, stands in front of the Momón River, a tributary of the Nanay River, which environmental activists have been defending from extractive activities that threaten its very existence in the department of Loreto, in Peru’s Amazon jungle region. CREDIT: Courtesy of José Manuyama

Their struggle was weakened during the pandemic, when the “millionaire polluting illegal mining industry” – as he describes it – remained active. Their complaints have gone unheeded by the authorities despite the harmful impacts of the pollution, such as on people’s food, which depends to a large extent on the fish they catch.

However, he is hopeful about the new national network of defenders of rivers and territories, an effort that emerged in 2019 and that on May 25 organized its second national meeting in Lima, with the participation of 60 representatives from the Amazon, Andes and Pacific coast regions of the country.

“It is important because we strengthen ourselves in a common objective of defending territories and rights, confronting the various predatory extractive waves that exist in this dominant social economic system that uses different factors in a chain to achieve its purpose. The battle is not equal, but this is how resistance works,” Manuyama said.

Like the watersheds of a river

Ricardo Jiménez, director of the non-governmental Peru Solidarity Forum, an institution that works with the network of organizations for the protection and defense of rivers, said it emerged as a response to the demand of various sectors in the face of depredation and expanding illegal mining and logging activities detrimental to water sources.

The convergence process began in 2019, he recalled, with the participation, among others, of the Amazonian Wampis and Awajún indigenous peoples, “women defenders of life and the Pachamama” of the northeastern Andes highlands department of Cajamarca, and “rondas campesinas” (rural social organizations) in various regions of the country.

Mirtha Villanueva, defender of life and Pachamama in the Cajamarca region of northeastern Peru, is seen here participating in one of the sessions of the Second Interregional Meeting of Defenders of Rivers and Territories, which brought together 60 participants from different parts of the country. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

The first important milestone of the initiative occurred in 2021, when they held their first national meeting, in which a National Promotional Committee of Defenders of Rivers and Territories was formed.

They approved an agenda that they sent to the then minister of culture, Gisela Ortiz, who remained in office for only four months and was unable to meet the request to form the Multisectoral Roundtable for dialogue to address issues such as environmental remediation of legal and illegal extractive activities.

The proposed roundtable also mentioned the development of criteria for the protection of the headwaters of river basins, and the protection of river defenders from the criminalization of their protests and initiatives.

At this second national meeting, the Promotional Committee updated its agenda and created synergies with the National River Protection Network, made up of non-governmental organizations.

It also joined the river action initiative of the Pan-Amazonian Social Forum (Fospa), whose tenth edition will be held Jul. 28-31 in Belem do Pará, in Brazil’s Amazon region, and whose national chapter met on May 27.

Three days of activity were organized in the Peruvian capital by the defenders of the rivers and their riverside communities, who on May 26 participated in a march of indigenous peoples, organized by the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest.

“There is a coming together of the social collectives at the national level and also with their peers at the Pan-Amazonian level; we have a shared path with particularities but which coincides,” Jiménez told IPS.

A group of villagers participates in the monitoring and surveillance of the Chimín river in the Condebamba valley, in the Cajamarca region of northeastern Peru. The river is contaminated by illegal mining activity, which harms all the communities along its banks, as it irrigates 40 percent of the crops in the area. CREDIT: Courtesy of Mirtha Villanueva

Rivers have no borders

Mirtha Villanueva is an activist who defends life and Pachamama (Mother Earth, in the Quechua indigenous language) in Cajamarca, a northeastern department of Peru, where more than a decade ago the slogan “water yes, gold no!” was coined as part of the struggles of the local population in defense of their lakes and wetlands against the Conga mining project of the U.S.-owned Yanacocha gold mine.

The project was suspended, but only temporarily, after years of social protests against the open-pit gold mine, which in 2012 caused several deaths and led to the declaration of a state of emergency in the region for several months, in one of the most critical episodes in the communities’ struggle against the impact of extractivism on their environment and their lives.

A large part of Villanueva’s 66 years has been dedicated to the defense of nature’s assets, of rivers, to guarantee decent lives for people, in a struggle that she knows is extremely unequal in the face of the economic power of the mining companies.

“We, the defenders of the rivers, have to grow in strength and I hope that at the Fospa Peru meeting we will approve a plan of action agreed with our brothers and sisters in Ecuador, Bolivia and Brazil, because our rivers are also connected, they have no borders,” she told IPS during an interview at the meeting in Lima.

“We need to strengthen ourselves from the local to the international level to have an impact with our actions. We receive 60 percent of our rainfall from the Amazon forest. How can we not take care of the Amazon?” she said.

José Manuyama stands to the right of the poster during one of his presentations at the Second Interregional Meeting of Defenders of Rivers and Territories, which brought together activists from different parts of Peru in Lima. His group analyzed power relations in the context of the risks surrounding the country’s rivers, especially those in the Amazon rainforest. CREDIT: Mariela Jara/IPS

The work she carries out with the environmental committees is titanic. She recalled the image of poor rural families protesting the change in the rivers and how it has caused rashes on their children’s skin.

And when they went to the mine to complain, they were told: “When I came, your river was already like this. Why do you want to blame me? Prove it.”

“In this situation, the farmer remains silent, which is why it is important to work in the communities to promote oversight and monitoring of ecosystems and resources. We work with macroinvertebrates, beings present in the rivers that are indicators of clean or polluted waters, gradually training the population,” she explained.

This is an urgent task. She gave as an example the case of the district of Bambamarca, in Loreto, which has the highest number of mining environmental liabilities in the country: 1118. “Only one river is still alive, the Yaucán River,” Villanueva lamented.

She also mentioned the Condebamba valley, “with the second highest level of diversity in Peru,” and 40 percent of whose farmland is being irrigated by water from the Chimín river polluted by the mines.

“In Cajamarca we have 11 committees monitoring the state of the rivers, we all suffer reprisals, but we cannot stop doing what we do because people’s health and lives are at stake,” both present and future, she said.

