'Nature is taking back Venice': wildlife returns to tourist-free city

With the cruise ships gone and the souvenir stalls closed, the coronavirus lockdown has transformed La Serenissima’s waterways

Look down into the waters of the Venice canals today and there is a surprising sight – not just a clear view of the sandy bed, but shoals of tiny fish, scuttling crabs and multicoloured plant-life.

“The water is blue and clear,” said Gloria Beggiato, who owns the celebrated Metropole Hotel a few steps from St Mark’s square and has a view over the Venice lagoon. “It is calm like a pond, because there are no more waves caused by motorised boats transporting day-tripper tourists. And of course, the giant cruise ships have disappeared.”

Under Venice’s strict rules of self-confinement to prevent the spread of the coronavirus – all journeys but a trip to walk the dog or buy food are forbidden – the ancient city has been transformed almost overnight.

Seaweed can be seen in clear waters in Venice as a result of the stoppage of motorboat traffic. Photograph: Andrea Pattaro/AFP via Getty Images

La Serenissima’s hundreds of canals have been emptied of speeding motorboat taxis, transport and tourist boats. The chugging vaporetti water buses now run on a reduced timetable. Even most of the gondolas are moored.

The clarity of the water has improved dramatically. Cormorants have returned to dive for fish they can now see. At the Piazzale Roma vaporetto stop, ducks have even made a nest. “Someone has put up a sign saying, ‘Don’t tread on the duck eggs,’’” Beggiato said. “All totally unimaginable a while ago.”

As the death toll from coronavirus in Italy outstrips that of China, the government of Giuseppe Conte has tried to keep citizens at home using a mix of social media and police controls.

But locals are still moving about cautiously to do their daily shopping – except now in a city without visitors. It is a remarkable transformation for a city that until recently saw protests against overtourism under the No Grande Navi (“No more cruise ships”) slogan.

At the world-famous and usually overcrowded Rialto market, most of the fish and vegetable stalls are still open, though customers are few and far between. All markets are allowed to serve customers at a minimum one metre distance.

In a queue to buy fish at his local fishmonger in Canareggio, Franco Fabris, an architect, reminisced: “When I was a kid growing up, there were far less boats in the canals and lots of kids would jump in and go swimming.”

“For the moment I am not going out fishing as all the restaurants I supply have closed, so what is the point?” said Franco Folin, a fisherman. “But when this all over, we may well see more fish returning because for the moment pleasure fishing is prohibited – there will be an awful lot of extra marine life in the lagoon.”

The apparent cleanliness of the water is not in fact due to a lack of pollution, said Davide Tagliapetra, an environmental researcher at the Institute of Marine Science. He told a local TV station that the reason is the absence of motorised transport, which normally churns up the muddy canal floor.

Matteo Bisol runs the vineyard restaurant Venissa on the tiny lagoon island of Mazzorbo, and has been campaigning for a more eco-responsible, sustainable model of tourism in Venice for some time.

“For goodness sake, it is not surprising there are fish in the canals of Venice,” he said. “If there were not, then we should all be worried as the lagoon here is a fragile ecosystem. People need to realise that if we control and cut down boat traffic in Venice and its lagoon then we could all discover a unique biosphere.”

It is not just the cruise ships that are gone: the souvenir stalls that line the Riva degli Schiavoni, the Murano glass and lace shops, and the bars and restaurants are all closed.

It is a brutal hit to an economy that relies on tourism, but in the meantime locals appear to be rediscovering their city, in an admittedly constrained way.

“We Venetians have the feeling that nature has returned and is taking back possession of the city,” said Beggiato.

“If you ask me today – sunny blue skies, clear canals – then, yes, we would all like Venice to stay like this for a while. But we need, and look forward to, the return of tourists, though maybe not the 20 million a year that we have had to cope with.

“I honestly believe we should take the opportunity of this lockdown to reflect and see how we can be more organised in the future to find a balance between the city and tourism.”

(Source: The Guardian)

If Americans used bidets fifteen million trees could be saved

This TreeHugger is a big fan of bidets (and I really like my Toto). Now Scientific American looks at the issue, when a reader asks "Wouldn't a return to installing bidets in bathrooms at home go a long way toward cutting disposable tissue use and saving forests?"

To be pedantic, it is not a return to installing bidets, they have never been popular in America; in fact, they were always a niche market among the rich who did European tours. Harvey Molotch, a New York University professor, studied the bidet and it's trip to America and the New York Times summarized:

The fixture, which was invented by French furniture makers in the early 18th century, was rejected by the English, who regarded French imports as tainted with the hedonism and sensuality of that country. That sentiment, rather than the bidet itself, traveled to America, Professor Molotch said. Later, at the turn of the last century, he said, bidets installed in an upscale Manhattan hotel incited public protest, resulting in their removal. And during World War II, the bidet suffered another blow when American soldiers encountered it in European brothels, perpetuating the idea that bidets were somehow associated with immorality.

Lloyd Alter/ toto toilet with washlet/CC BY 2.0

Others believe that they never caught on because they took up too much space. But now they have been integrated into toilets and toilet seats, which actually makes a lot more sense than a separate fixture. A bidet is not only is cleaner and healthier, but it has serious environmental benefits. TreeHugger Emeritus Justin Thomas (who wrote our first bidet posts) now edits Metaefficient and tells Scientific American:

Justin Thomas considers bidets to be “a key green technology” because they eliminate the use of toilet paper. According to his analysis, Americans use 36.5 billion rolls of toilet paper every year, representing the pulping of some 15 million trees. Says Thomas: “This also involves 473,587,500,000 gallons of water to produce the paper and 253,000 tons of chlorine for bleaching.” 

He adds that manufacturing requires about 17.3 terawatts of electricity annually and that significant amounts of energy and materials are used in packaging and in transportation to retail outlets.

That's a lot of water, far more than is actually used by the bidet itself.

There are also the health benefits (summarized here) and the fact that one is far less likely to get any fecal bacteria on their hands. When I designed my bathroom with the bidet/toilet in a separate water closet, readers complained that I wasn't washing my hands before I touched the doorknob. But in fact it is not a problem because the entire operation is hands-free. As they note in Scientific American:

On the public health front, bidet maker BioRelief reports that almost 80 percent of all infectious diseases are passed on by human contact and that only about half of us actually wash our hands after using the facilities—making hands-free bidets a safer alternative all around. “If you don’t have to use your hands at all then there is less chance of passing or coming in contact with a virus,” claims the company.

For the record, I still wash my hands.

(Source: Treehugger)

Earth may have been a 'water world' 3bn years ago, scientists find

Chemical signatures in ancient ocean crust point to a planet without continents

Scientists have found evidence that Earth was covered by a global ocean that turned the planet into a “water world” more than 3bn years ago.

Telltale chemical signatures were spotted in an ancient chunk of ocean crust which point to a planet once devoid of continents, the largest landmasses on Earth.

If the findings are confirmed by future work, they will help researchers to refine their theories on where and how the first single-celled life emerged on Earth, and what other worlds may be habitable.

