Egypt to Cooperate With Nile Basin Countries for Water Security

Egypt is keen on cooperating with all Nile Basin countries in a manner that benefits all parties, Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy said on Tuesday.

Nabil Fahmy

"Egypt's water security is an indispensible part of the country's national security and it cannot be ignored," Fahmy said, adding that "there are historic and legal rights that cannot be overlooked by any country."

Ethiopia started diverting the course of the Blue Nile, the main tributary of the Nile River, in May as part of its plan to build a hydroelectric dam that generates electricity.

The "Renaissance Dam" is built along the river that provides Egypt with about 60 percent of its annual 55 million cubic metres of Nile water.

This move sparked extensive arguments considering how that would affect Egypt's share of the Nile water.

Egypt and Ethiopia are members of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), a partnership among Nile states aimed at sharing the river's socio-economic benefits and promoting regional security.

Three of the Nile Basin countries - Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan - formed an expert committee to study the project.

The committee issued a report, unanimously approved by the three countries, on the potential damages of the dam and recommendations to avoid them in June.

The experts convened again in December and agreed to form another committee to look into the means of implementing their final recommendations.

Representatives of Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan are scheduled to meet in January in order to discuss issues related to the Nile water security. More

 

The Red Sea - Dead Sea canal

The agreement for the two seas Canal connecting the Red and Dead Sea was summed up best by Israeli water minister Silvan Shalam who jubilantly described it following the December 9 signing ceremony at the World Bank headquarters as "a historic agreement that realises ... the dream of (founder of modern Zionism Theodore) Herzl."

The canal was another strategic triumph for Israel's conniving diplomacy even after the project was reduced to about one-tenth of its original size due to serious economic and environmental concerns raised by the World Bank.

The Zionist-envisioned project was repackaged and sponsored by Jordan as a must to save the Dead Sea, and building a large desalination plant providing each Israel and Jordan with eight billion to 13 billion gallons of fresh water annually.

According to Israeli and international environmentalists, Israeli government's policies of over pumping from the Sea of Galilee and Jordan River - serving Jewish only colonies - was the main cause for the loss of nearly 30 per cents of the Dead Sea's mass in the last 50 years.

Herzl's repackaged vision includes articles tacitly granting Israel exclusive water rights in the supposedly shared Sea of Galilee and Jordan River's water. For the tri-party agreement empowers Israel to transfer close to 13 billion gallons of fresh water from those bodies to Jordan and to sell the state of Palestine 8bn gallons of drinking water at preferential prices.

Even more cynical is for the state of Palestine to purchase water from Israel -mind you at a special discount - while Israel continues to expropriate West Bank's water aquifers for the benefit of illegal Jewish-only colonies for free.

In addition to political concerns, environmentalists have warned that introducing new water composition from the Red sea brings a host of new invasive photosynthetic organisms which could lead to drastic negative consequences affecting the unique natural system of the Dead Sea.

Unlikely to solve the Dead Sea environmental degradation, international and Israeli environmentalists have alternatively suggested that "the reestablishment of the Jordan River to its natural state was a better solution to the decline of the Dead Sea than the proposed canal."

While it would receive roughly half of the desalinated water from the project, the 100 miles brine pipeline will run exclusively through Jordanian territories to circumvent objections by Israeli environmental groups.

Lacking proper environmental oversight, a credible rupture in the high saline pipeline - running along known active earthquake fault - would cause irreparable damage for a main source of Jordan's fresh groundwater in Wadi Araba.

Being the only party with positive return and no potential risks, the agreement provides Israel a free safety net to escape responsibility for the Dead Sea's environmental calamity while realising an old Zionist strategic military vision adding a natural water course on Israel's eastern borders. Economically, this project places Israeli water companies in a unique position to gain the most in building the waterway, associated desalination and power generation plants.

Jordan, on the other hand, is taking the biggest long term risk since a probable structural failure in the Canal system would lead to an incurable disaster for both the agriculture and ecosystem in the Jordanian valley.

In purchasing Israeli water, Palestine is sanctioning Israel's theft of its water aquifers from occupied West Bank, while allowing Israel to continue syphoning the only lifeline for the Dead Sea. More

 

Could There Be Fresh Groundwater In Singapore?

Scientists have identified an unexpected source of freshwater – beneath the seabed on continental shelves around the world.

AsianScientist (Dec. 30, 2013) – We often take it for granted, but freshwater is a limited resource, further limited by the pressures that human activities are placing on the Earth’s reserves.

It now seems that freshwater can be found in an unexpected place – beneath the seabed on continental shelves around the world. A new study published in the journal Nature reports that an estimated half a million cubic kilometers of low-salinity water is buried below the seabed in various locations, including off the coasts of Australia, China and South Africa.

Groundwater scientists have known of freshwater under the seafloor, but it was thought to occur only under rare and particular conditions. In this latest study, however, lead author Dr. Vincent Post of the National Center for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT) and the School of the Environment at Flinders University reports that fresh and brackish aquifers below the seabed are actually a fairly common phenomenon.

