UK Experiences ‘Weirdest’ Weather

The UK has just experienced its “weirdest” weather on record, scientists have confirmed.

The driest spring for over a century gave way to the wettest recorded April to June in a dramatic turnaround never documented before.

The scientists said there was no evidence of a link to manmade climate change.

But they say we must now plan for periodic swings of drought conditions and flooding.

The warning came from the Environment Agency, Met Office and Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) at a joint briefing in London.

Terry Marsh from the CEH said there was no close modern precedent for the extraordinary switch in river flows. The nearest comparison was 1903 but this year was, he said, truly remarkable.

What was also remarkable – and also fortunate – was that more people did not suffer from flooding. Indeed, one major message of the briefing was that society has been steadily increasing its resilience to floods.

Paul Mustow, head of flood management at the Environment Agency, told BBC News that 4,500 properties were flooded this year. “But if you look back to 2007 when over 55,000 properties were flooded we were relatively lucky – if lucky is the right word – for the impacts we saw this summer,” he said.

“The rainfall patterns affected different areas – and also there were periods of respite between the rain which lessened the impact.”

Fast moving

He said 53,000 properties would have been flooded this year without flood defences. In total, he said, 190,000 properties had received flood protection in recent years.

Mr Mustow claimed that flood defences repaid their investment by a factor of 8-1 but admitted that continuing to invest would be a “challenge”, after government cuts to planned projects.

But he said that new streams of joint funding from local authorities and private developers had allowed 60 schemes to happen that otherwise would not have gone ahead.

He said: “We have to get our heads round the possibility now that we’re going to have to move very quickly from drought to flood – with river levels very high and very low over a short period of time.

“We used to say we had a traditional flood season in winter – now often it’s in summer. This is an integrated problem – there’s no one thing that going to solve it. The situation is changing all the time.”

But scientists present from the Met Office and CEH said not much could be read into the weird weather. Terry Marsh from CEH said: “Rainfall charts show no compelling long-term trend – the annual precipitation table shows lots of variability.”

Sarah Jackson from the Met Office confirmed that they did not discern any pattern that suggested manmade climate change was at play in UK rainfall – although if temperatures rise as projected in future, that would lead to warmer air being able to carry more moisture to fall as rain.

She said that this year’s conditions were partly caused by a move to a negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation which would be likely to lead to more frequent cold drier winters – like the 1960s – and also wetter summers for 10-20 years.

“Longer term we will see a trend to drier summers but superimposed on that we will always see natural variability,” she said.

Whatever happens with the weather, the Environment Agency expects that more and more people will be protected from floods and droughts thanks to water sharing between farmers, water transfer between water companies, and better management of leaks and demand.

But Mr Mustow admitted that much more needed to be done to ensure that farmers didn’t increase flood risk with land drainage schemes and that developers and builders ensured that new developments allowed water to drain into the soil rather than flushing into the sewers.

updatednews.ca

Emerging Asia Hits a Wall of Water

                                                                                                   India's Sardar Sarovar Narmada Dam 

It’s often said that people are a nation’s greatest resource. That can be true, especially with their knowledge and creativity, which can supplement physical resources. But one basic must is hard to think your way around: water.

So it is that the great emerging nations of Asia–China, India, Indonesia–face a wall in their development. All are confronted with either a scarcity of moisture in key regions, or an inability to contain the water that sometimes pours and deliver it in potable form to millions for daily life. The results can be barren fields, destructive floods or sickened populations from exposure to contamination.

Usually the water problem is a natural one of scant rainfall or the absence of topographical means of collection and retention, such as mountains for snowpack or lakes and flowing rivers. Thus you can have monsoons and still be dried out. (Some challenge the notion that this is any longer “natural” by contending that man-made climate change is involved.)

However, even tropical states can be water-constrained when the public infrastructure is so poor that inundation causes bacteria to run off from sewage and other sources and spoil the vital supply. This is the case in booming Indonesia, according to a currently featured article in the country’s fine Strategic Review quarterly.

India has both natural and man-made problems. A recent feature in the licensed edition Forbes India said the country has only 4% of the “total world resource” of water but 18% of the population. It noted: “Deficient monsoons often lead to shortage of drinking and irrigation water. Groundwater is polluted due to poor land practices, atmospheric deposition of pollutants and direct discharge of sewage into water bodies.” Quite a bill of particulars. And then there is controversy when dams have ultimately been attempted.

Forbes India cited a similar predicament in China, with 7% of “resource share” and 19% of global population. The Chinese government, of course, is more proactive on this front, at least in terms of damming and other diversions intended to route precious fluid from the mountainous south to the populous north. What this is doing or will do to areas like the Tibetan Plateau is debated, and it is now difficult for many foreigners to enter that sensitive zone to investigate. China has stumbled on an attempt to dam northern Burma.

(Dams are also a growing issue in the strategic battleground of Central Asia, where the major powers are plying for mineral wealth, whose extraction also takes water.)

