UNEP Regional Consultations

The UNEP meetings prior to the DPI/NGO conference really were the highlight (in many ways) of the few days I spent in Bonn.

 While they had organisational drawbacks, there was a few really excellent speakers and some interesting discussions happened. It was also fun seeing a lot of the European Youth who had attended CSD-19.

I love Bonn. It is a very small and in many ways friendly city. I have not written much about the UNEP report that was introduced to us in one of the side events--it was interesting in numerous ways but had so many limitations that it also could not really be taken seriously. But that makes me consider "research" in the social sciences at large. I remember my friend Aoife working for hours on transcript after transcript. I know that they did a huge survey of lots of scientists. But is it just an opinion piece or do you think because they spoke to "experts" that it can be called research?

I personally believe that it is an interesting piece of quantitative research and take it with a pinch of salt. Considering that they were asked what they thought were the biggest issues facing the environment--it is really interesting to see how globally there are recurring concerns and common ideas on the solutions. But. I think but is the disclaimer in all this. But, how much can we accept as fact and how much do we still need to go to adequately find solutions that will work. There is no panacea. I don't want to sound like a stuck record but there is no one solution. Why are we still looking for a global solution?

Possibly because it is a global problem. I am not stupid. We need global norms / legislation. With local implementation in numerous diverse ways. Lessons should be shared but not indiscriminately. We also need to use our common sense.


This blog was meant to be about the UNEP consultations. It isn't. I will write a different one when I have time :)

Me! (at World Water Week??????)

It is almost impossible to describe the impact of World Water Week on me. But I can tell you that it has made me realise the necessity to become an expert in potential solutions, read much more and constantly challenge my own mindset. It was both exhilarating and humbling. My learning curve, the rate of new ideas bombarding me and re-evaluation of what I would say when I spoke at World Water Day changed every five seconds.

I realised that althought I have become very active in youth advocacy for Sustainable Development and attended relevant events....

I have ignored the complex interconnections in the water, energy and food security nexus. Water will affect food security. Water is increasingly volatile and this also a vital strand of the Sustainable Development debate that I have been ignoring. It is inexcusable.

Furthermore, while I had numerous opportunities to express myself during World Water week, my greatest concern is that my contributions were not concrete. I have spent years advocating for youth involvement beyond the token one. I have worked hard during CSD-19 to ensure that we had the background knowledge, could quote past agreements / conventions and could reference relevant materials. But when it came to water, I was not as well read and the knowledge gap was tangible.

Important reading???

Climate change, water and food security:

This FAO water report provides a comprehensive overview of the water-food nexus. It summarises current knowledge about climate change and its implications regarding water availability for agriculture, and analyses the impacts on local and national food security :http://www.fao.org/docrep/014/i2096e/i2096e.pdf

UN-Water Seminar: World Water Day 2012 - Water and Food Security: Call for Solutions

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UN-Water Seminar: World Water Day 2012 - Water and Food Security: Call for Solutions - World Water Week

Today I spoke on a panel for the UN-Water Seminar: World Water Day 2012 - Water and Food Security: Call for Solutions - World Water Week

I was terrible but I learnt a lot. The other speakers were excellent in their own way and it was hard to sit infront of practitioners, experts, scientists and public policy professionals and say something worthwhile.It was one of those times when you wish someone in the audience was familiar or wish you had been better prepared.

Enabling Effective Action: Adaptation across Political, Social, and Institutional Boundaries

Politicians care (?!?)

That is the message shared at World Water week. I listened to panels of speakers who assured us that they do care. But communicating for decision makers who speak in terms of economic value and needs to capitalised upon if change is going to be possible.

This in itself requires us to be flexible and change our structures. It is important to think about the next steps. How we internalise the costs. How can we deal with market failures? The negative externalities are the question that politicians need to think about. We have a tension based on the initial problem when we initially characterised the developed world as the bad guys and the rest as the good guys because now the good guys are polluting too. Costa Rica was used as an example of how water was used in the planning. 94% of electricity is renewable and energy and environment were made to be the same department. Protected areas are a major contributor to water and they struggle with financing. Costa rica took a unique approach to fund this.

Intergovernmental adaptation partnership (costa rica, spain and usa). It is voluntary and interim. They examine questions such as "What are the weak links in the climate adaptation chain?" The partnership is to bring innovators and those who try to innovate together.

It is interesting and its helping but the key message that I have got is the problem of working cross in a sectoral way but how vital it is.

Change is happening but not as fast as we like.

It is easier to change the small things. No one wants to hear that we need to change the big things.

Welcome to World Water week

We are just at the beginning but its just such an important experience that I really wouldn't have known about if it hadn't been for the FAO. I am in complete awe of what is happening and intrigued.