Dr. Jacobus Groen of VU University Amsterdam in the Netherlands, a co-author on the study, spoke to Asian Scientist Magazine about the possibility of finding offshore groundwater in Southeast Asia.

“I visited Singapore in 2003 to explore the possibilities of finding offshore meteoric groundwater (OMG). OMG is most likely present everywhere on the Sunda Shelf – the seas between Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. As for Singapore, indications for OMG have been found on the Sumatra side of the Strait of Malacca,” Groen says.

“I also did a small groundwater survey in the Old Alluvium on the east side of Singapore. In that zone there is a well close to the coast with deep fresh groundwater, which – to my opinion – can only be explained as fossil water formed in glacial times when sea level was low and the entire Strait was exposed. This fossil groundwater is likely to extend into the offshore sediments.”

The volume of offshore water is finite, but the quantities are vast, the authors say. Even for megacities like Singapore the stored amount of OMG will last for hundreds or even thousands of years. But there are also some environmental effects that have to be taken into account, such as the lowering of the seafloor or land around the wells, which necessitate that recovery should take place some distance away from the coast.

“The volume of this water resource is a hundred times greater than the amount we’ve extracted from the Earth’s sub-surface in the past century since 1900,” says Post. “Knowing about these reserves is great news because this volume of water could sustain some regions for decades.”

Given the location of these resources, Post says that there are two ways to access this water: either build a platform out at sea and drill into the seabed, or drill from the mainland or islands close to the aquifers. While offshore drilling can be very costly, Post says this source of freshwater should be assessed and considered in terms of cost, sustainability and environmental impact against other water sources such as desalination, or even building large new dams on land.

If the extracted groundwater is not fresh but moderately brackish, desalination may be required, the authors say. This process results in a brine residue that has to be disposed of. However, brine production and energy requirements for OMG are much smaller than those for seawater desalination, which makes this resource environmentally more attractive, they say. More

 

We Still Need To Deal With Drought

This is the time of year when drought drops from the headlines in all but the warmest parts of North America. Crops aren't withering in the sun; few homeowners worry about lawn-watering restrictions. Until the weather heats up in the spring, the weather headlines will be mostly about winter storms. But that doesn't mean moisture deficits have been resolved. National drought maps reveal that persistent drought is plaguing California, the central Plains states, and, to a lesser extent, the East Coast.

Water Harvesting

Looking more widely, the past eighteen months have seen a global outbreak of emergency water rationing in the face of sudden, extraordinary scarcity. In a diverse group of countries, including the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Australia, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, South Africa, India, Pakistan, China, Taiwan, Malaysia and the Philippines, a wide variety of rationing plans have had to be put into practice. Rationing has even become necessary in normally moist, green places, most prominently the United Kingdom, Ireland and New Zealand. In many situations, the causes of water shortages have been much more complex than routine drought or high population density. Thanks to greenhouse emissions, local climates are becoming increasingly fickle.

A whopping 86 percent of the world's total fresh water consumption is accounted for by production of food, fiber and other agricultural products, and 9 percent is attributable to industrial production. Farms dominate water use in the United States as well. But even though a scant 5 percent of the global footprint is residential water use, it is in the domestic supply where shortages are felt most immediately and most intensely by the majority of people.

When municipal or county water supplies are tightened, lucky residents with wells are able to supply themselves (at least until the well also goes dry). And increasingly, people in drought-prone areas are planning ahead and capturing rain for future use. A dozen states and the US Virgin Islands now have laws regulating, and for the most part encouraging, rainwater harvesting. In this, Texas leads the nation. In 2009, Colorado partially lifted a longstanding law that had banned homeownersfrom collecting rainwater off their own roofs. Utah repealed a similar ban in 2010. The state of Oregon publishes a guide to rainwater rainwater collection (PDF). (Hysteria a couple of years ago over the conviction of an Oregon man for water harvesting was unwarranted; he had built a vast system of reservoirs with a capacity of 13 million gallons—a bit more than is needed for personal use.)

Meanwhile, most of us are still stuck with paying for our residential water supply. And any economist can show you how the most efficient method of allocating water is "marginal cost pricing", under which the first gallon per week or month is the most valuable and expensive, with the cost falling as consumption rises. That, however, penalizes low-income households and rewards heavy consumption. Therefore, many municipalities across North America and the world have turned marginal cost pricing on its head. Under what are called increasing block tariff systems, each household has a monthly right to an initial "block" of that is free or very cheap, with the price escalating sharply for subsequent blocks.

But there will always be a wide gap between what it costs to provide municipal water and what many residents can afford to pay for it. Treating water as a market commodity almost inevitably leads to conflict, and water-privatization schemes have repeatedly failed.

Talk of looming worldwide conflict over water resources has been going on for years. But it is often conflict itself - state versus state, class versus class, neighbor versus neighbor and, increasingly, humanity versus nature - that triggers water scarcity in the first place. The only long-term solution is to resolve such conflicts, to ensure that every community has an adequate water supply. But even then, resources may not be bountiful, and rationing by some means other than willingness (and ability) to pay will be necessary.