So, mere expenditure for mass public works–even if done honestly and efficiently, and not riddled by graft–is not necessarily an easy response to water scarcity. (Few would object to basic water containmentl and purification projects.) There is also, for most nations, the option of the vast sea, if desalination can be afforded. Countries in North Africa and the Middle East have chosen this course as a palliative. It takes a well-stocked Treasury.

A supremely logical approach is to curb waste and misallocation by pricing water. Yet, failure to do so is common, nowhere more egregiously than in India. But this is understandable: where democracy is most rampant, the interests favored by currently free or cheap common water, if numerous, will be most able to keep their booty. Moreover, some who grasp the environmental aspects of water misuse nonetheless have a mental block on invoking the market as a remedy.

So we have a fundamental problem amid rising affluence, one that software code largely cannot solve, especially if politics blocks better allocation. Indonesia should be able to marshal its abundance, given honest government. But unless science somehow can muster rain clouds, much of Asia cannot affordably get “more” of something it needs to grow–and live. At some point, if the policy riddle of unpopular allocation is not solved, this becomes a Malthusian knot. That could trump the wisdom of the “people resource” and sidetrack a very promising growth story.

By Tim Ferguson@forbes.com

Protecting and Restoring the Great Lakes

The University of Michigan and 20 other U.S. and Canadian research institutions will join forces to propose a set of long-term research and policy priorities to help protect and restore the Great Lakes and to train the next generation of scientists, attorneys, planners and policy specialists who will study them.

The Great Lakes Futures Project of the Transborder Research University Network will use a cross-disciplinary, cross-sector approach to outlining alternative Great Lakes futures through science-based scenario analysis.

"With the recent release of the revised Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, this is a critical time to bring together scholars and practitioners from across the region to chart a more protective future for this precious resource," said Donald Scavia, director of U-M's Graham Sustainability Institute.

The Great Lakes basin is home to more than 35 million people -- 30 percent of the Canadian population and 10 percent of the U.S. population. The economic output of the basin is one of the largest in the world (more than $4 trillion gross regional product), and the area is expected to grow by 20 million people over the next 20 years. While the basin contains more than 80 percent of the water in North America and 21 percent of the world's surface fresh water, demands from within and outside the basin are substantial and escalating.

The Great Lakes Futures Project will be led by Irena Creed of Western University, Gail Krantzberg of McMaster University, Kathryn Friedman of SUNY at Buffalo and U-M's Scavia. The project will be managed by Katrina Laurent of Western University.

This unprecedented collaboration of U.S. and Canadian academics, governments, nongovernment organizations, industry and private citizens will address questions such as "How can this water and watershed be managed?" and "What are the environmental, social, economic and political impacts of those management plans?"

The assessment will begin with development of white papers outlining critical drivers of change in the Great Lakes basin over the past 50 years and the next 50 years, including climate change, the economy, biological and chemical contaminants, invasive species, demographics and societal values, governance and geopolitics, energy and water quantity.

These papers will be developed by teams of graduate students from Canadian and U.S. universities under the mentorship of leaders in Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River basin research and presented at a workshop at U-M in January. The assessments will drive scenario analyses and policy briefs that will be communicated to residents and government officials in both Canada and the U.S.

The Great Lakes Futures Project will also produce scholarly and popular publications and will conduct public events with schools and community groups. In addition, it has the potential to create a binational academic forum, research collaborations and a think tank. This initiative has also laid the foundation for two major federal grant opportunities for training of highly qualified personnel who will work on improving the status of the Great Lakes.

Eighteen U.S. and Canadian universities and colleges have provided cash support to the project. They are: University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Wayne State University, SUNY at Buffalo, Guelph University, McMaster University, Queens University, Trent University, University of Toronto, University of Windsor, Ryerson University, Waterloo University, Western University, York University, McGill University, Seneca College, Université de Montréal and the Université du Québec à Trois Rivière.

Funding was also provided by the Group for Interuniversity Research in Limnology and Aquatic Environment, Michigan Sea Grant and New York Sea Grant.

Project officials will recruit students for the next phase of the scenario analysis this fall.

The Transborder Research University Network expands and supports cooperation among research universities in the border region of Canada and United States through collaborative/ consortial research; joint applications for external funding; cooperative academic programs; faculty and student exchanges; shared facilities, library materials and electronic resources; and joint conferences, symposia and workshops.

sciencedaily.com

Water Scarcity Compounds India’s Food Insecurity

      A woman carries firewood in Gujarat on Aug. 6, 2012, as others rest under a tree after they migrated because of a water shortage. Reuters photo: Ahmad Masood

Since India’s independence, the mammoth task of feeding its hundreds of millions, most of whom are extremely poor, has been a major challenge to policymakers. In the coming decades, the issue of food insecurity is likely to affect almost all Indians. However, for the poorest amongst us, it could be catastrophic. India ranks 65 of 79 countries in the Global Hunger Index. This is extremely alarming.

In the past few years, uneven weather patterns combined with over exploited and depleting water resources in various parts of India have wreaked havoc on food security, particularly for small and marginal farmers, as well as the rural poor.

