The climate crisis is a water crisis but governments around the world are still not putting water security front and centre, according to a water governance expert.
The climate crisis is a water crisis but governments around the world are still not putting water security front and centre, according to a water governance expert.
Inga Jacobs-Mata, the country representative for South Africa and Southern Africa at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) was speaking to the Mail & Guardian from Stockholm, Sweden, during World Water Week.
“We’re talking [at World Water Week] about the floods in Pakistan, we’re talking about the big drought over many parts of Europe at the moment … We always say in the water sector that the manifestations of climate change felt by people are through water. And yet it’s not given the prominence, I think, in the climate negotiations as much as it should … [and] governments are still not putting water security at the centre of the climate crisis.”
This week, too, marked Africa Climate Week 2022. “I’d like to be hopeful that there would be some concrete developments coming out of it but the past two COPs have said otherwise,” Jacobs-Mata said. “We don’t see that kind of political commitment now in the lead up to COP27.”
But water solutions do exist, she said. There are climate-smart solutions, water saving technologies and a number of initiatives available and should be the focus of key discussions and policies to ensure sustainability in the water world.
Fragmented water sector
In Stockholm, the water sector spent the week “reflecting on growing food insecurity, disasters, inequality, fragility, and how the poorest communities will be impacted the most”, Jacobs-Mata said, adding that the connections are still not being made at the political level.
“We were talking about how fragmented the water sector is globally and in Africa. Institutions are still not talking in a coordinated voice, perhaps arguably in the way that the energy sector was able to achieve.
“If you look at the energy sector, governments have made ambitious commitments to the energy transition, right? But now we need to replicate that momentum by building the same sense of urgency and commitment to a transition to water security.”
The challenge with water is how it has been managed in the past needs to be fundamentally different. “We’ve still been largely crisis-driven or response driven.”
Jacobs-Mata said policy decisions could no longer be based on historic patterns and that flexible approaches guided by either satellite-based early warning systems or scenario modelling are required to identify robust options for water management and infrastructure.
To give water more of a focus, she pointed to one positive development — the Africa Water Investment Programme. “It’s about directing or redirecting investments for water on the continent to achieving more strategic and more coordinated aid … It’s a roadmap of how development partners, investors, governments … coordinate these investment plans and then countries have then taken that and made national level commitments … to ensure that that investment is directed towards achieving these coordinated objectives.”
Innovations to bolster water security include solar-powered irrigation, flood and drought indicators and climate information services.
More solutions than most people think
According to the Stockholm International Water Institute, the focus of World Water Week 2022 was on the value of water and “unseen water” such as groundwater.
“There are more solutions than most people think. World Water Week 2022 has demonstrated a broad range of concrete ideas that could greatly reduce the impact of droughts, floods, and storms across the world, including investments in sanitation, regenerative farming, water-smart city planning, early-warning systems, and watershed restoration, to name but a few. Often, what is needed is political will and increased investments,” it said.
Water needs to be at the top of the global agenda because humanity will not achieve the sustainable development goals without profound and inclusive transformations.
“Water is essential to all the goals, which is why it is so important that World Water Week is increasingly becoming a conference about water for people rather than a conference for water people,” it said, adding that there is a growing trend to view water holistically, recognising the connection between land-based, freshwater and marine ecosystems.
‘Decolonising water’
Jacobs-Mata said that for the IWMI the need for community-based approaches to build climate resilience is key. “We know that the impacts of climate change are felt by the most vulnerable, the most marginalised groups and we’ve got this body of work looking at customary water tenure – that’s all about how those traditional, tribal authorities and religious, cultural authorities manage water outside of the statutory legal system.”
Many rural areas in the region rely on these modes of managing water that are outside the legal space “because of our government’s incapacity to monitor and enforce water licences, permits, these kinds of things. We’re talking here about this whole decolonisation of how we manage water,” she said.
“It’s age old, but it’s innovative because now we’re saying how do you integrate that with legal mechanisms, how do you recognise customary water tenure in statutory water law and our National Water Act,” she said, adding that the IWMI is working on this with the department of water and sanitation, catchment management agencies, the Environmental Law Institute and the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation.
“It’s not about saying we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater and redo the whole [National] Water Act,” Jacobs-Mata said. “We need to strengthen the indigenous ways that people have built their climate resilience.”
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