Water in Cities

"Share - managing water across boundaries" now in Russian

WANI's latest toolkit translation offers "Share - managing water across boundaries" in Russian. The translated version provides Russian audiences with an overview of the world's shared water resources, and insights for managing these.

Transboudary rivers are increasingly being drawn upon to meet competing demands. The newly released Russian version of Share includes a range of potential costs and benefits of cooperation, and of non-cooperation, and principles and mechanisms for sharing the benefits that derive from water.

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L'ambiente tradito, storie di dighe e disastri

Nel libro 'Da Molare al Vajont, storie di dighe' (edizioni Erga), Giorgio Temporelli passa in rassegna i più tragici eventi accaduti nel nostro Paese nell'ultimo secolo. "La progettazione e la gestione delle grandi opere, siano esse un palazzo, un ponte, una strada o una diga - spiega l'autore - devono sempre essere ispirate al buon senso e all'onestà intellettuale. I segnali della natura non possono essere sottovalutati: quando ciò è successo i risultati sono stati tragici.". Il libro ricostruisce le vicende processuali, analizza le tecniche costruttive e propone anche le testimonianze dei superstiti. Ecco una rassegna di foto d'epoca dei casi trattati nello studio (e.d.s.)

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Acqua minerale, primato italiano

Nel nostro Paese record europeo di consumi di minerale: 192 litri a testa nel 2009. Nel mondo secondi soli al Messico. Ma bevendo acqua pubblica si riducono (di molto) le emissioni di gas serra

Acque salutari, pure, e cristalline. Una promessa tutta naturale, che però danneggia l'ambiente. Lo afferma uno studio che mostra come scegliendo l'acqua di casa rispetto a quella imbottigliata gli italiani risparmierebbero annualmente l'emissione di 9000 tonnellate di CO2.

Primi in Europa, secondi al mondo. Non un primato di coscienza ambientale ma quello del consumo pro capite d'acqua imbottigliata. Sono i dati che emergono da un rapporto della Beverage Marketing Corporation, secondo cui nel 2009 gli italiani hanno consumato in media 192 litri di acqua minerale a testa. Un valore che ci proietta al top della classifica dei dieci paesi più attratti dall'acqua in bottiglia. Siamo sotto solo al Messico (234 litri pro capite) e sopra agli aridissimi Emirati Arabi (151 litri).

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WEBINAR WATER ECONOMY - 20 April 2011, ore 17,00

Il 20 aprile BCFN presenta in diretta web "Emergenza acqua tra disponibilità ed interessi economici"

Un seminario per fare luce a 360° sul problema mondiale dell’accesso limitato all’oro liquido’. Si terrà il 20 aprile e sarà trasmesso in diretta web alle 17 sul sito del BCFN (www.barillacfn.it). L’acqua “di qualità”, infatti, non salata e non inquinata, rappresenta solo lo 0,003 % del totale dell’acqua disponibile nel mondo. Proprio qualche giorno fa il segretario generale delle Nazioni Unite Ban Ki-moon ha ricordato che ogni 20 secondi nel mondo un bambino o una bambina muore per una malattia causata dalla mancanza di acqua potabile, e che in questo modo “perdiamo 1,5 milioni di giovani vite ogni anno”.

Per garantire a tutti l’accesso all’acqua ognuno deve fare la sua parte. Servono nuove normative a livello sia locale sia internazionale, per evitare che l’interesse di pochi prevalga e garantire l’acqua per tutti. Per questo motivo è possibile partecipare al dibattito il 20 Aprile alle ore 17 su www.barillacfn.it.

Sourcing water

Drinkable water is essential for human survival, but in many parts of the world people have no immediate access to it and must work to get it. In the deserts of Africa, for example, Samburu herders rely on wild elephants to find waterholes for them, while people living in the Andes have come up with a remarkable way to trap the water in the air – nets.