It is estimated that more than one third of the European Union will be under “high water stress” by the 2070. Credit: Bigstock

By Baher Kamal
MADRID, May 26 2022 (IPS)

So busy as they are with strengthening military alliances and devoting billions of taxpayers’ money to double their war budgets and subsidise fossil fuels, European Governments seem not to care about the reiterated alerts that their continent faces a serious risk: the reduced availability -and more polluted– drinking water.

Two specialised bodies –the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), and the European branch of the World Health Organization (WHO)– have warned that plans to make water access possible in the face of climate pressures “are absent” in the pan-European region.

And “in most cases” throughout the region there has also been a lack of coordination on drinking water, sanitation and health during the Thirteenth meeting of the Working Group on Water and Health held on 19-20 May 2022 in Geneva.

Water-related disease

From insufficient drinking water supply to contamination by sewage overflow and disease outbreaks from improper wastewater treatment, existing risks from climate change to water, sanitation and hygiene in the pan-European region are set to increase significantly, UNECE/WHO-Europe warned.

The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) reports that other estimates are even more pessimistic, with up to four billion people – over half the population of the planet – already facing severe water stress for at least one month of the year while half a billion suffer from permanent water stress

On this, a previous report: Drugged Water: A New Global Pandemic Hiding in Plain Sight? informs that people around the world are unknowingly being exposed to water laced with antibiotics, which could spark the rise of drug-resistant pathogens and potentially fuel another global pandemic.

A study elaborated by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), found that, globally, not enough attention is being focused on the threat posed by antimicrobial resistance with most antibiotics being excreted into the environment via toilets or through open defecation.

While 80 percent of wastewater in the world is not treated, even in developed countries treatment facilities are often unable to filter out dangerous bugs.

Already in 2015, 34.8 billion daily doses of antibiotics were consumed, with up to 90 percent of them excreted into the environment as active substances. Since then the amount of daily consumed antibiotics has been increasing considerably.

Dangers are real

“Climate change is already posing serious challenges to water and sanitation systems in countries around the world,” said Thomas Croll-Knight, spokesperson for the UN Economic Commission for Europe.

“From reduced water availability and contamination of water supplies to damage to sewerage infrastructure, these risks are set to increase significantly unless countries step up measures to increase resilience now,” warned Thomas Croll-Knight.

It is estimated that more than one third of the European Union will be under “high water stress” by the 2070s, by which time the number of additional people affected (compared to 2007) is expected to surge to 16–44 million.

Bad news

Meanwhile, as governments prepare for the next UN climate conference (COP 27) in November 2022 in Egypt and the UN 2023 Water Conference, UNECE painted a potentially grim picture moving forward in parts of Europe.

“From water supply and sewerage infrastructure damage to water quality degradation and sewage spillage, impacts are already being felt.”

For example, increased energy demand and disruption to treatment plants in Hungary are threatening significant additional operational costs for wastewater treatment.

And challenges in ensuring adequate water supply in the Netherlands have increased, while Spain struggles to maintain a minimum drinking water supply during drought periods.

Huge risk of water shortage

But if the Governments of wealthy and industrially and technologically advanced Europe are not dedicating enough attention to the looming drinking water shortage, imagine the case of the overwhelming majority of developing regions.

In fact, it is estimated that, globally, over two billion people live in countries that experience high water stress.

Four billion people facing severe water stress

The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) reports that other estimates are even more pessimistic, with up to four billion people – over half the population of the planet – already facing severe water stress for at least one month of the year while half a billion suffer from permanent water stress.”

The situation has been worsening as more than half the global population will be at risk by 2050, due to stress on the world’s water resources.

700 million of people displaced…

“Desertification alone threatens the livelihoods of nearly one billion people in 100 countries. Intense water scarcity may displace as many as 700 million people by 2030,” said Munir Akram, president of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) during a UN meeting held already over a year ago.

On that occasion, the UN Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed, told the meeting the current rate of progress would have to quadruple to meet the 2030 deadline.

“Moreover, the planetary crisis, including the interlinked threats of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, will increase water scarcity”, she added.

… and 600 million children impacted

“By 2040, one in four of the world’s children under 18 – some 600 million – will be living in areas of extremely high-water stress.”

The UN estimates more than two billion people worldwide still do not have access to safely managed drinking water, while 4.2 billion lack safely managed sanitation.

Meanwhile, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) during the same meeting reported that one in five children worldwide do not have enough water to meet their daily needs.

“The world’s water crisis is not simply coming, it is here, and climate change will only make it worse”, said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore.

“Children are the biggest victims. When wells dry up, children are the ones missing school to fetch water. When droughts diminish food supplies, children suffer from malnutrition and stunting. When floods hit, children fall ill from waterborne illnesses…”

Africa, Asia, Middle East…

A UNICEF report found that Eastern and Southern Africa have the highest incidence of children living in “water poverty”, with nearly 60 percent facing difficulty in accessing water every day.

Meanwhile, humanitarian organisations continue to call for scaling up assistance in the Horn of Africa, where the worst drought in 40 years is affecting some 15 million people across Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia.

The drought follows four consecutive failed rainy seasons, and the fear is the number could jump to 20 million if the current below-average rains fail.

UNICEF informes that South Asia is home to the largest number of children living in areas of high or extremely high vulnerability, or more than 155 million.

Meanwhile, the Middle East and North Africa is reported to be the most water-scarce region in the world, as it is home to 15 out of the 20 of the world’s most water-scarce countries.

What’s wrong with the world’s Governments?

Farmer José Antonio Sosa, known as Ché, stresses the importance of taking into account the direction of the land for planting, and the use of live or dead barriers to prevent rains from washing away the topsoil to lower areas, thus combating soil degradation in Cuba. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Luis Brizuela
HAVANA, May 23 2022 (IPS)

Thorny bushes and barren soil made it look like a bad bet, but Cuban farmer José Antonio Sosa ignored other people’s objections about the land and gave life to what is now the thriving La Villa farm on the outskirts of Havana.

“The land was a mess, covered with sweet acacia (Vachellia farnesiana) and sickle bush (Dichrostachys cinérea), with little vegetation and many stones. People asked me how I was going to deal with it. With an axe and machete I gradually cleared the undergrowth, in sections,” Sosa told IPS.

