The global water crisis can become uncontrollable due to over consumption and climate change according to a UN report
How much water does India need to lose in the rainy season? An urban flood-control educator’s guideline for rural Bengalaru
In its four months, the monsoon provides most of India’s water. Changes in when and how the rains happen can have huge effects. Heavy downpours cause more problems for flood-control infrastructure in cities. Bengalaru, formerly known as Bangalore, with a metro-area population of 13 million, found that out the hard way this summer, experiencing major floods.
For farmers like Gagre, too much water too quickly can mean that much of it is lost, flowing into rivers and streams and thus unavailable as groundwater later in the year. Much of my time in his village and others was spent seeing and talking about efforts to conserve water, undertaken with the help of a nonprofit group, the Watershed Organization Trust.
To change landscapes, trenches are dug on slopes to hold back more water and trees are planted to keep more water out of the ground. The educational efforts include how to develop a water budget, how to monitor and use less water and how to change crops.
How Sustainable Will Fashion Week Be? An Empirical Analysis of the Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100: Where Do We Stand and What Should We Do?
Next Thursday,Vanessa Friedman, the chief fashion critic for The New York Times, will look at the environmental impact of Fashion Week. Can it ever be truly sustainable? You can register to watch for free.
There are some steps Bangladesh has taken to address the problem. In 2018, its Ministry of Planning published the Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100 (BDP; see go.nature.com/3s26anc). This outlines a long-term strategy for the country’s sustainable and resilient socio-economic development in a changing climate. Water security is a key component of the plan. The BDP identifies the main issues facing the nation’s water, however it is vague on effective actions. These will require heavy investments and more supporting research.
Our analysis of water resources from satellite and local data reveals under-appreciated risks. What is known, defining pressing questions and how to put that knowledge to better use are outlined in this section.
Data-driven irrigation advisory system to save 200 billion litres of water annually generated by rice cultivation in India and eastern Pakistan — a case study
Bangladesh is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world — its total gross domestic product has increased almost eight-fold since 2000. The government has promoted agriculture in order to encourage food security. Farmers are motivated to cultivate rice during both the wet and dry seasons. Rice productivity has doubled in the last 25 years. Today, Bangladesh yields 4.8 tonnes of rice per hectare annually, compared with 2.9–3.9 tonnes per hectare for other leading rice producers such as India and Thailand (see go.nature.com/3s74a33).
Over the past few decades, Bangladesh has benefited from World Bank initiatives, in partnership with local authorities, which have added thousands of cyclone shelters and water-control structures, several thousand kilometres of dikes and hundreds of polders. As a result, 333,000 people are now better protected from tidal flooding and storm surges. More investments are needed to protect against the increasing risks posed by climate change.
All of these efforts require good data to inform understanding of water supplies, flows and forecasts, so that the right infrastructure can be built in the right places.
Water sharing nations like India, Nepal, Bhutan, and China could benefit from scientific collaboration with Bangladesh. The transboundary agreement between Cambodia, Laotian, Thailand, and Vietnam is one example of a model agreement.
Publishing hydrological data in an open-access database would be an exciting step. It will be difficult to make public data on the ground because of the politics and funding.
The SERVIR programme of NASA and the US Agency for International Development could be useful in forecasting severe weather in Bangladesh. This could improve the flood monitoring and forecast system operated by the Bangladesh Water Development Board, which is limited in geographical scope — flooding is monitored only at specific locations, not across the country. In the short-term, such efforts will help with short-term adaption and emergency responses to flood conditions.
Satellite-based irrigation advisory systems can help by determining the volume of water actually needed by crops. One of us helped implement a system in northern India and eastern Pakistan. This was developed at the University of Washington in Seattle, in partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur and the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources in Islamabad. In these two regions, they think that a system like this could save 200 billion litres of water annually. This is just a small portion of the total demand for water, but it would be enough to satisfy about 4% of Bangladesh’s domestic water needs.
These irrigation advisory systems could be improved further by increasing the spatial resolutions of input data — some of which currently come from coarse-resolution global forecast models — and doing further validation on the ground.