“An early Earth without emergent continents may have resembled a ‘water world’, providing an important environmental constraint on the origin and evolution of life on Earth, as well as its possible existence elsewhere,” the scientists write in Nature Geoscience.

Boswell Wing, of the University of Colorado, Boulder, and his former postdoctoral student Benjamin Johnson, now at Iowa State University, launched the project to break fresh ground in the debate over what ancient Earth might have looked like.

The scientists’ work centred on a geological site in north-western Australia, where a 3.2bn-year-old slab of ocean floor has been turned on its side. Photograph: Planet Observer/Getty Images/Universal Images Gr

Their work centred on a geological site called the Panorama district in north-western Australia’s outback, where a 3.2bn-year-old slab of ocean floor has been turned on its side. Locked inside the ancient crust are chemical clues about the seawater that covered Earth at the time.

The scientists focused on different types of oxygen that seawater had carried into the crust. In particular, they analysed the relative amounts of two isotopes, oxygen-16 and the ever-so-slightly-heavier oxygen-18, in more than 100 samples of the stone.

They found that seawater contained more oxygen-18 when the crust was formed 3.2bn years ago. The most likely explanation, they believe, is that Earth had no continents at the time, because when these form, the clays they contain absorb the ocean’s heavy oxygen isotopes.

“Without continents above the ocean, the oxygen value would be distinct from today, which is exactly what we found,” Johnson said. “And it’s different in a way that’s most easily explained without land to get rained on and without soil formation.”

The findings do not mean Earth was entirely landless at the time. The scientists suspect that small “microcontinents” may have poked out of the ocean here and there. But they do not think the planet hosted vast soil-rich continents like those that dominate Earth today.

“I imagine a picture kind of like what it must look like to approach the Galápagos Islands from the west: vast expanses of ocean waters to the north and south with small volcanic rocky islets barely poking above the ocean surface,” said Wing.

Other explanations are possible, the researchers note. The same chemical signature could arise if continents formed far slower in the deep past than they do today, or if the continental clays that absorb heavy oxygen isotopes formed in the sea rather than on land.

It remains a mystery when the first continents eventually formed, most likely through the gradual slowing of heat loss from the Earth’s interior. But about half a billion years ago, Earth was dominated by the supercontinent Gondwana, which lasted into the Jurassic period, about 180m years ago. Wing now plans to look at oxygen isotope ratios in younger oceanic crust in the hope of nailing down when the global continents emerged.

“The oldest preserved continental material is approximately 4bn years old and the subsequent growth and emergence of the continental landmasses is constantly debated,” said Alan Hastie, an igneous petrologist at the University of Birmingham.

“Earth scientists use a variety of methods to try to estimate how the volume of the continents has changed over time. This is important as the volcanism associated with continental growth and the erosion of landmasses has modified the composition of Earth’s oceans and atmosphere. Therefore, any new study to help us constrain the amount of continental emergence is welcome,” he added.

(Source: The Guardian)

Dehydrated koala approaches cyclist for help as Australian wildlife suffers in heatwave and fires

‘It walked right up to me ... and climbed up onto my bike while I gave him water,’ says rider 

A dehydrated and confused koala approached a passing cyclist in what appeared to be a call for help, as a heatwave and wild fires continued to grip Australia.

Anna Heuseler was with a group of cyclists heading towards Adelaide in temperatures of up to 40C when they spotted the animal sitting in the middle of the road.

The koala hurried over and drank thirstily when offered a water bottle, even clambering onto Ms Heuseler’s bike to take big gulps.

Sharing the footage on Instagram, she wrote: “This koala walked right up to me as I was descending and climbed up onto my bike while I gave him water. Best thing to happen to me on a ride ever.”

The mid-north coast of New South Wales is one of Australia’s most populous koala habitats, estimated at 15,000-28,000.

But ecologists fear up to a third of those – as many as 9,000 – could have been killed in the fires, according to Sussan Ley, Australia’s environment minister. Those that survived the heat, flames and habitat loss have been left desperately searching for food and water.  

The experts believe 480 million animals could have been killed since the start of the devastating fires in September, which have burnt more than 5 million hectares (12 million acres) and killed eight people.

Ms Heuseler told 7News it was not uncommon to spot koalas out in the bushland, but she had been surprised by this animal’s reaction. “We’ve seen literally hundreds of koalas over the years [but] we have never seen a koala do this.

“We were descending from Norton Summit Road back into the city early this morning and we came around a bend and there was a koala sitting in the middle of the road. Naturally, we stopped because we were going to help relocate him off the road.

“I stopped on my bike and he walked right up to me, quite quickly for a koala, and as I was giving him a drink from all our water bottles, he actually climbed up onto my bike. None of us have ever seen anything like it.”

After giving the animal water, she led it away from the road, back to the scrubland.

The bushfires in the Adelaide Hills have burnt 25,000 hectares of land and left koalas.

Three weeks ago, an ecologist told an official inquiry that thousands of koalas had been killed, and the fires were so large their bodies would probably never be found.

Fires tore through the mid-north coast in November, and further emergency-level blazes have since flared in NSW near Sydney, on the NSW south coast, in South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia.

But even before the bushfire crisis, koala populations in NSW and Queensland had already dropped by 42 per cent between 1990 and 2010, according to the federal threatened species scientific committee, The Guardian reported.

Jane Brister, of Adelaide Koala Rescue, which is caring for 46 rescued koalas, said: “A big problem we’re noticing now is koalas are coming in starving… there’s just no food.

“Part of the problem is there’s often at least four days until someone finds them.”

Thousands of eucalyptus trees – the animals’ staple diet – have been destroyed by fire. 

(Source: Independent)

This algorithm can remove the water from underwater photos, and the results are incredible

An engineer has developed a computer program that can, in her words, “remove the water” from an underwater photograph. The result is a “physically accurate” image with all of the vibrance, saturation, and color of a regular landscape photo.

The technology, called Sea-thru, was developed by oceanographer and engineer Derya Akkaynak while she was a post-doctoral fellow under Tali Treibitz at the University of Haifa, and it has the potential to revolutionize underwater photography. While “remove the water” isn’t the most scientific explanation for how the technology works, as you can see in the Scientific American feature above, that’s more or less what it does.

By automatically removing the color cast and backscatter caused by the way light moves through a body of water, she’s able to capture underwater landscapes as they would look to the human eye on dry land—in other words: if all the water were gone.

Akkaynak and Haifa created Sea-thru by capturing “more than 1,100 images from two optically different water bodies,” each of which include her color chart. These photos were then used to train a model that compensated for the way light is both scattered and absorbed by water.

“Every time I see a reef with large 3D structures, I place my color chart at the base of the reef, and I swim away about 15 meters,” explains Akkaynak. “Then I start swimming towards the reef, towards the color chart, and photograph it from slightly different angles until I get to the reef.”

Once trained, the color chart is no longer necessary. As Akkaynak helpfully explained on Reddit, “All you need is multiple images of the scene under natural light, no color chart necessary.”

