Nature-Based Solutions and Water

The relationship between #naturebasedsolutions and water cannot be overlooked or underestimated!

 As climate related changes become more prevalent in the coming years ahead, water managers, politicians, community leaders, should not underestimate how nature-based solutions (#NBS) can protect, restore, and sustainably manage nature to secure critical water resources for us all.

The Global Status of Water Resources

 Water security is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. Although nearly 70% of the world is covered with water, most of it is saltwater or in the form of snow and ice, leaving only 2.5% of global water readily available as freshwater. The current rate at which we consume water is not sustainable. Usable water is getting scarcer each year.

Factors Impacting Water Scarcity

 Water scarcity combined with decreasing water quality and reliability are accelerating the water crisis and will result in food insecurity. Vulnerability to natural disasters, political instability, rising tensions, and increasing corruption, all of which will disproportionately affect the poor and vulnerable.

Water scarcity is driven by increasing irrigation, ground water extraction, changing diets, increasing energy demands, and a changing climate.

Interesting Water Facts:

• Agriculture accounts for 70% of all water use.
• Ground water extraction has increased ten-fold in 50 years.
• Various studies predict global temperature rises anywhere between 1.4 to 5.8 degrees in the future due to climate change. Even a small temperature increase can have disastrous effects on freshwater resources.
• Since 1900, 90% of disasters from natural hazards have been related to water.
• By 2030, it’s estimated some 700 million people worldwide could be displaced by intense water scarcity.
• A single almond, for example, requires a gallon of water to produce, ……. a quarter pound of beef requires 10,000 liters of water!
• Energy currently accounts for 15% of water withdrawals, by 2030, its estimated to increase by more than 50%.

Factors Impacting Water Quality

Declining water quality is driven by agricultural run-off, salinization, and industrial waste and sewage.

Global run-off is currently at 32.6 million tons per year, causing major eutrophication problems in inland and marine waters.

  EUTROPHICATION

Is the increase in additions of nutrients to freshwater or marine systems, which leads to increases in plant and algae growth (biological production) and often to undesirable changes in ecosystem structure and function.

Irrigation, particularly with mineralized groundwater, increases soil salinity and decreases crop yields. It’s estimated that 20 – 50% of the world’s irrigated land is affected. By 2050, half of all arable lands could be at risk of salinization.

 On average, 80 percent of all industrial and municipal wastewater across the globe is released into rivers without any treatment, with major impacts on water quality.

Water and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s)

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals represent humanity’s effort to end poverty and hunger. Given the impact of water on the achievement of each of the SDGs, the triple decline in quantity, quality, and reliability of potable freshwater compromises our ability to achieve these goals.

If our management of global water supplies slips further out of control, the ramifications will be felt throughout the world.

 The effects of water insecurity will likewise compromise our ability to achieve the SDGs, in particular the seven goals directly and fundamentally linked with water.

Role of Nature in Securing Water

 Nature plays a significant role in securing water resources by regulating water flow, ensuring water quality, and reducing impacts from natural disasters. Particularly important are wetlands, forests, mountains, and grassland ecosystems.

Nature-based solutions are often as cost effective, or more so, than traditional infrastructure solutions for water, such as filtration systems. The cost of supplying and treating drinking water around the world is very high and continues to increase; in a third of large cities, the average costs have increase by 50 percent per unit of water. According to a recent report, four out of five cities – more than 3,200 in all – could make significant gains in water quality by reducing sedimentation or decreasing fertilizer run-off, and a third could improve water flow, through forest protection, reforestation and improved agricultural practice.

 Forests play a critical role in ensuring water quality and availability. While forests will not filter out all contaminants, they radically reduce the amount of treatment that drinking water requires. The protection and restoration of forests in source watershed areas lends itself to the provision of water for the population living there, particularly in large cities.