Now there are plots of different varieties of fruit trees, vegetables and tubers on the 14 hectares that this farmer received from the State in usufruct in 2010, as part of a government policy to reduce unproductive land and boost food production.

The crops feed his family, while contributing to social programs and sales to the community, after part of the produce is delivered to the Juan Oramas Credit and Services Cooperative, to which the farm located in the municipality of Guanabacoa, one of the 15 municipalities of the Cuban capital, belongs.

On the farm, where he works with his family and an assistant, Sosa produces cow and goat milk, raises pigs and poultry, and is dreaming of farming freshwater fish in a small pond in the not too distant future.

La Villa is in the process of receiving “sustainably managed farm” certification. The farm and Sosa represent a growing effort by small Cuban farmers to recuperate degraded land and use environmentally friendly techniques.

The restoration of unproductive and/or degraded lands is also connected to the need to increase domestic food security, in a country highly dependent on food imports, whose rising prices mean a domestic market with unsatisfied needs and cycles of shortages such as the current one."The guideline foresees implementing new financial economic instruments or improving existing ones by 2030 in order to achieve neutrality in land degradation." -- Jessica Fernández

At the end of 2021, Cuba had 226,597 farms, 1202 of which had agroecological status while 64 percent of the total – some 146,000 – were working towards gaining agroecological certification, according to official statistics.

Sosa, who has been known as “Che” since he was a child, said the use of natural fertilizers and animal manure has made a difference in the recovery and transformation of the soil.

“It is also important to pay attention to the way crops are cultivated or harvested, to avoid compaction,” the farmer said.

Studies show that changes in land use, inadequate agricultural practices (including the intensive use of agricultural machinery and irrigation), the increase in human settlements and infrastructure and the effects of climate change are factors that are accelerating desertification and soil degradation in this Caribbean island nation of 11.2 million people.

Sosa stressed the importance of paying attention to the direction of the land for planting, and the use of living or dead barriers “to prevent the water from carrying the topsoil to lower areas when it rains.”

These cucumbers were grown using agroecological techniques on the La Villa farm, located in the municipality of Guanabacoa, one of the 15 that make up Havana, Cuba. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

Drought and climate change

In this archipelago covering 109,884 square kilometers, 77 percent of the soils are classified as not very productive.

They are affected by one or more adverse factors such as erosion, salinity, acidity, poor drainage, low fertility and organic matter content, or poor moisture retention.

The most recent statistics show that 35 percent of the soil in Cuba presents some degree of degradation.

But at 71 years of age, Sosa, who has worked in the countryside all his life, has no doubt that climate change is hurting the soil.

“The rain cycles have changed,” Sosa said. “When I was young, in the early 1960s, my father would plant taro (Colocasia esculenta, a tuber that is widely consumed locally) in March, around the 10th or so, and by the 15th it would be raining heavily. That is no longer the case. This April was very dry, especially at the end of the month, and so was early May.”

He also referred to the decrease in crop yields and quality, “as soils become hotter and water is scarcer.”

Several studies have corroborated important changes in Cuba’s climate in recent years, related to the increase in the average annual temperature, the decrease in cloud cover and stronger droughts, among other phenomena.

According to forecasts, the country’s climate will tend towards less precipitation and longer periods without rain, and by 2100 the availability of water potential could be reduced by more than 35 percent.

But more intense hurricanes are also expected, atmospheric phenomena that can discharge in 48 hours half of the average annual rainfall, with the consequent stress and severe soil erosion.

Although the least productive lands are located in the east, and Cuba’s so-called semi-desert is limited to parts of the southern coast of Guantánamo, the easternmost of the 15 provinces, forecasts indicate that the semi-arid zones could expand towards the west of the island.

Gloria Gómez (right), director of Natural Resources, Prioritized Ecosystems and Climate Change, and Jessica Fernández, head of the Climate Change Department of the General Directorate of Environment of Cuba’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, confirm the government’s intention to promote the use of credits, insurance and taxes as incentives for farmers to improve soils. CREDIT: Luis Brizuela/IPS

Goals

In addition to being a State Party to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, since 2008 Cuba has been promoting the Program for Country Partnership, also known as the National Action Program to Combat Desertification and Drought; Sustainable Land Management.

Likewise, the Cuban government is committed to the 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), agreed within the United Nations in 2015.

In SDG 15, which involves life on land, target 15.3 states that “By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world.”

According to Sosa, the increase in soil degrading factors requires more efforts to restructure its physical and chemical characteristics.

In addition, he said, mechanisms should be sought to prioritize irrigation, taking into account that many sources are drying up or shrinking due to climate variability.

“In my case, I irrigate the lower part of the farm with a small system connected to the pond. But in the higher areas of the farm I depend on rainfall,” he said.

The construction of tanks or ponds to collect rainwater, in addition to the traditional reservoirs, are ideal alternatives for this Caribbean country with short, low-flow rivers and highly dependent on rainfall, which is more abundant during the May to October rainy season.

But farmers like Sosa require greater incentives: there is a need for more training on the importance of sustainable management techniques, and for economic returns, as well as financial and tax support, in order to make agroecological practices more widespread.

The use of natural fertilizers and animal manure is one of the keys to the restoration and transformation of the once degraded soils covered with thorny bushes of what is now La Villa farm, in the municipality of Guanabacoa, Havana, Cuba. CREDIT: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

In 2019, Cuba approved the National Land Degradation Neutrality Target Setting Program.

“The guideline foresees implementing new financial economic instruments or improving existing ones by 2030 in order to achieve neutrality in land degradation,” Jessica Fernández, head of the Climate Change department of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, told IPS.

The plan is to enhance the use of credits, insurance and taxes as economic incentives for farmers, based on soil improvement and conservation, and to account for the current expenses destined to environmental solutions to determine the total expenses for soil conservation, the official added.

“We are in talks and studies with the Central Bank of Cuba to gradually introduce green banking,” Gloria Gómez, director of natural resources, prioritized ecosystems and climate change at the ministry, told IPS.

