Tag: Water

Addressing the global water crisis through collective action

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Cover of "Turning the Tide: A Call to Collective Action," by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water

A sustainable and just water future can be achieved; however, it requires a significant change in how we value, manage, and use water.

We read Turning the Tide: A Call to Collective Action, by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, which was published this month, and share the following synopsis.

A systemic water crisis headed for massive collective failure

Our current systemic water crisis is growing into a global tragedy on local and global levels. Nations and regions are connected through the water cycle in profound ways. More than two billion people still lack access to safe water. The report points out that one child under five dies every 80 seconds from diseases caused by polluted water.

This water crisis is also linked to climate change and the loss of biodiversity. The global energy imbalance intensifies the water cycle, “adding about 7% of moisture for each 1°C of global mean temperature rise.” Deforestation and depletion of wetlands and land degradation impact precipitation patterns, soil moisture and vapor (green water), and runoff and liquid flows (blue water). Extreme events in the forms of unprecedented floods and droughts, cyclonic storms, and heat waves have caused a devastating toll on human suffering, and in some cases, wiped out decades of human development in weeks.

The report points out that the water crisis imperils all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):

…from SDG 6, ensuring universal access to safe water and sanitation; to food security and health; to ending poverty and inequalities; to enabling trade for sustainable growth; to our chances of delivering the Paris Climate Agreement, and avoiding conflict within and across borders.

Another contributor to the water crisis is water mismanagement. We have failed to preserve freshwater ecosystems, manage overuse, prevent contamination, and develop and share water-saving technologies. The report notes that we face the prospect of a “40% shortfall in freshwater supply by 2030, with severe shortages in water-constrained regions.”

Water also plays a role in climate mitigation and adaptation strategies, including the protection wetlands provide against floods and droughts.

Hope through collective solutions

The report points out that a sustainable and just water future can be achieved; however, it requires a significant change in how we value, manage and use water. This collective action begins with treating water as our most “precious global collective good, essential to protecting all ecosystems and all life.”

Collective solutions enable us to reinvigorate our economies, benefit people globally, and unlock progress on the SDGs. However, we must act urgently with a collective resolution.

Seven-point call to collective action

The report sets out a seven-point Call to Collective Action which provides a path for immediate implementation. The Call to Collective Action includes the following requirements:

  1. Manage the global water cycle as a global common good, to be protected collectively and in the interests of all. It requires the recognition that communities and nations are connected regionally and globally and that water is critical to food security as well as all the SDGs. In addition, water justice and equity are required to put water on a sustainable trajectory.

  2. Adopt an outcomes-focused, mission-driven approach to water encompassing all the key roles it plays in human well-being. We must deliver on the human right to safe water and act collectively to stabilize the global water cycle. We can act collectively by mobilizing multiple stakeholders, public, private, and civil society as well as local communities.

  3. Cease underpricing water. We need to properly price water and provide targeted support for the poor. We need to also account for water’s non-economic value in decision-making to ensure we protect nature and our biodiversity.

  4. Phase out some $700 billion of subsidies in agriculture and water yearly, which tend to generate excessive water consumption and other environmentally damaging practices. We also need to reduce leakages in water systems (“non-revenue water”) that cost billions annually and prioritize sustained maintenance efforts. The report also calls for the acceleration of water footprint disclosures.

  5. Establish Just Water Partnerships (JWPs) to enable investments in water access, resilience and sustainability in low- and middle-income countries, using approaches that contribute to both national development goals and the global common.

  6. Move forward at scale on opportunities that can move the needle significantly in the current decade such as fortifying freshwater storage systems, developing the urban circular water economy, reducing water footprints in manufacturing, and shifting agriculture to precision irrigation and less water-intensive crops.

  7. Reshape multilateral governance of water, which is currently fragmented and not fit for purpose. Trade policy must be used as a tool for more sustainable use of water, by incorporating water conservation standards, highlighting wasteful water subsidies, and ensuring that trade policies do not exacerbate water scarcity in water-stressed regions.

The report describes the need to learn from past failures. Our past approaches have been too narrow, too local, too short-sighted, too divided, and too incremental. We can correct these failings with more systems thinking and bolder collective actions at local to global levels to manage water in a more integrated, inclusive, and effective way.

A new framework for the economics of water calls for managing the global water cycle and regarding water as a global common good to be protected collectively and in the interests of all.