I am currently at "Enabling Effective Action: Adaptation across Political, Social, and Institutional Boundaries". It is really interesting listening to the German Ministry's perspective on Climate proofing in the planning process. Its short term higher cost and long term gains. It is refreshing to see a government that is willing to invest in the future rather than focusing on short term which tends to be the direction that short term grants forces projects in.

I had never considered that climate and hydrological regimes determine water availability, but institutions determine how water resources are managed. It is something that I took for granted but it wasn't something that I had thought to question. I am effected. Why haven't I thought about this before?

This session was thought provoking. Overcoming obstacles to respond sustainably to shifting climate regimes--a huge topic. We know (or should know) that climate change reduces certainty about our ability to balance energy, food, water, and ecological security. Water availability and timing are ultimately expressions of climate and hydrology and largely beyond our control. Yet we are having a adverse impact on it. Making the connection is not something that is recognised or internalised in our societies.

If we think about it logically, economic and population growth too are, in many ways, also beyond our influence. What we can control is how institutions function within shifting economic, climate, and hydrological conditions is within our control. True, its not in my personal control but our governments can impact this. Our experts should be able to impact this.

Water has not yet entered into political and development forums. I have been only involved with development for the last two years in an advocacy role. Until the FAO introducted the concept to me --I had not made the link between sustainability and green growth grounded in an awareness of the centrality of water. It is logical. It makes sense.

Adaptation is about governance, policy, science, finance and economics, and engineering. Todays seminar explored the fact that the need for action and often new kinds of action is obvious, but examples are rare.

It didn't answer the questions. But that is the never ending challenge. Developing best practices is a learning curve. Barriers are real and not going to shift overnight. Balance mitigation with adaptation appears (at least to me) an almost unsolvable problem. It is clear that we need to ensure that climate-sustainable frameworks are in place urgently. It was really interesting to listen to how governments and organisations are enabling effective action within organisations, across sectors and borders, and over multiple scales. You can watch the seminar for yourself below:

http://i.2degrees.info/CmpDoc/2008/4840/48641_world-water-week.pdf?utm_medium=email&utm_source=2degrees&utm_campaign=host&dm_t=0,0,0,0,0

Stockholm (World Water Week)

Stockholm is an incredible city. It was my first time seeing the beautiful islands, glitter clear water, gorgeous old buildings with their green copper roofs, and exploring this majesty with Johanna made my month. She showed me the narrow cobbled streets of Old Town, the castles, and touristy things but she also took me to her favourite vegetarian restaurant that overlooked stockholm and took a boat to a nature reserve island for a lovely walk. It was wonderful to talk to someone who has a sparkling intelligence and a compassionate caring nature. 

We discussed our advocacy work around Rio+20 and wondered if anything would result from the three day conference as everyone is placing such unrealistic hopes on it.

Water Access and Cost.

 I have recently been learning about Water and this has been making me think. It is a silent yet systemic issue that is going to grow in importance as it is vital to human survival.

In 2005, the United Nations Human Development Programme stated “If you live in a slum in Manila, you pay more for your water than people living in London.”

This makes sense to me because when I lived in Tanzania--Water cost a lot--even before privatisation.

I grew up collecting rain water, celebrating when it rained and experiencing very brief periods of rain. Discussing when to plant a neighbours grain stores based on when it might possibly rain has been something that I have grown up with. I know what happens when there is a drought, and how families relied on the crops that they planted to survive. Children and women carried buckets of waters for kilometers home, people went to the river to wash (themselves and clothes). Water wasn't clean. It needed to be boiled before you drank it. I knew water borne diseases such as Cholera  or Dysentery or Bilharzia. I saw all of this as normal. This was life.

The impact of the privatisation of water was to make things worse. I saw the hardships and struggles people I knew and grew up with because of this. Tanzania's government following rich-countries and World Bank advice to privatized their water services but the country back a few generations in development terms. Stealing water, fights over water, illegal traders of water and suffering due to a lack of water become more widespread. These policies are having serious unacceptably negative impact. Privatization led to increased prices and lack of access, rather than increased access. Access to water became a clear indicator of poverty levels.

Government put water meters on water, charged unreasonable amounts for water, there was regularly water shortages, I used to pay attention to when the water stores ran low,we saved water in tanks, I saw rivers diverted to grow cereals (e.g Rice) for World Bank or IMF funded projects to pay back national debt, our electricity source was haphazard and depended on the water level in the dam.  I saw wells being built using foreign aid for a village to have access to and a local school building walls around it and posting security guards to prevent access to that water. I saw how water springs were privatised, how a bottled water plant took off in a rural village in the rift valley and soon was supplying the whole country.