“This service will seek to promote and finance projects that provide solutions to environmental problems through loans with lower interest rates, longer repayment periods, incentives for green products and services, or eco-labeling,” she said.

Since 2000, the Ministry of Agriculture has been developing the National Program for Soil Improvement and Conservation, and in January the Policy for Soil Conservation, Improvement and Sustainable Management and Fertilizer Use came into effect.

At the same time, the Cuban State’s plan to combat climate change, better known as Tarea Vida, in force since 2017, also includes actions to mitigate soil vulnerabilities.

In the last five years, the principles of Sustainable Land Management (SLM) were applied to more than 2525 hectares, while one million of the more than six million hectares of agricultural land in the country received some type of benefit, statistics show.

Other national priorities are related to increasing the forested area to 33 percent, extending the areas under SLM by 150,000 hectares and improving 65 percent of agricultural land by the end of the current decade.

A mountainous landscape in the area of the headwaters of the Velhas River, where "barraginhas", the Portuguese name for holes dug like lunar craters in the hills and slopes, prevent erosion by swallowing a large amount of soil that sediments the upper reaches of the river, in the southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
BELO HORIZONTE/ITABIRITO, Brazil , May 19 2022 (IPS)

The southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais owes its name to the main economic activity throughout its history: mining – of gold since the 17th century and later iron ore, which took on an industrial scale with massive exports in the 20th century.

The so-called Iron Quadrangle, a mountainous area of some 7,000 square kilometers in the center of the state, concentrates the state’s minerals and mining activity, long questioned by environmentalists, who have been impotent in the face of the industry’s economic clout.

But the threat of water shortages in Greater Belo Horizonte, population six million, along with two horrific mining accidents, reduced the disparity of forces between the two sides. Now environmentalists can refer to actual statistics and events, not just ecological arguments.

Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state, experienced an unprecedented water crisis in 2014 and 2015, during a drought that affected the entire southeast of Brazil.

“For the first time we experienced shortages here that only the semi-arid north of the state was familiar with,” said Marcelo da Fonseca, general director of the Mining Institute of Water Management (Igam).

On Jan. 25, 2019, a tailings dam broke in Brumadinho, 35 kilometers from Belo Horizonte as the crow flies. The tragedy killed 270 people and toxic sludge contaminated more than 300 kilometers of the Paraopeba River, which provided 15 percent of the water for the Greater Belo Horizonte region (known as RMBH), whose supply has not yet recovered.

On Nov. 5, 2015, a similar accident had claimed 19 lives in Mariana, 75 kilometers from Belo Horizonte, and silted up more than 600 kilometers of the Doce River on its way to the Atlantic Ocean. (The river, whose waters run eastward, do not supply the RMBH.)

Two years of drought, in 2014 and 2015, frightened the population of Greater Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state of Minas Gerais in southeastern Brazil. For the first time the threat of water shortages was felt, said the director general of the Minas Gerais Water Management Institute, Marcelo da Fonseca. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Mining hazards

Minas Gerais has more than 700 mining tailings dams. The latest data from the State Environmental Foundation (Feam) show 33 in different degrees of emergency, four of which are at level three – high risk and mandatory evacuation of endangered residents – and nine at level 2 – recommended evacuation.

“We are hostages of the mining companies, they occupy the territory and make other economies unviable,” said Camila Alterthum, one of the founders and coordinators of the Cresce Institute and an activist with the Fechos, Eu Cuido movement, promoted by the Rio de las Velhas Watershed Committee.

Fechos is the name of an Ecological Station, a 603-hectare integral conservation area belonging to the municipality of Nova Lima, but bordering Belo Horizonte.

“There are mountains here that recharge the Cauê aquifer, which supplies more than 200,000 inhabitants of southern Belo Horizonte and a neighborhood in Nova Lima,” an adjoining municipality, said Alterthum, who lives in Vale do Sol, a neighborhood adjacent to Fechos.

Activist Camila Alterthum is opposed to mining, which she says is a permanent threat to the destruction of nature and water sources. She is fighting to expand the Fechos Ecological Station, whose forests contribute to the water supply for more than 200,000 inhabitants of Belo Horizonte, in southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Her movement presented to the Minas Gerais state legislature a bill to expand Fechos by 222 hectares, to provide more water and preserve local biodiversity.

But Vale, Brazil’s largest mining company, aims to expand its two local mines in that area.

In order to acquire the land, it is offering double the number of hectares for conservation, a counterproposal rejected by the movement because it would not meet the environmental objectives and most of it is an area that the company must preserve by law anyway.

A fiercer battle was unleashed by the decision of the Minas Gerais government’s State Environmental Policy Council, which has a majority of business and government representatives, to approve on Apr. 30 a project by the Taquaril company to extract iron ore from the Curral mountain range.

Forestry engineer Julio Carvalho, of the Itabirito municipal government, stands next to a “barraginha” on a private rural property, whose owners joined the municipal effort to contain soil loss and river sedimentation in this area of southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

This mountain range is the most prominent landscape feature of Belo Horizonte, in addition to being important in terms of water and environmental aspects for the capital, although it is located on its border, on the side of the municipality of Nova Lima. The mining threat triggered a huge outcry from environmentalists, artists and society in general.

Droughts and erosion

There are other threats to the RMBH’s water supply. “We are very close to the springs, so we depend on the rains that fall here,” Fonseca told IPS at Igam headquarters in Belo Horizonte.

Two consecutive years of drought have seriously jeopardized the water supply.

Two basins supply the six million inhabitants of the 34 municipalities making up Greater Belo Horizonte.

The Velhas River accounts for 49 percent of the water supply and the Paraopeba River for 51 percent, according to Sergio Neves, superintendent of the Metropolitan Business Unit of the Minas Gerais Sanitation Company (Copasa), which serves most of the state.

The Paraopeba River stopped supplying water after the 2019 accident, but its basin has two important reservoirs in the tributaries. The one on the Manso River, for example, supplies 34 percent of the RMBH.