This sample image, published alongside the research paper explaining this technique in detail, shows you just how incredible Sea-thru really is:

To be clear, this method is not the same as Photoshopping an image to add in contrast and artificially enhance the colors that are absorbed most quickly by the water. It’s a “physically accurate correction,” and the results truly speak for themselves. And while this technology was developed with an eye towards scientific uses, we can only imagine the results it would produce if shared with incredible National Geographic photographers like Paul Nicklen…

To see the algorithm in action and learn more about how Akkaynak was able to achieve this, watch the Scientific American feature up top. And if you want to dive into the nitty gritty of how this algorithm was developed and how it works, you can read the full research paper on Sea-thru here.

(Source: PP)

Story of Bengalurian- who has recharged more than 1 lakh Wells in the city

Bengaluru has long been facing severe water crisis. According to a Niti Aayog report, the Karnataka Capital will be one of the prime metro cities that is expected to run out of water by next year itself.

While many are more concerned about this existing problem and discussing this issue, there are a few who have already started working towards saving the future by preventing the disastrous situation.

Meet water activist and urban planner Vishwanath Srikantaiah. Hailing from Bengaluru, he not only has a strategy to save the city from this upcoming severe water scarcity but has also started executing the plans to perfection and has also achieved some great success.

Vishwanath has been working really hard and smart as a team with local communities and until now has recharged 1 lakh wells and made 10,000 wells functional.

Vishwanath Srikantaiah (Credits: Metrosaga.com)

The 55-year-old activist has also received massive support from the well-diggers in the city. Vishwanath along with his team has set the target to recharge 1 million wells in the coming days and they are destined to achieve the goal.

Giving details about how the wells are being recharged, the water activist says, “These recharge wells will use rooftop rainwater and send it into the aquifers, helping groundwater conditions to improve. It will also help the traditional well diggers get a better livelihood.”

Besides recharging wells and making them functional for regular use, Vishwanath has also designed several rooftop water harvesting structures for industries and households across Karnataka.

While talking about water conversation, the active member of Rainwater Club since 1995 has some interesting words in store. He says, “For every square meter of roof area, one has to create 20 litres of storage of recharge, and for every square meter of the paved area around the building, one has to create 10 litres of storage for recharge. The recharge well should be a minimum of 10 feet.”

The enthusiastic activist has also developed a filter called VARUN, a device which purifies rainwater and so anyone can try out his method and use rainwater for daily usage. Interestingly, he has also restored some old wells in city’s Cubbon Park.

Vishwanath knows exactly the importance of water, especially during this crisis. He says, “We identified seven wells through something called the Karagadabavi, which is one of the oldest wells, where the Karaga festival begins. We were then able to revive it with traditional well-diggers. These wells can give 65,000 to 100,000 litres of water a day for the park and is done with citizen participation. The money is being raised by the India Cares Foundation, with a group called Friends of Lakes.”

Vishwanath adds, “With the current crippling water crisis, rejuvenating water bodies, growing water-efficient crops, and recycling wastewater are possible ways to avoid the recurrence of such an acute water crisis in future.”

The water activist says, “We have been able to encourage quite a lot of people to follow various water conservation methods. We also run an ecologically-run architectural practice, where many of the components are incorporated as part of the design.”

The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) including some few engineers have been constantly working to execute these water conservation tactics at the policy level which Dr. Vishwanath has been following with his 2 active members since more than 24 years.

(Source: The Youth)

Blue spaces: why time spent near water is the secret of happiness

Coastal environments have been shown to improve our health, body and mind. So should doctors start issuing nature-based prescriptions?

After her mother’s sudden death, Catherine Kelly felt the call of the sea. She was in her 20s and had been working as a geographer in London away from her native Ireland. She spent a year in Dublin with her family, then accepted an academic position on the west coast, near Westport in County Mayo. “I thought: ‘I need to go and get my head cleared in this place, to be blown away by the wind and nature.’”

Kelly bought a little house in a remote area and surfed, swam and walked a three-mile-long beach twice a day. “I guess the five or six years that I spent there on the wild Atlantic coast just healed me, really.”

She didn’t understand why that might be until some years later, when she started to see scientific literature that proved what she had long felt intuitively to be true: that she felt much better by the sea. For the past eight years, Kelly has been based in Brighton, researching “outdoor wellbeing” and the therapeutic effects of nature – particularly of water.

In recent years, stressed-out urbanites have been seeking refuge in green spaces, for which the proven positive impacts on physical and mental health are often cited in arguments for more inner-city parks and accessible woodlands. The benefits of “blue space” – the sea and coastline, but also rivers, lakes, canals, waterfalls, even fountains – are less well publicised, yet the science has been consistent for at least a decade: being by water is good for body and mind.

 ‘People who visit the coast at least twice weekly tend to experience better general and mental health,’ says Dr Lewis Elliott. Composite: Getty Images

Proximity to water – especially the sea – is associated with many positive measures of physical and mental wellbeing, from higher levels of vitamin D to better social relations. “Many of the processes are exactly the same as with green space – with some added benefits,” says Dr Mathew White, a senior lecturer at the University of Exeter and an environmental psychologist with BlueHealth, a programme researching the health and wellbeing benefits of blue space across 18 (mostly European) countries.

An extensive 2013 study on happiness in natural environments – to White’s mind, “one of the best ever” – prompted 20,000 smartphone users to record their sense of wellbeing and their immediate environment at random intervals. Marine and coastal margins were found by some distance to be the happiest locations, with responses approximately six points higher than in a continuous urban environment. The researchers equated it to “the difference between attending an exhibition and doing housework”.

Although living within 1km (0.6 miles) of the coast – and to a lesser extent, within 5km (3.1 miles) – has been associated with better general and mental health, it seems to be the propensity to visit that is key. “We find people who visit the coast, for example, at least twice weekly tend to experience better general and mental health,” says Dr Lewis Elliott, also of the University of Exeter and BlueHealth. “Some of our research suggests around two hours a week is probably beneficial, across many sectors of society.” Even sea views have been associated with better mental health.

White says there are three established pathways by which the presence of water is positively related to health, wellbeing and happiness. First, there are the beneficial environmental factors typical of aquatic environments, such as less polluted air and more sunlight. Second, people who live by water tend to be more physically active – not just with water sports, but walking and cycling.

Third – and this is where blue space seems to have an edge over other natural environments – water has a psychologically restorative effect. White says spending time in and around aquatic environments has consistently been shown to lead to significantly higher benefits, in inducing positive mood and reducing negative mood and stress, than green space does.

People of all socioeconomic groups go to the coast to spend quality time with friends and family. Dr Sian Rees, a marine scientist at the University of Plymouth, says the coastline is Britain’s “most socially levelling environment”, whereas forests tend to be accessed by high-income earners. “It’s not seen as being elite or a special place, it’s where we just go and have fun.

