Tag: Water & Sanitation

Water Stress, a Daily Problem in the Agro-Exporting South of Peru — Global Issues

Ortensia Tserem, a 27-year-old indigenous woman from the Amazon jungle, arrived with her partner to the coastal city of Ica in search of better economic opportunities. She never imagined that living without water would become part of her daily life. In her wooden shack in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Ica, she has had to make space for plastic containers to store the water she buys to meet the needs of the couple and their two young children. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS
  • by Mariela Jara (ica, peru)
  • Inter Press Service

ICA, Peru, Jul 20 (IPS) – Living without water in a desert area is part of the daily life of Ortensia Tserem, a member of the indigenous Wampis people from the Amazon rainforest of northeastern Peru, who came three years ago to the outskirts of the coastal city of Ica with the dream of better economic opportunities for her family.

However, the scarcity of water is a major hardship. Every week she has to buy water from tanker trucks, which costs about 56 dollars a month, a heavy burden on the family’s small income.

“I have a three-year-old girl and a one-year-old baby boy. The most difficult thing is to make sure we have water for their hygiene, so that they don’t get sick,” she told IPS while showing the plastic drums where she stores water in her shack in the Intercultural settlement of Nuevo Perú on the outskirts of Ica, the capital of the department of the same name.

Like hers, the 150 families who settled in this desert area in the department of Ica, south of Lima, lack water, sewage and electricity services.

The shantytown is part of the area known as Barrio Chino, located at kilometer 163 of the Panamericana Sur, a major highway that runs across the country. It is populated by people from towns in Peru’s Andes highlands and Amazon jungle who are keen to become part of Ica’s agro-export boom.

Agricultural exports, which account for four percent of Peru’s GDP, are one of the factors that have exacerbated the problem of water scarcity in Ica, the sixth smallest of the country’s 24 departments, which had just over one million inhabitants in 2022, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics.

“Since early 2000 in Ica we have been feeling the worsening water shortages due to the lowering of the water table as a result of the drilling of wells, when after the agrarian reform the large landed estates reemerged as a result of agro-exports,” Gustavo Echegaray, an engineer and renowned expert on water resources, told IPS.

Engineer Gustavo Echegaray poses for a photo at his office in Santiago, a city in the semi-desert coastal Peruvian department of Ica. The consultant and expert in water resources warns that in Ica, where agro-export activity has overexploited water, things will collapse if measures are not taken to correct the water imbalance. CREDIT: Courtesy of Gustavo Echegaray
Engineer Gustavo Echegaray poses for a photo at his office in Santiago, a city in the semi-desert coastal Peruvian department of Ica. The consultant and expert in water resources warns that in Ica, where agro-export activity has overexploited water, things will collapse if measures are not taken to correct the water imbalance. CREDIT: Courtesy of Gustavo Echegaray

Groundwater is considered the reserve for the future, so good management and sustainable use are imperative, he stressed.

Echegaray, who lives in Santiago, a city in Ica, also experiences daily water rationing. In his neighborhood they receive one hour of piped water a day, with which they fill tanks and containers for household use.

This complication of day-to-day life in the cities is much worse in the impoverished neighborhoods on the outskirts.

The right to water, a distant goal

Tserem, 27, said the right to water, guaranteed in international treaties and in Peru’s constitution, is just an empty promise. “Look at how living without water affects our health, our food, our environment, our peace of mind,” she explained as she gave IPS a tour of her modest wooden house.

The family has a latrine in the backyard, and taking a daily shower is an impossible dream.

Ortensia Tserem (L) and María Huincho moved from other parts of Peru three years ago to the outskirts of Ica, the capital of the coastal desert department of the same name in south-central Peru. Their families were drawn by the agro-export boom of which Ica is the epicenter, but they struggle to get temporary jobs and casual work, and their biggest challenge is access to drinking water, which they have to buy from tanker trucks. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

Her partner is a day laborer on one of the large farms dedicated to export crops, whose work varies according to the seasonal labor requirements. “Right now it’s the slow season, there’s no harvest yet; he is helping to prune the tangerine trees, but only for a few hours a day,” she said in a quiet voice.

Fewer hours of work means a reduction in income, making it even more difficult to afford to buy water.

She is also employed during the harvests and at other times of higher demand for labor on the nearby large landed estates, and the rest of the time she spends raising the children and doing household chores.

María Huincho, 39, who moved here from the Andean department of Huancavelica, adjacent to the highlands of Ica, faces a similar situation. She came with her partner and their three young children with the hope of working on one of the farms that grow export crops like blueberries, grapes, tangerines, artichokes or asparagus.

A view of the Nuevo Peru Intercultural settlement, a shantytown which forms part of the area known as Barrio Chino, inhabited by families from different regions of Peru who came to the department of Ica, hoping for jobs on the large export-oriented fruit and vegetable farms. The 150 families in the neighborhood suffer from severe water scarcity. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

“I’ve been here for three years now and the hardest thing is to go without water. I bathe once a week, more often than that is impossible,” she told IPS. She is Tserem’s neighbor and they help each other in their daily chores. “You can never just sit still doing nothing here,” she said, smiling as she looked around at the large sandy field where the wooden houses have been built.

Ica is known worldwide for the pre-Inca Nazca Lines, ancient geoglyphs in the sand made by the Nazca culture which developed a complex hydraulic system with an extensive network of aqueducts that astonished the world when they were discovered.

Today, water stress is a reality in a large part of the department, one of the hardest hit by the growing water scarcity in this South American country of 33 million people.

Aquifer depletion

According to the United Nations, people require 20 to 50 liters per day of clean, safe water to meet their needs for a healthy life. Peru, despite its great diversity of water sources, has failed to guarantee the populace the right to water.

The National Center for Strategic Planning (Ceplan) has projected that by 2030, 58 percent of the Peruvian population will live in areas affected by water scarcity. Overexploitation is one of the reasons.