The phenomenon of “voçorocas” (gullies) is repeated in several parts of Itabirito and Ouro Preto, the municipalities where the Velhas river basin originates, in southeastern Brazil. The soil is vulnerable to erosion and measures to mitigate the damage are finally beginning to proliferate in a region dominated by iron ore mining. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

The Velhas River only has a small hydroelectric power plant reservoir, with a capacity of 9.28 megawatts, but it is generating only four megawatts. It is run-of-river, that is, it does not store enough water to regulate the flow or compensate for low water levels.

In addition, sedimentation has greatly reduced its storage capacity since it began to operate in 1907. The soil upstream is vulnerable to erosion and has been affected by urban and agricultural expansion, local roads and various types of mining, not only of iron ore, which aggravate the sedimentation of the rivers, said Fonseca.

Decentralized solutions

The municipal government of Itabirito, which shares the headwaters of the Velhas basin with Ouro Preto, the gold capital in the 18th century, is promoting several actions mentioned by Fonseca to mitigate erosion and feed the aquifers that sustain the flow of the rivers.

Businessman and environmentalist Ronaldo Guerra stands on his farm where he promotes ecotourism and exhibits his proposal for a succession of small dams as a mechanism for storing water on the surface and in the water table, strengthening the forests and the hydrographic basin in a mining region of southeastern Brazil where there is growing concern about the water supply. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

It is intriguing to see craters in some rural properties in Itabirito, especially on hills or gently sloping land.

They are “barraginhas”, explained Julio Carvalho, a forestry engineer and employee of the Municipal Secretariat of Environment and Sustainable Development. They are micro-dams, holes dug to slow down the runoff of rainwater that causes erosion.

This system prevents a large part of the sediment from flowing into the rivers, as well as the phenomenon of “voçorocas” (gullies, in Portuguese), products of intense erosion that abound in several parts of Itabirito and Ouro Preto, municipalities where the first tributaries of the Velhas are born.

As these are generally private lands, the municipal government obtains financing to evaluate the properties, design the interventions and put them out to bid, in agreement with the committees that oversee the watersheds, Carvalho told IPS.

The municipality of Itabirito is the “water tank” of Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state of Minas Gerais, in southeastern Brazil. The municipal government is promoting programs aimed at revitalizing the watershed that supplies nearly half of the six million inhabitants of Greater Belo Horizonte, explains Frederico Leite, environmental secretary of the municipality, which depends on mining activity. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

For country roads, which generate a great deal of erosion in the undulating topography, “dry boxes” are used, as well as small holes in the banks to retain the torrents or at least curb their speed, he said.

Other “mechanical land use and conservation practices” include recovering water sources through reforestation and fencing to prevent animals from invading water sources and trampling the surrounding areas.

Itabirito is also seeking to dredge the river of the same name, which crosses the city, to reduce sedimentation, which was aggravated by flooding in January, when the water level in the river rose unusually high.

Environmental education, a program of payments for environmental services and the expansion of conservation areas, in the city as well, are the plans implemented by Felipe Leite, secretary of environment and sustainable development of Itabirito since 2019.

“We want to create a culture of environmental preservation,” partly because “Itabirito is the water tank of Belo Horizonte,” he told IPS.

The municipal government chose to cooperate with the mining industry, especially with the Ferro Puro company, which decided to pave a road and reforest it with flowers as part of a tourism project.

In São Bartolomeu, a town in the municipality of Ouro Preto, Ronald Guerra, an ecotourism entrepreneur, proposes a succession of small dams and reservoirs as a way of retaining water, feeding the water table and preventing erosion.

On his 120-hectare farm, half of which is recognized as a Private Natural Heritage Reserve –a private initiative conservation effort – he has 13 small dams and raises fish for his restaurant and sport fishing.

The son of a doctor from Belo Horizonte, he opted for rural life and agroecology from a young age. He was secretary of environment of Ouro Preto and today he is an activist in several watershed committees, non-governmental organizations and efforts for the promotion of local culture.

Pollution from urban sewage is visible in the Onça (jaguar, in Portuguese) River, near its mouth, seen here from the entrance bridge in the Ribeiro de Abreu neighborhood that suffers frequent flooding when it rains heavily in Belo Horizonte, capital of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, in southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil, May 17 2022 (IPS)

“We do everything through parties, we don’t want power, we don’t want to take over the role of the State, but we don’t just protest and complain,” said Itamar de Paula Santos, a member of the United Community Council for Ribeiro de Abreu (Comupra), in this southeastern Brazilian city.

Ribeiro de Abreu is one of the neighborhoods most affected by recurrent flooding in Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais, as it is located on the right bank of the Onça (jaguar, in Portuguese) River, on the lower stretch, into which the water drains from a 212 square kilometer basin made up of numerous streams.

Cleaning up the river and preventing its waters from continuing to flood homes requires actions that also produce social benefits.

“We have so far removed 736 families who were living in high-risk situations, on the riverbank,” Santos told IPS in the same place where precarious and frequently flooded shacks gave way to the Community Riverside Park (Parque Ciliar, in Portuguese), which has a garden, soccer field, children’s playground and fruit trees.

The project, begun by local residents together with Comupra and the local government in 2015 and gradually implemented since then, aims to extend the community park 5.5 kilometers upstream through several neighborhoods by 2025.

This includes doubling the number of families resettled, cleaning up the Onça basin and its nine beaches, three islands and three waterfalls, preserving nature and developing urban agriculture, and creating areas for sports and cultural activities. All with participatory management and execution.

Itamar de Paula Santos, an activist with the United Community Council for Ribeiro de Abreu, longs to go back to swimming and fishing in the Onça River, as he did in his childhood. But its waters, polluted by urban waste, often flood the riverside neighborhoods in the rainy season as the river flows through the city of Belo Horizonte, in southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Displaced within the same neighborhood

The families removed from the flood-prone riverbank now live mostly in safe housing in the same Ribeiro de Abreu neighborhood, which had 16,000 inhabitants at the 2010 census, but is now estimated to be home to 20,000 people.

The Belo Horizonte city government has a rule to resettle families from risky areas in places no more than three kilometers from where they used to live, Ricardo Aroeira, director of Water Management of the Municipal Secretariat of Works and Infrastructure, told IPS.