“By spending time in these environments, you’re getting what we call ‘health by stealth’ – enjoying the outdoors, interacting with the physical environment – and that also has some different health benefits.”

Even a fountain may do. A 2010 study (of which White was lead author) found that images of built environments containing water were generally rated just as positively as those of only green space; researchers suggested that the associated soundscape and the quality of light on water might be enough to have a restorative effect.

Although participants rated large bodies of water higher than other aquatic environments (and “swampy areas” were rated significantly less positively), the study suggested that any water is better than none – presenting opportunities for beneficial blue space to be designed or retrofitted. “You can’t change where the coast is, but when we’re talking about translating the benefits to other types of environments, there is nothing to stop a well-designed urban fountain,” says Elliott.

“People work with what they have,” says Kelly. When she lived in London, she would head for the Thames when she had a spare 10 minutes “and recalibrate”. Then, four times a year, she would go to Brighton “and the benefits would keep me going for the next few months – so I didn’t get into a place of being overwhelmed or stressed, just keeping myself topped up”.

The coast does seem to be especially effective, however. White suggests this is due to the ebb and flow of the tides. He points out that rumination – focusing on negative thoughts about one’s distress – is an established factor in depression. “What we find is that spending time walking on the beach, there’s a transition towards thinking outwards towards the environment, thinking about those patterns – putting your life in perspective, if you like.”

 To go to the sea is synonymous with letting go. Photograph: James Galpin/Getty Images

When you are sailing, surfing or swimming, says White, “you’re really in tune with natural forces there – you have to understand the motion of the wind, the movement of the water”. By being forced to concentrate on the qualities of the environment, we access a cognitive state honed over millennia. “We’re kind of getting back in touch with our historical heritage, cognitively.” Water is, quite literally, immersive.

As well as an academic, Kelly is a wellness practitioner who teaches classes in “mindfulness by the sea”. She says the sea has a meditative quality – whether it is crashing or still, or you are in the water or observing from the shore. “You can immerse yourself in it, which you can’t really do with a green space. You’re present in that moment, you’re looking at something with intention, and whether that’s for two minutes or half an hour, it gives you the benefits in that moment.”

In the future, she believes time in blue space will be a mainstream, formalised response. “The mental health crisis isn’t going anywhere,” she says.

Rees says support for the idea of “blue” or “green” prescriptions for individuals is growing. A “surfing for mental health” group in north Devon is one example she gives of how “nature-based interventions” can work.

By working to characterise and quantify benefits, BlueHealth’s cross-disciplinary team hopes to establish how “blue infrastructure” – the coast, rivers, inland lakes – can help tackle major public health challenges such as obesity, physical inactivity and mental health disorders. A 2016 paper – which White co-authored – put the monetary value of the health benefit of engaging with the marine environment at £176m.

Harnessing the power of blue space could also potentially help to alleviate inequality. “One of our recent papers finds that the benefits of coastal living are strongest for people living in the poorest areas,” says Elliott. For that reason, it is crucial to ensure everyone has access. With proximity to water associated with at least a 10% premium in house prices, White is concerned by the exclusivity of seaside urban development. “What will happen is you’ll get this kind of gentrification, where the people who benefit most will get squeezed inland.”

Access provisions under the revised Marine and Coastal Access Act, which is due to be completed next year, will help, says White. But seaside communities are particularly vulnerable, imminently from seasonal fluctuations in income and environmental degradation, and, in the longer term, sea level rise and extreme weather due to climate change.

Rees says that the benefits of marine environments for our wellbeing are tied to the health of those environments, and that conservation efforts need to factor in the “natural capital” of blue space in supporting our wellbeing. Kelly’s work has found a link between a sense of personal connection to the sea and environmentally friendly behaviours; researchers hope that we may be more inclined to protect blue space if the health benefits are proven.

“To go to the sea is synonymous with letting go,” says Kelly. “It could be lying on a beach or somebody handing you a cocktail. For somebody else, it could be a wild, empty coast. But there is this really human sense of: ‘Oh, look, there’s the sea’ – and the shoulders drop.”

(Source: The Guardian)

How to build a climate-proof home that never floods

The Netherlands has found an ingenious way to combat rising water – build housing that does the same

Could climate change-resistant homes help solve the housing crisis? The Met Office’s conclusion was unequivocal. There is “no doubt” climate change played a role in the record-breaking temperatures that fried the UK and northern Europe last month.

But there was an irony in this year’s latest heatwave too. The scorching heat that sparked fears of buckled train tracks and made many of us yearn for rain was a symptom of a gradual shift that isn’t just raising temperatures but is making flooding more likely too.

The UK Climate Projections 2018 warn that coming decades would see a triple whammy of rising summer temperatures, rising sea levels and more extreme weather such as flash floods. In time, these patterns will fundamentally change where we live and the homes we live in.

Many of us already face an uncomfortably high risk of flooding. More than one in 10 of the new homes built in England in 2016-17 are in areas the Environment Agency deems at risk of flooding (it estimates they face at least a 1% chance of flooding every year). Over time, those aren’t great odds.

Yet the agency recently warned that “we can’t win a war against water by building away climate change with infinitely high flood defences”. Instead it is calling for housebuilders to construct homes that are more flood-resistant, for example by adding watertight flood doors and thicker, more waterproof membranes in the walls.

This sort of technology is getting better. Much of it comes from the Netherlands, where they know a thing or two about flood defences.

There are also things that can be done to make homes more resilient in the event that the worst happens, and flood waters do get in.

 Schoonschip, a floating home project in Amsterdam. Photograph: Isabel Nabuurs

As anyone who has endured the horror of a flooded home will tell you, one of the biggest expenses in the aftermath is replacing waterlogged wooden flooring and joists and sodden electrics.

Housebuilders can mitigate these risks fairly easily, by installing concrete floors and routing power cables as high as possible.

In the long term, such building techniques will become increasingly mainstream. By the 2080s up to 1.5m homes in England will be in areas at significant risk of flooding, according to the Committee on Climate Change.

But a more radical change to the way we build homes could deliver a more immediate benefit – by helping tackle the housing crisis.

Building homes that aren’t just resistant but immune to flooding could allow developers to build safely on land currently dismissed as unviable because it has a high flood risk.

Opening up swaths of extra land for development, especially in the most densely populated parts of the country, might even give developers a fighting chance of meeting the government’s target of building 300,000 new homes a year.

The most tried and tested way to build in flood-risk areas is to lift the house off the ground. Humans have been building homes on stilts for millennia, and this technique is still popular in south-east Asia, Central America and Brazil.

More modern techniques include building on a raised platform like a beach house – a familiar sight in my wife’s native Australia – or simply on banks of earth or concrete. Of course this approach requires an element of second guessing: you need to build the accommodation above the level any floodwater will reach.

But the latest technology solves this problem: houses that float and rise with the floodwaters.

Ingenious Dutch architects – where else? – have designed houses that have a buoyant, air-filled concrete base instead of conventional foundations anchoring them to the ground.

Some are intended to float full-time and are bound together to form floating communities that sit atop the water of a lake.

Others are amphibious, designed to sit on terra ferma most of the time but able to float safely in the event of flooding, albeit with copious moorings to prevent any relocation.

Such technology comes at a price. Amphibious houses cost about 20% more to build than a conventional design. With prices falling in some parts of the country and builders seeing their margins squeezed, persuading them to build more expensive homes won’t be easy. The clincher could be the land question.

A combination of strict planning rules and “landbanking” – developers’ habit of buying but not building on land – is driving up prices in many parts of the UK.

By contrast, floodplain land is cheap. So technology that enables homes to be built safely in areas that were previously off limits could make business sense for private developers and spur the construction of thousands of affordable, unfloodable homes.

Other parts of the property industry would need to get, ahem, on board. Insurers will want to be sure of the houses’ immunity to flooding, as will mortgage lenders. But both serve conventional homes in flood-risk areas, so there’s no reason for them to eschew homes that cannot flood, no matter how high the water rises.

This won’t magically solve the housing crisis or eliminate all flooding risk. As climate change steadily puts more conventional homes at flood risk – whether from tidal surges, or rivers and drains overflowing – the UK needs to continue investing in flood defences.

But if we’re willing to embrace the new technology of floating and amphibious houses, we can unlock tracts of cheap floodplain land that could be used for some of the new homes Britain needs so desperately.

As the Environment Agency says, we can’t out-build the flood risks of climate change. But if we’re canny, we might just turn some of the threat into an opportunity.

(Source: The Guardian)

Oil built Saudi Arabia – will a lack of water destroy it?

As Riyadh continues to build skyscrapers at a dizzying rate, an invisible emergency threatens the desert kingdom’s existence

Bottles of water twirl on the conveyor belts of the Berain water factory in Riyadh, as a puddle of water collects on the concrete floor. In a second warehouse, tanks emit a low hum as water brought in from precious underground aquifers passes through a six-stage purification process before bottling.

“In Saudi Arabia there are only two sources of water: the sea and deep wells,” says Ahmed Safar Al Asmari, who manages one of Berain’s two factories in Riyadh. “We’re in the central region, so there are only deep wells here.”

 Irrigation canals in Saudi Arabia channel fresh water from deep wells and desalination plants to farms and homes. Photograph: Tom Hanley/Alamy

Perhaps not surprising for someone who makes a living selling water, Asmari professes to be untroubled about the future of Saudi Arabia’s water supply. “Studies show water in some reserves can stand consumption for another 150 years,” he says. “In Saudi Arabia, we have many reserves – we have no problems in this area.”

His confident predictions are out of sync with the facts. One Saudi groundwater expert at King Faisal University predicted in 2016 that the kingdom only had another 13 years’ worth of groundwater reserves left.

“Groundwater resources of Saudi Arabia are being depleted at a very fast rate,” declared the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation as far back as 2008. “Most water withdrawn comes from fossil deep aquifers, and some predictions suggest that these resources may not last more than about 25 years.”

In a country that rarely sees rain, the habit of draining groundwater, like the Berain factory does, could prove perilous: groundwater makes up an estimated 98% of naturally occurring fresh water in Saudi Arabia.

Indeed, oil may have built the modern Saudi state, but a lack of water could destroy it if drastic solutions aren’t found soon.

 Fans spray water on Muslim pilgrims around the Grand Mosque in the run up to the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Photograph: Dar Yasin/AP

The emergency seems invisible in Riyadh, which is undergoing a construction boom as more buildings creep upwards to join a collection of towering skyscrapers.

Although everyone knows this city in the desert owes its existence to the discovery of oil in 1938, fewer realise water was just as important. Decades of efforts to make the desert bloom to feed the city’s population have resulted in agricultural projects to grow water-intensive crops such as wheat, on farmland meted out to figures favoured by the royal family.

While many question the accuracy of the kingdom’s optimistic estimates of its own oil reserves, the looming threat of a lack of water could prove to be an even bigger problem. Saudi Arabia consumes double the world average of water per person, 263 litres per capita each day and rising, amid a changing climate that will strain water reserves.

 Saudi Arabia leads the world in the volume of desalinated water it produces, and now operates 31 desalination plants such as the one pictured, located outside Riyadh. Photograph: Fahad Shadeed/Reuters

In March, the Kingdom launched the Qatrah programme to demand citizens drastically cut their water use. Its aim is to ration water to 200 litres per person per day by 2020 and 150 litres by 2030.

It has also tried to reform the water-hungry agriculture industry, reducing government incentives for cereal production. The overall amount of irrigated farmland still hasn’t declined, though, as producers switch to more profitable crops that still require large amounts of water. Almarai, a major food producer, has begun buying up deserted land in the US, on plots near Los Angeles and in Arizona, and in Argentina, in order to grow water-rich alfalfa to feed its dairy cows.

The Saudi Arabian National Transformation Plan, also known as Vision 2020 – a subset of the Vision 2030 initiative intended to diversity the Kingdom’s economy away from oil – aims to reduce the amount of water pulled from underground aquifers for use in agriculture. It seeks to employ 191% of these water resources for farming, down from the current estimates of 416% of water available.

“This means that Saudi Arabia is using more than four times the water that renews on average – and that’s in Vision 2020,” says Dr Rebecca Keller from Stratfor – a private intelligence and geopolitical analysis firm – who says she was shocked after learning about the country’s water use. “Technically they’re using fossil water, which renews at a really, really slow rate. The sheer volume of overuse stood out to me.”

Desalinating sea water has long been seen as a silver bullet against the growing threat of water shortages across the Middle East. Saudi Arabia leads the world in the volume of desalinated water it produces, and now operates 31 desalination plants. Desalinated water, as distinct from naturally occurring fresh water, makes up 50% of water consumed in Saudi Arabia. The remaining 50% is pulled from groundwater.

 Changing water consumption habits remains the toughest challenge for Saudi Arabia. Photograph: Hasan Jamali/AP

It comes as at a high-energy cost, however. According to the International Energy Agency, in 2016 desalination accounted for 3% of the Middle East’s water supply but 5% of its overall energy cost. Researchers at King Abdelaziz University in Jeddah estimate that the demand for desalinated water increases by roughly 14% each year, but add that “desalination is a very costly process and is not sustainable”. Desalination plants also harm the surrounding environment, pumping pollutants into the air and endangering marine ecosystems with their run-off.

A recent push towards using solar power rather than fossil fuels to desalinate means that the first commercial plant is expected to be up and running at 2021 at the earliest, although it reportedly remains behind schedule.

Keller says Saudi Arabia’s evolving use of desalination technology could also alter their relationship with other countries in the region, in particular Israel. “They’re producing the most cutting-edge technology for desalination, especially at scale,” she said. “As we see [both countries] having more geopolitical things in common in terms of their attitude to Iran, there’s more room for this relationship to grow, and the Saudi water sector is something that could benefit from this cooperation.”