“Life without water is very difficult,” said Rosa Huayumbe (L) as she and Alicia Fernández paused on their way home, after walking down the steep unpaved road they take every day to buy food and water, which they pipe up to their homes using hoses. The two women have lived for eight years in the Dos de Mayo neighborhood, part of the municipality of Subtanjalla in the department of Ica. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

Echegaray, the engineer, told IPS from his hometown that at the end of the 2000s the agricultural frontier in Ica was smaller, but under the authoritarian government of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), who changed the country’s economic model to a free market regime, land that was wasteland was allocated for business investment.

“The agricultural frontier has grown a lot on the side of what used to be desert, in the Villacurí pampas (grasslands), which are before the entrance to the city of Ica and also in the lower valley. Due to the irrigation technology that they began to use, a large amount of uncultivated land was made available by drilling new wells, which was done without any controls until 2009,” said the expert.

The result was seen in the decrease of water for small-scale agriculture and for local human consumption, Echegaray said.

“The population of the department of Ica has grown and at the same time the amount of water has decreased. A serious problem has been generated in the lower part of the province (also called Ica) and in general in most of the districts where water is rationed, there are areas where families have access to piped water one or two hours per week or every 15 days,” he said.

He added that due to the overexploitation of the wells, the water table is more fragile and an imbalance is occurring – in other words, the amount of water filtering into the aquifers is less than what is extracted from the wells.

Life is very hard without water

In March 2009, Law 29338 on water resources was approved, which regulates areas where water is protected or where its use is banned.

The bans refer to the “prohibition to carry out water development works; the granting of new permits, authorizations, licenses for water use and discharges.” The National Water Authority (Ana) has already applied this to the aquifers of Ica, Villacurí and Lanchas, all three of which are in the department of Ica.

But despite the ban, reports continue to appear from Ana itself about new wells in the aquifers. “Not all of them are detected,” lamented Echegaray.

Rosa Huayumbe (L) and Alicia Fernández, who came to Subtanjalla, in the Peruvian department of Ica, the center of the agro-export boom, climb the steep, dusty road they walk every day to get to their homes in the Dos de Mayo neighborhood, where the severe water shortage constantly disrupts their lives and makes a huge dent in their meager family incomes. CREDIT: Mariela Jara / IPS

Rosa Huayumbe, 47, was born in the Amazonian city of Iquitos and her friend Alicia Fernández, 30, is from Pisco, a city in Ica. They came to the Dos de Mayo neighborhood in the Ica municipality of Subtanjalla eight years ago, and they have never had piped water in their homes.

This is a poor, desert area, where sand covers the unpaved streets and small houses, most of which are made of wood.

They live in a steep area and must stretch meters of hose so that the tanker truck can deliver water to their homes. They buy three dollars of water a day to cover their basic necessities.

“We work on the large farms,” Huayumbe told IPS. “Right now there is only work for men, which is pruning. We have more time to spend with our children but no money and it’s an even bigger problem to buy water.”

“The worst thing is not having water,” said Fernández. “You get used to the sun, to the wind… but without water and sanitation it is very difficult. We don’t leave because we have nowhere else to go: We just hope that the authorities will make good on what they promised us as candidates: to bring us drinking water,” she added during a pause climbing the steep dirt road back to their homes.

Echegaray said that if something is not done, Ica will run out of water and collapse. He called for studies to determine the water imbalance, which is estimated to be between 38 and 90 million cubic meters per year. “The difference is too big,” he said.
.
He also proposed putting into operation some natural dams and increasing experiments in planting and harvesting water that revive ancestral techniques to restore the aquifers.

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

‘Passion Seeds’ Fertilize Brazil’s Semiarid Northeast — Global Issues

Ligoria Felipe dos Santos poses for a photo on her agroecological farm that mixes corn, squash, fruits, vegetables and medicinal herbs. She is part of the women’s movement that is trying to prevent the installation of wind farms in the Borborema mountain range, in the northeastern Brazilian state of Paraíba. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS
  • by Mario Osava (esperanÇa, brazil)
  • Inter Press Service

ESPERANÇA, Brazil, Jul 14 (IPS) – Zé Pequeno cried when he learned that the heirloom seeds he had inherited from his father were contaminated by the transgenic corn his neighbor had brought from the south. Fortunately, he was able to salvage the native seeds because he had shared them with other neighbors.

Euzébio Cavalcanti recalls this story from one of his colleagues to highlight the importance of “passion seeds” for family farming in Brazil’s semiarid low-rainfall ecoregion which extends over 1.1 million square kilometers, twice the size of France, in the northeastern interior of the country.

Saving heirloom seeds is a peasant tradition, but two decades ago the Brazilian Semiarid Articulation (ASA), a network of 3,000 social organizations that emerged in the 1990s, named those who practice it as individual and community guardians of seeds. By September 2021, it had registered 859 banks of native seeds in the region.

Cavalcanti, a 56-year-old farmer with multiple skills such as poet, musician and radio broadcaster, coordinates the network of these banks in the Polo de Borborema, a joint action area of 14 rural workers’ unions and 150 community organizations in central-eastern Paraíba, one of the nine states of the Brazilian Northeast.

“These are seeds adapted to the semiarid climate. They can withstand long droughts, without irrigation, that is why they are so important,” he explained. They also preserve the genetic heritage of many local crop species and family history; they have sentimental value.

“Don’t plant transgenics, don’t erase my history”, is a slogan of the movement that promotes agroecological practices and is opposed to the expansion of genetically modified organisms in local agriculture. “Corn free of transgenics and agrotoxins (agrochemicals)” is the goal of their campaign.

In Paraíba, the name “passion seeds” has been adopted, instead of native or heirloom seeds, since 2003, when the state government announced that it would provide seeds from a specialized company to family farmers.

“If the government offers these seeds, I don’t want them. I have family seeds and I have passion for them,” reacted a farmer in a meeting with the authorities.

“‘Passion seeds’ spread throughout Paraíba. In other states they’re called ‘seeds of resistance’,” Cavalcanti said.

Agroecology is one of the banners of the Polo de Borborema, as it is for ASA in the entire semiarid ecosystem that covers most of the Northeast region and a northern strip of the southeastern state of Minas Gerais.