That is the case of Dirce Santana Soares, 55, who now lives with her son, her mother and four other family members in a five-bedroom house, with a yard where she grows a variety of fruit trees and vegetables.

“It’s the best thing that could have happened to us,” she said. Five years ago she lived next to the river, which flooded her shack, almost always in the wee hours of the morning, every year during the rainiest months in Belo Horizonte – December and January.

“We had bunk beds and we piled everything we wanted to save on top of them. Then we built a second floor on the house, leaving the first floor to the mud,” she told IPS. “But I didn’t want to leave the neighborhood where I had been living for 34 years.”

She was lucky. After receiving the compensation for leaving her riverside shack, an acquaintance sold her their current home, at a low price, with long-term interest-free installments.

View of a beach on the Onça River, which the movement for clean rivers wants to recuperate as a recreational area for the local population in the city of Belo Horizonte, in southeastern Brazil. At this spot, the Onça River receives the waters of the Isidoro stream. There are another eight beaches to be restored as well. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Bad luck

Soares, who is now a domestic worker, had a daycare center that started losing money in the face of the increased offer of free nursery schools by the local government, and the COVID-19 pandemic over the last two years.

Itamar Santos, a 64-year-old father of three, has also lived in the neighborhood for almost four decades. Before that, he worked as a mechanical lathe operator in other cities and for three years in Carajás, the large iron ore mine in the eastern Amazon, 1,600 km north of Belo Horizonte.

In 1983, in Carajás, he lost his right leg when he fell into a 12-meter well. “It was night-time, and there was no electricity, just dark jungle,” he explained. After the first painful impact, he learned to live with his disability and regained the joy of living, with a specially adapted car.

He became an activist and among his achievements were free bus tickets for paraplegics and a gymnasium for multiple sports. “Creating conditions that enable the disabled to leave their homes is therapeutic,” he told IPS.

View of a community garden that local residents in the Ribeiro de Abreu neighborhood cultivate on the banks of the Onça River. Some 140 families who suffered annual flooding were resettled and now live in safe housing in the same part of Belo Horizonte, a metropolis in southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

But the cause that impassions him today is the river, which in January has a heavy flow due to the heavy rains that month, but dries up in September, in the dry season.

“Let the Onça drink clean water” is the slogan of a movement also promoted by Santos, to emphasize the protection and recovery of the thousands of springs that supply the river and its tributary streams.

Every year since 2008, this movement, driven by Comupra, organizes meetings for reflection and debate on the revitalization of the river in riverside venues in different neighborhoods in the basin.

The festivities are also repeated annually, or more often. Carnival brings joy to the local population on the beaches or squares along the banks of the Onça River, and giant Christmas trees are set up for the communities to come out and celebrate the holidays.

The basin, or more precisely sub-basin, of the Onça River comprises the northern half of the territory and the population of Belo Horizonte, which totals 2.5 million inhabitants. The south, which is richer, is where the Arrudas River is located.

Both emerge in the neighboring municipality to the west, Contagem, and flow east into the Das Velhas River, the main source of water for the six million inhabitants of Greater Belo Horizonte. As they cross heavily populated areas, they are the main polluters of the Velhas basin.

Major floods in the provincial capital occur mainly in the Onça sub-basin. The steep topography of Belo Horizonte makes the soil more impermeable, leading to more disasters.

Maria José Zeferino, a retired teacher from neighboring schools, at the Our Lady of Mercy Park, which was built to clean up a stream from urban pollution that was spreading diarrhea and parasites among the students of three nearby schools, in Belo Horizonte, a city in southeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Other riverbank parks

The Belo Horizonte city government has been working on drainage plans for years and has been implementing the Program for the Environmental Recovery of the Valley and Creek Bottoms since 2001.

In April it published the Technical Instruction for the Elaboration of Drainage Studies and Projects, under the general coordination of Aroeira.

Since the end of the last century there has been a “paradigm shift,” said Aroeira. Channeling watercourses used to be the norm, but this “merely shifted the site of the floods.” Now the aim is to contain the torrents and to give new value to rivers, integrating them into the urban landscape, cleaning them up and at the same time improving the quality of life of the riverside populations, he explained.

The construction of long, narrow linear parks, which combines the clean-up of rivers or streams with environmental preservation, riverside reforestation and services for the local population, is one of the “structural” measures that can be seen in Belo Horizonte.

The participation of students and teachers from three neighboring schools stood out in the implementation in 2008 of the Nossa Senhora da Piedad Park in the Aarão Reis neighborhood, home to 8,300 inhabitants in 2010, near the lower section of the Onça River.

Cleaning up the creek that gives the park its name was the major environmental and sanitary measure.

“Sewage from the entire neighborhood contaminated the stream and caused widespread illnesses among the children, such as diarrhea, verminosis (parasites in the bronchial tubes) and nausea,” Maria José Zeferino, a retired art teacher at one of the local schools, told IPS.

The medicinal herb garden in the Primer de Mayo Ecological Park was a demand of the local population in the southern Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte. Creation of the park included the clean-up of a polluted stream and provides a gathering and recreational area for local residents. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

The park, which belongs to the municipality, has an area of 58,000 square meters, a pond, three courts for different sports, a skateboarding area and a paved walkway for the elderly. A total of 143 families and one farm received compensation to vacate the area, leaving many fruit trees behind.

“A clean river was our dream. And the goal of the next stage is to have swimming, fishing and boating in the city’s streams,” said Zeferino.

The Primer de Mayo Ecological Park, in the neighborhood of the same name with 2,421 inhabitants according to the 2010 census, was built during the revitalization of the stream of the same name, covering 33,700 square meters along a winding terrain. The novelty is a medicinal herb garden, a demand of the local population.

“We discovered 70 springs here that feed the stream that runs into the Onça River,” said Paulo Carvalho de Freitas, an active member of the Community Commission that supports the municipal management of the park and carries out educational activities there.

“My fight for the future is to remove much of the concrete with which the park was built, which waterproofs the soil and goes against one of the objectives of the project,” which was inaugurated in 2008, said Freitas.