The report cries out for a new social contract with an integrated, holistic approach that places justice and equity at the center of our actions. It ends with a reference to learning from the wisdom of Indigenous Peoples and traditional communities who understand and treasure water as a shared resource, across generations.

Researchers warn Great Salt Lake’s retreat threatens crucial ecosystem, public health

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Great Salt Lake Desert, Utah, USA by Urvish Prajapati on Unsplash
Great Salt Lake Desert, Utah by Urvish Prajapati on Unsplash

“The lake’s ecosystem is not only on the edge of collapse. It is collapsing,” said one ecologist.

By Julia Conley, Common Dreams

Scientists are warning Utah officials that the Great Salt Lake is shrinking far faster than experts previously believed, and calling for a major reduction in water consumption across the American West in order to prevent the lake from disappearing in the next five years.

Researchers at Brigham Young University (BYU) led more than 30 scientists from 11 universities and advocacy groups in a report released this week showing that the lake is currently at 37% of its former volume, with its rapid retreat driven by the historic drought that’s continuing across the West.

Amid the climate crisis-fueled megadrought, the continued normal consumption of water in Utah and its neighboring states has led the Great Salt Lake to lose 40 billion gallons of water per year since 2020, reducing its surface level to 10 feet below what is considered the minimum safe level.

“Goodbye, Great Salt Lake,” tweeted the Environmental Defense Fund on Friday.

Scientists previously have warned that increased average temperatures in Utah—where it is now about 4°F warmer than it was in the early 1900s—are to blame for a 9% reduction in the amount of water flowing into the lake from streams.

The authors of the BYU study are calling on Utah officials to authorize water releases from the state’s reservoirs and cut water consumption by at least a third and as much as half to allow 2.5 million acre feet of water to reach the lake and prevent the collapse of its ecosystem as well as human exposure to dangerous sediments.

“This is a crisis,” BYU ecologist Ben Abbott, a lead author of the report, told The Washington Post. “The ecosystem is on life support, [and] we need to have this emergency intervention to make sure it doesn’t disappear.”

The shrinking of the Great Salt Lake has already begun creating a new ecosystem that is toxic for the shrimp and flies that make it their habitat, due to the lack of freshwater flowing in. That has endangered millions of birds that stop at the lake as they migrate each year.

The loss of the lake may also already be exposing about 2.5 million people to sediments containing mercury, arsenic, and other toxins.

“Nanoparticles of dust have potential to cause just as much harm if they come from dry lake bed as from a tailpipe or a smokestack,” Brian Moench, president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, told the Post. Last month, Moench’s group applauded as Republican Gov. Spencer Cox’s administration, under pressure from residents, walked back its position supporting a plan to allow a magnesium company to pump water from the Great Salt Lake.

Abbott called the rapid shrinking of the lake “honestly jaw-dropping.”

“The lake’s ecosystem is not only on the edge of collapse. It is collapsing,” Abbott told CNN. “The lake is mostly lakebed right now.”

‘Turn off the tap on plastic,’ UN Chief declares amid debate over new global treaty

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Photo by Naja Bertolt Jensen on Unsplash

“Plastics are fossil fuels in another form,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, “and pose a serious threat to human rights, the climate, and biodiversity.”

By Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams

Hours before the first round of negotiations to advance a global plastics treaty concluded Friday in Punta Del Este, Uruguay, the leader of the United Nations implored countries “to look beyond waste and turn off the tap on plastic.”

“Plastics are fossil fuels in another form,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres tweeted, “and pose a serious threat to human rights, the climate, and biodiversity.”

Guterres’ comments elevated the demands of civil society organizations, scientists, and other advocates fighting for robust, legally binding rules to confront the full lifecycle impacts of the plastic pollution crisis. A coalition of more than 100 groups has called for limiting the ever-growing production and consumption of plastic and holding corporations accountable for the ecological and public health harms caused by manufacturing an endless stream of toxic single-use items.

Petrochemical industry representatives who attended the first intergovernmental negotiating committee meeting (INC-1) for a global plastics treaty, by contrast, attempted to bolster fossil fuel-friendly governments’ efforts to slow the pace of talks—convened by the U.N. Environment Program and set to continue off-and-on through 2024—and weaken proposals for action.

In the wake of this week’s opening round of debate, the Break Free From Plastic (BFFP) alliance launched a petition outlining what it calls the “essential elements” of a multilateral environmental agreement capable of “reversing the tide of plastic pollution and contributing to the end of the triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.”