“Passion seeds,” as heirloom seeds are known locally, ensure better harvests on semiarid lands, free of transgenics or “agricultural poisons,” according to Euzébio Cavalcanti, a small farmer, poet and musician who helped lead the struggle for agrarian reform and cares for the seeds in the highlands of Borborema, in northeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Learning to coexist with semiarid conditions

This approach arose from a change in the development strategy adopted on the part of local society, especially ASA, since the 1990s. “Coexisting with semiarid conditions” replaced the traditional, failed focus on “fighting the drought”.

Large dams and reservoirs, which only benefit large landowners and do not help the majority of small farmers, gave way to more than 1.2 million tanks for collecting rainwater from household or school rooftops and various ways of storing water for crops and livestock.

It is a process of decolonization of agriculture, education and science, which prioritizes knowledge of the climate and the regional biome, the Caatinga, characterized by low, twisted, drought-resilient vegetation. It also includes the abandonment of monoculture, with the implementation of traditional local horticultural and family farming techniques.

The Northeast, home to 26.9 percent of the national population, or 54.6 million inhabitants according to the 2022 demographic census, concentrates 47.2 percent of the country’s family farmers, according to the 2017 agricultural census. There are 1.84 million small farms worked mainly by family labor.

Brazil’s semiarid region is one of the rainiest in the world for this type of climate, with 200 to 800 millimeters of rain per year on average, although there are drier areas in the process of desertification.

A stand at the ecological market in the municipality of Esperança, in northeastern Brazil, is a link between urban consumers and family farmers opposed to agrochemicals, monoculture and transgenic products. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Borborema, the name of a high plateau that obstructs the humidity coming from the sea, making the territory to its west drier, is the scene of various peasant struggles, such as the mobilization for agrarian reform since the 1980s and for small-scale agriculture “without poisons” or agrochemicals, of which the “seeds of passion” are a symbol.

Cavalcanti is a living memory of local history, also as a founder of the local Landless Workers Movement (MST) and an activist in the occupations of unproductive land to create rural settlements, on one of which he gained his own small farm where he grows beans, corn and, vegetables and has two rainwater collection tanks.

Women help drive the expansion of agroecology

Women have played a key role in the drive towards agroecology. The March for Women’s Lives and Agroecology is an annual demonstration that since 2010 has defended family farming and the right to a healthy life.

This year, on Mar. 16, 5,000 women gathered in Montadas, a municipality of 5,800 inhabitants, to block the creation of wind farms that have already caused damage to the health of small farmers by being installed near their homes.

Borborema is “a territory of resistance,” say the women. About 15 years ago, they succeeded in abolishing the cultivation of tobacco.

The president of the Union of Rural Workers of the municipality of Esperança, Alexandre Lira (C) and other leaders pose in front of a poster declaring the union’s current goals: “Agroecological Borborema is no place for a wind farm,” he says about this area in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast region. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

When the citrus blackfly arrived, the government tried to combat it with pesticides, but “we resisted; we used natural products and solved the problem for our oranges and lemons,” said Ligoria Felipe dos Santos, a 54-year-old mother of three.

“That is agroecology, which is strengthened in the face of threats. Farmers are aware, they resort to alternative defenses, they know that it is imbalance that leads to pests,” she told IPS.

“Agroecology is a good banner for union activity,” said Lexandre Lira, 42, president of the Rural Workers Union of Esperança, a municipality of 31,000 people in the center of the Polo de Borborema.

It is also a factor in keeping farmers’ children on the farms, because it awakens the interest of young people in agriculture, said Edson Johny da Silva, 27, the union’s youth coordinator.

Maria das Graças Vicente and Givaldo Firmino dos Santos stand next to the machine they use for making pulp from native fruits little known outside Brazil, such as the umbu (Brazil plum), cajá (hog plum), acerola (Amazon or Barbados cherry), along with cashews, mangos, and guava. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Pulp, added value

Maria das Graças Vicente, known as Nina, 51, along with her husband Givaldo Firmino dos Santos, 52, is an example of agroecological productivity. On 1.25 hectares of land they produce citrus fruits, passion fruit, acerola (Amazon or Barbados cherry), mango and other fruits, as well as sugar cane, corn, beans and other vegetables.

Grafted fruit tree seedlings are another of the products they use to expand their income, as IPS was shown during a visit to their farm.

Using their own harvest and fruit they buy from neighbors, they make pulp in a small shed separate from their home, with a small machine purchased with the support of the Advisory and Services to Projects in Alternative Agriculture (AS-PTA), a non-governmental organization that supports farmers in Borborema and other parts of Brazil.

“Luckily we have a microclimate in the valley, where it rains more than in the surrounding areas. Everything grows here,” Santos told IPS.

But the couple created three reservoirs to collect rainwater and withstand droughts: a 16,000-liter water tank for household use, another that collects water on the paved ground for irrigation, and a small lagoon dug in the lower part of the farm.

But in 2016 the lagoon dried up, because of the “great drought” that lasted from 2012 to 2017, Vicente said.

The fruit pulp factory has grown in recent years and now has seven small freezers to store fruit and pulp for sale to the town’s stores and restaurants. The couple decided to purchase a cold room with the capacity of 30 freezers.

“I work in the mornings on the land, in the afternoons I make pulp and my husband is in charge of the sales,” she said.

Hiring workers from outside the family to reduce the workload costs too much and “we try to save as much as possible on everything, to sell the pulp at a fair price,” Santos said.

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Water a Weapon of War or a Tool for Peace? — Global Issues

  • Opinion by Maria Skold, Martina Klimes (stockholm, sweden)
  • Inter Press Service

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Jul 11 (IPS) – The role of water in conflicts is changing, with more attacks against environmental and civilian infrastructure. Dr Martina Klimes of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) recently held a lecture describing the shifting security landscape and how water can be both a weapon and a victim of war – and sometimes a tool for peace.

The Kakhovka dam disaster in Ukraine on 6 June is a painful reminder of how collapsing water infrastructure can cause enormous suffering in times of war, sometimes with consequences that last for generations. Ukraine accuses Russia of destroying the dam and using it as a weapon of war.