As anyone who has done a survival course can tell you, we can survive weeks without food but only a matter of days without water. Of course, many of us are lucky enough to have water on tap, but according to the UN, only 42% of people in rural areas had access to clean water in 2004. For those people, sourcing water can take a great deal of effort and ingenuity.
The Hamar of Ethiopia, for example, must walk long distances in grueling temperatures to get water from their nearest wells. And that’s not the hardest part. The hardest part is carrying the water back for the other villagers since water is anything but light.
In fact, water is so heavy that carrying it any great distance is often a very inefficient way to keep yourself topped up. When women and children from the Tubu tribe set off across the desert for market, they know that the walk will take them eight days in temperatures that can exceed 45C. They also know that the only way to survive is by remembering the location of a single well along the way, their only lifeline in a sea of emptiness.
Relying on the navigational skills passed down by their mothers, the women must take their bearings from the stars and read the shapes of the sand dunes. But take one wrong turn in these ever-shifting sands and death may be just around the corner.
In Kenya, the Samburu people don’t rely on themselves to find water when the river runs dry, but on the skills of wild elephants. Since the elephants have an amazing ability to detect underground water, the Sumburu keep close tabs on them and then take their water from the shallow wells that the elephants leave open for them. Back in their village, the Samburu thanks the elephants by filling troughs which they leave out for thirsty animals. It is part of their belief system that no living thing should suffer the agony of dying from lack of water, especially those animals who help to keep the herdsmen and their families alive.
But while some people must go in search of water, others like the Chileans of the Atacama Desert have learned to wait for it to come to them. As the wind blows across the Pacific, it draws up water from the sea until it becomes a thick fog. When the fog then hits the desert coastline it is trapped by lichen on cacti and condenses into water that is drunk by the local animals. Inspired by this, local people now set down huge nets that line the hills and trap the fog as it rolls across the desert. As the fog condenses, the precious liquid runs through pipes that lead down to the grateful villages below. As usual, Mother Nature has all the best tricks.

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Deep wells and prudence - Towards pragmatic action for addressing groundwater overexploitation in India - A World Bank document (2010)

India is the largest user of groundwater resources in the world. It is estimated that approximately 230 cubic kilometers per year is used annually, this is more than a quarter of the total world consumption from this resource.

It is in this context that this World Bank report looks at the reasons for this quantum of groundwater usage.

The report delves into socio-economic and political reasons and looks at policies which inadvertently promote so much extraction. The report also analyses various attempts to manage this resource. These attempts range from government and international agency efforts directed to grassroots mobilisations. Finally the report comes out with suggestions to deal with this crisis.

The report is broken into 4 chapters and an introduction. These are:

You cannot manage what you don’t know: Understanding realities under and above the ground
A semblance of sufficiency: Institutional framework of groundwater management in India
A groundswell of change: Potential of community groundwater management in India
Pragmatic approaches for managing over-exploited aquifers in India

Each chapter ends with a 'conclusion' section that is both a summation of the points discussed and an introduction to the next chapter.

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An-tiki crew complete trans-Atlantic raft voyage for WaterAid

An-Tiki, a raft made of polyethylene pipes and a pig shelter, and her intrepid crew of four 'mature' adventurers, including an 85-year-old grandfather from London, have defied sceptics by successfully crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

Grandfather, writer and adventurer Anthony Smith and his three-man crew – aged from 56 to 61 years old – arrived yesterday at St Martin in the Caribbean, having safely sailed 3,000 miles across the second largest ocean in the world.

During their 66 days at sea the crew battled bad weather, broken rudders and freight boats sailing too close for comfort. They also baked fresh bread every day, studied plankton with their onboard microscope and last week celebrated Anthony's 85th birthday with a chocolate cake and a tin of pineapple chunks!

The crew have also raised thousands of pounds for WaterAid, which works with some of the world's poorest communities to improve access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene education.

Anthony, former BBC Tomorrow's World TV presenter and science correspondent, who developed the An-Tiki project, said: "We are looking forward to eating fresh food and enjoying some of life's little luxuries again. But the excitement is tinged with some sadness as the arrival means saying goodbye to our trusty partner, the good raft An-Tiki, who has so steadfastly looked after us on this journey.

"We'll also miss the incredible sights and sounds of life at sea, sunrises and sunsets, incredible wildlife, the camaraderie and that special space and solitude that ocean-goers come to love."

John Russel, 61, from Gloucestershire, wrote on the An-tiki blog: "I have to admit that I did have some concerns before setting out, but am really glad that I came on the adventure, and it has been absolutely mind-blowing and wonderful. I cannot use enough superlatives, and would not hesitate to do the same again."