If we cannot manage to conserve and share water fairly, there is little chance that we will manage share other resources fairly. Enforcing the right to water is, or at least should be, less complex and contentious than ensuring rights to, say, energy, food, or medical care. As Maude Barlow concluded in her 2007 book Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water, "If ever there was a time for a plan of conservation and water justice to deal with the twin water crises of scarcity and inequity, now is that time. The world does not lack the knowledge about how to build a water-secure future; it lacks the political will."

Meanwhile, you might as well get a couple of rain barrels going. More

Photo by Wikimedia Commons/Sustainable Sanitation Alliance

Stan Cox is a senior scientist at The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, and author most recently of Any Way You Slice It: The Past, Present, and Future of Rationing(The New Press, 2013).

 

ADB Releases Report on Managing the Water-Food-Energy Nexus

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September 2013: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has released a report, titled 'Thinking About Water Differently: Managing the Water-Food-Energy Nexus,' which argues for recognition of water as an economic and social good and the urgent assurance of regional water security to eliminate risk to food and energy security in Asia and the Pacific.

According to the ADB report, which offers high-level guidance on water issues affecting the region, governments need to think differently about water, taking a longer-term view of the limited resource. It highlights the importance of the following strategic approaches: reforming water governance through advocacy at global, regional, and national levels; generating reliable data and information on the availability and behavior of water resources; resource protection through effective reduction of wastewater and other waste discharging into freshwater supplies through regulation, investment, and innovation; water for food through stimulating research into improving the use of water in agriculture, increasing food production on the same area of land, and using less water; and increasing storage including via aquifer recharge, as a response to uncertainties in supply that are being aggravated by climate change. [Publication: Thinking About Water Differently: Managing the Water-Food-Energy Nexus] [ADB Press Release]

More: http://energy-l.iisd.org/news/adb-releases-report-on-managing-the-water-food-energy-nexus/

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UNESCO Presents Views on Water Cooperation

September 2013: The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has released a report titled 'Free Flow. Reaching Water Security through Cooperation,' which was published in the framework of the International Year of Water Cooperation. The report brings together a range of water professionals and stakeholders to share their knowledge and experiences in water cooperation.

The report reflect the progress and challenges encountered in the fields of water management and cooperation around the world. It features chapters on, inter alia: water diplomacy; transboundary water management; water education and institutional development; financing cooperation; legal framework at the national/international level; water cooperation, sustainability and poverty eradication; and economic development and water.

The report includes articles presenting the views of experts on water cooperation from various regions, including: water diplomacy in the Middle East; transboundary water diplomacy in the Mekong region; the Nile Basin Initiative; efficient and effective cooperation in the River Rhine catchment; sharing water in Australia; regional water cooperation in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region; participation in the management of the Niger, Senegal and Congo river basins; the Murray–Darling Basin Plan; the transboundary ecosystem of Russia and Mongolia; Libya's experience in the management of transboundary aquifers; and transboundary groundwater resources management implemented in the Kumamoto region of Japan.

Issues addressed in the report include: climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction (DRR); agriculture; capacity building and education; financing; integrated water resources management (IWRM); managing water for livelihoods; poverty reduction and sustainable development; urban areas; and wetlands. [UNESCO Press Release] [Publication: Free Flow. Reaching Water Security through Cooperation]

read more: http://larc.iisd.org/news/unesco-presents-views-on-water-cooperation/

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New Report First to Quantify Damage Done by Gas Drilling

Washington, D.C. - Thursday, October 3, 2013 — As federal policy makers decide on rules for fracking on public lands, a new report calculates the toll of this dirty drilling on our environment, including 280 billion gallons of toxic wastewater generated by fracking in 2012.

The Environment America Research & Policy Center report, "Fracking by the Numbers," is the first to measure the damaging footprint of fracking to date.

“The numbers don't lie — fracking has taken a dirty and destructive toll on our environment. If this dirty drilling continues unchecked, these numbers will only get worse,” said John Rumpler, senior attorney for Environment America.

“At health clinics, we’re seeing nearby residents experiencing nausea, headaches and other symptoms linked to fracking pollution,” said David Brown, a toxicologist who has reviewed health data from Pennsylvania. “With billions of gallons of toxic waste coming each year, we’re just seeing the ‘tip of the iceberg’ in terms of health risks.”

The “Fracking by the Numbers” report measured key indicators of fracking threats across the country, including:

• 280 billion gallons of toxic wastewater generated in 2012,
• 450,000 tons of air pollution produced in one year,
• 250 billion gallons of fresh water used since 2005,
• 360,000 acres of land degraded since 2005,
• 100 million metric tons of global warming pollution since 2005.

Fracking also inflicts other damage not quantified in the report — ranging from contamination of residential wells to ruined roads to earthquakes at disposal sites.
Reviewing the totality of this fracking damage, the report’s authors conclude:

Given the scale and severity of fracking’s myriad impacts, constructing a regulatory regime sufficient to protect the environment and public health from dirty drilling — much less enforcing such safeguards at more than 80,000 wells, plus processing and waste disposal sites across the country — seems implausible. In states where fracking is already underway, an immediate moratorium is in order. In all other states, banning fracking is the prudent and necessary course to protect the environment and public health.