Adapting to sea level rise and incursions of salt water is a strategy. Many farmers will stop cultivating oilseed, sugar cane, and other crops due to rising salinity levels. Local fish species cannot tolerate salty conditions, which has put fish farmers in conflict with rice farmers as they compete for fresh water. The addition of non-local species of fish to the system would be beneficial.
There are plants that are salt- tolerant that are now commercially available. As well as providing food and fodder, these plants have the capacity to desalinate soils. They are widely used in coastal areas of countries in the Middle East and South Asia; research should be conducted to assess their suitability for Bangladesh.
Inform your friends about the fight against contamination. It is unlikely that a centralized sewerage system for Bangladesh will be viable in the long term. Many urban residences have low-cost sewage tanks on site. Most are poorly designed and constructed and release partially treated effluent into the water. Researchers can help by improving surface- and ground-water quality monitoring and by assessing the financial costs of such systems, to help governments to understand trade-offs.
Ongoing efforts to deal with arsenic contamination include drilling deeper wells, piping clean surface waters or helping people to switch to lower-arsenic sources where available. Large scale, low cost, real time monitoring systems for water quality would be greatly assisted by these efforts.
Sutter, Van Lierop, and the United Nations: How u.s. climate policy is threatened by global warming and other climate catastrophes
Editor’s Note: John D. Sutter is a CNN contributor, climate journalist and independent filmmaker whose work has won the Livingston Award, the IRE Award and others. He recently was appointed the Ted Turner Professor of Environmental Media at The George Washington University. The opinions he expresses in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.
There should be an “insurance pool … used to compensate the most vulnerable small island and low-lying coastal developing countries for loss and damage resulting from sea level rise,” Vanuatu’s ambassador, Robert Van Lierop, proposed to United Nations climate negotiators, according to a 2019 article in the journal “Climate Policy.”
At the time, Vanuatu – on behalf of an alliance of small-island states – argued quite reasonably that polluters should pay for the costs of their pollution.
There are a lot of arguments against loss-and-damage payments. The harm is undeniable at this point, as is the cause. Oxfam estimates these climate losses will total $1 trillion per year by 2050.
After decades of deflection, it’s overdue for high-polluting countries like the United States to take this question seriously. It is clear that those who profit from the loss of territory, culture, life and property should be held accountable.
He says policymakers need to not lose hope in the face of relentless news about global warming and other dangerous effects. Millions of lives and billions of dollars can be saved by decreasing global reliance on fossil fuels, thanks to the huge amount of air and water pollution caused by burning fossil fuels.
The less carbon we put into the atmosphere, the less risk we put into the climate system — with important consequences for sea levels, storms, drought, biodiversity and so-on.
International Courts Against Climate Change: A Peruvian Case Against a German Fossil Fuel Company in Antigua and Barbuda
Over the years there have been many arguments against action. This was a problem for the future, rather than the present, and this is laughable in retrospect.
The report states that climate change endangers human well-being and planetary health. “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”
That may feel like a new phenomenon, but it’s been decades in the making. Scientists linked a deadly heat wave in Europe in 2003 to global warming. It is thought that 20,000 people were killed by that heat wave.
All developed economies should tax the windfall profits of fossil fuel companies. Those funds should be re – directed in two ways: to countries suffering loss and damage caused by the climate crisis; and to people struggling with rising food and energy prices,” he added.
The courts are taking on countries and people that don’t have international support for a lost-and-damage process. A Peruvian farmer, for example, is suing a German fossil fuel company over a melting glacier that threatens his home and farm. According to news reports, the suit was filed in 2015 and claims the German company should be responsible for its proportion of damages, in line with the amount of fossil fuel pollution it has created. The lawsuit is being fought by RWE, which says it should not be held responsible for the damage.
The Commission of Small island States on Climate Change and International Law was formed in 2021. There is an aim to explore claims in international courts.
The Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, mentioned last year that litigation would be the only way to be taken seriously. They want to respond in court.