But once access to water was made prohibitively expensive. People had to work twice as hard to achieve the previous standard of life... This is wrong and cannot be justified.

Some privatization programs have produced positive results. But the overall record is not encouraging. From Argentina to Bolivia, and from the Philippines to the United States, the conviction that the private sector offers a “magic bullet” for unleashing the equity and efficiency needed to accelerate progress towards water for all has proven to be misplaced. While these past failures of water concessions do not provide evidence that the private sector has no role to play, they do point to the need for greater caution, regulation and a commitment to equity in public-private partnerships. -- 2006 United Nations Human Development Report, 2006, p.10

In Europe--it is completely different! In Ireland it rains almost daily and no one really takes water shortage seriously. Dams don't dry out...they flood. Yet the rivers are horrifically polluted and the seas are over fished. In Denmark, water was supposed to be used in moderation and people used to recycled (and if you didn't you were fined) but now they cannot afford to process their waste to the same extent. In the UK, a water shortage meant you weren't allowed to water your lawns or gardens or have water fights in the summer heat. Life and water access was completely different.

Much of the world lives without access to clean water. Privatization of water resources, promoted as a means to bring business efficiency into water service management, has instead led to reduced access for the poor around the world as prices for these essential services have risen.

In 2006, the United Nations Human Development Report states "almost 2 million children die each year for want of a glass of clean water and adequate sanitation." It notes that over 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water. But the scariest fact and most believable fact in that report (for me) was :

"1.8 billion people who have access to a water source within 1 kilometer, but not in their house or yard, consume around 20 liters per day. In the United Kingdom the average person uses more than 50 liters of water a day flushing toilets (where average daily water usage is about 150 liters a day. The highest average water use in the world is in the US, at 600 liters day.) "

This report also said something that worried me (and hopefully worries you?) "the scarcity at the heart of the global water crisis is rooted in power, poverty and inequality, not in physical availability." The severity of the ecological crisis appears to be that we are taking water from the water sheds and  aquifers (either pumping it into factories, using it for irrigation etc). Humanity as a whole is not paying attention to displacement, diversion and mass pollution of water. We need to change our mentality to water. Instead of seeing it as a only a crisis for those who don't have it--we need to think of it as a geopolitical crisis.

In May 2010, the UN produced the 3rd Global Biodiversity Outlook report which notes that water quality in freshwater ecosystems is an important biodiversity indicator, yet global data is quite lacking.What surprised me was:

More than 40% of the global river discharge is now intercepted by large dams and one-third of sediment destined for the coastal zones no longer arrives. These large-scale disruptions have had a major impact on fish migration, freshwater biodiversity more generally and the services it provides. They also have a significant influence on biodiversity in terrestrial, coastal and marine ecosystems.

The number of observed ‘dead zones’, coastal sea areas where water oxygen levels have dropped too low to support most marine life, has roughly doubled each decade since the 1960s. Many are concentrated near the estuaries of major rivers, and result from the buildup of nutrients, largely carried from inland agricultural areas where fertilizers are washed into watercourses. The nutrients promote the growth of algae that die and decompose on the seabed, depleting the water of oxygen and threatening fisheries, livelihoods and tourism. (p. 60)

Source:  Diaz and Rosenberg (2008). Science.

If you look at this graph....it is a dramatic insight into what damage we have done to our own planet. The clearest thing to me is that water insecurity is on the rise and that it isn't as highlighted an issue as climate change but it is just as (if not more) important to make people aware of.

The Millennium Development Goals includes the need to “reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.” The World Water Forum's that I have recently only heard about have been working towards this. I read an interesting article that goes through them year by year.

Its interesting to look at extracts from their their final declarations with regard to water privatisation:

2nd World Water Forum:

“freshwater, coastal and related ecosystems are protected and improved; that sustainable development and political stability are promoted, that every person has access to enough safe water at an affordable cost to lead a healthy and productive life and that the vulnerable are protected from the risks of water-related hazards.”

3rd World Water Forum:

Increased support for the private sector. 

4th World Water Forum:

Noted (in final ministerial declaration) that governments should have the primary role in providing water access and related improvements. (This does not preclude the use of private companies contracted to provide the service, but highlights the importance of democratic accountability over the provision of such service.)

5th Water Forum:

Final report:http://www.worldwaterforum5.org/fileadmin/WWF5/Final_Report/WWF5_Final_Report_ENG.pdf

Some interesting links (and my sources):

Global Water Partnership:
http://www.gwp.org/en/The-Challenge/What-is-water-security/

Water.org
http://water.org/learn-about-the-water-crisis/facts/


World Health Organisation:
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/en/

World Water Council: An International Multi-Stakeholder Platform for a Water Secure World
http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/