At the federal level, the report’s data on land destroyed by fracking operations comes as the Obama administration considers a rule for fracking on public lands, and as the oil and gas industry is seeking to expand fracking to several places which help provide drinking water for millions of Americans — including the White River National Forest in Colorado and the Delaware River basin, which provides drinking water for more than 15 million Americans.

Along with the new numbers in today’s report, Environment America’s John Rumpler added one more: the more than 1 million public comments submitted this summer to the Obama administration rejecting its proposed rule for fracking on public lands as far too weak. Environment America is urging President Obama to follow the recommendation of his administration’s advisory panel on fracking to keep sensitive areas as off-limits to fracking.

“We need decisive action from Washington to protect our communities,” said John Fenton, a rancher from Pavillion, Wyoming who last week appealed to federal officials to re-open an investigation into contamination of drinking water there.

“The bottom line is this: The numbers on fracking add up to an environmental nightmare,” said Rumpler. “For our environment and for public health, we need to put a stop to fracking.”
Of particular concern are the billions of gallons of toxic waste created from fracking, which threaten the environment, public health and drinking water. Environment America is calling on federal officials to close the loophole that exempts this waste from our nation’s hazardous waste law. Rep. Matt Cartwright (PA-17) has introduced the CLEANER Act, H.R. 2825, to close that loophole.

“The data from today’s report shows that fracking is taking a dirty and destructive toll on our environment and health,” said Rumpler. “It’s time for our federal officials to step up; they can start by keeping fracking out of our forests and away from our parks, and closing the loophole exempting toxic fracking waste from our nation’s hazardous waste law.” More

Download Report

 

 

Irrigating Fields With Sunshine, The Sunflower Pump Is An Insipired Low-Cost Alternative To Diesel Pumps

Sunflowers, sunbeams, and dry fields. The sun is shining and the fields need watering, what’s a farmer to do? Use his tired old back pumping water? Worse yet, use that smelly diesel fuel or petrol to pump some water?

No, there is an alternative! Use the sunshine to pump the water. It just goes hand in hand — sunshine and watering are two parts of the same work day. When the fields need watering, there is plenty of sunshine. Renewable energy is ever-present.

Futurepump, the Sunflower’s creator, explains: “The Sunflower is the result of over twenty years R&D to develop an affordable way of doing this.”

Cheaper, no smell, no hard labor, this solar-powered pump is rather simple after all.

The Sunflower uses a solar collector that generates steam to drive a simple engine pump. It can lift 12,000 litres/day from a 7.5m well (more at shallower depths) which can irrigate around 1/2 acre. It is so cost-effective — with No fuel costs, (and no noxioussmell) — that the initial investment of around $400 can be recouped in 1-2 years compared to the ongoing running costs of diesel or petrol engines.

Futurepump built this baby to last. It is designed with the intent of low maintenance, a kind consideration. It has no electronics. As Sunflower’s creators suggest, if you understand how a bicycle operates, you will be able to understand this.

It comes as a kit. We farmers love the do-it-yourself kit, don’t we? The only thing we love more is those lady bugs and bees. It is easily serviced with spare parts always available at low cost. There are three main parts to the Sunflower:

1. the collector, which is a reflective dish that captures and focuses sunlight to produce steam;
2. a meticulously designed engine that converts pressurized steam into mechanical movement;
3. the pump, a reciprocal piston pump that draws water out of the well.

4. In the video above, Nick, Futurepump’s field director, introduces the Sunflower Mark 2 in action in a test compound in Bolgatanga, Ghana in June 2013.

   Futurepump writes:

   “The design is built around principles of appropriate technology — in other words it is low-cost, simple to operate and easy to maintain and repair locally.”

   The solar collector concentrates sunlight onto the water-filled boiler, producing steam which is piped to the engine. A cam attached to the flywheel shaft opens an inlet valve. Steam enters the cylinder and the pressure pushes the diaphragm piston forward activating the water pump and rotating the flywheel. The inlet valve closes, the exhaust valve opens and as the pressure drops and the flywheel inertia pushes the piston to the top of the cylinder and the cycle repeats. More details on the design here.

   The new design is simpler with more standardized parts. The flow capacity has also been improved with a potential daily output of over 10,000 litres from 10m water depth. The Ghana field testing is being conducted byiDE.

   

   Perhaps you want to become a distributor. Futurepump is just blossoming, so opportunities are readily available for growth.
   Future pumps site is interested in distribution partners and dealers in East Africa, especially Kenya and Ethiopia. And it says it can offer attractive trade prices to the right partners.

 

Egypt aims for revolution in desert farming

Cairo, Egypt -The hazy desert that extends from the outskirts of Cairo has become the unlikely scene of another revolution that has the potential to transform Egypt - and it is green.

Inhospitable, yellowed wasteland is now yielding up ripe red tomatoes, fresh kale and schools of fish in a bold experiment fuelled by the country's most precious resource: water.

This surprising harvest illustrates how Egypt is witnessing a slow transformation in attitudes towards the environment driven by groups such as Greenpeace and Nawaya alongside an innovative young sustainability movement.