The recently launched Global Food Security Index (GFSI) estimates that in 2012, there are 224 million Indians, around 19 percent of the total population, who are undernourished. The same report also estimates that while the Indian government has various institutions designed to deal with the impact of inflation on food prices, it only spends 1 percent of agricultural GDP on research to build food security for the poorest. Overall, India ranked 66th on the GFSI. It is estimated that one in four of the world’s malnourished children is in India, more even than in sub-Saharan Africa.

Water insecurity, further exacerbated by climate change, is arguably the most important factor for India’s food security. India’s total water availability per capita is expected to decline to 1,240 cubic metres per person per year by 2030, perilously close to the 1,000 cubic metre benchmark set by the World Bank as ‘water scarce’.

Factors such as increasing usage, poor infrastructure, and pollution have led to a decline of water quantity and quality in India. Climate change, meanwhile, is expected to cause a two-fold impact.

One, increasing temperatures have hastened the rate of melt of the Himalayan glaciers, upon which major Indian rivers like the Ganges, Indus and Brahmaputra depend.

Second, the effect of climate change on monsoons in India will cause them to become more erratic, arriving earlier or later and lasting for shorter, more intense periods of time. India’s farming communities depend overwhelmingly on the monsoon, as their cropping patterns are built around it. The combined effect of climate change and over exploitation is violating the water cycle, degrading aquifers and  eroding ground water resources.

Over 50 percent of agricultural land in India depends entirely on groundwater. In North and Northeast India, where perennial rivers (rivers that have water year round, i.e. glacier fed rivers in India, such as the Ganges) sustain the agricultural land, have to deal with issues such as flooding caused by climate change impacts such as speedier glacier melt and erratic monsoons.

Meanwhile, farmers in states in West and South India, where rivers are seasonal, have to depend heavily on rapidly depleting groundwater resources.

The worst affected by this type of water-fuelled food insecurity are the small farmers of India. Estimates suggest that between 1995 and 2010, over 2,50,000 farmers in India, mostly from states like Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, killed themselves. Most of these farmers were drowning in vicious cycles of debt caused by failed monsoons and increasing droughts.

Responses to this crisis, including the National Action Plan on Climate Change, lay out various solutions and intended interventions, but most focus on the long term. To secure the future of India’s water resources vis-à-vis its agriculture in the future, it is important that certain steps be taken immediately. First and foremost, authorities will have to remove the mindset that water is an endless resource and the solution to water woes is simply a further development of India’s fast depleting groundwater.

Indeed, Dr. Mihir Shah, co-Founder, Samaj Pragati Sahayog (SPS) and member of the Planning Commission of India has stated that the ‘era of further water development may be over’ and emphasized that we have to urgently introduce more efficient water management. In this regard, promotion of irrigation efficiency will be crucial in the future.

Systems such as drip irrigation and System of Rice Intensification (SRI) to farmers across India will be essential. It will also be necessary to promote water conservation methods such as rain water harvesting, which has been successful in urban India, in villages as well.

At the same time, reducing inefficiencies and water wastage through conveyance losses will require governmental and NGO support in actions such as replacing faulty pipes and pumps.  Hence, India needs to invest on improving its water productivity, and any capacity to produce more food like rice with less water will be an important contribution to sustainable water and food security.

In short, India is facing a bleak future of becoming water scarce and painfully food insecure. How exactly are the country’s hundreds of millions, who depend entirely on agriculture for their livelihoods, as well as those that depend on agriculture for their food needs, to make ends meet?

Delaying this issue is simply not an option for India as this could lead to increased instability, poor human development and enhance inter-generational poverty. India needs to ensure food security through sustainable development and create resilience amongst the most vulnerable in the country: the poor.


reuters.com

Water, Water, Not Everywhere

Few people in the world are more water-conscious than California farmers.

The state leads the nation in farm revenue and produces nearly half of the domestic supply of fruits, nuts and vegetables. It also boasts nine of the top 10 producing counties in the nation, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

Yet California is one of the driest states in the U.S., getting an average of just 22 inches of precipitation annually compared with more than 40 inches for states like Missouri and New York. And, with nearly 40 million people, California is also the most populous state—meaning there's a lot of competition for that precious rain and snow.

How do the farmers make do with so little water? They use technology and the state's topography to stretch existing supplies as far as they can. "If you have limited water supplies, you have to be as careful and efficient as you can with it," says Larry Schwankl, an irrigation expert with the University of California Cooperative Extension.

The efficiencies start at the northern end of the Central Valley, the 400-mile corridor that's home to most of the state's farmland. There, farmers along the Sacramento River use a system called flow-through, which means that the water they take but don't use flows back into the river by a network of valves and drains.

As water flows to the driest southern reaches of the valley via the California Aqueduct, many farmers use drip irrigation, microsprinklers and extensively plumbed groundwater caverns—filled with runoff from the Sierra Nevada—to maximize their water usage.

Daniel Errotabere, for instance, says his 5,200-acre farm's conversion to drip irrigation over the past five years has helped yield water savings as high as 50%—helping to cushion the blow during the most recent drought. "You can't deliver water much more efficiently than what we are doing today," Mr. Errotabere said on a recent tour of the farm near Riverdale, Calif.