7 April 2011

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Announcing FAO’s Regional ‘Sustainable Water Resource Use in Asia’ Online Conference

The Food and Agricultural Organization’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific is pleased to announce a Regional Online Conference Issues and Challenges in Sustainable Water Resource Use in Asia commencing 18 April 2011.
The conference is hosted by FAO in close partnership with a range of regional and international organizations including the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), UNESCAP, AusAID, Global Water Partnership (GWP), the Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF), IUCN and the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID).
Conference Objective
The conference is an integral part of the ‘Analysis of Sustainable Water Resource Use in Asia’ project which focuses specifically on issues related to policies and practices of water allocation, particularly to agriculture. The objective of the conference is to identify the issues and challenges related to water allocation, and to explore the agricultural responses at all scales.
The aim is to get people discussing, debating and mobilized about the issues that are key to fostering better water allocation mechanisms in the region. The online conference provides the platform needed to bring together regional and international experts, government staff, researchers, academics, NGOs, system managers and all other stakeholders to share opinions, discuss new ideas and debate controversial issues.

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Acqua!

Il Concorso Fotografico di Beneficenza “ACQUA” promosso da 42mm e SBS Sociale presenta le fotografie vincitrici del concorso, sabato ore 21,00 via del Guadagnolo, Roma

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James Workman: Boycott World Water Day!

Set aside warm and fuzzy emotion, and use cold logic to revalue our matrix of life.

In case your email isn’t already loaded with 967 well-meaning reminders, the United Nations has officially designated March 22 as a time for us all “to focus attention on the importance of freshwater and to advocate for its sustainable management.”

He is also translating the proven system that has sustained indigenous people of the Kalahari Desert into an online, utility-based system that could be used to conserve water and energy in cities worldwide.
In that spirit—as one who has invested two decades into conserving this precious resource 364 days a year—let me advocate how you can truly honor our supreme liquid asset, the matrix of life, the wet stuff on which we depend: boycott World Water Day.

That’s right. Skip the political speeches, ignore the tired propaganda, bypass the grim statistics, and avoid the marches expressing solidarity and concern.

Instead, do what I plan to do. Hose down your sidewalk. Plant a lawn. Order a Big Mac (1,000 gallons to produce). Buy a new pair of jeans (2,900 gallons to make). Take a long shower. Flush your toilet a few extra times, and put off fixing that leaky sink. And, in that most sinister act of betrayal, brush your teeth while leaving the tap on.

No, I haven’t come unhinged. I recognize more than ever the serious risk we all face from depleting aquifers and draining rivers. I know I’m wasting our finite resource.

So where’s the method behind my deliberate madness? I now realize that World Water Day does more than soften or hide the impact of water depletion. It makes matters worse.

First, it creates the illusion that we value water, when all economic indicators show we clearly do not.
Second, it punishes the very people who strive to be frugal and green, while rewarding profligates.
Third, it reinforces a rigged and perverse centralized system, a vertically integrated absolute monopoly of disincentives that ensures water conservation remains increasingly unsustainable.
You can stop reading right now. You can take part in the annual, feeble “celebration of water.” Or you can face reality in the water world and decide to change it.

“By boycotting World Water Day, you will create a local disturbance.”
If you, like me, decide to boycott World Water Day, you will essentially be taking the red pill that Morpheus offers Neo in The Matrix. You will see the truth behind your local water works. That is to say, you will be exposed to the Three Paradoxes of Water.

......

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The worth of water

An encouraging model suggests urban Asia’s water problems could be easily fixed

PIGS rootle fastidiously through the foothills of the mountain of rubbish dumped at Tuol Sen Chey on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. A few metres away, cross-legged amid the clouds of flies and shaded from a fierce sun by a broad-brimmed hat, Tim Chan Tha is sifting and flattening used plastic bags for recycling. A widow with three children, she earns about 6,000 riels ($1.50) a day for this. She lives nearby down muddy dirt roads, in a cluster of ramshackle huts of corrugated iron, salvaged wood and tarpaulins. Ms Tha’s life seems as miserable an example of urban poverty as could be found anywhere.

In one respect, however, she is lucky. Her home has a constant supply of running water, drinkable straight from the standpipe outside. Perhaps just as remarkably, she pays for it. The provider is a government-owned utility, the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA), which actually makes a profit and pays tax. For its many fans in the world of development experts, its achievement in doing this while serving the very poor makes it a model—proof that all that stands between poor people and a decent water supply is mismanagement.