Interesting Forest Facts:

• Over three-quarters of the world’s accessible freshwater comes from rivers in or around forests.
• 3 out of 4 people worldwide depend on forests for their drinking water and 80% of the world’s municipal water supply could be improved through forest protection.
• Forests reduce soil erosion and sediment load enabling them to provide cleaner water than other forms of land cover.
• Forests are exposed to fewer pollutants, such as agrochemicals and human waste, therefore reducing the amount of treatment required for drinking water.
• Forests regulate the rate of water flow by reducing surge after heavy rains or snowmelt and slowly release the water over a longer period of time.
• Deforestation, road building, and other forms of development in forest ecosystems increase flood and landslide risks, therefore protecting forests is a disaster risk mitigation strategy.
• Forest restoration and the sequestration of carbon in old-growth forests are critical in controlling climate and weather. For example, the Amazon rainforest pumps seven trillion tons of water into the atmosphere per year through the recycled rainfall.

Example – Case Study of the Ruvu River Catchment, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Africa.

 Consider the Ruvu River Catchment in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the 18,000 sq km catchment area supplies water resources to the population of six million people along with livestock farming, irrigation, and wildlife. Over the past two decades, it has experienced significant degradation and loss of forest cover as well as annual shortages and seasonal fluctuations in flow. By implementing sustainable land management, such as forestry, the water quantity and quality is expected to increase by 10 percent.

 Role of Grassland in Securing Water

 Covering almost one-third of the Earth’s land surface, grasslands provide a range of water ecosystems impacting water supply, quality, and quantity.

 They play a critical role in hydrological systems, particularly in high altitude ecosystems with less forest cover due to their water regulation capacity.

 Interesting Grassland Facts:

• Grasslands are important water sources for millions of people.
• More than a third of the world’s major rivers have at least half of their extent in the drylands.
• Some high-altitude grasslands retain humidity in soils and vegetation regulating the flow of water downstream.

  Water storage in dryland ecosystems is critically important due to the lack of precipitation and communities such as the Sukuma people in Tanzania maximize access to water by setting aside ‘ngiti areas’ in the drylands for private or communal grazing or fodder reserves for livestock.

Role of Mountains in Securing Water

 Mountains cover over a quarter of the Earth’s terrestrial surface and over half of the world’s mountains play an essential or supporting role in providing water to downstream communities. Mountains ranges collect water from high levels of rainfall and snow or from clouds and mist, then the water either evaporates or flows downstream, creating streams and rivers and eventually reaching human populations living in the plains.

 Interesting Mountain Facts:

• The health of a mountain determines the quality and regularity of the water flowing down its slopes.
• Mountains typically release water from snowmelt and glaciers during the summer months when there is less rainfall and a decrease in other water sources.
• In tropical mountain cloud forests, net flow of water out of the catchment is increased by evolved leaves and foliage that glean water from clouds and mists and provide a water source to the populations downstream. In Mexico City, 20 million people benefit from cloud forest water.

  Example – Case Study of the Hindu Kush, Himalayas.

 The ten largest rivers in the Hindu Kush Himalayas supply water to one out of five people in the world and snow and glacier melts in the region contribute to 50% of the annual flow in the greater Indus River Basin.

 Nature-Based Solutions for Water

 A number of organizations and governments are increasingly recognizing the important role that nature-based solutions can play in securing sustainable water supplies for humanity, while at the same time providing a wide range of co-benefits. Nature-based solutions for water-related challenges involve a wide range of strategies, including protection, restoration, management, connectivity, mitigation of impacts and integration into key sectors.

Protected areas are a cornerstone of water management, as well as of biodiversity conservation. Protected areas currently cover 14.7 percent of the world’s terrestrial surface, including inland waters, over 19.8 million square kilometers. In addition to legally-designated protection areas, a new designation of ‘other effective area-based conservation measures’ – area-based approaches that provide measurable and long-term biodiversity conservation but are not protected areas – is gaining increasing attention.

 Taken together, protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures could protect half of the planet’s land surface as natural ecosystems, an idea that is gaining increasing support. The designation of an area as protected does not necessarily mean that no ecosystem degradation will occur. However, if legal designation or other means are not in place, then land conversion and degradation of important ecosystems is all but guaranteed.