In the vanguard of this movement is Faris Farrag, an Egyptian banker inspired by a love of growing plants and fishing, who has embraced the revolutionary technique of aquaponics at his unassuming farm outside Cairo called "Bustan" (Arabic for orchard).

"As the price of water soars, as the price of petrol soars, and when the subsidies on farming disappear, this model makes sense," says Farrag.

Reviving ancient techniques

Aquaponics, an ancient form of cultivation that originated with the Aztecs, enables farmers to increase yields by growing plants and farming fish in the same closed freshwater system.

Farrag studied the technique under Dr James Rakocy at the University of the Virgin Islands, whose sustainable farming method grew in popularity in the 1980s and is now gaining mainstream acceptance in developing nations.

Enterprising farmers have implemented the system in countries as diverse as Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen to save water and increase output.

As the price of water soars, as the price of petrol soars, and when the subsidies on farming disappear, this model makes sense

Farris Farrag, former banker

At Bustan, the first commercial aquaponics farm in Egypt, olive trees flank the growing areas sprouting from what seems to be sandy ground, and dusty mesh screens are the only barriers protecting delicate young plants from the expansive tracts of sand.

Water circulates from tanks hosting schools of fleshy Nile tilapia through hydroponic trays which grow vegetables including cucumber, basil, lettuce, kale, peppers and tomatoes on floating foam beds with run-off flushed out to irrigate the trees.

It is an ingenious solution to an old problem in a country dominated by unforgiving deserts where access to fresh water is a luxury in many areas.

The Nile supplies Egypt with almost all its water, 85 percent of which goes to agriculture - but the country has long outgrown agreements with neighbours on its share of this resource as its population has soared to 85 million, and is pressing to renegotiate terms.

Earlier this year the most populous Arab nation made global headlines in an angry disagreement over plans to dam the Blue Nile, denouncing Ethiopia's attempts to reroute the river.

Need for environmental policies

Compounding problems of access to water is pollution, and visitors only have to peer at the Nile's swirling eddies and water catchments to notice the gunk and assorted rubbish that confirm the low priority afforded environmentalism.

Most of the population lives on the 2.9 percent of land that is arable and use the only source of fresh water as an industrial, human and agricultural dump, undeterred by laws that prohibit the throwing of waste into the Nile.

Compounding water pollution, Egypt's annual "black cloud" caused by the burning of agricultural waste costs an estimated $6bn in damage to natural resources and a further $2bn in associated health effects, according to date compiled by the American University in Cairo.

These challenges are a bleak reminder of how desperately Egypt needs environmental policies to protect its fragile agricultural resources.

From Cairo's unremitting expansion into fertile areas to the mountains of garbage strewn on the city's streets, incessant congestion, and misuse of the water supply, there are precious few examples of sustainability.

Which is where Farrag believes aquaponics comes in - Bustan uses 90 percent less water than traditional farming methods in Egypt.

He argues that his model is economically viable and scalable, producing between 6-8 tonnes of fish per year and potentially yielding 45,000 heads of lettuce if it were to grow just a single type of vegetable.

Sustainability underpins the whole operation, he says. Bustan is not land-intensive and Farrag also uses biological pest control methods, such as ladybirds to kill aphids, in order to avoid chemical inputs.

The project also employs two locals, Abdul Rasul Hassanain and his wife Amal, who live on a nearby plot of land and have dramatically increased their role in running the farm.

Dr Ashraf Ghanem, a professor of water engineering at Cairo University, is a strong advocate of the system.

He recently told journalists about the potential benefits of these farms in the Middle East.

A local non-governmental organisation, Nawaya, is taking a leading role in supporting sustainable farming and has brought locals to visit Farrag's farm in a bid to help them swap traditional irrigation techniques for sustainable methods.

But that transition does not come cheap. Inside Bustan, the hum of pumps to ensure the fish are raised in pools with properly filtered water is constant, raising concerns about costs - and posing questions about whether sustainable farming can only be a novelty for the wealthy. More

 

Californians want water issues fixed but not enough to pay for it

Californians say the state's water supply system has serious problems that require improvement, but they are unwilling to spend billions of dollars in ratepayer and taxpayer funds on the task, according to a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll.

The results suggest an uphill fight for proponents of a state water bond and for a proposal to replumb the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the transfer point for Northern California supplies delivered to the San Joaquin Valley and urban Southern California.

Reluctance to pay for big public works projects was reflected throughout the survey, which also questioned voters on the California prison system and the high-speed rail project.

"On all three of these issues voters have very clear concerns and want to see something done — until they see the price tag," said Dan Schnur, director of USC's Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics.

In initial questioning, 60% of those polled said they would favor a bond to finance statewide water improvements such as levee repair and groundwater cleanup. But when told the bond would require the state to borrow $5 billion to $6 billion, support plunged to 36%.

Slightly more than half, 51%, of those surveyed said they favored the delta proposal — until they learned it would cost $25 billion in ratepayer and government funds. Then only 36% said they would support it.

Pollsters said the flip in support demonstrated two things: Voters continue to have serious pocketbook concerns as the state crawls out of recession, and most Californians don't think the state's water problems are urgent.