The 2022 Tropical Volcano Eruption that Killed the United States and Great Ocean Attempt to Save the Earth from Climate and Climate Disasters
From a small island in Polynesia to the white-sand beaches of Florida, the planet experienced a dizzying number of climate and extreme weather disasters in 2022.
Scientists in the US successfully produced a nuclear fusion reaction that generated more energy than it used – a huge step in the decades-long quest to replace fossil fuels with an infinite source of clean energy.
And at the United Nations’ COP27 climate summit in Egypt, nearly 200 countries agreed to set up a fund to help poor, vulnerable countries cope with climate disasters they had little hand in causing.
The Union of Concerned Scientists’ principal climate scientist says we are far off course to meet the goal of reducing global heat-trapping emissions and limiting future planetary warming. If we are to keep climate extremes from becoming even more devastating, we have to put a stronger collective commitment in motion to slash emissions.
When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted in January, it sent tsunami waves around the world. The blast itself was so loud it was heard in Alaska – roughly 6,000 miles away. The afternoon sky turned pitch black as heavy ash clouded Tonga’s capital and caused “significant damage” along the western coast of the main island of Tongatapu.
According to data from NASA, the underwater volcanic eruption caused a huge cloud of ash and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere more than 20 miles above sea level.
Biden’s Climate and Energy Budget Plan: Implications for the Italy River, Rhine River and Italy’s River Rhine, and Possible Impact on the Italian Interior
The area of Northern Italy saw its worst dry spell in more than 70 years. The 400-mile River Po hit a record low due to an unusually dry winter and limited snowpack in the Alps, which feeds the river. The Po is relied on by millions of people for their livelihood, and 30% of the country’s food is produced along the river.
Also fed by winter snowpack in the Alps along with spring rains, Germany’s Rhine River dropped to “exceptionally low” levels in some areas, disrupting shipping in the country’s most important inland water way. Months of little rainfall meant cargo ships began carrying lighter loads and transport costs soared.
In the US, the Mississippi River and its tributaries had to deal with the consequences of the unprecedented heat and dry conditions. Barge traffic moved in fits and starts as officials dredged the river. The Army Corps of Engineers built a 1,500-foot-wide levee on the Mississippi River to prevent Gulf of Mexico saltwater from pushing upstream after it dropped so low.
After more than a year of negotiations, Democrats in late July reached an agreement on President Joe Biden’s long-stalled climate, energy and tax agenda – capping a year of agonizing negotiations that failed multiple times.
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin was influential in delaying the bill’s passage. Multiple White House and Biden administration officials had tried to convince the lawmaker to support the bill over dinner in Paris and ziplining in West Virginia.
An analysis suggests the measures in the bill will reduce US carbon emissions by roughly 40% by 2030 and would put Biden well on his way to achieving his goal of slashing emissions in half by 2030.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/28/world/top-climate-weather-stories-2022/index.html
Nicole, the First Category 1 Hurricane in More Than 40 Years: The Effects on Volusia and Dallas, Texas, and Throughout the Mid-South
Hurricane Nicole hit the US in November and was the first storm in more than 40 years. It was the first time that a hurricanes made a landfall on Florida’s east coast in November.
Nicole was a category 1 storm and had more than 500 miles of wind field and high tides which caused a catastrophic storm surge. Homes and buildings collapsed into the ocean in Volusia County, with authorities scrambling to issue evacuation warnings.
The floods began in the summer in the park in June, when rapid melting snow washed out roads and bridges, damaging a nearby town and the entrance to the park. Authorities had to rescue more than 100 people from the floods.
The year also brought several 1,000-year rainfall events. When there is a 1,000-year precipitation event, it only happens once every 1,000 years, under normal circumstances. Extreme weather has become more common as the climate crisis pushes temperatures higher. Warmer air holds more precipitation, which leads to historic rainfall.
Meanwhile, down south, parts of Dallas, Texas, got an entire summer’s worth of rain in just 24 hours in August, prompting more than 350 high-water rescues.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/28/world/top-climate-weather-stories-2022/index.html
The Temperature of Summer 2022 in the UK, Central Europe, and the Colorado River as a Reality Check for the Western Smoke and Water System
Europe experienced its hottest summer on record in 2022 by a wide margin. While the heat kicked off early in France, Portugal and Spain, with the countries reaching record-warmth in May, the most significant heat came in mid-July, spreading across the UK and central Europe.