 Where ecosystem loss and degradation are already advanced, restoration remains the only option. The extent to which restoration is viable depends on the ecosystem, the level of degradation, and the political and economic opportunities. Restoration has different benefits across different ecosystem types. Restoring forests can boost water quality, stabilize flows, and in some cases increase net availability of water. The Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration estimates that a billion hectares of previously forested land are suitable for broad scale or mosaic restoration – approximately six percent of the planet’s total land area.

 Investors have taken note of the economic potential of restoration and have recently launched a US$2 billion fund for large-scale restoration. Large-scale restoration is possible, as well as direct restoration of wetlands.

 Sustainable management of forests, mountains, wetlands, and grasslands, including agricultural lands, is essential for maintaining water-related services.

 Key management actions include:

• Management of riparian zones, especially strips of vegetation along streams, as well as the river and stream banks.
• Sound agricultural management, including cover crops, reduced tillage, the use of strips of natural vegetation along farms, and reduced pesticides and fertilizer use.
• Management of ranching and cattle grazing such as through adhering to maximum stocking densities.
• Management of roads and other infrastructure that can have negative impacts on soils, water, and species.

  RIPARIAN ZONES

What are riparian zones? Riparian zones, or areas, are lands that occur along the edges of rivers, streams, lakes, and other water bodies. Examples include streambanks, riverbanks, and flood plains. They're different from the surrounding uplands because their soils and vegetation are shaped by the presence of water.

Benefits of NBS for Water-Related Services

 Implementing nature-based solutions yields a wide variety of benefits for water-related services.

 Improving water quality to enhancing water availability, retaining moisture levels whilst reducing diseases, contaminants, and sedimentation. The benefits of NBS to water are wide ranging and fundamental.

Policymakers are increasingly recognizing the finite and fragile nature of water, as well as the need to shift policy priorities to improve the management of water resources. This shift in policy priorities brings increased attention to NBS.

 Although many national water plans still sparsely mention NBS, some governments have already integrated nature-based solutions in their national water plans.

As an example – Costa Rica’s National Water Policy commits to encouraging efficient use of water and providing financial resources for investment in protected wild areas, as well as incentives for protection, reforestation, and forest management.

 As an example – The Seychelles Coastal Management Plan recommends integrating nature-based solutions for coastal planning and prioritizing investment in nature-based coastal infrastructure to protect against hazards, such as rock revetments or seawalls.

 As an example – The National Water Plan of Nepal mentions mitigation measures such as forestation and bioengineering with people’s participation, involving community-based organizations, non-governmental organizations, and women’s groups in riverbank protection and conservation of critical areas. These initiatives emphasize the value of nature along with a state of mind.

 Recommendations

 Governments and other stakeholders should support nature-based solutions for water through proper integration across all ministries and departments. The most robust plans will mix nature-based “green” and engineering “Gray” solutions to develop an approach that acknowledges the value of existing hydrological systems.

 A step-by-step approach for integrating NBS at a national level with the ultimate aim of water security can, as part of a wider masterplanning effort, be broken down into four key developmental planning driven components:

1.  Identify and map important areas for water security.
2.  Identify how well key areas for water are protected.
3.  Identify patterns of water use across the country.
4.  Develop an action plan and a finance plan for protecting, restoring, and / or sustainably managing key ecosystems for water security.

We hear a lot in the media about hope for the future of our planet and how things are going to change (for the worse?), water security will play, whether we like it or not, a big part of how we, as a species, will adapt in the future. Perhaps by encouraging Governments to intertwine NBS solutions into their inland and coastal infrastructure planning and projects can, in some small way, help to off-set water related events and their impact to local communities.

#worldwaterday #watermanagement #waterconservation #watercrisis #naturepositive #naturebasedsolutions #natureconservation #naturerecovery #cpg #cpgconsultants #cpgcorporation #leeadamharryman

 Onwards and upwards as they say.

Lee Adam Harryman, NBS Leader

Senior Vice President and Head of Climate Change Adaptation Strategies Team,

CPG Consultants Pte. Ltd. Singapore

Acknowledgments and citations

 Thank you to the United Nations Development Program and all the effort, technical know-how, support and continued, driven, approaches in saving our planet.

 Mention to Google Earth and graphics

 Referenced articles and reports, studies: