Water Security Lecture by Professor Chad Staddon - Akshaya and Izzy

Some of our Geog a Blog team attended a very interesting lecture at the Royal Geographical Society on Water Security, covering many important aspects of this ever-growing issue facing many parts of the world. We were lucky enough to have the opportunity to talk to the speaker, Professor Chad Staddon and give our views and opinions whilst hearing more about the topic. During the talk, there were six main areas covered which included: the definition of water security and what it means to many people, some background on the issue including climate issues, how population affects the water security and consumption patterns. Some information about the international water security network, a few varied and interesting case studies and a look at how we can reframe the definition of water security in order to attempt to be more satisfied with the definition it has been given.

Water security is “the capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water for sustaining livelihoods, human well-being, and socio-economic development; for ensuring protection against water-borne pollution and water-related disasters; and for preserving ecosystems in a climate of peace and political stability.”(United Nations, 2013) We also learnt of other key concepts, such as water balance and water stress, in order to gain a greater understanding of water security. Globally, we are water abundant, but despite this many countries are water stressed, due to having a higher population density, a poor distribution of water services, and unequal access to water resources based on location, economic capacity and/or lack of water storage facilities. 

We learnt that unclean water is just as bad as no water, with waterborne diseases being one of the biggest killers in Sub-Saharan Africa; 40% of Africans suffer from some sort of waterborne disease. Diarrhoea, which is often due to the consumption of unlearn water, is a leading cause of death in children, accounting for approximately 8% of all deaths among children under five years in 2016. 

It is also important to improve the equity of water supplies, as often girls are disproportionately disadvantaged in regions of water insecurity. In areas such as Kisoro in south western Uganda, there tends to be a substantial walking distance to reach a water source; collecting from distant sources is time intensive and results in girls missing school in order to collect water. Therefore, better water sources in more areas can lead to greater gender equality, with more girls accessing education. 

Having an urban water cycle is a way in which cities can intervene and manage the water cycle, in order to ensure better access and water security for the population. Other ways include green and grey infrastructure, as well as the hybrid that is green-grey infrastructure. Green infrastructure is the “strategic use of networks of natural lands, working landscapes, and other open spaces to conserve ecosystem values and functions and provide associated benefits to human” (Allen, 2012) which can be seen in New York and Singapore, whereas grey infrastructure refers to the “human-engineered infrastructure for water resources such as water and wastewater treatment plants, pipelines, and reservoirs.” (Alberta Water Portal Society, 2018). Green-grey infrastructure is when these are both integrated, and it “seeks to improve the multi-functionality of hard, non-building grey infrastructure assets in towns and cities by greening the parts of our cities that must remain grey”(Naylor et al, 2017), which is hugely useful in water attenuation. 

Water is vital to all life on earth and is needed for hydration, cooling, cleaning, industry and agriculture, thus the SDG6 of the sustainable development goals being to ‘ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all’. Therefore maintaining water security is a global issue we should all be concerned with. 






Bibliography:

Allen, W. (2013, May 14). The Conservation Fund (referenced in World Resources Institute, Natural Infrastructure - Investing in Forested Landscapes for Source Water Protection in the United States https://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/wri13_report_4c_naturalinfrastructure_v2.pdf)

Alberta Water Portal Society (2018). Introduction to green infrastructure and grey infrastructure

Naylor, LA., Kippen, H, Coombes, MA., et al. (2017). Greening the Grey: a framework for integrated green grey infrastructure (IGGI). University of Glasgow report. URL: http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/150672/ 


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