“That would be in direct conflict with the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions which protects civilians in times of war,” says Dr Martina Klimes who is Advisor Water and Peace at SIWI.

On 14 June, she participated in a breakfast meeting at the Swedish parliament together with other representatives from the Stockholm Hub on Environment, Climate and Security of which SIWI is a founding member.

Klimes’ presentation outlined the different roles of water in war:

    • Direct impact – where water and attacks on water infrastructure are used as a weapon of war.
    • Indirect impact – where military operations harm the environment, for example poisoning water sources or contaminating soil.
    • Transboundary impact – where the consequences are felt also in other countries.

During the war in Ukraine, all three dimensions are carefully monitored by local and international organizations to an extent rarely seen in other wars. Already before the Kakhovka dam disaster, Ukrainian authorities estimated the cost of the environmental impacts of the war to be approximately 50 billion euros.

Rivers, groundwater, and soil are polluted, and many national parks are impacted in the country which is described as the most biodiverse in Europe. In 2022, 16 million Ukrainians needed water, sanitation, and hygiene assistance.

By tracking the environmental consequences of the war so closely, the Ukrainian government hopes not just to facilitate reconstruction. Another aim is to collect evidence that could be used in a future war tribunal against Russia.

President Zelensky has said that charges could include ecocide, in addition to the four types of crimes currently covered by the International Criminal Court (ICC). In recent years, the idea of making ecocide a fifth crime enshrined in the Rome Statute of the ICC has started to gain traction.

The parliament of the European Union recently voted to make ecocide part of EU law.

At the United Nations, a commission has assessed gaps in existing international law and presented a set of more far-reaching draft principles on protection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts.

But researchers who have studied Yemen, Libya, and Syria say that attacks on civilian and environmental infrastructure have become more common in the past decade.

“This causes immense suffering for local populations and the impact often goes beyond national borders. We also know that environmental degradation is a risk multiplier that can trigger social instability and violence,” Klimes says.

Meanwhile, a landmark report on the topic – Environment of Peace – was presented last year by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), another partner of the Stockholm Hub on Environment, Climate and Security.

At the same time, countries and regions can reduce tensions by strengthening the resilience of ecosystems and humans. Collaborating around for example shared waters can also foster cooperation and peace.

To raise awareness of these complex interlinkages, SIWI works actively to bring together actors with different types of competencies. One example is the Shared Waters Partnership Programme to strengthen transboundary water cooperation.

Every year, SIWI also hosts a high-level panel during World Water Week on water-related security issues. This year the event will take place on 23 August at 11am CET with the theme Innovative Approaches to Support Peace and Conflict Prevention.

Maria Sköld, is Senior Manager, Communications.
Martina Klimes, PhD, is Advisor, Water and Peace, and Transboundary Water Cooperation.

IPS UN Bureau


Follow IPS News UN Bureau on Instagram

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Water Harvesting Boosts Agriculture in Brazil’s Semiarid Northeast — Global Issues

Eronildes da Silva proudly stands next to a bunch of bananas on his farm, whose large size is the result, he says, of the effective fertilizer of reusing waste water. In addition to farming, he drives a school bus and builds rainwater tanks in Afogados da Ingazeira, in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast region. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS
  • by Mario Osava (afogados da ingazeira, brasil)
  • Inter Press Service

“The rainwater tanks are the best invention in the world for us,” said Maria de Lourdes Feitosa, 46, who recalls the deadly droughts of the past in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast region.

“There has been a reduction of many diseases” that came from the so-called “barreros”, puddles and small ponds that are the result of the accumulation of water in muddy holes in the ground that people shared with animals, Feitosa, a farmer from a rural community in Afogados da Ingazeira, a municipality of 38,000 inhabitants, told IPS.

Feitosa owns a six-hectare farm and is less dependent on water than some of her neighbors because she produces agroecological cotton, which requires less water than horticultural and fruit crops.

Nearly 1.2 million tanks that collect 16,000 liters of potable rainwater from the roofs of homes now form part of the rural landscape of the semiarid ecoregion, an area that covers 1.1 million square kilometers and is home to 28 million of Brazil’s 214 million people, which extends throughout the interior of the Northeast and into the northern fringe of Brazil’s Southeast region.

The water tanks are a symbol of the transformation that the Northeast, the country’s poorest region, has been undergoing since the beginning of this century. During the longest drought in its history, from 2011 to 2018, there was no repeat of previous tragedies of deaths, mass exodus of people to the south and the looting of businesses by desperate people, as seen in the 1980s and 1990s.

According to the Articulação Semiárido Brasileiro (ASA), a network of 3,000 social organizations that created the program, adopted as public policy by the government in 2003, some 350,000 families are still in need of water tanks.

This 16,000-liter concrete slab tank stores rainwater collected on the roof and uses pipes to provide drinking water for Josaída Nunes and Eronildes Silva, in the Sertão de Pajeú, in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Another battle is to increase fourfold the more than 200,000 “technologies” for collecting water for production, or “second water”, which already benefit family farming and are decisive for food security and poverty reduction in the region.

Reusing household water

Josaida Nunes da Silva, 38, and her husband Eronildes da Silva, 41, resort to reusing water from the bathroom and kitchen in their home, faced with shortages aggravated by the altitude of the hill they live on in Carnaiba, a municipality of 20,000 people bordering Afogados da Ingazeira.

A complex of pipes carries the wastewater to the so-called “fat box” and then to the Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) reactor and a tank for “polishing”, exposed to the sun, and another for the water ready for irrigation.

This system filters contaminating components, such as fecal coliforms (bacteria), and prepares the water with fertilizers for irrigation of the fields and fruit trees. “We grow lettuce, onions, cilantro and other vegetables, as well as bananas, corn, cassava, papaya, guava, passion fruit and even dragon fruit,” said Nunes.

Dragon fruit comes from the cactus family, of Mexican and Central American origin, and has recently become popular in Brazil.

The large size of the banana bunch is “proof” of the fertilizer’s effectiveness, said Nunes’ husband, who adds cow dung. “The treated water is a blessing. Besides providing us with water, it gives us good fertilizer,” Nunes said.