The toughest challenge of all remains switching consumption habits to avoid an impending water emergency. The kingdom is pressing ahead with its Red Sea Project, a tourism haven the size of Belgium that aims to attract a million visitors annually to its unspoiled beaches and 50 new hotels. Such mammoth construction means growing water use, with current estimates that the string of resorts will use 56,000 cubic metres of water per day.

“It’s the desert,” said Keller. “Obviously water is a natural constraint.”

(Source: The Guardian)

Use your waste water to save street trees, experts urge

Dishwater and bathwater can be used to give vital support that councils often cannot afford to young trees

Instead of letting your dirty dishwater go down the drain, consider using it to water the trees on your street. That is the message from tree experts, who say survival rates for urban trees could be boosted significantly by volunteers.

Russell Miller, a London-based arboricultural consultant, said: “If you plant trees from good stock, at the right time, and provide enough water, you’d lose almost none prematurely. But get that wrong, and more than half can die.”

Miller says a big issue is that local council budgets often do not stretch to include proper watering, which is critical in the first three years of a tree’s life. “Watering is less sexy than planting. It’s cheaper to replace them,” he said.

 Street trees in Bethnal Green, London. New trees need at least 20 litres of water a week. Photograph: M Sobreira/Alamy

New street trees need at least 20 litres of water a week – about two large watering cans – from April to September, especially in hot weather, says Miller. Any tap or grey water, including dishwater, bathwater and water from washing cars, windows and even clothes, is fine, as long as it does not contain bleach.

England’s tree-planting fell 71% short of government targets last year, with just over 2m planted. Last October, the environment secretary, Michael Gove, announced a £60m scheme to plant 10m trees, including 130,000 urban trees. But there are concerns that both the money and trees could go to waste unless the right aftercare is prioritised.

“The idea is not just to plant a million trees, but to establish a million trees,” warned Tony Kirkham, arboretum head at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew.

Most species of street tree, such as the London plane, are chosen especially for their resilience and tolerance of urban stress. But even these species need years to develop root systems that can find their own sources of moisture among the networks of cables and pipes, and compacted soil under pavements and roads.

“Once street trees get stressed it’s difficult for them to bounce back, they really struggle, and have to rely on rain falling the following year,” Kirkham explained. “If this doesn’t happen, the problem is compounded from year to year.”

Citizen-led projects are making an impact, and some local councils, including Cambridge, Sheffield, Camden, Kingston-upon-Thames, Waltham, Enfield and Richmond, have started social media campaigns, put signs up on trees and sent out leaflets urging residents to water their local trees.

“Councils are hoping for rain, and hoping they’ll survive, but there are heavy losses when it comes to urban tree planting. The public can dramatically improve their chances of survival,” said Kirkham. “Anything we can do to relieve the stress on our trees is a massive bonus, for both our local authorities and our trees.”

(Source: The Guardian)

David Attenborough urges everyone to leave a spoonful of sugar and water in their garden to save humanity

You don’t have to be a tree hugger to respect the environment that you live in.

For two million years, before the agricultural revolution, humans foraged the land and brought thousands of species of animals to extinction.

We can say that millions of years ago we didn’t know better, but now we do.

Bees are pollinators, and without them, we wouldn’t be alive. They are responsible for feeding 90% of the world’s population.

David Attenborough, the voice behind The Blue Planet and Planet Earth, warns “if bees were to disappear from the face of the Earth, humans would have just four years to live.”

That may become a reality at the rate things are going.

In a heartfelt Instagram post, the 92-year-old documentary maker shared that “in the last five years, the bee population has dropped by 1/3.”

There is a way to make a difference.

David Attenborough says by leaving a teaspoon of sugar and water in your garden or lawn, you can help to re-hydrate them when they’re tired.

“This time of year bees can often look like they are dying or dead, however, they’re far from it. Bees can become tired and they simply don’t have enough energy to return to the hive which can often result in being swept away. If you find a tired bee in your home, a simple solution of sugar and water will help revive an exhausted bee. Simply mix two tablespoons of white, granulated sugar with one tablespoon of water, and place on a spoon for the bee to reach.”

In turn, these bees are going to give you health and happiness!


(Source: Newsroom 24)

Ancient palace emerges from drought-hit Iraq reservoir

A 3,400-year-old palace has emerged from a reservoir in the Kurdistan region of Iraq after water levels dropped because of drought.

The discovery of the ruins in the Mosul Dam reservoir on the banks of the Tigris River inspired a spontaneous archeological dig that will improve understanding of the Mittani Empire, one of the least-researched empires of the Ancient Near East, the Kurdish-German team of researchers said in a press release.

"The find is one of the most important archaeological discoveries in the region in recent decades," Kurdish archeologist Hasan Ahmed Qasim said in a press release.

The palace would have originally stood just 65 feet from the river on an elevated terrace. A terrace wall of mud bricks was later added to stabilize the building, adding to to the imposing architecture.

Ivana Puljiz, an archeologist from the University of Tübingen's Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies, describes the palace, known as Kemune, as a carefully designed building with mud-brick walls up to two meters (6.6 feet) thick.

Some of the walls are more than two meters high, and various rooms have plastered walls, she added.
The team also found wall paintings in shades of red and blue, which were probably a common feature of palaces at the time but have rarely been found preserved.

"Discovering wall paintings in Kemune is an archaeological sensation," she said in a press release.
"Kemune is only the second site in the region where wall paintings of the Mittani period have been discovered," Puljiz told CNN in an email.

Ten clay tablets covered in cuneiform, an ancient system of writing, were also discovered and have been sent to Germany for translation.

"From the texts we hope to gain information on the inner structure of the Mittani empire, its economic organisation, and the relationship of the Mittani capital with the administrative centers in the neighboring regions," Puljiz told CNN.

Archeologists first became aware of the site in 2010 when water levels in the reservoir were low, but this is the first time they have been able to excavate.

However, the site was submerged shortly after the dig, Puljiz said, adding: "It is unclear when it will emerge again."

Qasim also worked on another project with the University of Tübingen, uncovering a Bronze Age city in northern Iraq in 2016.

The team unearthed the city, which lies beneath what is now the small village of Bassetki in the autonomous region of Kurdistan, close to territory that was held by ISIS.

Days after the dig was completed, Iraqi security forces began their push to take Mosul back from ISIS.

Measuring a kilometer in length and 500 meters across (about 1,000 yards by roughly 550 yards), the ancient urban area features grand houses, a palace, an extensive road network and a cemetery.

(Source: CNN)

Namibia looks to sell 1,000 wild animals to game farms as national parks run out of water

Six hundred buffaloes, 28 elephants and 60 giraffes set to be auctioned

Namibia is reportedly selling 1,000 wild animals from its national parks as the southwestern African country continues to struggle with drought.

The African nation’s government is hoping that game farmers will buy the animals, despite the fact that the farmers raise animals for hunting.

Stanley Simataa, Namibia’s Information Minister, said the environment ministry suggested the sale to reduce the amount of wildlife in the parks, which were struggling with the drought.

