Water Matters

1. Water Matters Global Perspectives on Quantity, Quality, Availability, and Equity Darrin Magee Hobart & William Smith Colleges Environmental Studies Program

2. Priming the Pump • What do we know about water? • What do our students know? • How do we know what we know? • How do our students know what they know? • What do we teach? Why? • How do we make water matter?

3. Quantity IMAGE CREDIT: ADAM NIEMAN / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

4. www: world wide water • 70% of Earth’s surface • +ground • +atmosphere • 97% is saline • Usage differential • Kenya: 3 gal/day • UK: 30 gal/day • Canada/US: 150 gal/day Source: US Geological Survey, http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/waterdistribution.html

5. Myth of the Water Cycle • What’s missing? • Time • Space • Extraction and recharge • Rates differ widely • Competing uses • “Fossil” water • Centuries to recharge • Hours to extract Source: US Geological Survey, http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycle.html

6. Worldwide Water Use • 6 countries=1/2 the water • Brazil • Canada • China • Columbia • Indonesia • Russia Source: Canadian International Development Agency, http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/CIDAWEB/acdicida.nsf/En/REN-218125537-Q2B

7. Regional Perspective: China • South-North Water Transfer • 48 km3/year from Yellow to Yangtze • Three diversion channels • Equivalent to a new Yellow River • North (Yellow River basin) • Dropping water tables • Heavy use by farms, industry, and cities • South (Yangtze River basin) • Annual flooding from monsoons • China on average not water-poor • Time and place matter!

8. Quality Source: Pacific Environment, http://www.pacificenvironment.org/article.php?id=2418

9. How and why of water quality • Why water quality matters • Environmental health • Human health • Industrial & agricultural needs • Crop sensitivity, tourism, toxicity • Measuring water quality • pH, oxygen demand, color, dissolved chemicals, etc. • Turbidity (cloudiness) • Suspended solids • Point-source vs non-point-source pollution

10. Natural factors • Weathering • Increases water hardness (dissolved minerals) • Salinization • Saline intrusion into surface and groundwater • Erosion of salts from river channel • Algal blooms and associated toxins • Bioaccumulation • Entry of a toxin into the food web • Biomagnification (bioamplification) • Increase in concentration of a toxin within the food web

11. Human factors • Sewage effluent • Most enters waterways without treatment • Combined systems can overflow during storm events • Industrial pollution • Wastewater discharge, atmospheric deposition • Thermal pollution (e.g. cooling, power plants), leachate • Agriculture • Pesticide and fertilizer runoff • Feedlots, manure spreading, CAFOs • Effectiveness (and use!) of treatment varies widely

12. Disease and Illness • Water as a home (at least part-time) for disease agents • Diarrheal illnesses (cholera, dysentery, giardia) • Water as a home for disease vectors • Malaria, Japanese encephalitis (Mosquitoes) • Schistosomiasis (Snails) • Hepatitis A • Dracunculiasis (Guinea worm) • Water as a solvent for toxins • Arsenic, selenium • World Health Organization WSH Program, http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/en/ Image: Stanford University

13. Mapping water-related illnesses Fluorosis, Cholera, Hepatitis, Onchocerciasis Arsenicosis, Dysentery, Hep A, Typhoid Arsenicosis, Cholera, Dengue, Hepatitis, Onchocerciasis Giardiasis, Salmonella Dysentery, Malaria, Cholera Guinea worm, Schisto, Malaria, Cholera Cholera, Dengue, Hepatitis, Onchocerciasis

14. Availability “Whiskey’s for drinking, water’s for fighting over” Mark Twain PHOTO CREDIT: DARRIN MAGEE

15. Dams • Making water, stopping waste, controlling rivers • Benefits • Flood control • Power generation • Irrigation • Recreation • Problems? • Ecosystem disruption • Human displacement Aswan High Dam (Egypt) Image: NASA

16. Different types of scarcity • Physical abundance may not equate to high levels of consumption • Economic scarcity may result from limited human, financial, or technical means to obtain water

17. Equity Is water a commodity or human right?

18. Privatization of water • Attractive option for cash-strapped governments • Cities, states, countries worldwide face huge need for investment in water infrastructure • Examples in Global South and North, MDCs and LDCs; many have failed and/or resulted in increased debt and increased prices to consumers (standpipes vs meters) • Both ends: drinking water and waste water • Advantages of privatization? Disadvantages? • Capital, expertise, profit motivation, market efficiency • Public oversight, greater attention to equity