A “stone tank” that takes advantage of holes in the rocks to store rainwater is one of the technologies used to coexist with the scarcity of rainfall in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast ecoregion. In the background can be seen the mountainous landscape of the Sertão de Pajeú, in northeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Her husband Silva is also a bricklayer and has built many water tanks in the region. He also drives school children from the rural area in an old van and keeps fodder for his ten cows in hermetically sealed plastic bags.

“The drought hit us hard. We had to bring water from the ‘barrero’ on the plain, up the mountain in the ox cart. We bought a cow, when she was still a calf, for 2500 reais and had to sell it for 500 reais (104 dollars),” lamented his wife.

The couple owns 8.5 hectares of land, a large property in the region where most farms are only a few hectares in size, the result of the frequent divisions between heirs of the large families of the past. But since the terrain is mountainous and rocky, the cultivable area is limited.

Nunes and Silva have three children, although only the youngest, 17, still lives with them.

Farmer Aluisio Braz (L) dries and threshes beans, accompanied by his wife, Joselita Ramos, on the terrace of their house that collects rainwater to fill the 52,000-liter tank at the back for agricultural irrigation on their farm in Carnaiba, in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Coexisting with semiarid conditions

The techniques that benefit family farmers so that they can “coexist with the semiarid conditions” and prosper have been disseminated in the municipalities of the Sertão de Pajeú by Diaconia, a social organization of Protestant churches.

Pajeú is the name of the river that crosses 17 municipalities, whose basin is home to 360,000 people. The mountains surrounding the territory include the headwaters of several streams and creeks, which dry up in the dry season, but ensure greater humidity compared to other areas of the semiarid Northeast.

Agroecology practices are one of the focuses of Diaconia, whose agricultural technician Adilson Viana has dedicated 20 of his 49 years to supporting farmers and who accompanied IPS on visits to families involved in the program.

A tank that collects 52,000 liters of rainwater for production is the treasure of Joselita Ramos, 49, and her husband Aluisio Braz, 55, on their two-hectare farm, also located in Carnaiba.

The UASB reactor is an important component in the system for reusing bath and kitchen water for family farming in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

The rainwater falls on a concrete terrace on the ground that is about 200 square meters in size and is slightly inclined to fill the water tank. Braz uses it to dry and thresh string beans, which are typical of the Northeastern diet.

The couple grows fruit trees that Ramos uses to make pulp using mango, guava, acerola cherry (Malpighia emarginata) and a fruit native to the semiarid region, the umbu or Brazil plum (Spondias tuberosa), that comes from a small tree native to Northeast Brazil.

Ramos is taking a break from the activity “because it is not fruit season in the region and the energy to run the refrigerator is very expensive.” Another difficulty is that the city government’s payments for the pulp supplied to the schools have been delayed. “I only received a payment in November for sales from early last year,” she complained.

To boost the production of grains, such as beans and corn, as well as cassava, Braz grows them on his father’s four-hectare farm, about six kilometers from his own farm.

Ivan Lopes, an enterprising family farmer, shows a soursop plant that is highly productive thanks to irrigation with reused water and natural fertilizers, on his farm in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Agroecological productivity

An exceptional case of entrepreneurial vocation and availability of water is that of Ivan Lopes, 43, who together with his brother grows fruit, including bananas, pineapple, mango, grapes, avocado, passion fruit and many more, on nine hectares of land.

Water is pumped from a lagoon on the property to four reservoirs located at the higher elevations, which make gravity irrigation possible. That is why electricity is one of the farm’s biggest expenses. “I plan to install a solar power plant to save money,” Lopes told IPS.

Honey is another product they make. “The last harvest totaled 40 liters,” from dozens of hives distributed throughout the orchard. Sugarcane is grown for the sale of sugarcane juice in the cities.

The farm is also a kind of laboratory for the dissemination of organic tomato cultivation in greenhouses. “At the agroecological market in São José do Egito (a neighboring city of 34,000 people) people line up to buy my tomatoes, because they are known to be clean, pest-free and tasty,” Lopes said.

Based on their experience, there are now 10 projects for tomato production in the Pajeú Agroecological Association.

To achieve his high level of productivity, the farmer makes his own fertilizer from earthworm humus. The success he has experienced in farming prompted him to get rid of his 10 cows in order to focus on crops and beekeeping.

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Mexico Needs to Step Up Treatment and Reuse of Water to Address Crisis — Global Issues

The expansion towards the mountains of the coastal city of Ensenada, in the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California, stresses the water supply, which is scarce in this peninsular region due to its arid nature and deficiencies in water management. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS
  • by Emilio Godoy (ensenada, mexico)
  • Inter Press Service

ENSENADA, Mexico, Jun 21 (IPS) – At the entrance to the coastal city of Ensenada in the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California a sign reads: “Every drop matters to us. Take care of the water.”

The message is important, as the city faces shortages due to hoarding by agricultural producers and builders, as well as the drought that has become more severe because of the effects of the climate emergency.

But cities such as Ensenada, which has a population of 443,000 and is located 2,883 kilometers from Mexico City, do not take sufficient advantage of the reuse of water, a technique that along with other measures can contribute to the fight against the water shortage at a time when Mexico is suffering from intense drought and an unusual heat wave.

Independent expert Adrián González said a conventional focus on obtaining water that ignores improvements in its use continues to prevail.

“There is enough water, but there is hoarding. We consume a lot. It is a question of management. Consumption can be moderated, there are experiences around the world in this regard,” he told IPS.

Demand exceeds supply, and supply cuts and overexploited sources dry up the water supply. The delivery and sale of water in “pipas” or tanker trucks is a common sight in Ensenada, located in an arid region between the Pacific Ocean and the mountains.

Due to the overexploitation of the aquifers and the growing demand, Ensenada is suffering from a deficit, so long-term solutions are urgently needed.

Consumption stands at about 1,000 liters per second (l/s), which should increase to about 1,260 in 2030, while supply totals about 800 l/s, according to the State Water Commission, the government agency responsible for water resource management in Baja California, on the peninsula of the same name, bordering the United States.