The accompanying images outline how irrigation and water conservation work in California's Central valley.

By JIM CARLTON@The Wall Street Journal

Last Call At The Oasis

Although it covers 70 percent of the earth's surface, there is a very real possibility that in the near future, there won't be enough water to sustain life on the planet. This documentary illuminates the vital role water plays in our lives, exposes the defects in the current system and shows communities already struggling with its ill-effects and individuals championing revolutionary solutions. Firmly establishing the urgency of the global water crisis as the central issue facing our world this century, the film posits that we can manage this problem if we are willing to act now.

Inspired by the book "The Ripple Effect" by Alex Prud'homme, "Last Call at the Oasis," is from Participant Media, the company that brought you "Page One," "An Inconvenient Truth," "Food, Inc.," and "Waiting for Superman."

Reverse Osmosis to Rescue Water Scarcity in the Dead Sea

Engineers and scientists are expected to use Reverse Osmosis (RO) technology to merge the Dead and the Red seas under the “Two Seas Canal Project” worth 10 billion dollars.

   

RO, occurs when water is moved across a membrane against a concentration gradient from lower to higher concentration, under pressure to force ions, molecules and bacteria to be filtered, which is used purposely for the commercial desalination of seawater.

   

The project, to run in three-phases would be financed through international and multi-national institutions with counterpart funding from beneficiary countries, namely, Palestine, Jordan and Israel, would haul in 700,000 cubic metres of water into the Dead Sea from the Red Sea, a distance of 180 kilometres.

    

Results of feasibility studies and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) supported by the World Bank and other donors are yet to be released for concrete works to commence. 

    

The region is witnessing water scarcity with its main freshwater source, the River Jordan, which has kept shrinking in size and posing declines in its annual flow from more than 1.3 billion cubic meters per year to less than 30 million cubic meters annually.

    

With Israel, Jordan and Syria, each grabbing as much clean water as they could, it is ironically the sewage that is keeping the river alive today.

    

In fact, water scarcity is a disincentive to many in the agriculture and industrial sectors as well as for domestic consumption, largely due to urbanization, pollution and global warming.

    

Mr Batir Wardam, environment expert and researcher, said the project, though ambitious, is expected to revive the biodiversity and water scarcity in the region.

    

He called for use of science to distinguish between myths and reality while urging the media to lead the crusade by setting the right agenda.

    

General Secretary of the Ministry of Water, Mr Bassem Talfah, said the situation is scary, which demands prompt action hence the invitation to the private sector to strike partnership with to government to diversify funding and implementation of the project.

    

He said the sector needs higher investment portfolios resulting from higher financial outlays in production cost stating that this manifests in a financial gap of One Billion Jordanian Dinar.

    

Mr Khaled Irani, President of Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature, said the problem of water scarcity is not only a humanitarian issue but economic as well.

   

“Sixty-six percent of water is imported into Jordan of which 15 percent goes into agricultural activities. We cannot wait for the commencement of this project as its prospects are overwhelming.”  

    

He entreated stakeholders to avoid knee-jerk reactions even as the recommendations are released and positive that the project would provide an alternative means for water in the country and beyond.

   

Contrarily, Dr Samir Mahmoud, media expert, said double-political commitment was needed to actualize the Two-Seas canal project as it is “haunted by political inactivity.”

   

“With the pace of development and disregard for timelines, the canal project will not see the light of day now, not within the next two decades,” he suggested.

He said merging the two seas would have an environmental catastrophe for Jordan, especially for occupying the lowest bit of the project.

   

Dr Mahmoud explained that Jordan’s location with increased salinity could be a bouquet for destabilization of the ecology in relation to marine life and culture of the Dead Sea.

ghananewsagency.org

Nigeria: Flood - Danger Looms in Lagos

Dr. Akintola Omigbodun is an expert in flood management. In this interview, he says the floods ravaging many states in Nigeria are avoidable. Omigbodun, who fielded questions from Vanguard editors during a visit to the media house, last week, also deplores the Ministry of Water Resources' handling of the crisis and warns that there are grave dangers ahead for Lagos and Ogun states should the water in Oyan Dam not be properly managed.

You are an expert on environmental issues, particularly flooding. What got the flooding story in Nigeria started and was it avoidable?

There is a dam across the River Benue in Cameroon called Lagdo Dam. This dam is about 40meters high. Its storage capacity is about half of what is found in Kainji Lake Dam. And at full flow, if equipment was installed in it, it could possibly generate 700 megawatts of electricity. But the equipment is limited and is only generating about 20 megawatts.

They are also supposed to have an irrigation scheme in that dam. The result is that the dam is storing a huge amount of water and is not being used for any purpose. In the event of so much rainfall like what we have now, the people around the dam would become terrified that it might be overtopped. So the authorities release additional water from the dam.