19. Private vs public control • Commodification • Of services • Capture (dams and reservoirs) • Treatment (drinking water and waste water) • Provision (pipes and meters) • Of water itself • French springs • Atlanta taps • Canadian lakes

20. Water Footprints of Nations Source: Hoekstra and Chapagain 2005

21. Making Water Matter

22. Making Water Matter • Embodied Water • Cotton T-shirt • Cup of coffee • Fast food meal • Microchip • Sheet of paper • Pair of shoes • Water Footprint • www.waterfootprint.org • How much? • 700 gallons • 74 gallons • 750 gallons • 10 gallons • 3 gallons • 2000 gallons

23. Making Water Matter • Primary Uses • Drinking • Laundry • Flushing • Showering, hygiene • Lawns • Secondary Uses • Food • Manufactured goods • Every Bottle a Teaching Moment • Evian: $8/gal = cool and vaguely European (or Atlantan) • Gasoline: $8/gal = riots in the street

24. World Water at a Glance A taste of what’s coming today and tomorrow (and what’s not)

25. Middle East • Disparities in access • Fluoride deposits, high salinity • High groundwater extraction rates • Transboundary rivers, development pressures • How safe are our conflict/cooperation assumptions?

26. India/South Asia • Greatest population and highest rates of urbanization • Naturally-occurring groundwater contamination • Human-induced pollution widespread and severe • Potential for transboundary tensions (esp. China) • Water as divinity: Yamuna the goddess river • She is a goddess, therefore we must protect/heal her • She is a goddess, therefore impervious to harm by humans

27. Western Europe • Longstanding treaties, but development often haphazard, unilateral • “Improvements”, dumping decimated salmon by 1930s • Industrial Revolution damage great, recovery slow • Setback in late 1980s • Principal pollution loads now from farm runoff Map credit: UNESCO

28. China/Mainland Southeast Asia • High population densities and rates of urbanization • Widespread declines in quality • Regional disparities in availability and access • Climate change impacts on the Water Tower of Asia • Short term: increased volumes, flooding • Long term: decreased glacial melt and runoff • Transboundary river tensions: development, flooding

29. Central Asia • Aral Sea • Wrong crops • Wrong place • Wrong methods • Lessons? • Transboundary rivers, aridity, management void in post-USSR • Amu Darya • Syr Darya Image: NASA

30. North America • Columbia River Treaty • United States calling the shots from…downstream? • How long is that treaty going to last, anyway? • Colorado River Compact • 1922: What boundary?!? • 1944: Oh yeah, Mexico! • 2009: Nevada wants what? • 14 minus 17 equals bad news • Prolonged drought/GCC? http://geochange.er.usgs.gov/sw/changes/natural/codrought/

31. Latin America • Amazon (Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Suriname, Guyana) • World’s largest watershed • Development could increase transboundary tensions • Significant indigenous populations, endemic species • Guarani aquifer (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay) • Few precedents for joint management of groundwater • Protection is much cheaper than remediation

32. Big Questions • How much is there? • Where is it and how do we get it? • How much do humans need? Natural systems? • Is water a right or a privilege? • What about clean, fresh water? • What about water-related services and goods? • How do boundaries matter? • Where is there potential for transboundary conflict? • What about global climate change? • What are possible impacts on water resources?

33. Photo: Darrin Magee

34. Wrap-Up

35. Themes • Quantity, Quality, Availability, Equity • Sustainability • Of what, for what, for whom, by whom? • Security • Pros and cons of thinking of water in security terms • Nature of our relationship with water • Drowning man vs marathon swimmer • Risk management vs precautionary approach

36. Millennium Development Goals • Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability • Target 7.c: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation • Proportion of population using an improved drinking water source • Proportion of population using an improved sanitation facility • Recognize the glimmers of hope and good news • Playpumps, A Child’s Right, MDG Progress, community engagement and success stories

37. Critical thinking: living with gray • Politicians and fifth-graders live in a black-and-white world of simple binaries (e.g., good and bad); oversimplified binaries replicated through media • Students need to know that gray areas and uncertainty are acceptable and natural, recognizing that often we have to act and make important decisions with incomplete information • How can we use water to teach students broader critical thinking skills that will make their learning more productive and our teaching more satisfying?