"You turn on your faucet and the water comes out. They don't see an immediate problem," said David Kanevsky of American Viewpoint, the Republican half of a bipartisan pair of polling firms that conducted the survey for the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles Times.

A statewide vote on the water bond, which was originally set at $11 billion, has been postponed several times as legislators whittle down the amount and wait for the economy to improve. They are still drafting the latest version, which is scheduled to go on the ballot next year and is expected to be about half its initial size.

The delta proposal, backed by Gov. Jerry Brown's administration, is for a smaller, subterranean version of the peripheral canal that voters quashed in 1982. It calls for the long-term restoration of more than 100,000 acres of delta habitat and construction of a new, north delta diversion point on the Sacramento River that would feed two 30-mile tunnels carrying water to existing export facilities in the south delta.

San Joaquin Valley irrigation districts and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California say the project is necessary to halt cuts in water deliveries that have been imposed to protect imperiled native fish in the delta. More

 

UNESCO Presents Views on Water Cooperation

September 2013: The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has released a report titled 'Free Flow. Reaching Water Security through Cooperation,' which was published in the framework of the International Year of Water Cooperation.

The report brings together a range of water professionals and stakeholders to share their knowledge and experiences in water cooperation.

The report reflect the progress and challenges encountered in the fields of water management and cooperation around the world. It features chapters on, inter alia: water diplomacy; transboundary water management; water education and institutional development; financing cooperation; legal framework at the national/international level; water cooperation, sustainability and poverty eradication; and economic development and water.

The report includes articles presenting the views of experts on water cooperation from various regions, including: water diplomacy in the Middle East; transboundary water diplomacy in the Mekong region; the Nile Basin Initiative; efficient and effective cooperation in the River Rhine catchment; sharing water in Australia; regional water cooperation in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region; participation in the management of the Niger, Senegal and Congo river basins; the Murray–Darling Basin Plan; the transboundary ecosystem of Russia and Mongolia; Libya's experience in the management of transboundary aquifers; and transboundary groundwater resources management implemented in the Kumamoto region of Japan.

Issues addressed in the report include: climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction (DRR); agriculture; capacity building and education; financing; integrated water resources management (IWRM); managing water for livelihoods; poverty reduction and sustainable development; urban areas; and wetlands. [UNESCO Press Release] [Publication: Free Flow. Reaching Water Security through Cooperation] More

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Fracking polluting 280 billion gallons of water in 2012

Given that we have a closed hydrological cycle on the planet, i.e. a finite amount of water, should we be allowing this to happen?

The human race is not all this ignorant. Take back your countries from the oil corporations! The only way they make a profit is from subsidies. So basically Americans are paying corporations to pollute their water..... Incomprehensible!

 

UNECE Water Convention Discusses Best Practices for Transboundary Water Cooperation

23 September 2013: The UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes (Water Convention) held a workshop to inspire best practices in institutional and legal arrangements and procedures among joint bodies for transboundary water cooperation and river basin commissions.

The workshop was the first in a series of two workshops, organized during the International Year of Water Cooperation, to support discussions on institutional and legal arrangements for transboundary water management, as well as to highlight the importance of good water governance in the post-2015 development agenda.

The 'River Basin Commissions and other Joint Bodies for Transboundary Water Cooperation: Legal and Institutional Aspects' workshop showcased evolutions in transboundary water management. The International Commission for the Congo-Oubangui-Sangha Basin presented its transition from a body focused on navigation to a commission working on integrated water resources management (IWRM). The International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine shared its experience on the expansion of cooperation in the Rhine Basin. The binational Authority of Lake Titicaca described how it implemented a master plan to address resource use in its lakes and rivers. The Mekong River Commission presented its organizational reform experience.

Over 120 participants discussed the establishment of new agreements and institutions, to guide efforts in aquifers and basins not covered by agreements. One such example is the cooperation between Afghanistan and Tajikistan on environment and hydrology in the upper Amu Darya Basin. According to UNECE, 158 of the world's 263 international river basins lack a cooperative management framework.

Plenary sessions and working groups considered methods and tools for daily cooperation, such as coordinated or joint monitoring, exchange of information and formulation of joint action plans. A fourth topic focused on conflict prevention and dispute settlement.

The workshop, which took place in Geneva, Switzerland, from 23-24 September 2013, was co-organized by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) International Hydrological Programme (IHP), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the Global Environmental Facility's (GEF) International Waters Learning Exchange and Resource Network (IW: LEARN), the Global Water Partnership (GWP), the International Network of Basin Organizations (INBO) and the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR). The event was funded by the Governments of Estonia, Finland, Germany and Luxembourg.

A document with workshop reference material will be shared on the workshop website. [UNECE Press Release] [Workshop Website]

read more: http://water-l.iisd.org/news/unece-water-convention-discusses-best-practices-for-transboundary-water-cooperation/

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Pakistan tackles water crisis with rainwater harvesting

MORRY-JE-WANDH, Pakistan (AlertNet) – Wearing colourful traditional dresses with silver jewellery and bangles on their arms, the women of Tharparkar district look festive. But the empty earthen pots they carry tell a different story.