What we get now is a lot more than what we would get. If there was no dam, the water will continue to flow day in day out. But when you put a dam, you are controlling the flow of water; when you now suddenly release the water because you are afraid your dam will overtop, then it will result to releasing much water. The Lagdo Dam has been flooding every year, just that this year is exceptional. Communities in Cameroon are also flooded. There is a town called Garua; every year, that place is flooded. But in order to save Nigeria, the Cameroonian government should lower their operational level, otherwise, every year, most Nigerian communities will continue to be flooded.

Can we know more about this operational level that you want the Cameroonian authorities to lower?

What really happened was that they opened the gate of their dam. The actual water released from that dam from 1992 to 2002 showed that they opened a number of gates at higher percentages. Floods are associated with rainfall, water courses, streams, rivers, dams and reservoirs where water behind dams are stored. Rainfall is natural while dams and their reservoirs are hand made and are therefore subject to human control. Dam owners and operators are expected to exercise control over the water behind their dams such that in years of heavy rainfall and for singular rainfall events, water passing through the dams does not damage infrastructure or create floods. Earthquakes are natural events and, when they occur in certain regions, there is considerable damage to buildings and other social infrastructure. However, in some areas such as Tokyo in Japan, Los Angeles and San Francisco in the United States, buildings are designed to withstand earthquakes. Damage from natural occurrences can be limited through appropriate human action. For example, the Netherlands has over two-thirds of its economy and half its population below sea level. The Netherlands has about 350km of coastline on the North Sea and major rivers, the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt passing through on their way to the North Sea. The Netherlands has an active coastal and river flood management programme to keep the country flood-proof and maintain its prosperity.

Our experience in Nigeria suggests that dam operators should prepare for heavy rainfall within the next 20 years and for singular rainfall events leading to exceptional floods within the next 35years.

Is there a nexus between the Dam in Cameroon, and the River Benue and the flooding of the Oyan Dam?

There is no physical connection. What we have is operational connection. They (Cameroon) are storing a lot of water in the lake and they are not doing much with it. And when the water is much, they release it and the released water causes flooding.

If they release it in small quantity, it would not have effect, but when they release the water in large quantity, it results to flooding. The Osun River is not in any way connected to the Ogun River or the Niger. That tells you that there is no physical connection. I am hoping that government will live up to expectations. I have personally involved the Ministry of Environment and I must say that I am disappointed with their level of involvement in the crisis. They are just being arrogant.

The Minister of Water Resources has not lived up to expectation and I have met with the Director of Water Resources and I could not get him to do anything. I have also written to the Attorney General of the Federation on the Oyan Dam, so that they can do something about it. We must understand that the dams are designed to have spillways and the spillways guide the release of water. The people are suffering as a result of the flooding and government has to rise to the challenges posed by the flood.

We have River Ogun which starts in Oyo North. And there is a dam in Iseyin. That dam is about 47meters high. There is also a tributary of the Ogun River which also has a dam.

At the moment, the Okere Dam is not gated. There is no gate and water flows over. The dam is supposed to provide irrigation and also generate power. What is important is that the dam is supposed to provide water for Iseyin and environs. Following the non-utilisation of the dam for various purposes, there is huge storage of water. All the things that caused the flooding in Lagos and Ogun are under the control of Ogun River Basin Authority. They should manage the dams in such a way that we do not have flood in the areas of their mandate. We are about to be flooded again like what happened in 2010 and 2011.

I have had experience of the floods along the River Ogun in Ogun State and Lagos State in 2007, 2010 and 2011. The flood path is over 27km long and is up to 4km wide in places. The flood level in 2010 was 0.5m higher than the level of 2007. The River Ogun system has two major dams, the Okere Gorge Dam on the River Ogun at Okere Village 28km north east of Iseyin in Oyo State and the Oyan Dam located about 20km northwest of Abeokuta on the River Oyan, a tributary of the River Ogun.

The Okere Gorge Dam is ungated while the Oyan Dam is gated. The Federal Ministry of Water Resources has been asked to direct that the freeboard in the reservoir behind Oyan Dam should be increased by 4meters as an interim measure pending appropriate studies and a construction programme along the River Ogun from Oyan Dam to Lagos flood plains. Put simply, the floods now taking place yearly at Isheri North, the Lagos wetlands communities and parts of Ogun State and the River Oyan Dam were not built on the River Oyan respectively, floods will occur in the Lagos flood plains within the intervals of 10years and 25years.

With the construction of both dams, floods should no longer occur in the Lagos flood plains if both dams are being operated in accordance with their designs. In the exceptional situation, floods may occur once in 50 years.

For the months of August, September, October for years 1992 to 2002, it was only in August 1993 that there was water release. Presently, exceptional release of water takes place yearly in August, September and October. This was observed in 2007, 20010 and 2011. A greater part of the area covered by flood water in 2007 qualified to be included in the disaster area as opposed to the flood plains of the River Ogun. For example, a newspaper published on Friday, November 4, 2011 that the Itowolo Community Primary School Ikorodu started experiencing flood in 2007. The report indicated that the community was founded over 200 years ago and the community never experienced flood until 2007. Further, when the school was established 30years previously, there was no sign that the school would be affected by water.