While installed capacity and treatment are on the rise, a widespread problem lies in the historical lack of efficiency and maintenance of facilities, which limits the scope of the available technologies.

In 2021, coverage reached 67.5 percent of the wastewater generated and collected in the municipal sewage systems of this Latin American country, just a few tenths more than the previous year, according to data from the National Water Commission (Conagua).

Treated water can be used for agricultural irrigation, gardening, domestic and industrial uses, and can help recharge aquifers.

Local water agencies can undertake aquifer recharge projects, but incentives for doing so are needed. In fact, the legal framework does not stipulate recovery rights for reused water, which falls under the general jurisdiction of Conagua.

The El Naranjo municipal treatment plant in the city of Ensenada, in the northwestern peninsular state of Baja California, is operating below its installed capacity, which is further affecting the distribution of scarce water in the city. CREDIT: Conagua

Mexico, with a population of 128 million inhabitants spread over an area of 1.96 million square kilometers, is facing increasing water stress, ranking 24th among the countries in the world with this phenomenon, caused by overexploitation, pollution, scarcity and inequity in access to water.

In 2021, 2,872 water reuse plants were operating in Mexico – three percent more than the previous year-, with an installed capacity of 198,603 l/s and a treated flow of 145,341 l/s, just 0.5 percent above the 2020 level.

The northern state of Sinaloa has the largest number of plants (311), followed by Durango also in the north (241) and neighboring Chihuahua (195). Despite their water needs, those with the smallest number of plants are the southeastern state of Campeche and the northern state of Coahuila (27 each), which furthermore operate below capacity.

There are 44 plants operating in Baja California, with an installed capacity of 7692 l/s and a performance of 6222. At the same time, 14 of the 48 groundwater reservoirs in the state, including the Ensenada reservoir, suffer shortages because annual extraction exceeds renewal.

Regional and federal authorities have resorted to seawater desalination in the state, but it only refines about 130 l/s, out of a capacity of 250.

Martín Zepeda, founder of the non-governmental Citizens’ Water Commission, criticized the measures applied so far in the reuse of water.

“We have only achieved palliative measures. We have been suffering from the same problems for 30 years,” he stressed.

The coastal city of Ensenada in the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California depends on aquifer extraction, seawater desalination and the transfer of water from the state of Tijuana, also on the U.S. border, as not enough water is reused. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Baby steps

In another northern state, in the east, Nuevo León, reuse is showing signs of success, but more progress is needed.

Antonio Hernández, a researcher with the non-governmental organization Pronatura Noreste, stressed to IPS the need for treated water infrastructure.

“We don’t have a sufficient network to distribute the treated water available. In 2022, when the water shortage crisis began, the agency responsible instructed the municipalities to buy treated water and thus take pressure off the groundwater,” he told IPS from Monterrey, Nuevo León’s capital.

“The transfer was to be by truck. But it did not happen, because the municipalities did not buy the water nor did the government build the distribution network. Availability does not mean accessibility,” he said.

In 2022, Nuevo León, especially greater Monterrey with a population of more than five million people, faced a severe water crisis.

As a result, the authorities resorted to supply cuts, rate hikes, anti-waste fines and awareness campaigns on water usage.

In that state, 13 of the 24 aquifers are overexploited, including the one outside of Monterrey proper.

The population of Monterrey drinks about 16,000 l/s, which results in a deficit of about 3,000 l/s. That means the 56 treatment plants are insufficient, managing 12,387 l/s, compared to an installed capacity of 16,162 l/s.

Mexico does not take sufficient advantage of wastewater reuse, which can be used to recharge aquifers, for consumption in industrial facilities, for agricultural irrigation or for urban use. Pictured is a fountain in a park in a neighborhood in south-central Mexico City. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Half-hearted measures

Despite the problems faced by the plants, the Federal Attorney General’s Office for Environmental Protection (Profepa) only inspected four municipal facilities, most of them private, in 2016 in Baja California, where it found “minor irregularities” and charged fines in three, according to a public information request filed by IPS.

In Mexico City, only two were inspected – in 2018 and in 2022 – and minor irregularities were found in one private municipal plant, although it was not fined. In 2018, Profepa visited four plants in Nuevo León in which it found minor irregularities.

In total, Profepa inspected a total of 330 plants, including 50 in the western state of Jalisco and 33 in the northern state of Chihuahua. Of that total, it found minor irregularities in 234, and none in 69.

Focus on pipes and little else

The generalized view is the conventional one of promoting the construction of infrastructure to face the crisis, without addressing the scarcity of water resources.

The current Mexican government boasts that it is promoting 15 water projects, such as the construction of dams, aqueducts and treatment plants, mainly in the north of the country to combat the crisis.

In places like Ensenada, the outlook is no different.

Over the next few years, the State Water Commission foresees the expansion of the desalination plant, the modernization of an aqueduct, the rehabilitation of five treatment plants, the delivery of treated water to the agricultural zone, and the rehabilitation of pumping plants and wells.

Despite the situation, the Baja California state government is just now drafting its water plan for the 2022-2027 period.

In Nuevo León, authorities announced the digging of more wells, the construction of the Libertad dam, the El Cuchillo II Aqueduct and four treatment plants, as well as the modulation of pressure to reduce waste.

The Libertad dam will have a capacity of 1,500 l/s, at a cost of some 350 million dollars. Meanwhile, the aqueduct will transport 5,000 l/s, thanks to an investment of some 495 million dollars.

Mexico has also benefited from international financing for water projects. Since 1997, the North American Development Bank has financed 27 water and sanitation projects in Baja

The Norte treatment plant in the Mexican state of Nuevo León seeks to promote water reuse for automobile assembly, urban and agricultural activities in an area that experienced a severe water crisis in 2022. CREDIT: Conagua

, in addition to three in Nuevo León since 2001.

Its financing of a 6.8 million dollar wastewater management initiative in the city of Mexicali is currently under public consultation.

In addition, the U.S.-Mexico binational financial institution is backing the issue of a 150 million dollar green bond for water projects.

The experts consulted proposed several measures, such as awareness campaigns, water reuse, and leak repair.

González, the independent expert, said the combination of reuse and efficiency offers very low costs and promising results.

