Last month's contribution to this forum from two of the 6,500 participants in the recent UN water summit (Alan Nicol and Lyla Mehta) nicely summarised the changes that have, and more importantly, have not happened since the Mar del Plata meeting almost half a century ago. Here I look more closely at the "practical" recommendations that emerged.
The most substantive recommendations emanated from three interrelated reports. The first, Turning the Tide [1], was funded by the Dutch government, which co-sponsored the UN meeting. This flagship report was loosely based on a collection of technical contributions, summarised in The What, Why and How of the World Water Crisis [2].
Turning the Tide highlighted seven action points, each of which would merit thorough debate.
First, we must manage the global water cycle as a global common good, to be protected collectively and in the interests of all.
Second, we must adopt an outcomes-focused, mission-driven approach to water, encompassing all the key roles it plays in human well-being.
Third, we must cease under-pricing water.
Fourth, we must phase out some USD 700 billion of subsidies in agriculture and water each year.
Fifth, we should establish Just Water Partnerships (JWPs) to enable investments in water access, resilience and sustainability in low- and middle-income countries, using approaches that contribute to both national development goals and the global common good.
Sixth, we must move ahead on the opportunities that can move the needle significantly in the current decade.
Seventh, underpinning all our efforts, we must reshape multilateral governance of water, which is currently fragmented and not fit for purpose.
One wonders why a version of the second point did not emerge from Mar del Plata—perhaps it's just very difficult to get stakeholders to converge when their interests (and boundaries of concern) differ; the third proposal is perhaps the most repeatedly and thoroughly discredited approach to induce sustainable water use in agriculture; the fourth is actionable but politically toxic (hence the difficulties with the second proposal); and the sixth is surely a statement of the obvious: if it's a crisis, we should act promptly and effectively.
But it is the first and last proposals that may generate the most interest. These were elaborated in a Comment article in Nature, Why we need a new economics of water as a common good [3], whose authors included two of the Global Commission members. That article argues that scientists should have a seat at the table when decisions on water resources management are taken. Agreed. And that would have eliminated recommendation three, above.
But more seriously, and even if followed, in the case of water disputes, the politicians will hire scientists who support their case—all neutral science can do (for example via satellite data) is to limit the extremes of interpretation. Politicians will then adopt the most convenient science or law to suit their cause—thus countries argue for equitable distribution or no appreciable harm depending on their situation in the river basin, historic usage or disputed agreements. Having a scientist at the table may help WITHIN jurisdictions but is unlikely to clarify matters internationally let alone globally.
The final recommendation in the Comment article—starting locally and building globally—is correct. But then let's face the miserable fact that in most of the world we are failing locally, rendering the global strategy a redundant diversion of effort for the foreseeable future. While "local" is the priority, the perspective implied by the global water cycle framework will provide an excuse for countries that fail to manage water properly to claim that "someone stole my water vapour!", justifying local failure.
The first example of such interactions that is quoted in the Comment article (that ET in India is supporting flows in the Yangtze) is spectacularly revealing. India is over exploiting pretty much ALL its water resources. Is the recommendation to continue this process lest the Yangtze dries up?
It is politically rather unlikely that a country facing local water scarcity is going to further self-harm to support another country. Yet the Comment article recommends that "Governments must monitor soil moisture and vapour flows, and set policies that value these flows as natural capital. Water governance and management need to span all scales, connecting local watersheds, river basins, precipitation- and evaporation-sheds, and eventually the globe."
The extensive and inconclusive literature on how water that is actually under our control should be "valued" suggests that it will be some time before "soil moisture and vapour flows" that are predominantly the outcome of uncontrollable rainfall interacting with uncontrollable temperature, humidity and wind can be "valued".
Beyond such technicalities, recommendations for global oversight of the hydrological cycle are premature (even if plausible).First, climate change is the 600-pound gorilla in the room. Climate change will alter the disposition of precipitation across the globe, and that changing pattern will no doubt feed back into climate. Yet as noted in the Comment, "researchers need to better understand how these processes interact and how atmospheric flows of water vapour connect different regions." Until that understanding is in place, we don't even know what to recommend—as illuminated by the India-China example above. Self-interest suggests that India should limit excessive water consumption for the sake of India. Whether that strategy will exacerbate water scarcity in China is a matter of uncertain speculation (perhaps it is true that maintaining unsustainable levels of ET in Indian irrigation systems is to the benefit of China); whether either strategy is better or worse globally is entirely speculative at this point as the authors more or less admit in recommending "more research" to understand these issues.
Furthermore, to the extent that we already have research, the 600-pound gorilla that is climate change seems likely to overwhelm whatever changes we might make to irrigation systems, which comprise our most obvious example of "ET management". The GRACE mission (which tracks water status globally) recently reported that the extreme rainfall following the millennium drought resulted in so much accretion to aquifers in Australia that sea levels fell measurably [4]. Such variability in climate will have the proposed research institutes modelling well into the next century before concluding whether introduction (or elimination) of drip irrigation in Punjab will be good (or bad) for India, China, or the world.
Summing up these issues, our actual capacity to manage these changes (assuming we know what the changes will be, and apparently we don't) and assuming countries will sign up to export ET they cannot sustainably support, which they won't, is minimal when compared to the 600-pound gorilla. A new UN agency to manage the hydrological cycle is thus a premature proposal. Avoiding water waste and improving agricultural productivity will impact an imperceptible fraction of these processes globally, and substantially locally. Mixing these two impacts is a category error.We need to better understand the hydrological cycle and our capacity to "manage it", while focussing immediate action on local water resources management, which we know is poor and have clear ideas of how to improve it.
The first option, attempting to manage the global water cycle as a common good, will be expensive in terms of intellectual energy, conferences, CO2 emissions (6,500 attended in NY), research skills and more importantly diverting attention from the local issues that comprise the essential, practical element of sustainable water resources management. Sadly, it will also be the more appealing to researchers, conference organisers and donors.
Chris Perry
[1] https://watercommission.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Turning-the-Tide-Report-Web.pdf
[2] https://watercommission.org/publication/phase-1-review-and-findings/
[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00800-z#:~:text=Excessive%20extraction%20for%20irrigation%20and,as%20a%20global%20common%20good