Women of Tharparkar district

“Walking for three miles and (hoisting) a ... bucket filled with water through a wooden pulley from a 130-feet-deep well twice a day is toilsome work,” says Marvi Bheel, who lives in isolated Morry-je-Wandh village in this arid district of Sindh province, some 450 km (280 miles) south-east of Karachi.

Increasing temperatures and lower rainfalls, believed to be associated with climate change, are creating intense water shortages in much of Pakistan, a situation which is likely to worsen if the country’s 170 million population doubles as projected in the next 25 years.

In response, non-governmental organizations are trying to improve water harvesting in rural areas. A pilot project in Morry-je-Wandh has seen the construction of a large covered pond with the capacity to supply the domestic and drinking water needs of 20 families (135 villagers) for more than eight months.

“The new rainwater harvesting facilities have transformed the lives of people, as we have now a safe source of clean water,” said Sobho Bheel, a farmer unrelated to Marvi Bheel.

The effects of having a good supply of drinking water at hand are far-reaching, he added: diseases have diminished, children can go to school and women have more time to spend on other economic activities.

IMPROVING LIFE FOR WOMEN

Women in Tharparker district, as in many places around the world, are charged with the task of gathering water. But as water becomes scarcer, travelling long distances to collect it can be arduous.

“Women fall unconscious on their way to these dug wells, while others develop pregnancy related complications due to being malnourished,” Marvi Bheel said. On summer days temperatures hover around 48 to 50 degrees Celsius (118 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit), and the falling water table means that water sometimes has to be hauled from a depth of 200 to 250 feet (62 to 77 metres).

Dug wells are the major source of water for over 90 percent of the approximately 1.4 million people living in Tharparkar, Pakistan’s largest arid district, which spreads over nearly 20,000 square kilometres (7,600 square miles) and comprises some 2,350 villages.

Water is taken from the wells for domestic, agriculture and livestock needs. But because of the inadequate number of wells in the district and demand for water exceeding supply, wells often produce too little water or dry up within several months of being recharged by rain.

Bharumal Armani of Chelhar village recalls that during August 2010, rains in the Thar Desert recharged parched shallow wells, raised the water table in deep wells and filled household cisterns.

But after four months, local people were without sufficient water even for drinking. Many villagers had to walk miles to fetch supplies, while herdsmen were forced to take their livestock to reservoirs to water them.

According to a study by the Pakistan Council for Research on Water Resources (PCRWR), a government body, the entire Thar Desert receives between 260 and 280 mm (1.0-1.1 inches) of rainfall annually. The scanty precipitation, however, could suffice to meet the domestic water needs of the locals and their livestock for three years, according to the PCRWR.

95 PERCENT OF RAINFALL LOST

But because of inadequate storage and rainwater harvesting facilities, more than 95 percent of the water is lost under sand dunes or evaporates in the summer heat.

“Hardly 0.06 percent of the total annual rainwater is harvested by the locals in their household cisterns or in other indigenous ways,” said A.D. Khan, director for groundwater management at the water council. Khan believes the water shortage problem can be addressed by scaling up rainwater harvesting to at least 0.25 percent of the annual rainfall.

In Morry-je-Wandh, a water storage pond with a cover to curb evaporation is part of that effort. The pond, constructed by the Sukkar Foundation, a non-governmental organisation, cost Rs. 125,000 (about $1,400) and relied on financial and technical support from WaterAid-UK’s Pakistan chapter.

“We lay a geo-membrane sheet under the floor of these (ponds) to check seepage, and cover them with roofs that help check evaporation of stored rainwater during the sizzling summer days,” said Abdul Hafeez, WaterAid’s national programme manager.

Using hand pumps connected to the storage ponds through pipes, women can fill their pitchers with water without any difficulty.

According to Qamar uz Zaman Chaudhry, Pakistan’s advisor on climate change affairs, the country is one of the world’s most arid. Most areas have little or no access to surface water. By international standards, Pakistan was already considered a water-scarce country in 1992 with an annual per capita availability of 1,700 cubic metres. This has now declined to fewer than 1,100 cubic metres, according to the government.

“The situation will grow tenser as rains are becoming more erratic and scarce due to climate change,” said Chaudhry, who is author of Pakistan’s national climate change policy.

Climate change and overuse of limited water is expected to create severe problems for the country in coming years, according to Simi Kamal, chairperson of the Hisar Foundation for Water, Food and Livelihood Security, promotes water conservation and management practices in Pakistan.

Annual per capita availability of water may fall to half its current level by 2020 if the depletion of water resources goes unchecked, she said. She believes much of the solution to growing water stress lies in planning and implementing workable rainwater harvesting programmes at medium and small levels.

Chaudhry agrees.

“More than adequate water can be made available for domestic, agriculture, industrial, livestock and other miscellaneous needs, provided that viable strategic plans are drawn up and implemented for rainwater harvesting at all levels,” he said. More

Saleem Shaikh and Sughra Tunio are development reporters based in Karachi, Pakistan.