The UK, in particular, topped 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time on record. Stephen Belcher, chief scientist of the UK Met Office, said that it would have been difficult in a disrupted climate.
The 40-degree day in London on July 1st made for an “unprecedented day in the history of the fire brigade”, according to a fire official.
The past few years have been a reality check for western states that heavily rely on the Colorado River for water and electricity. Plagued by decades of overuse and a climate change-fueled drought, the river that serves 40 million people in seven western states and Mexico is draining at an alarming rate.
There is a critical shortage of drinking water supply and power generation as the water levels in its two main lakes plummet. The largest lake in the US bottomed out in late July, and has only rebounded a few feet off the record lows. Human remains and a sunken vessel were revealed when the levels fell quickly.
The federal government implemented its first-ever mandatory water cuts this year for states that draw from the Colorado River, and those cuts will be even deeper starting in January 2023.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/28/world/top-climate-weather-stories-2022/index.html
Water Agenda for the 13th UN Conference on Water, Climate and Water Science in the Middle East and South of the World: Twenty-Years of Progress
Floods caused by record monsoon rain and melting glaciers in Pakistan’s northern mountain regions claimed the lives of more than 1,400 people this summer, with millions more affected by clean water and food shortages. More than a third of Pakistan was underwater, satellite images showed, and authorities warned it would take months for the flood waters to recede in the country’s hardest-hit areas.
Pakistan contributes less than one percent of the world’s warming emissions and is one of the most vulnerable countries to the climate crisis.
Hurricane Ian was a Category 4 when it hit Southwest Florida in late September, causing extensive damage from the Caribbean to the Carolinas. According to recently released data from Swiss Re, Ian’s losses are expected to reach up to $65 billion.
The most dangerous storms have intensified quicker in the last 24 hours than ever before, and scientists told CNN it’s a part of the trend. Super Typhoon Noru in the Philippines became the equivalent of a category 1 Hurricane as residents around Manila slept, catching officials and residents unaware and unable to prepare.
70% of sub-Saharan Africa doesn’t have safe drinking water, and that’s the worst situation in low-income countries.
The water agenda will be produced at the conference. The voluntary commitments will be involved. There is no equivalent to Paris. [climate] agreement.” There is no UN body in charge of monitoring and implementing progress for water-relatedSDGs. “The conference finds itself in an institutional void,” says Ovink. “While we are now very busy with the water conference, we’re not very busy with water.”
Last October, the UN published the results of a consultation with government representatives as well as specialist and stakeholder communities on their priorities for the conference. Around 12% of respondents were from education, science and technology fields. Data and evidence, improved access to knowledge, and open research are some of the elements that will be essential in gettingSDG 6 back on track. delegates at the March conference will be looking to use all the water sources and technologies that have been established, including freshwater and rainwater sources.
There’s a wealth of knowledge already out there, in the form of established technologies, innovative alternatives and research that captures centuries-old knowledge and the practices of communities themselves. What has been learned has been forgotten or ignored in the past. Twenty years ago, for example, the UN invested in a major piece of research that captured examples of how communities living in water-stressed regions have used research and innovation to access water. In arid regions of China, people store snow in cellars during the winter to be melted in the summer.
Some paths forward are clear. Damir Brdjanovic at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in the Netherlands writes in Nature Water that there’s a vast body of research on alternatives to sewered sanitation — and how to use less or no water to safely dispose of faecal matter and inactivate pathogens2. There are other alternatives to the flush toilet. And Rongrong Xu at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China, and colleagues report that there are ways to create hydropower, especially in Africa and Asia, without the same environmental and social impacts3.
Cut emissions rapidly to save lives scientists in a new u-n-report: recommendations for the U.N’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The delegates assembling in New York need to accept that their countries’ visions will not be realized until all nations can somehow carve out a path to cooperate amid tension and conflict. When decisions are being made, research is important because it can help provide at least some of the right language. We in the Nature Portfolio intend to play our fullest part to make that happen.