“There is not going to be just one single solution. Fate is going to catch up with us. We can’t continue following strategies that have never worked and that have been exhausted,” he argued.

Zepeda, the water activist, also suggested the creation of a citizen water commission to audit the operation of the system.

“The situation is not going to improve until availability and uses are corrected. It is a combination of water sources and activities. We need long-term solutions,” he said.

Meanwhile, Hernández the researcher proposed a revision of zoning and land use plans to address the construction of neighborhoods, golf courses and vehicle assembly plants, to promote the efficient use of water.

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Green Bills Over Blue Gold — Global Issues

Dörte Wollrad
  • Opinion by Dorte Wollrad (montevideo, uruguay)
  • Inter Press Service

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Jun 19 (IPS) – Drinking water is running out in Uruguay — this headline got the small South American country onto international news. Prolonged drought has brought the reservoir and river that supply the capital Montevideo down to 10 per cent of their normal water level. Unless the rain comes, there is sufficient water only until mid-June, at best.

Paradoxically, Uruguay is located in a region that holds more than 30 per cent of the world’s freshwater reserves. So, there is groundwater. But the fact that drinking water is available only to those able to buy it in bottled form highlights rather different political priorities. Amidst the climate crisis, short-term economic interests have been prioritised over prevention, mitigation and adaptation.

Economic interests prevail

Water supply is not a new issue in Uruguay. As early as 2004, 65 per cent voted in favour of a referendum on a constitutional amendment to establish access to drinking water as a fundamental right. It also gave the state exclusive responsibility for water treatment and supply.

Experienced in direct democratic procedures, Uruguayans thus prevented the participation of French and Spanish companies in the public water utilities and a possible privatisation, as was the case in other countries in the region.

Dörte WollradUruguay’s economy depends on commodity exports; cellulose, beef, rice and soya, to name a few. In all these sectors, the production is highly water-intensive. The latest drought has caused enormous losses in recent months, but this is not an isolated incident. Meteorologists have been warning of a huge reduction in precipitation for more than three years now.

That is why outgoing President Tabaré Vasquez passed on construction plans for another reservoir to Luis Lacalle Pou’s newly elected government in 2020. The aim was to avoid foreseeable supply bottlenecks. But the reservoir was never built. Also, discussions on a transformation strategy for a development model that, due to climate change, has a foreseeable expiry date did not happen.

Instead, the new neoliberal government approved foreign investment projects that are extremely water-intensive and fed by groundwater wells. For example, in 2021, Google started the construction of a gigantic data centre, which requires 7 million litres of fresh water every day to cool the servers.

In 2022, an agreement was reached with a German firm on the production of green hydrogen in northern Uruguay, which requires 600,000 litres of fresh water a day. There was no parliamentary vote on either project and thus no democratic participation.

Despite the recent lack of rainfall, there has been no attempt to tap into the groundwater to obtain drinking water. Instead, since early May, estuary water from the Rio de la Plata has been mixed in with remaining reserves. As a result, drinking water now considerably exceeds the sodium and potassium levels laid down by the Health Ministry. And people only became aware of this because the water was now noticeably salty.

After contradictory messaging on whether tap water could be drunk, finally, the Ministry recommended that old people and invalids stick to bottled water. It remains to be seen how hospitals, schools and day-care facilities will obtain the drinking water they need.

When asked what the poor are supposed to do (10 per cent of the population live beneath the poverty line), the deputy chair of the state-owned water company said that people should give up Coca-Cola for water. Marie Antoinette sends her regards.

A government feeding lies

Trade and industry were the next to suffer from the problems of water quality. Can saltier water be used in certain production processes without damaging machinery? Can bakers raise bread prices to cover the cost of drinking water without suppressing demand, already hard hit by Covid-19?

As in Europe, Uruguayans are also grappling with high inflation, which reached double figures before stabilising at 9 per cent. But even this level is unlikely to be maintained. The government broke its promise to keep the price of bottled water under control.

In many places ‘Blue Gold’ is out of stock and, where it is available, priced the same as Coca-Cola. Now, there are plans afoot to import bottled water from neighbouring countries.

Despite being under increasing pressure, the government knows how to use the situation to its advantage. It feeds the neoliberal narrative that public companies are incompetent. What’s more, salty drinking water makes it easier for the government to gain acceptance of its ongoing negotiations on building a river-water desalination plant. The ‘Neptuno’ project is facing strong protests, highlighting its potential environmental damage, high costs and de facto partial privatisation of water as a resource.

But the problem is not new. Previous governments formed by the progressive coalition Frente Amplio also failed to focus consistently on transforming the development model. Although the energy matrix has been almost entirely converted to renewable energies in only a few years, soya cultivation and pasture lands, as well as eucalyptus plantations for cellulose production grew even under progressive rule.

The renovation of old pipelines was also delayed so that now 50 per cent of drinking water just seeps away. There are no incentives for more frugal private water use, either. Only now are radio commercials calling on people to refrain from washing their cars or watering their gardens have started to be broadcasted.

However, one thing was guaranteed during the 15 years of the Frente Amplio government: the state’s responsibility for water and other essential goods. Today, the citizens no longer even believe the waterworks with regard to the measured values of the tap water. The loss of trust in the state’s duty of care is enormous.

The effects of climate change on the water supply are also discernible in Europe. Just look at the crisis in Spain’s agricultural sector or the drying up of whole bodies of water from the Aral Sea to Lake Garda. Nevertheless, few people in Europe can imagine a day they might turn on the tap and no water comes out.

But the battle for the Blue Gold has long begun. Fresh water is not the gold of the future but of the present. And as with any resource allocation conflict, it needs political and legal regulation. This applies in particular to the governments and parliaments of the countries concerned. But criticising mismanagement in the Global South is pointless in isolation.

Climate change knows no borders. That’s why we need to challenge our own national and community policymakers on this issue. What signal do trade agreements send that reinforce Latin America’s role as a raw materials supplier?

How can food security be ensured while conserving water? What guidance, investments and technologies do the production countries need? And what incentives would facilitate change away from consumption and thus demand?