According to experts associated with BFFP, an effective global plastics treaty must include the following:

  • Significant, progressive, and mandatory targets to cap and dramatically reduce virgin plastic production;
  • Legally binding, time-bound, and ambitious targets to implement and scale up reuse, refill, and alternative product delivery systems;
  • A just transition to safer and more sustainable livelihoods for workers and communities across the plastics supply chain; and
  • Provisions that hold polluting corporations and plastic-producing countries accountable.

BFFP member Graham Forbes, head of the Global Plastic Project at Greenpeace USA, said in a statement that “we cannot let oil-producing countries, at the behest of Big Oil and petrochemical companies, dominate and slow down the treaty discussions and weaken its ambition.”

“If the plastics industry has its way, plastic production could double within the next 10-15 years, and triple by 2050—with catastrophic impacts on our planet and its people,” said Forbes. “The High Ambition Coalition must show leadership by pushing the negotiations forward and calling for more ambitious measures which protect our health, our climate, and our communities from the plastics crisis.”

A global plastics treaty, Forbes added, represents “a major opportunity to finally end the age of plastic, and governments should not let this go to waste. We demand that world leaders deliver a strong and ambitious treaty that will dramatically reduce plastic production and use, open inclusive and justice-centered discussions, and ensure that the next INCs are free from industry interference.”

Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) senior attorney Giulia Carlini pointed out that profit-maximizing corporations “have deliberately manufactured doubt about the health impacts” of their products in previous treaties that address health issues, such as the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

“There is strong scientific consensus that plastics-associated chemicals cause diseases,” Carlini continued. “If the treaty is to succeed in meeting its health objectives, it will be essential to set strict conflict-of-interest policies going forward.”

After more than 145 governments expressed support this week for developing a pact with specific and shared international standards—which could include a ban on single-use items and requirements to ensure reuse and circularity—Eirik Lindebjerg, global plastics policy lead at the World Wildlife Fund, said that “the momentum demonstrated at these negotiations is a promising sign that we will get a truly ambitious treaty with effective global measures to stop plastic pollution” by 2024.

“It has been a very important week in the history of protecting the environment and people,” said Lindebjerg. “This week we saw an encouraging level of agreement, both in formal and informal spaces, on the urgency of seeking a joint solution to this major threat to nature and communities, and to do so in a comprehensive, effective, inclusive, and science-based manner.”

However, he warned, “this is just the first step towards a legally binding global treaty that can help us stop plastic pollution.”

“The next stage of negotiations will be more challenging, as countries must agree on the technical measures and rules,” said Lindebjerg. “Although in the minority, there are also some powerful opponents of global rules and standards, which risk potentially weakening obligations on countries to take action. The push for an ambitious global plastics treaty has only just begun.”

“Millions of people around the world, whose livelihoods and environments are affected by plastic, have their eyes on these negotiations,” he added. “Now negotiators must harness this momentum to push for specific rules to be negotiated as part of the treaty.”

Lindebjerg’s assessment was shared by other summit delegates.

“Negotiations at INC-1 this week demonstrated that the majority of countries are ready to take urgent action to confront the plastics crisis, including by addressing the plastic production that drives that crisis,” said CIEL president Carroll Muffett. “Sadly, it also proved that plastic producers and their allies are equally committed to slowing progress and weakening ambition—from the U.S. insistence that the plastic treaty replicate the weaknesses of the Paris agreement, to last-minute maneuvers by other fossil fuel and petrochemical states to block countries’ ability to vote on difficult issues.”

“Despite these maneuvers, the world made real progress in Punta Del Este,” said Muffett. Robust “global commitments and binding targets remain both necessary and achievable,” she added, but securing them will require “the U.S. and other countries join the rest of the world in pairing claims of high ambition with the policies that high ambition demands.”

While this week marked the first time that governments have met to hash out global-scale regulations to restrict plastic production, the United States and the United Kingdom—the world’s biggest per-capita plastic polluters—have so far refused to join an international treaty to curb the amount of plastic waste destined for landfills and habitats, though both countries are reportedly now open to the idea.

“Over this week, we have seen multiple interventions raising whether the future treaty will be based on national action plans, or global, mandatory targets,” said CIEL senior attorney Andrés Del Castillo. “We know that this will be top of the agenda at INC-2. The failure of countries to fulfill their emissions reduction plans under the Paris agreement shows that we cannot afford another treaty that centers on the whims of its leaders.”

The next session of the conference aimed at creating a global plastics treaty is set to take place in Paris in May 2023.