Has the well of good ideas and public policy on water run dry?

More than technology and funds are needed to resolve the world’s clean water drinking problems, say two observers from NUS’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

Asit K. Biswas and Cecilia Tortajada

CHANNEL NEWS ASIA | July 22, 2018

Around 2.5 to 3 billion people worldwide don’t have access to clean water.

There are at least another 1.5 billion in developed countries who may have access to clean water but don’t trust its quality.

MISTRUST

A number of widely publicised events about unreliable water services in countries have added to this mistrust.

Seventeen years ago Walkerton in Canada had the country’s worst E.coli contamination of domestic water supply. It resulted in seven deaths and 2,300 illnesses.

In 2014, Flint, Michigan, United States changed its source of water supply to Flint River. This corrosive source dangerously increased lead contamination of domestic water which severely affected people’s health, especially children.

Many other incidents, in cities ranging from Sydney in Australia to Hong Kong, have made people increasingly sceptical of the quality of water they get at home.

To be on the safe side, consumers all over the world are increasingly taking charge of their own drinking water supply.

Installations of expensive water treatment systems are exploding in the developed world, as is consumption of bottled water. In cities like Tokyo, Berlin, London and New York, fewer and fewer people are drinking water from the tap.

The trend in developing countries has taken a different route. Households, from Delhi to Dakar, have become mini-utilities.

Even if water only comes on for a few hours every day, residents have found ways to deliver 24-hour supply by collecting it in underground tanks, pumping it into overhead tanks and then distributing it. Households have also installed their own treatment systems for clean drinking water.

WATER FROM TAP

After decades of work on urban water and waste water management in some 40 countries, we have concluded that there is no reason why urban centres of 200,000 or more people cannot have access to clean water that can be drunk straight from the tap without any health concerns.

Technology and funds are available to make this possible. So what’s missing?

Very often the view is that technological developments will solve water problems. But policies are just as critical, as are “softer” aspects such as management, governance and institutions.

Unless these get adequate attention, neither technology nor additional investment funds are likely to resolve the world’s clean water drinking problems.

A decade ago we predicted that unless management practices improved very significantly at least one city in Africa would face unprecedented water crisis within 20 years.

Our prediction was accurate. Unless politicians in African cities improve water management as a priority, our studies indicate there will be at least 15 other cities which will face severe water problems by 2035.

REDUCING WATER CONSUMPTION 

The trend is progressively towards less water use. This reduction has been made possible through different policy approaches. This includes pricing water appropriately as well as incentives for using less water, particularly in times of drought.

But what assumptions should be made about consumption when designing policies?

How much water a person needs to survive is tricky, partly because it differs dramatically depending on the country and on whether the person is living in a city or a rural area.

Only one multi-year study has been done on this issue. It was in the 1960s in Singapore. It concluded that a person needs 75 litres to lead a healthy and productive life.

In Singapore, per capita water use in 2017 was 143 litres, nearly double this amount. In the US, it varies from 300 to 380 litres. In South Africa, it is around 235 litres.

There is good reason to believe people can lead a healthy and productive life with 75 to 85 litres of water per day.

For example, water consumption in Czech Republic is now 88 litres per capita per day. In several West European cities like Leipzig, Malaga, Tallinn, Barcelona and Zaragoza, average water use is 95 litres per capita per day or less. Denmark now has an average water use of 104 litres.

It’s possible to shift behaviour patterns as both Cape Town has showed recently and as was the case in the 2014 to 2015 drought in Sao Paulo.

Thanks to water pricing, initiatives for using less water, fines for excessive use and very effective public awareness campaigns, Sao Paulo reduced its per capital daily water use from 145 to 120 litres. Its policies saved 550 million litres of drinking water every day in the Metropolitan Area with around 22 million people.

CRITICAL TO IMPROVE WATER GOVERNANCE 

Technological developments will undoubtedly help to solve the world’s urban water problems. But there is increasing evidence that if the aim is to provide everyone with access to clean water, then increasing focus must be placed on governance, institutional issues and policies.

Urban water problems of the world are solvable. Knowledge, technology and funds to solve them have been around for at least a decade. But lack of sustained political will has been the most important missing link critical factor to improve urban water governance in nearly all cities of the world.

Sadly there aren’t many signs that this may change any time soon.

Asit K Biswas is distinguished visiting professor, and Cecilia Tortajada is senior research fellow at the Institute of Water Policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.

This article was first published by CHANNEL NEWS ASIA, July 22, 2018.

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Taxonomy

• Water
• Technology
• Drinking Water

4 Comments

1. Thank you for this insightful and thought-provoking article. While it is true we Americans waste a lot of water, we also (historically) were blessed with a lot of it...the vast majority of which goes not for direct human consumption and household use, but rather to industrial scale agricultural, dairy, poultry and energy extraction operations. A good portion of the farm productivity is shipped overseas as "virtual water", which of course eventually comes back to us in the form of Pacific/Atlantic storms. Our major urban centers are becoming water stressed due largely to historically poor water management (with some isolated exceptions) and water delivery infrastructure that is deteriorating. The pressing issue in many rural areas of the US, particularly the mid-West and Southwest is overdrafting (i.e., "mining") of our groundwater basins, which has accelerated in recent decades. At current usage rates (mostly by large agribusiness interests), some Western basins will be functionally depleted by 2030. I fully agree with the authors that in general there is a lack of political will to change our wasteful water habits. But when a country's GDP is inextricably tied to ever expanding population growth and goods manufacturing and exportation, there is tremendous local, state and federal political pressure to not disrupt "business as usual", and to continue as long as possible with poor water resources management practices. A real question is: How long can that go on before a point of irreversible damage has been reached?    

2. Respectfully someone with real professional water capacity does not write such simplicity, but it's typical of bureaucracy staff worried for investment and return of investors rather than real water solutions.

   the issue is that most of those water investors are banks together with global water companies to sale their palliative and inefficient water treatment technology.

   1 Comment reply

   1. I disagree.  It's perfectly possible to run a for profit water agency that delivers high quality water affordably to those who need it.  Just as it is possible to run a public water agency that, through negligence and poor accountability, gratuitously poisons its customers (Flint).  The public-private thing is a total diversion from the real issue - which is, how do we make water providers in both sectors able and willing to use the technologies available today, and manage their operations efficiently, effectively and accountably?  As I say, the well has not run dry - too much of he water industry just isn't using the well!

3. I don’t think the well has run dry. We aren’t using the technologies that already exist and we aren’t applying principles of accountability that have been known for many years.  The question should be “why isn’t the water industry going to the well of ideas that could help it. 

4. Excellent article. As previously noted-Blood lead levels in children were NOT significantly increased in Flint, because the water was so obviously terrible that virtually no one drank it. About 9000 blood lead samples were available before during and after the change of water source, so that the data are very clear. The adverse health effect was 2 spikes of legionellosis cases and deaths. It is important that the facts are known.

   1 Comment reply

   1. The article encapsulate the real problem in water sector in Nigeria, Over years there had been series of projects with billion of dollars spent with little or no remarkable improvement in the water and sanitation sector. For over a decades the government is interested in spend on infrastructures without ensuring that there are policy and institutions in place to ensure sustainability of the infrastructures.

      In one of my paper, i considered the bane of the sector woe as  continues infrastructural development with out institutional strengthen and legal framework. We found out that continue intervention in the management of the sector by politicians reduces the expected efficiency in delivering of the services and does not make the management of the water Agency accountable to the people.

      Water is seen as a political tools to get votes from the citizens, unfortunately, the politician never get this water to the citizens .