Global public goods such as fresh water need global protection and international regulation. Unless we think about and promote socio-ecological transformation in global terms, climate justice will remain a pipe dream and the rule of the market will dominate resource distribution. Our joy at sourcing green hydrogen from Uruguay in place of wind turbines down the road is thus likely to prove short-lived.

Dörte Wollrad heads the office of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) in Uruguay. Previously, she led the foundation’s offices in Argentina and Paraguay.

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS), published by the Global and European Policy Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin.

IPS UN Bureau


Follow IPS News UN Bureau on Instagram

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Massive Fish Mortality Strikes Kashmirs Lake, Threatens Livelihoods — Global Issues

Thousands of dead fish in Dal Lake, Kashmir, are of concern to fishers, who make a living off the lake. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS
  • by Umar Manzoor Shah (srinagar, indian kashmir)
  • Inter Press Service

SRINAGAR, Indian Kashmir, Jun 14 (IPS) – Abdul Lateef Dar, a 45-year-old man living on the outskirts of Kashmir’s renowned Dal Lake, relies on the lake’s fish for food and income.

On the morning of May 26, 2023, Dar followed his usual routine, preparing his fishing tools and heading toward the lake. Initially, he noticed a few lifeless fish floating on the lake’s surface, which he considered a common sight. However, as the morning haze lifted, Dar looked at the lake with horror. The lake was filled with thousands of dead fish, resembling dry and withered branches. Dar urgently called out to fellow fishers and showed them the distressing scene.

Soon, hundreds of fishermen and their families gathered along the lake’s shore, witnessing the devastating scale of the fish mortality.

Dar recounted how he began fishing with his father at 14, relying on the lake for his livelihood. He expressed deep anguish at the devastation. Overnight, thousands of fish had perished, dealing a severe blow to his livelihood and that of countless others who depend on fishing and selling fish in the market.

“But I have never ever seen such devastation – it’s like a doomsday. Not hundreds but thousands of fish are dead overnight. This is the heaviest blow to my livelihood, and there are thousands like me whose livelihood is directly dependent upon catching fish and selling them in the market. What will we sell now, and what is there to catch?” Dar lamented.

The Hanjis community has lived around Dal Lake for centuries, and its main occupation is fishing. They are considered the poorest community in the valley – and they only own a few belongings and live a simple life. Because of their reliance on fishing since ancient times, the community, estimated at about 40 000 people, is more vulnerable than the others in Kashmir’s local populace.

In Srinagar, Jammu, and Kashmir, Dal Lake is a famous and iconic body of water with enormous cultural and ecological value. It is frequently referred to as Kashmir’s “jewel.”

The formation of Dal Lake is believed to have been caused as a result of tectonic action and glacial processes. It is surrounded by magnificent mountains and has a surface area of around 18 square kilometers.

The mass fish deaths widespread panic among the locals and particularly those families whose livelihood is directly dependent on the lake.

The region’s government said its scientific wing had made an initial examination to ascertain the cause of fish mortality and said the deaths were caused due to “thermal stratification”– a change in the temperature at different depths of the lake.

Bashir Ahmad Bhat, the most senior officer of Kashmir’s Lakes and Conservation Management Authority, told IPS that the samples had been collected more analysis is ongoing.

“Although we have collected samples for a thorough analysis, the fish (seemed to have) died as a result of heat stratification, a common occurrence. There is no need to be alarmed; fish as little as two to three inches have perished. We have collected samples of the dead fish in the research lab of our department to find out the precise reason why the fish in the lake died; we are awaiting the official results,” Bhat said.

However, for experts and research scholars, fish mortality in the water body could be a prelude to more troubled times ahead.

Zahid Ahmad Qazi, a research scholar, told IPS that the spike in pollution level is severely affecting the lake’s biodiversity and is causing huge stress to the lake’s fish fauna. He says the unchecked construction around the lake and liquid and solid wastes going into the lake’s water has begun to show drastic impacts.

A research paper published by the Indian Journal of Extension Education in 2022 highlighted the same fact.

“Over the years, the water quality of Dal Lake has deteriorated, causing adverse impacts on its fish fauna. The endemic Schizothorax fish populations have declined considerably owing to the pollution and introduction of exotics. At the same time, the total fish production of the lake has not increased much over the last few decades. The lack of proper governance, policy regulations, and coordination between government agencies and fishers adds more negative impact to this,” the research paper concluded.

The Department of Lakes and Waterways Development Authority, tasked with the protection of the lakes in Kashmir, indicated there were various plans underway to save the Dal Lake and its biodiversity. The department, according to its officials, is uprooting water lilies with traditional methods and weeding the lake using the latest machinery so that the surface is freed from weeds and its fish production increases.

However, in 2018 research done by Humaira Qadri and A. R. Yousuf from the Department of Environmental Science, University of Kashmir, the government, despite spending USD 3 million on the conservation of the lake so far, there has been no visible improvement in its condition. “A lack of proper management and restoration plan and the incidence of engineered but ecologically unsound management practices have led to a failure in the conservation efforts,” reveals the research.

It concluded that conservation efforts have proved to be a failure. It adds that the apathy of the managing authorities has resulted in the deterioration of the lake.

“There is a need to formulate a proper ecologically sound management plan for the lake encompassing all the environmental components of the lake ecosystem and thus help to conserve the lake in a real ecological sense,” the research stated.

IPS UN Bureau Report


Follow IPS News UN Bureau on Instagram

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Steps Towards a Future of Lead-Free Drinking Water — Global Issues

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
  • Opinion by Ahmed Rachid El-Khattabi, Aaron Salzburg (chapel hill, nc, us)
  • Inter Press Service

Chapel Hill, NC, US, May 23 (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.

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 signification 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’ policies are fully 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.

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Rainwater Harvesting Brings Hope for Central Americas Dry Corridor

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)
  • Inter Press Service

SAN SALVADOR, May 22 (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.

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Chiles Water Vulnerability Requires Watershed and Water Management — Global Issues

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)
  • Inter Press Service

SANTIAGO, Apr 19 (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.”

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.”

© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Exit mobile version