Namibia’s current drought is the second in three years and is so severe that Hage Geingob, the country’s president, declared a state of emergency in May 2019.

Officials said the national parks were unable to provide adequate feeding conditions for animals.

A wildebeest photographed in Namibia near a waterhole ( AFP/Getty )

“The grazing condition in most of our parks is extremely poor and if we do not reduce the number of animals, this will lead to loss of animals due to starvation,” said Romeo Muyunda, according to AFP.

Mr Simataa said that between 500 and 600 buffaloes would be sold from Waterberg Plateau Park and 150 springbok would be sold from the Hardap and Naute game parks, according to The Namibian.

The government will sell the animals at auction and is hoping they will be bought by game farmers, as the group have facilities to care for wild animals.

“Given that this is a dry year, the ministry would like to sell various types of game species from various protected areas to preserve grazing, and to generate much-needed funds for parks and wildlife management,” said Mr Muyunda.

Namibia also plans to sell 65 oryx, 28 elephants and 20 impala, as well as 35 eland, 16 wildebeest, 60 giraffes and 16 kudus.

Officials hope to raise $1.1m from the sale.

The proceeds will go towards the government’s Game Products Trust Fund, which will support conservation efforts.

Namibia has previously been criticised by animal conservation activists, for its trophy hunting policy.

The country permits the controlled and authorised hunting of wildlife and around 20% of conservancy revenues come from hunting.

The money generated is used to increase anti-poaching policing and relocate animals, as well as being funnelled back into the local community to build waterholes and infrastructure.

The country is home to some of the world’s largest remaining populations of free roaming elephants and black rhinos.

(Source: Independent)

Israel ready to help India in dealing with water shortage

At a time when large parts of India are facing excessive water crisis and drought, Israel has extended support in dealing with desertification and water management.

t a time when several parts of India are facing acute water shortage and drought situation, Israel has expressed its keenness to share its experience in dealing with desertification and water management, in which it is a world leader.

Israel, with over 60 per cent of its territory being a desert and another 20 per cent semi-arid land, has developed a variety of solutions to desertification through desert agriculture, irrigation, desalination, aquaculture, afforestation and management of water resources.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu at the Olga beach in 2017. (Representative Image/File Photo)

The country is one of the world's leading nations in desert technologies and methods of dealing with desertification.

"As part of our growing partnership with India, Israel is keen to work together and share all its experience and cutting edge technology in our joint fight against desertification, including a strategic partnership on water management and water security," said Israeli Ambassador to India Ron Malka in a statement.

His statement came in the context of World Day to Combat Desertification, which is observed on every June 17 to promote public awareness of international efforts to combat desertification.

The statement assumes significance as it comes at a time when several parts of India are facing acute water shortage and drought situation.

A statement issued by the Israeli Embassy said MASHAV, the country's Agency for International Development Cooperation, places special emphasis on development cooperation and assistance in the fight against desertification and drought by introducing international programs of capacity building, training, project development and research.

MASHAV's approach is based on Israel's experience in facing harsh climatic conditions, combines the transfer of adaptable technology, research and development, and a hands-on experience originating from leading Israeli experts and institutions, it added.

Under the Indo-Israeli Agricultural Project with the federal and state governments of India, the centre of excellence for date palms in the heart of the desert in Bhuj, Gujarat introduced Indian farmers to date palms suitable for arid conditions made more common by desertification, the statement said.

Date palms are ideal value crops for farmers in arid conditions that can be found in India and Israel alike, it added.

(Source: India Today)

Water crisis is leading to child kidnappings and rape in South Sudan

The struggle for clean water is sparking fresh conflict in the world's youngest nation – and women are bearing the brunt

For a split second it looked like the young South Sudanese woman and her baby, swaddled in a cloth-carrier on her back, were taking a breather from the heat of the day under a tree.

But then Mary, 25, a mother herself, took a second look. The two motionless figures were awkwardly propped up against the trunk. The bodies were stiff. Both had died from dehydration.

This is Boma, a state in South Sudan that is suffering from one of the country’s worst water shortages.

Women walk an exhausting eight hours to fetch water ( Photos Bel Trew )

The world’s youngest country has been ravaged by a brutal five-year civil war that has killed over 400,000 people and pushed its population to the brink of famine. That conflict nominally ended in September, with South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, and the rebel group led by Riek Machar signing a historic peace deal.

But six months on, a simmering humanitarian crisis is threatening to unpick the tense truce.

And water, though often ignored, is now at the heart of a new wave of unrest.

Nearly 80 per cent of the country has no access to clean water, according to the government water authority, which said vital infrastructure has been destroyed in the fighting.

With climate change driving up temperatures, water resources for cattle and agriculture are also in dwindling supply.

The shortages have sparked armed conflicts between several of the country’s 60 or so ethnic groups and could be the tinder box for fresh conflict in the future, officials have warned.

Caught in the crossfire are women, who are responsible for fetching water supplies even if it means making long and dangerous journeys.

Mary says she found the bodies along the dirt track that leads to a water pump from Gumuruq, a remote village only accessible by helicopter and a long drive on dirt track roads.

In this area, dozens of bore holes were destroyed in the civil war and so it is a treacherous eight-hour hike to the nearest water pump.

Along the way, women risk dying of thirst or hunger, as well as being attacked and even raped by men, who in the searing heat of the dry season ambush them for their jerry cans.

This, aid agencies say, is not a unique phenomenon for South Sudan – across the world, women are often the water fetchers and face similar violence.

Mary and five women who sit beside her all say they have been ambushed fetching water. One had been raped at gunpoint.

“I personally know 10 people who have died from thirst in the last 12 months, at least three already this year,” she tells The Independent from a tukul, or mud-packed reed hut, in her village.

“It is a common problem and it is going to get worse in the next few weeks, which is the peak of the dry season.”

“We have all been attacked walking to the bore holes. Water is scarce and the dry seasons are getting longer. This year we expect the number of deaths and attacks to be even higher.”

South Sudan is limping through one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises. Four million people have been displaced internally or externally, while more than two-thirds of the country, or 7.1 million, rely on aid to survive.

Last month, the United Nations said that 1.5 million were on brink of starvation, and tens of thousands are already in famine.

Despite the peace deal, battles still rage in southern regions between the army and a rebel force that refused to sign the September deal.

Even the signatories to the agreement are wary of each other. The deal set a deadline for all sides to screen their respective forces and unify them into a national army before the formation of a unity government in May.

None of these steps have been completed yet.

But amid the mesmerising overlap of woes, water should not be an issue.

Children empty jerry cans of water in Gumuruq in remote South Sudan (Bel Trew)

Officials in South Sudan’s water authority say there is more than enough water to serve the population of just 10 million.

The country is blighted by floods for more than half of the year and is crisscrossed with rivers, including the White Nile, one of the two main tributaries to the Nile. It also straddles three transboundary aquifers.

And yet according to Oxfam, which runs several water, sanitation and hygiene programmes (WASH), around 6 million people, or three-quarters of the population, are in need of help getting access to clean water and sanitation.