 

North African Countries Commit to Cooperative Management of Nubian Aquifer

18 September 2013: Chad, Egypt, Libya and Sudan signed a Strategic Action Programme to establish a long-term framework for managing the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS), the world's largest known fossil water aquifer system.

The agreement establishes a Joint Authority for the NSAS, with the aim of strengthening regional coordination and optimizing equitable use among the four arid North African countries.

The Aquifer is the main water resource for humans, livestock, irrigation and industry in this region, and is under pressure from increasing populations, agricultural expansion and decreasing water availability from other sources. The agreement seeks to strengthen transboundary water cooperation among the four countries to ensure water removal does not threaten water quality, harm the surrounding desert ecosystem and its biodiversity, or accelerate land degradation. The agreement is based on an ecosystem-based management approach (EBMA) and integrated water resources management (IWRM), and includes transboundary actions and targets that individual countries are expected to translate into national actions.

The agreement resulted from a technical cooperation project among the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The project, which began in 2006, created an aquifer model to assist the countries in optimizing the aquifer's use for human needs and ecosystem protection. The project also improved understanding of the transboundary ecosystem threats and improved data sharing. The Programme will build upon this project by continuing to strengthen the countries' capacity to monitor groundwater quantity and quality, and providing a framework for transboundary cooperation.

UNDP Administrator Helen Clark congratulated the African countries on the agreement, saying cooperative management of their shared sub-surface waters “will help to ensure maintenance of livelihoods and ecosystems dependent upon the aquifer." The agreement was signed at IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria. [UN Press Release] [UNDP Press Release] [GEF Press Release] [Strategic Action Programme Agreement] More:

 

 

To deal with worsening drought, Pakistan turns to olives

BHAGWAL, Pakistan (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – As Pakistan struggles with increasingly unpredictable weather patterns linked to climate change, farmers in arid regions are seizing on a drought-resilient crop better known from southern Europe and the Middle East: olives.

Ghulam Mustafa, 53, is one of the farmers in Chakwal district of Pakistan’s Punjab province who is experimenting with growing olives, alongside his normal wheat and peanut crops, to cope with worsening drought problems.

“I am expecting five times more production of olives than wheat,” Mustafa, who owns more than 50 acres of land, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview. He planted about 500 olive trees in June 2010, and expects his first harvest in 2016.

“Every two years there is a spell of drought in the area” that can last as much as a year or more, he said. Traditional crops, he said, increasingly cannot cope with the hot, dry weather conditions.

The olives, experts say, could not only help farmers like Mustafa protect their incomes and the country’s food security, but, if turned into olive oil, could save Pakistan some of the nearly half a billion dollars in foreign exchange it spends each year purchasing edible oils.

To cope with drying conditions on his farm, Mustafa has installed a drip irrigation system to save on irrigation water and expenses. Olive trees are drought-resilient and can also be irrigated with small amounts of water, he says. Plus, “the production of olive oil will help not only increase my income but also prestige in the society,” he said.

At least 70 percent of Pakistan’s land is arid, with rainfall insufficient in some areas to grow crops without irrigation. Increasingly erratic rainfall has reduced the yields of traditional crops such as wheat, peanuts, maize and millet in arid areas of the country.

With the help of the Italian government, Pakistan has identified potential olive cultivation areas in different parts of the country, including restive northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and southwestern Baluchistan province. The government of Punjab has declared Potohar region as “Olive Valley” for its suitability for olive growing.

PAKISTAN’S ‘OLIVE VALLEY’

The “Olive Valley” includes Attock, Rawalpindi, Jhelum and Khushab districts. The government of Punjab, with the help of Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC)and the Italian government, is planning to develop ten certified olive nurseries in these districts, spread through an area of 27,000 acres (10,900 hectares).

Muhammad Munir Goraya, director of the national olive project and senior director of crops at PARC, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that Pakistan, with the financial help of the Italian government, plans to plant olive saplings on 1,500 hectares of land in Potohar region and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan provinces in the next three years.

About 800,000 wild olive trees already grow in various parts of Pakistan, statistics show. These trees were grafted to make them fruit bearing but only a few thousand of them have successfully produced olive crops. “There were policy flaws in the grafting of wild olive trees; therefore the project could not yield desired results,” said Goraya.

With high global demand and rising prices for edible oils in the international market, Pakistan last year imported edible oil worth $2.5 billion. “The import of edible oil may jump to $4 billion by 2016 if Pakistan fails to increase yield of its own edible oil,” Goraya said.

At the moment, total domestic consumption of edible oil in Pakistan is around 1.9 million tonnes, out of which 1.3 million tonnes is imported from abroad. Goraya said that precious foreign exchange could be saved if olive cultivation is stepped up in Pakistan and the country begins processing its own olive oil to help reduce oil imports.

Currently the major olive oil producing countries in the world are Spain, Italy, Greece, Tunisia, Syria and Turkey.

Shehbaz Ahmed Warraich, dean of the faculty of crop and food sciences at the University of Arid Agriculture in Rawalpindi, said that Pakistan has more land available for cultivation of olive trees than the total cultivated land of major olive oil producing countries in the world. More