Water Resources and Urbanization

Today we had a participatory approach on our lecture which in practice meant that we were divided into groups and were supposed to think of problems and solutions from their perspective. The case in point was Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and my group was assigned the position as village people from the outskirts. We did not have access to tap water and we do not know if our groundwater is clean or not (apparently there is only one laboratory in Cambodia that can do the tests necessary) and to make matters worse there was a factory nearby that uses the groundwater and now the level has begun to lower.

The reason for this particular case has (in my opinion) something to do with the Asian Development Bank calling the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA) ”An Exemplary Water Utility in Asia”. Between the years 1993 and 2006 they lowered the percentage of non revenue water from 72 to 6, increased their total connections from 26,000 to 147,000 and now they supply water 24hrs/day instead of only 10hrs. I mean, it is a HUGE change (you can read more here: http://www.adb.org/water/actions/CAM/PPWSA.asp), they even turn a profit nowadays. This goes to show that with a little education, a lot of willpower and the right people at the right place at the right time anything can happen.

The PPWSA are doing a lot for the poor community too which would most likely not have been done if they had remained the corrupted government organization it once was. In large parts of the poorer world corruption is a big problem; however it might not be considered a ‘problem’ there in the sense that it is “common practice” and “the way business is done”, which is something most people (and organizations) forget when donating money for a cause. They want to just send the money because sending people from the western world would cost so much and that would take away from the sum donated. What they forget is that once the money gets to the place where it is needed it has gone through a lot of corrupted pockets and even more of the money goes lost. This is not to say that there are not corrupted people in the richer parts of the world, not long ago the Red Cross had some issues with a communications chief who swindled millions of SEK from the organizations. Then of course we have the salary of half a million USD for the CEO of the Red Cross. One might take a minute to think why they need volunteers if they can afford to pay that amount to one single person.

But back to the case, we discussed what could be done and a lot of good ideas came to light. Most of which were quite feasible from an engineering standpoint but several times we were reminded of the mindset of the people involved and asked if we had thought of that. The truth is that the whole situation becomes that much harder to solve when you have to account for the people. For one we (my group) thought it would be a swell idea to only have one connection in our village to save money and have the village chief (or someone else) to distribute the water from there and charge for the usage. It took the lecturer about two seconds to point out that in a village where they have water, those with access to the connection collects water in tanks and sell to the other poor people in their community for a large (percentage-vise) profit.

And once again have we gotten to the gist of the problem: human behavior. I mean, the ‘actual’ problem can be solved by engineers, it only needs money. The money can be gotten either as a donation or as an affordable loan (this is solved by the economists), if we look at the PPWSA again we see that they now turn a profit but before they got there it did cost a lot of money. So think about it this way: if we remove people from the equation or assume they behave in a logical matter then it is quite simple to calculate when a certain venture will turn a profit and guarantee a profit. This would make for a sound investment and thus money would be no problem.

From this it stands to reason that unless we are able to change the mindset of people then we cannot hope for a sustainable solution but that does not mean we should not try.

Water Management and a little something on Megacities

"if the wars of [20th] century were fought over oil, the wars of the [21st] Century will be fought over water"
                                            -Ismail Serageldin, World Bank VP in 1995

This is something I believe is true. Since we are already fighting over one liquid the step to the next should not be so big. We are already seeing that water is a problem in large parts of the world and if the problem continues to grow as it has this far then it would stand to reason the price would go up as the scarcity increases and then at some key point the value is greater than the cost of war. I mean, if there's no oil then we could just use some other energy source but replacing water is not that simple AND let us not forget that we ARE fighting over oil already.

But i digress.

The volume of water is pretty much fixed and only 2,5% of it is fresh water and only 30% of fresh water is available for use. Which means that less than 1% of the blue liquid is readily available for our use. This is something worth thinking about. If you take into account the pollution of water and the growth of the population, remembering that the volume of water is fixed, the future does not look good unless something is done. We really need to reverse the growth of water usage per capita to be able to live on this planet.

Water resources then? Well 70% of the water goes to agricultural use. Perhaps growing crops where they are best suited (or modifying the crops) would decrease this percentage. There are also other usages such as hydropower and fisheries. These do however not necessarily have to compete, they could prove to be synergic if given a chance.

Another problem is that water is not equally divided, neither spatial nor temporal. That adds the dimension of borders (politics) to our problem. The places that will be hit hardest first are the poorer regions between the latitudes of 40 degrees North and 10 degrees North. And there the poor people will be the ones to suffer first and foremost.

One cannot forget that water affects some things and that some things affect water. So water, or the lack thereof, needs to be taken into account when planning (urban planning), it affects energy production and not to forget, it affects the environment. To underline, the big five are: Population growth, (Urban) development, Energy production, Climate change and Environmental degradation.

So are these caused by water or is water affected by these problems? Perhaps it is a bit of both, since water flows through all and thus it stands to reason it would have some effect on that and it would take something with it as it flows away. One might call it the blood of our planet since it is vital to all living things.