Millions are at risk of waterborne diseases such as typhoid and cholera, which spread unchecked in rural communities that lack access to basic sanitation.

Armed groups have deliberately targeted water infrastructure during the years of fighting as a way of destroying the communities of their enemies. 

There are scant resources to rebuild these water holes: Oxfam and others say their WASH programmes are woefully underfunded. While Alier Ngongoka, the water authority chair, said only 0.1 per cent of the government budget is allocated for water.

Ratcheting up pressure is climate change. Seasonal rivers are drying up early, forcing people such as those in cattle herding communities to be on the move, sparking mini local wars which the water authorities fear could bleed into the national conflict. Cattle raids and related child abductions are on the rise.

Boys on the banks of a seasonal river that is drying out a month too early due to climate change in South Sudan (Bel Trew)

Four million people have already been internally or externally displaced from the five-year civil war. But Ngongoka warned that if nothing was done to improve the water crisis, within two years there could be millions more on the move.

Rural communities would be forced to move to urban areas, piling pressure on scant resources at a time when South Sudanese refugees are also beginning to return to the country.

“Water creates real armed conflicts among the pastoral communities, particularly as the dry season is getting longer,” Ngongoka tells The Independent from his office in the capital Juba. “We have already seen fighting in areas like greater Jonglei, Akobo and eastern Equatoria.”

He adds: “With no support to our WASH activities to help communities access water we will see more conflict, particularly with the impact of climate change.”

Compounding the problem is the fact that as South Sudan has no storage facilities to collect and store water, there is also no data to ascertain the real size of the crisis.

And that is why the government is hoping to build a large dam on the White Nile just south of Juba, to also produce clean energy.

Every year the violence is getting worse because access to water is deteriorating
Boma governor John Joseph
But that is a controversial decision. Egypt and Ethiopia, both Nile Basin countries, have nearly come to blows over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the other main tributary: the Blue Nile.

Egypt’s population heavily relies on the Nile and so Cairo is terrified that Ethiopia’s dam, the largest hydropower plant in Africa, will drastically reduce water flow downstream and impact its national security.

The decade-long spat has yet to be resolved. Egypt has talked about the GERD being a “national security issue”.

A dam in South Sudan, on the other Nile source, could spark an international conflict if not carefully handled.

But for now the authorities are more concerned about domestic conflict and violence.

In Pibor, the regional capital of Boma where Mary is from, local governor John Joseph warns that people have already died in his state over water.

“As the government, we don’t have the capacity to build permanent water infrastructure for people or livestock,” he says. “Every year the violence is getting worse because access to water is deteriorating.”

The authorities say child abduction is also linked to South Sudan’s water troubles (Bel Trew)

Opposite his battered offices, across a dirt-track compound, local gender minister Lydia Agolory keeps a watchful eye over a toddler boy and a girl, who is barely five years old.

The children were abducted from their families in 2017 by cattle raiders but were only recently found.

Child abduction has become a business in the region as kidnappers are able to take children during raids and sell them for livestock to families who are unable to conceive.

But bizarrely the local authorities have linked the spike in abductions to the water crisis. 

Cattle raids are increasing as shepherding communities are on the move looking for water resources or new livestock to replace those lost to thirst, leading to direct conflict with rival ethnic groups.

Women in Pibor’s market try to earn a living by selling items such as water and bush fruit (Bel Trew)

One of the main side businesses is taking children along with the cows.

These two children were too little when they were abducted to know their real parents, names or home towns and so are upset and confused.

Agolory explains it is too dangerous to keep the pair in Pibor, as they are at risk of being rekidnapped by the disgruntled family who paid 30 cattle for each of them. The children are put, sobbing, on a tiny propeller plane bound for the capital.

“In so many ways, women and children are worst impacted by the water crisis,” she adds.

Back in Gumuruq, Mary shows where the scars stutter across her arms and legs from when she was attacked by armed men while fetching water last year.

Two men demanded we lie down on our faces, they told me they would kill us if we didn’t do what they said
Mother-of-three Elizabeth, in the village of Gumuruq
They flogged her so hard with sticks she was carried to a field clinic unconscious.

She then spent 10 months in hospital recovering and was only recently discharged.

“Since that time until now I am now too weak to get water,” she says.

“I still feel pain every day,” she adds, before trailing off.

Elizabeth, 35, who sits beside her, says she was raped at gunpoint in February 2016 by a gang of men who, she says, hide in the bush preying on women fetching water and firewood.

“Two men demanded we lie down on our faces, they told me they would kill us if we didn’t do what they said,” the mother-of-three explains.

A destroyed water pump in remote Manyabol in South Sudan (Bel Trew)

“I had no power and had to surrender myself to him,” she adds.

But the situation is even worse in Manyabol, a two-hour drive from Gumuruq, along a recently cleared dirt track. The village is so remote the commissioner of the area makes a point of repeatedly saying we are the first white people to set foot there.

Scrambling through the bush, heavy with birdsong, villagers from the Murle ethnic group that live there point out the water pumps that were destroyed in the fighting a few years ago.

Members of the Dinka in Bor, a neighbouring but rival ethnic group who took an opposing side in the civil conflict, had bulldozed all the water pumps in the area with armed vehicles to devastate the local community, according to local officials.

With resources stretched to breaking point, no aid organisation has been able to make it this far to repair the damage.

That day, a team from Oxfam were visiting the area to assess the damage.

“It was a deliberate attack to try to destroy the town, where 2,000 people live,” says loca commissioner Jacob Labousho. “But we hope now there is peace agreement, we can move on from this and get assistance to rebuild.

“No aid organisations come this far but with the seasonal rivers drying up early we have no access to water.”

A South Sudanese woman collects water for her family at a tank in a UN-protected displacement camp in Juba (Bel Trew)

Marconi Kuju, a member of the Oxfam team, says 100 water pumps were destroyed in that area alone, forcing women to walk up to 10 hours for water.

“It is an issue of money, there is a big funding gap for WASH programmes because it doesn’t attract the same level of attention as other crises,” he says.

Oxfam has only received funding to build two new bore holes this year. Their teams were busy drilling one, about four hours away near the capital Pibor.

It’s a race against time: the water level is dropping each year, meaning they have to dig even deeper, making the drilling process more expensive.

At one pump rehabilitated by the aid organisation last year, a line of women, who have walked for hours, start the laborious process of pumping water into dozens of jerry cans.

Women at a water hole in South Sudan (Bel Trew)

It is exhausting work. In the searing heat they take turns to throw their full body weight on the metal lever to fill the canary-yellow containers.

As the pressure mounts, a fight breaks out. Only two of the six pumps in this area are working, which is causing problems because the population is booming.

“The water levels are too low so it’s hard to pump – it can take an hour to fill a single jerry can,“ Nachunalan, 43, says, taking a breather by a patch of reeds.

“There has been no change for us since the peace deal was signed. Women are facing thirst, hunger, and violence. When will it end?”

(Source: Independent)