Why does flood incidence wreaks so much havoc in the face of the existence of River Basin Authorities? Does it mean that the River Basins are no longer working?

The law establishing River Basin Development Authorities all over Nigeria, which is the River Basins Development Authorities, RBDAs, Act Chapter R9 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004, required RBDAs to control floods in their areas of operations. Under section 4(1) of this Act, part of the functions of the RBDAs is to undertake comprehensive development of both surface and underground water resources for multi-purpose use with particular emphasis on the provision of irrigation infrastructure and the control of floods and erosion and for watershed management. The river basin is also established to construct, operate and maintain dams, dykes, wells, boreholes, irrigation and drainage systems, and other works necessary for the achievement of the authority's functions and handover to be cultivated under irrigation scheme to the farmers.

However, they have not been performing their functions well. Even though the Ogun River Basin Authority is responsible for what we are experiencing here in Lagos, we are not taking them to court because of my not pleasant experiences in Nigeria's judicial system. The truth is that the flood in Lagos and some parts of Ogun State is entirely avoidable.

It is regrettable that the river basins are not working. For example, when I met the General Manager of Sokoto River Basin Authority, he told me that he only had three qualified staff to work with. Why should the government continue to award new contracts to build new dams, when they have not properly managed the ones they have?

Some have attributed this flooding disaster to climate change. Do you in anyway see climate change as a factor?

We should not be talking of climate change and sea level rise as the cause of the flooding because they are measurable. What the New York City panel on climate change said was that the figures of rainfall analysis from 1970 to 2000 indicated that rainfall and snow will only be ten percent different from 1970 to 2000. The rainfall in 1991 for Abeokuta and Iseyin in 1990 was higher than what we have today. People who are doing research on climate change have come up that there are variations in the rate of rainfall in West Africa. That implies that there are years of low rainfall and years of high rainfall change have variables that are measurable. What is needed to be done in the case of Oyan Dam is to lower the operational level by 4 meters.

What can be done proactively to forestall further damages by flood?

The best thing is for the government to perform its functions. I don't think the government is deaf to newspaper publications, even if they are deaf to letters, because I have written in the past and present on how to avoid the present damages that the flood is unleashing all over the country. What we are saying is that they should take correct measures so that we don't experience this kind of disaster again, because the chances of occurring again are real. The water we are seeing in the Niger Delta is River Niger and Benue water, because there is exceptional rainfall in Kainji and Lagdo Dams.

They were forced to release water. In River Benue, for instance, they wait for the water to be so much high before they release it. Government should realise that they are losing economically to the flooding. It affects our GDP and well-being.

My message is that the losses we are encountering as a result of the flood is avoidable. Definitely the flood would unleash food crisis on the nation, because farmers would lose their crops to the flood. We experienced a similar thing in Sokoto in 2010 when the Goronyo Dam wreaked havoc. The same thing will happen as a result of this year's disaster, especially for those that planted by the river side.

BY CHARLES KUMOLU@allafrica.com

Somaliland: Drought Leaves Nothing Untouched

The village elders are quick to tell me that Boodhlay, the name of this village, means dusty. A quick glance around shows that this name is very apt indeed.

There is hardly any vegetation here at all. No grass, just pockets of dry scrub, spiky acacia trees and dust as far as the eye can see. Unusually for this part of Somaliland, I can't see a single camel.

Almost everyone in the village is a pastoralist. This means that they are largely reliant on their herds of camels, goats and sheep to provide food, milk and income for their families. When there is not enough rain, the pasture soon disappears and people are forced to move in search of food and water for their animals.

"It is affecting every aspect of life"

Yusuf, one of the village elders tells me: "There have been droughts here for a long time now. The situation is very difficult. It is affecting the food and water supply, our incomes and the children's education. It is affecting every aspect of life."

When the drought came last year many people lost animals. In a place where your livestock are your livelihood, some families lost everything.

Recently, the humanitarian situation in Somaliland has modestly improved. The rainy season – known in the region as the Gu rains – was not as meagre as predicted this year. But there are many pockets of land, like Boodhlay, where the rains have been both late and insufficient. In these areas pasture remains extremely limited and water – both for livestock and human consumption – is scarce.

As Yusuf told me: "People think that because we have had some rains recently everything is OK. But they are wrong. Ten days ago it rained for two days. We've had nothing since. These two days of rain will not fix things. It takes a long time to recover. Nothing has changed."

Our response

Unless assistance is provided, these factors could lead to destitution for many of the pastoral communities that call eastern Somaliland home. We're calling for urgent funding to contribute towards sustainable early recovery in these areas.

We have also have launched an emergency intervention to address the lack of water in villages where we are already working, such as Boodhlay.

The Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) component of our response is already underway, and we're aiming to provide immediate access to safe water for more than 7,000 families. This is being achieved via emergency water trucking, the restoration of water sources (berkads), or a combination of both.