IWRM? Integrated Water Resources Management. Sounds important. Well, it IS a binding agreement but how do you enforce it? The general idea is great but it still leaves a lot to be wanted. There is not any clear value designated to certain fields and areas affected by development, i.e. a dam will provide you with energy (monetary value easily calculated) but how do you calculate the value of the fisheries that has to close or the ecosystem that is forever lost? What is a positive effect and what is a negative effect? Well that is up to the person asked. The man who just lost his livelihood says it's negative but the state official might not see it that way.

So as with everything else, water is a political matter. Which essentially means that until the politicians realizes that they should leave the decision-making to the engineers and other people who actually understand the problem, the positive progress will be rather slim.

Right to the Land

Our second lecture was actually a workshop touching on the subject of poor people living in the urban area without right to their own land.

These "slum-dwellers", as their called, live in make-shift houses that are similar to those that i built as a kid. Not only in appearance but also in that sense that they lack water and electricity. Not only are the conditions bad, the people living there pay most of the time half their salary as rent and the amount of people living in those small houses are staggering.

With no running water or energy the sanitation is not the best and access to clean water is not the best. And the houses being not that sturdy, the people are vulnerable to natural disasters and also to the dry/wet-season changes. To make matters worse, the people are not allowed to live there. So from time to time government officials (read military) remove the people and houses.

We discussed the problems with this and some say that urbanization, the move to the city, is the problem. Personally I would not consider that a problem. The problem is that there are a lot of people without adequate housing and access to necessities. If the people moving to the cities would get jobs and good housing then no one would consider it a problem.

Our workshop concentrated on Africa and there were some mentions on the government issues. Corruption being the main problem. This causes the money and the help to be kept out of reach of the needy. Or at least it takes away from the sum that was meant for the poor.

In China they have opted for pouring the money to a few hot spots and hoping the economy there would catch on and be self-sufficient after a while. This has worked to some extent but that is no guarantee that it would work in Africa, being that the mindset of the African people and the Asians is quite different.

So how do we solve this? well the experts say that it is a complicated matter, which is something I disagree on. Nothing is ever complicated. There is always a simple solution to any problem. However when politics are involved and peoples egos get in the way then things get complicated. The politicians are standing in the way of solving the problem.

But we can't just remove the politicians either since they have the power and are too power-hungry to want to relinquish that power. So again it boils down to the mindset of the people at power... well if we read that again we see that the problem is "power".

Perhaps this is because most people by nature are egotists. And as long as humans as a whole do not look after each other as much as themselves we are going to have a problem. Although one might argue that the western world could use their military might and simply enforce human rights on the people affected. But if we look at Iraq then it might not be the best of ideas.

No, the key is in the mind. If we change how the people think then they will change their society themselves. Through education and knowledge the society will evolve for the better not through power and enforcement. Since one can put shackles on a body but not on a mind and one mind is enough to change the course of history.

Urban Risks

What are urban risks? Leaving aside the semantics regarding "risk" and "vulnerability" we can redefine the question as "What could go wrong in an urban area?".Well, we have natural hazards such as avalanches, landslides, droughts, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and wildfire, we also have technological hazards such as airplane accidents and nuclear power plants (but seriously, who can name a nuclear accident other than Chernobyl?) and one should not forget the newest hazard: Terrorism.

But why do we have these hazards in our urban areas? The short answer is that people are stupid and build their houses where they shouldn't build them or perhaps they simply do not know better. Poverty could also have something to do with it in some cases.

The "funny" thing however, is that in the U.S. you are far more likely to die from heart disease or cancer than from any "natural" disaster. The thing is that the Newspapers do not consider such events as "70 year old man dies from natural causes" as newsworthy and thus you only hear of the large disasters where many lives are lost.

So what makes urban risks important then? Well the urban population is high and still growing. There are also several key structures in urban areas (airports, hospitals etc) that cause severe difficulties for many if damaged. If we look at where people live, now is the first time there are more people living in an urban area than in the rural areas.

When an urban area is struck, not only are lives lost but there is also a lot of damage to properties which may have socioeconomic repercussions.

So what can be done then? well for one, the make-shift houses has to go and some more rigid structures be put up in their places. Some cities should move, pepople should not build in tornado valley etc. It is a question about mostly money but also about education to some extent. But something that can "actually" be done would be to place important structures as hospitals and fire stations away from the danger area so that the emergency personnel is not affected by a catastrophe.

The Keywords here are Protect, Adapt and Retreat/Relocate, all may not be an option due to cost but if a human life would be valued more than the monetary cost would perhaps not seem as steep anymore.

As a task we were to do a list of weighed hazards for Europe and then see how well it adapts to our home town. Being that my hometown is Vaasa I would dare to say that it does not actually have any risk. It was once burned down and relocated closer to the shoreline so perhaps a dramatic rise in sea level could cause some damage but that is the only risk I see.

I would dare to guess that the purpose of the exercise was to show that risk is different due to differences in local environment (rivers, mountains etc).