This is a salutary message. Perhaps two-fifths of the people in Asia’s cities do not have access to piped water. Many of the rest suffer from intermittent supply and unsafe water. And, globally, the provision of water to cities is not keeping pace with urbanisation. In a message for “World Water Day” on March 22nd the United Nations’ secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, claimed that in the past decade the number of city-dwellers without a water tap in their home or immediate vicinity has risen by 114m.

Mr Ban identified the problem as “a crisis of governance, weak policies and poor management”. Asit Biswas, of the Third World Centre for Water Management, an NGO, agrees: “Lack of money, scarcity, and so on—they’re all excuses. The problem everywhere is bad management.” PPWSA has prospered in as unpromising an environment as any. Like much of Cambodia’s infrastructure, Phnom Penh’s water-supply system fell into disrepair under the Khmer Rouge reign of terror from 1975, during which tens of thousands were driven into the countryside.


The isolated, cash-strapped Vietnamese-backed regime that replaced it in 1979 patched up the system. But by 1993, when a new government took office after a peace agreement and UN-supervised elections, PPWSA was producing 65,000 cubic metres of water a day, with connections to just one-fifth of city residents. Of this 72% was “non-revenue water”—given away, or lost to leakage and theft. Chea Visoth of the PPWSA recalls carrying water up to his flat from a roadside tank filled by a pipe illegally tapping the public system.

The government appointed a new boss to PPWSA, Ek Sonn Chan, who remains in charge. It now produces 300,000 cubic metres a day, has 200,000 connections and non-revenue water of less than 6%. It is financing its latest water-treatment plant through commercial borrowing, and will be one of the first companies listed on a planned new stock exchange. To achieve all this Mr Chan solved problems that dog water-suppliers across Asia. One, the physical infrastructure, was relatively easy with the help of aid agencies and development banks. Another, identifying who was using water and putting in meters to measure their consumption, was painstakingly time-consuming.

Harder still, though, was to improve the quality of the staff (in his words, “underqualified, underpaid, unmotivated and mostly inefficient”). As in public utilities in many countries, PPWSA employed too many of them—some 20 per 1,000 connections compared with about three per 1,000 now. Many were corrupt, either pocketing water tariffs or taking bribes for not charging them. When Mr Chan tried to sack one egregious wrongdoer, his well-placed relation in the municipal government objected. Mr Chan made it a resigning issue and got his way (his victim, however, says Mr Visoth, landed on his feet and now works at the electricity utility.) Nor was it easy to persuade the government and army to pay up. One senior officer’s response to a water bill was to point a gun at Mr Chan’s temple.

Another difficulty was to overcome the prejudice against running a public utility as a business. When PPWSA’s proposal for universal tariffs went to the cabinet in 1993, it was unanimously rejected. But Mr Chan earned the trust of Hun Sen, then one of two prime ministers, and, since 1997, the only, increasingly autocratic, one. His support has helped Mr Chan show that the poor will gladly pay for water if it is cheap, reliable and safe.

Ms Tha, for example, pays about 7,500 riels a month for her supply. But much of that she recoups from neighbours. (For the 300 or so “waste-picker” families at Tuol Sen Chey, there are 113 connections.) Before 2008 and the advent of piped water, she had to pay about 20,000 riels a month to the owner of a nearby well for muddy water that had to be left to settle and boiled before it could be drunk. It left your hair feeling like cardboard after washing, her sister recalls. Even happier is their neighbour Oum Sok Ha, who specialises in recycling glass jars and bottles and so is a heavy water-user. Her daily profit has increased by 2,000 riels.

Not rocket science

More important than Miss Ha’s glee are the health benefits of a good water supply. This week the UN children’s agency, Unicef, estimated that in Pakistan, for example, 60m people may not have access to clean drinking water and that 100,000 child deaths a year can be blamed on unsafe water. A frequent estimate in India is that between one-half and two-thirds of hospital beds are occupied by people suffering waterborne diseases. Through the methodical, single-minded pursuit of basic common sense, PPWSA has shown how unnecessary that is.


http://www.economist.com/node/18440717?story_id=18440717