In total we're targeting 21 villages in eastern Somaliland. To date, we've reached 13,557 people, including 6,110 children in the area through our WASH intervention.

somalilandsun.com

In response to 2011's famine in parts of southern Somalia, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) more than doubled its support to Somali farmers, especially in the cereal producing parts in the country's south.

To restore the crop production capacity, FAO distributed appropriate agricultural inputs (cereal seeds and fertilizers) and provided technical assistance in conservation agriculture. In the cropping season that followed 2011's famine declaration, FAO procured and distributed 3750 tons of Urea and 1300 tons of DAP fertilizer to Somali farmers. Other farm inputs included 135 tonnes of maize seeds, 935 tonnes of sorghum seeds and 120 tonnes of sesame seeds.

Distribution of these inputs is aimed at restoring the productive capacity (and improving food security) of some 150, 000 farming households (equivalent to 900 000 people) in Somalia.

However, 2012 has seen the introduction of tractor hours per beneficiary, through which farmers access tractors to cultivate their land resulted in cultivation of over 1,533hectares of land. Through a creating irrigation scheme, farmers pay money to access water pumps to irrigate their fields. As a result, some 8496 hectares has been irrigated to date.

FAO's agricultural activitiesEuropean Commission, United Kingdom, United States, Australia Aid, The World Bank Belgium, Spain and Italy.

Water, water, everywhere…

Water, water, every where/Nor any drop to drink. This is verse from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner seems like a prelude to the water sharing problems dogging the world. The long poem’s reflection, particularly ebbing in the Cauvery issue is now at its peak, like it does every summer.

The Cauvery water sharing dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu is one of the many water disputes in India and the world. The other two parties in this dispute are Kerala and Pondicherry. Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka are caught in a triangle over the sharing of Krishna waters.

The same states along with Madhya Pradesh and Orissa dispute over the Godavari waters. The Ravi-Beas dispute is between Punjab and Haryana, two agricultural surplus states that provide large quantities of grains to the rest of India.

Narmada River is the bone of contention between Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. Similar water sharing issues bubble at the Mahadayi and Vasandhara rivers too. Dispute settling mechanisms like Acts and Tribunals, methods of resolution including political interference and constitutional provisions applied during negotiations have so far yielded partial or no results in resolving water disputes.

Declaration of water as a national property might settle inter-state water squabbles. What about the same issue of water sharing between countries?

Water systems usually arise in one country and pass through others before reaching the sea or oceans. Rivers and lakes that come off these larger water systems are typically shared by more than one country. The states where these systems originated tend to try and gain the most control over the water, like the Nile and the Jordan River.

Chinese efforts to divert water resources of the Brahmaputra away from India, has worsened situations that have remained tense since the 1962 Indo-China war.

Israel and Palestine have a traditional history of fighting over water — conflicts over the Tigris and Euphrates. Some experts believe the only documented case of a ‘water war’ happened about 4,500 years ago, when the city-states of Lagash and Umma went to war in the Tigris-Euphrates basin.

There is tension between India and Pakistan over hydroelectric projects in Leh and Kargil, which will affect the flow of water from the Indus and Suru rivers.

India and Bangladesh share 54 rivers. Despite setting up a Joint River Commission for water management in 1972, tension between the two countries on how to share resources recently came to a head in a dispute over the Teetsa River.Whether in South Asian countries or between Middle East provinces, water issues hold up peace talks and pose graver conflicts.

In March 2012, a classified US report listed India’s three major river basins — Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra — among the top 10 world water conflict zones in ten years from now. “Beyond 2022, use of water as a weapon of war or a tool of terrorism will become more likely, particularly in South Asia (India), the Middle East and North Africa,” the report based on National Intelligence Estimate on Water Security stated.

A new of genre of water journalists address the delicate issue of corruption in the water sector and sustainable practices for water conservation, particularly in countries like West Africa.

“Water too often is treated as a commodity, as an instrument with which one population group can suppress another,” according to Ignacio Saiz, Centre for Economic and

Social Rights.

Solution to water conflict and ultimate co-operation between warring segments is required as water is projected to become scarce and amicable trans-boundary water distribution will also address issues of global warming and climate change at the higher level.

Otherwise, water will remain a powerful weapon of mass conflict to settle other bubbly episodes, outside the purview of environmental issues and the natural resource will never be considered as the world’s water!

Mark Twain’s quote of “Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over,” does not seem to be exaggerated, despite Twain’s biographer debating the authenticity of this scholarly certitude.

By Syed Shoaib@postnoon.com

The Central Asian Water Crisis

The deficit of water resources that may in the future be in greater demand than petroleum and natural gas has already become a reality for many districts of the inner Eurasia. Central Asia has not enjoyed the surplus of water for quite some time. The water problem is getting more and more charged with geopolitical meanings, directly affecting Russian interests.

At the start of 2009, when on the one hand there was in Russia a growth of interest in old Soviet projects of building big hydro power stations in Tajikistan and Kirghizia, on the other activities of Uzbekistan that essentially began forming in the region a sort of the “water bloc” were also evident. Russian diplomacy made attempts to have a balance between the interests of “the water source countries” (Tajikistan, Kirghizia) that control the heads of the biggest water arteries, the Amu Darya and Syr-Darya, and the “downstream” countries (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenia) with their critical dependence on the water flow from the sources, but these attempts were almost futile.