Over the last two years, hundreds of scientists working for the U.N’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published multiple reports highlighting the disproportionate effects of climate change on poor people and the policy options available for doing so. Each of those documents ran hundreds of pages long.
Simpler, immediate solutions such as quickly adopting renewable sources of electricity and stopping new oil and gas drilling are available. They are also more aspirational ones, such as investing in research that could one day allow technology to suck carbon dioxide out of the air.
The planet is hotter than it was in the 19th century and is on track to get hotter by the end of the century.
It is possible to change course, according to the report. The more catastrophic effects of climate change can be avoided, if humans are able to limit the temperature to no more than two degrees Celsius. Sea levels wouldn’t rise as much. Heat waves and storms would be less deadly. The oceans and land have different environments that would be more able to adapt.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/20/1162711459/cut-emissions-quickly-to-save-lives-scientists-warn-in-a-new-u-n-report
Water Security in Highly Vulnerable Countries and Post-Conflation Settings: Goals, Challenges, and Prospects of a New UN Body
The hope is that the new report will serve as a shared scientific foundation for those negotiations, as well as a menu of solutions available to world leaders.
“When we talk about climate change it’s often really easy to focus on the bad outcomes, the things that are really scary,” says Solomon Hsiang, a climate scientist at the University of California, Berkeley who has worked with the IPCC.
He says investing in reducing emissions is a way of improving people’s health and education and protecting the people we care about.
The other big takeaway from the report is that people in developing countries, and poor people around the world, are disproportionately affected by climate change.
For example, “between 2010 and 2020, human mortality from floods, droughts and storms was 15 times higher in highly vulnerable regions, compared to regions with very low vulnerability,” the authors write.
The report states that the most vulnerable communities include people who live in low-income countries, low-lying areas and island nations.
Climate researcher with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the University of Chicago, and member of the International Panel on Climate Change, said that they are not all in this together. The most vulnerable are the poor and marginalized in all cities and regions.
Water has not been on the international sustainable development policy agenda until now, and that’s the simplest answer.
Several low-income countries asked for financial support, but were rebuffed, and instead a study was proposed on how to finance water projects, as Nature reported at the time.
The conference needs to address water security in vulnerable communities and those in conflict and post- conflict settings, according to Carol Cherfane, director of the Arab Centre for Climate Change Policies. As many as 43,000 people could have died last year from a lack of food, according to a report published this week by the WHO.
It will take many years to set up a new UN body. Instead, delegates will call for water to be prioritized in existing treaties and in the UN system.
Some countries will be calling for more funds, especially in the form of grants for projects such as desalination of seawater or wastewater treatment. Much existing international support is loans, says Omar Salameh, a spokesman for Jordan’s water and irrigation ministry, based in Amman. “However, loans exacerbate the financial pressures on already-struggling economies,” he says.
The UN secretary-general is expected to ramp up his campaign for funds to create climate early-warning systems in all UN member states, so that they are better prepared for extreme events. “Only half of our 193 members have proper early-warning services in place,” says Petteri Taalas, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, based in Geneva, Switzerland, which is working with Guterres to implement the plan. Taalas says we need US$3 billion over the next five years. So far, around 10% of this has been raised, through different sources.
Sustainable Water Use in the 21st Century: The Role of Water Deficits in the Treatment of Diseases, Diseases and Diseases
Water use has increased by 1% a year over the last 40 years, driven by population growth and changing consumption patters according to the UN World Water Development Report.
There are growing shortages of water with 70% of the world’s water supply being used by agriculture.
Without action to address the problem of water scarcity, “there definitely will be a global crisis,” said Richard Connor, the report’s lead author, at a news conference to launch the report.
The report’s authors warn of the consequences of extreme and long-absorbent droughts on the environment, which could have dire consequences for plants and animals.
Efforts to reduce pollution should open the door to further collaboration and increase access to water funds, he said.