Francisca Piecho stands with her daughter-in-law Johana Cruz and her grandson outside her home that now has electricity from solar energy, in the village of Cacho de Oro, Teotepeque municipality, in the southern department of La Libertad. Hers and other rural Salvadoran families have seen their lives improve with the arrival not only of electricity but also of a reforestation program in the area. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
TEOTEPEQUE, El Salvador , May 5 2022 (IPS)

After working on the family farm, Carlos Salama comes home and plugs his cell phone into a socket via a solar-powered electrical system, a rarity in this rural village in southern El Salvador.

“Just being able to charge the phone with our own electricity, which comes from the sun, is a great thing for us,” the 29-year-old farmer who lives in Cacho de Oro, a rural settlement nestled in hills on the shores of the Pacific Ocean in Teotepeque municipality in the southern department of La Libertad, told IPS.

Salama’s mother, Rosa Aquino, was also enthusiastic about the electrical system installed in her home and 15 other houses in the village in late April.

“It feels good, we never had electricity… at night it makes you happy. When I was a child we used kerosene lanterns. And then battery lamps, and now we save what we used to spend on batteries,” Aquino, 45, told IPS.

Salvadoran farmer Carlos Salama recharges his cell phone by means of a solar energy system installed on the roof of the house where he lives in the village of Cacho de Oro, in the municipality of Teotepeque. Although the system does not support appliances that consume more than 500 watts, the families now have lightbulbs to use at night, can charge their cell phones and can use small appliances. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Poverty in plain sight

Some 50 families live in Cacho de Oro, dedicated to subsistence agriculture. And although the village has had electricity from the national grid for some years now, nearly twenty families, the poorest, have not been able to afford the connection to the grid.

That was the case of the family of Francisca Piecho, a 43-year-old farmer who lives with her son and his wife and their little boy in a dirt-floor dwelling.

Piecho’s husband works in another area of the country cutting sugar cane, as he could not find work in Cacho de Oro.

The family could not afford to pay the 500 dollars it cost to connect to the national power line that had finally reached the village.

“Some families have relatives in other countries who send them remittances, but we don’t have any, and we couldn’t afford it,” Piecho told IPS, while stirring a stew on a wood stove.

Her son was not at home when IPS visited the village. But Piecho said he works in agriculture, mainly during the May to November rainy season, because in the dry season there is almost no work available.

The village of Cacho de Oro is perched on top of a hill along the Pacific Ocean in southern El Salvador, a remote impoverished area where unemployment is particularly acute during the November to May dry season, when no agricultural work is available. The privatized electricity system has not connected these villages to the national grid because it is not profitable. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

In El Salvador, electricity distribution has been privatized since 1998, and many rural villages do not have electric power because they are very small and the companies do not see investing there as good business.

According to official figures, 95.2 percent of households in rural areas have access to electricity, while 2.0 percent use candles, 0.8 percent use solar panels, 0.5 percent use kerosene, and 1.4 percent use other means.

Official data also shows that the average monthly household income in urban areas is 728 dollars compared to 435 dollars in rural areas.

But now the poorest families in Cacho de Oro also have electricity, and from a clean energy source, thanks to the solar power project brought to the village by the governmental Environmental Fund of El Salvador (Fonaes), at a cost of 16,000 dollars.

Staff from the municipal government in Jicalapa, in the southern Salvadoran department of La Libertad, explain to a group of residents from the village of Izcacuyo about the solar electrification project that began in December 2021, as well as the community reforestation effort. CREDIT: Municipality of Jicalapa

Solar energy to the rescue

Solar panels were installed on the rooftops of the houses of nearly twenty families. The panel provides just enough electric power to connect a couple of light bulbs, charge a cell phone and plug in small appliances that consume less than 500 watts.

“If the appliances consume more than that, it’s not enough to turn them on,” Arturo Solano, a technician with Tecnosolar, the company that supplied the panels, told IPS.

He added that there are approximately 100 community solar energy projects in rural El Salvador, a country of 6.7 million inhabitants. About 7,500 homes have been electrified with this clean energy source.

“You have to adapt to the system and buy appliances that are compatible with the power it supplies,” he said, adding that the amount of energy provided depends on the investment made, because if you want more power, you have to install more panels.

Even so, with this very basic electricity service, the residents of Cacho de Oro are happy to at least have electric light and an outlet to charge their cell phones and stay in communication.

Before the arrival of the solar energy project, some of the families were able to connect to the national grid indirectly through neighbors who were connected. But this meant that they had to pay part of the monthly bill.

“Now we no longer pay part of the bill, which cost us five dollars. We use that money to buy some food, eggs or oil,” Francisco de la Cruz Tulen, a 30-year-old farmer who lives with his wife Milagro Menjívar, 21, and their two small children, told IPS, pleased to have electricity at no monthly cost.

In the rainy season, Tulen, like the rest, rents a small plot of land to plant the staple crops of Central America – corn and beans – to feed the family. He also works on other farms as a day laborer, to earn a little money.

But in the dry season, he leaves the village to look for work in the sugar cane fields. This work, one of the most physically demanding in agriculture, pays between six and 24 dollars a day.

In addition to the solar electrification project in the village of Cacho de Oro in southern El Salvador, reservoirs have been built to capture rainwater and irrigate fruit and timber trees planted to reforest the area and provide food, such as avocados, and keep the aquifers healthy. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Reservoirs for life

There is no potable water in Cacho de Oro. The families get their water from a spring that sometimes dries up in the dry season and at times they have to buy water in barrels brought in by truck. Each barrel costs 2.5 dollars.

“There are possibilities of getting piped water. A Japanese development cooperation project has dug a well, but we are still waiting to see,” German de la Cruz Tesorero, a resident of the village and the president of the local Communal Development Association (Adescos), an organizational system for small settlements in this Central American country, told IPS.

To maintain water sources and to provide food, the solar electrification project is also accompanied by a reforestation effort in the area. In addition, small reservoirs have been built to irrigate the trees and home gardens.

This has occurred not only in Cacho de Oro, but also in another village located downstream, called Izcacuyo, in the municipality of Jicalapa, also in the department of La Libertad.