Should the “bloc”-type geopolitical constellation be established in Central Asia, the standoff between the “upstream” and the “downstream” countries in their debate on the expediency of building big hydro power facilities on the trans-border rivers Amu Darya and Syr-Darya will be inevitable.

On April 13 Uzbekistan’s Foreign Ministry posted a press release, whose gist can be summed up by the following two points:

1) Construction of new hydro power stations is a matter of concern for all the states in the region and it would aggravate the already difficult water supply situation to “the downstream regions” resulting in violations of the fragile ecological situation;

2) The problems relating to water and energy supply in Central Asia should be solved without interference of “third” countries (read: the Russian Federation). According to Uzbekistan’s Foreign Ministry developers of large-scale hydro power projects should take into account the interests of all the states in the region and be thoroughly investigated by international experts to assess their technological and environmental safety as well as guarantee maintenance of water balance. Violation of these principles could have “unpredictable environmental, economic, social and political consequences.” In the last several years the problems of water supply faced by “the downstream countries” was aggravated by shortage of water whose level in the Amu Darya and the Syr-Darya is, according to Uzbekistan’s Foreign Ministry, about 70% of the average annual standard.

Uzbekistan’s foreign ministry views the Kambaratinsk hydro power station (HPS) currently under construction in Kirghizia and the planned construction of the Rogunsk HPS in Tajikistan, as the Central Asian environment least friendly. The construction of both power stations was launched in the USSR and is still unfinished. The rated capacity of the Kambaratinsk-1 HPS in the mid-stream Naryn, a tributary of the Syr-Darya, is 1,900 MWt and a rated annual output of electricity at 5.1bln KWt/h. Uzbekistan’s government plans to have the capacity of the Rogunsk HPS in the Vakhsh basin almost twice as high, up to 3,600 MWt with an annual electricity output at up to 13.4bln KWt/h.

Russia is expected to play a decisive role in the construction of both power stations, becoming the principal investor in both projects. In October 2008 during the visit to Bishkek of Russian president Dmitry Medvedev agreements on the participation of Russian companies in the construction of the Kambaratinsk power stations in Kirghizia were signed. In November, the head of the RF Presidential Administration S.Naryshkin pledged assistance in the construction of the Rogunsk power station in Tajikistan.

Uzbekistan has the biggest population among Central Asian countries, about two-thirds of whom reside in rural agricultural areas; it depends more than others on water supply from the “upstream” countries. The Tashkent authorities are concerned over potential usage of water as a tool of political and economic pressure upon its neighbours. The statement president Medvedev made during his visit to Uzbekistan’s capital in January to the effect that implementation of major hydro power projects should meet the interests of all the countries in the region did not allay their fears.

In turn, erection of hydro power stations is essential for the Central Asian “upstream” countries. Unlike Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenia, Kirghizia and Tajikistan do not have significant oil and natural gas resources to provide heating and electricity to its population and economy. The principal suppliers of electricity in Kirghizia and Uzbekistan are hydro power stations. Water in their reservoirs is needed for watering the fields in summer in the “downstream” states, and for the production of electricity in winter – in the “upstream” ones. These contradictions were aggravated after the dismembering of the Soviet Union, when its former republics that were oil- and gas-rich began selling them at market prices, whereas the new independent states that were unable to purchase energy carriers in adequate amounts, had to dramatically increase, electricity production in winter, whose output, nevertheless, is critically inadequate. The only way out for Kirghizia and Tajikistan is erection of new power stations to both overcome the deficit of electricity and sell it to the neighbouring countries.

The interests of “the downstream” countries in the area of water usage coincide and objectively contradict the interests of their “upstream” neighbours to build new hydro power stations. During a telephone conversation in April 2009 the presidents I.Karimov of Uzbekistan and G.Berdymukhammedov of Turkmenia they “noted the significance of joint efforts in working out new approaches to finding solutions to the water problem, common to the countries of the region, as well as that of the Aral Sea.” Earlier I.Karimov discussed the water problem with Kazakhstan’s president N.Nazarbayev. And then Kazakhstan’s prime-minister paid a visit to Tashkent. Analysts say that these negotiations aim at working out a common position of both the “downstream” countries with an eye to construction of new hydro power stations in Kirghizia and Tajikistan.

The difference of interests of the “upstream” and “downstream” Central Asian countries that poses a threat of ending in an inter-state conflict is both a diplomatic and geopolitical challenge to Russia. Refusing to build power stations in Kirghizia and Tajikistan and ignoring their interests would be tantamount to inviting other state s, primarily China and Iran that have energy-related interests in Central Asia. However, it is not less significant for Russia to maintain close ties with Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in the oil-and-gas area. In a word, the Central Asian “water problem” has questions for the Russian diplomacy that need to be addressed without delay.

By Aleksandr Shustov@globalresearch.ca