Some families have planted vegetable gardens next to their homes in the southern Salvadoran village of Cacho de Oro, growing vegetables such as “pipián”, a highly prized local squash, to boost food production in this impoverished part of the country. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

The families of Izcacuyo have their own solar electrification project, inaugurated in December 2021, with the difference that they had never received energy from the national grid.

To charge a cell phone, villagers had to go to the canton of La Perla, a 30-minute bus ride away.

The total cost of the local electrification and reforestation project was 38,000 dollars, including 30,000 provided by Fonaes, 4,000 by the municipal government and the other 4,000 from work contributed by the community, which was counted as hours of labor.

Some 5,450 fruit trees have been planted in family plots, including avocado, lemon and mango trees, as well as timber species such as madrecacao (Gliricidia sepium), which offers advantages to the habitat and soils by fixing nitrogen.

The project also provided fertilizer to ensure that the trees grew well.

The municipal government’s idea is that in three or four years, families will be harvesting avocados, mangos and lemons, and part of the production can be marketed along the coastal strip of the department of La Libertad, catering to tourists and hotels and restaurants in the area.

“They will see the benefits in a couple of years,” said William Beltrán, a technician in the Jicalapa municipal government, during a meeting with IPS in San Salvador.

Crossing the Rio Cobre, at a crossing at Tulloch, St Catherine. Water from the Rio Cobre is diverted to the artificial recharge system at Innswood. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

By Zadie Neufville
Kingston, Jamaica, Apr 26 2022 (IPS)

It will take billions of dollars and many years to fix a growing problem that has placed Jamaica into the unlikely bracket of being among the world’s most water-scarce countries due to the unavailability of potable water.

The worsening water crisis of the Kingston and St Andrew (KMA) metropolis results in rationing for months in some years. The lock-offs are exacerbated by droughts, broken pumps and the crumbling pipelines making up the water distribution system. At the same time, in the aquifers below the capital city, more than 104.3 million cubic meters of water, or about 60 percent of the available resource, remained unusable due to pollution.

A 2020 study, Groundwater Availability and Security in the Kingston Basin, found that high levels of nitrates in the city’s main aquifer were making the water unusable for domestic purposes. The study conducted by researchers at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus’ Departments of Chemistry and Geology and Geography, pointed to the contamination by effluent from the septic and absorption pits that litter the city’s landscape and saline intrusion from over-pumping as the cause of the pollution.

Lead researcher Arpita Mandal told IPS via email that the two-year study, which started in 2018, showed no “significant change” in the levels of chloride and nitrates during the period, noting: “The historic data is patchy, but the chloride and nitrate levels have always shown high above the permissible limits”.

The report concluded that there is an urgent need to address the continued contamination of the Kingston Basin, but Debbie-Ann Gordon Smith, the lead chemist in the study, noted that the cleaning process would be extremely lengthy and costly.

According to the study, many of the wells across KSA were decommissioned because between 50 and 80 per cent of the effluent from absorption pits and septic tanks goes directly into the ground. The report said the same was true for many Caribbean Islands, including Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, and Grenada.

Noting the concerns for the quality and quantity of water in the aquifers of the KSA, the managing director of the Water Resources Authority (WRA) Peter Clarke pointed to the existence of several working wells in use by companies that treat the water to potable standards for industrial use.

He said that while the contamination from “200 years of pit latrines” (in KSA) continues to cause concern, “the hardscaping of car parks and roofs” means there is less water available to recharge the aquifer. Therefore, to preserve the continued viability of the aquifer, the WRA, Jamaica’s water management and regulatory body, is preparing to put a moratorium on new wells.

Clarke is confident that the island has enough water and reserves of the precious liquid for decades to come. He noted, however, that in Jamaica’s case, it is the distribution and access that makes water a scarce commodity in some areas.
“It is where the people are, where water is distributed, and access to the water that is important,” he said.

In 2015 the state-owned domestic distribution agency, the National Water Commission (NWC), announced an extensive 15 million US dollar programme to refurbish Kingston’s ageing distribution network. The programme included decontamination and recovery of old wells, decommissioning old sewage plants, and rehabilitation of water storage facilities.

In the process, the water company mended 40,000 leaks, which back then were reportedly costing the city 50 percent of the potable water it produced. They also replaced the ageing pipelines installed before the country’s independence in 1962. The programme continues with the replacement and installation of hundreds of miles and pipelines.

Clarke explained that Jamaica’s groundwater supply is three to four times greater than that which runs to the sea via the island’s 120 rivers and their networks of streams and provides 85 per cent of potable needs. Jamaica uses roughly 25 per cent of its available groundwater resources and 11 per cent of its accessible surface water.

To satisfy the growing demand in the KMA, Clarke said, the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation is considering a new treatment plant in St Catherine among its planned and existing solutions. In 2016, an artificial groundwater recharge system was built at the cost of just over 1 billion Jamaican dollars or 133 million US dollars, on 68 acres (27.5 hectares) of what was once cane-lands in Innswood, St Catherine, to replenish the wells that supply the most populated areas of the metropolis and surrounding areas.

The system currently injects an extra five million gallons of potable water per day to replenish abstractions from the supply wells. The Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development announced last month that it is considering similar systems to store excess water for use in times of drought and to reduce evaporation from surface systems like reservoirs and dams in other water-stressed areas of the island,

Both Gordon Smith and Mandal agree that Kingston’s water shortage is worsened by climate variations, increased urbanisation, and the inadequate management of existing resources. In the last few years, a construction boom in the KMA has transformed the KMA, placing increased pressure on the available water supply.

The UWI’s Climate Research Group has warned of increased temperature and extremes in rainfall and droughts. Based on the 6th Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Group warned Caribbean governments to brace for more prolonged and more intense droughts and higher temperatures that will impact, among other things, food production and water supplies.

In the case of the KSA, the NWC has continued to build and upgrade the city’s sewage treatment capacity in the areas affected to end sewage and wastewater contamination of the aquifer. Hopefully, the aquifer will naturally flush itself when the work is complete.

“Jamaica is not short of water,” Clark said. “It’s a distribution issue”.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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