Socio-economic and Demographic
Changes
Context
The world’s population is due to rapid changes. Urbanisation, population growth and rising living standards are socio-economic and demographic changes particularly pronounced in emerging economies and developing countries. According to recent estimates, by 2050 the worlds’ population will grow from today’s 6.8 billion to approximately 9.3 billion people, of which 70 per cent will be urban dwellers. In combination with increasing wealth and change of lifestyle, the synergistic implications for water supply and sanitation resources as well as for the global ecosystem become problematically self-evident. The United Nations General Assembly’s resolution on 28 July 2010, defining access to clean water and sanitation as a human right, sets an important landmark illustrating the political will to tackle the water crisis. However, despite the regional success stories towards reaching the Millennium Development Goals, more than 2.6 billion people still lack access to basic sanitation
and approximately 884 million people do not have access to safe drinking water. Sanitation, lagging more severely behind from the targets, demands for focused attention whereas responding quickly and comprehensively to the growing pressure on water supply leading to conflicts on resource allocation asks for cross-sectoral involvement. The water sector cannot tackle balancing the supply and demand alone. The need to respond applies to every sector of our society, and a system approach is increasingly called for in the sustainable development of water management. In practice, implementation of this holistic understanding
remains still incomplete. When looking at especially water quality challenge from the perspective of responding to socio-economic and demographic changes, improved knowledge of different system levels and empowerment of their associated capacity were called for throughout the 2010 World Water Week. The systems highlighted here include communities in the developing world with special emphasis on young women, growing urban areas of different sizes and global political economy.
Major insights
Education and empowerment of young women on water and sanitation. Women are the main managers of water, sanitation and hygiene in communities in the developing world. They are the biggest beneficiaries and most efficient implementers of improvedpractices. However, the capacity of women is still under-utilised in developing more sustainable management solutions and their opportunities undermined due to lack of education. Lack of basic sanitation and inadequate water quality in the growing communities cause cholera outbreaks, diarrhoea and other diseases. Moreover, young women tend to drop out of school when they reach puberty, due to lack of sanitation facilities. Many women have no access to sanitary pads or waste disposal facilities and the information on hygiene management is often poor due to cultural and religious taboos. There will need to be major improvements especially in the mentioned sanitary and hygiene issues with consideration that they are intertwined with promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women, ultimately underlying the well-being of whole developing communities. Flexible urban systems to meet the changeability of the future. Whereas the growing mega-cities are struggling with the capacity of their existing ageing sewer systems, the new urban growth and urban sprawl takes increasingly place outside the former cities merging the surrounding areas together thus creating informal cities with no or very little water supply or treatment infrastructure. Rising living standards and growing consumption associated with urbanisation set an extra pressure on the urban water management system. The rapid uncontrolled changes lead to uncertainty of the future and demand for proactive approach with flexible solutions in different scales and application of precautionary principles in urban water management. Changing world order. In the global political economy, water quality and quantity are managed in an intertwined manner on a water-food-energy nexus. The dynamics of the nexus are increasingly complicated by climate change and shifting consumptionand dietary patterns. Most importantly, the water footprints of the decisions made on the nexus are increasingly located in other parts of the world than the decision makers themselves. Moreover, besides traditional national and public institutions, new actors are occupying the water field. Increasing foreign and private transnational investment in water poses both opportunities and challenges for sustainability of water
quality and quantity.
Challenges for progress
Cultural and religious taboos. Low income countries need more investments in sanitation facilities in schools in order to prevent young women from dropping out of the educational system after they reach puberty. Cultural and religious taboos have to be challenged by bringing the issue to policy agendas and by encouraging small scale businesses providing women with sanitary pads and waste disposal facilities. Foreign investment and the risk for neocolonialism. Foreign and private investment in land and water can also have a downside when the resources are 'grabbed' from the local communities. In order to secure their increasing domestic demand, investors mainly from the Eastern Asia and Arab world andtransnational corporations originating from the US and Europe are negotiating long term leasing agreements of land and water resources in countries in Africa that are themselves tackling with water and food insecurity. Hence the foreign investment in land and water poses also a risk of neocolonialism. Limitations of private sector engagement. When it comes to the private sector involvement, despite the increasing stakeholder scrutiny there is a risk of corporations hijacking the discourse on water governance and water footprinting for their own advocacy purposes. Moreover, there is a lack of understanding of the importance of global supply chains and networks in global water management of virtual water flows as the private sector approach is still very much limited to basin specific water use issues concerning specific operations. Stockholm Water Prize Laureate Professor Tony Allan among others emphasised throughout the week that major decisions on global water security regarding both water quantity and quality are made in water intensive agro-food supply chains by farmers, global traders, retailers and ultimately by consumers. Chemical pollution and water reuse. Chemicalisation of consumption and rising water quality standards pose new challenges for urban water management. Whereas in the developing countries waste water can mostly be recycled for re-use and the biggest obstacles are in the lack of political will and funding in implementing existing techniques, rather than in their availability, urban areas in the developed world are facing a new, creepingwater quality problem. The Malin Falkenmark Seminar discussed the effects of large consumption of drugs in developed countries. Emergent pollutants end up in the water with consequences there are little knowledge about and the effects on human fertility may have a long-term impact on world population. Heavier traffic and storm water surges and other extreme climatic events pose an additional burden on urban water man26 Photo: Frida Lanshammar agement infrastructure and water quality both in the developing and developed world. Overflow of sewage storage during peaks in rainfall lead to widespread contamination of urban water supply.
Instead of rebuilding the whole urban water infrastructure, flexible scales of solutions and application of precautionary principles are the keys to increasing resilience of urban water management in all of the mentioned cases. Small steps make bigger differences and they are more sustainable than risky direct leaps to best existing technology with insecure funding.
The world’s population is due to rapid changes. Urbanisation, population growth and rising living standards are socio-economic and demographic changes particularly pronounced in emerging economies and developing countries. According to recent estimates, by 2050 the worlds’ population will grow from today’s 6.8 billion to approximately 9.3 billion people, of which 70 per cent will be urban dwellers. In combination with increasing wealth and change of lifestyle, the synergistic implications for water supply and sanitation resources as well as for the global ecosystem become problematically self-evident. The United Nations General Assembly’s resolution on 28 July 2010, defining access to clean water and sanitation as a human right, sets an important landmark illustrating the political will to tackle the water crisis. However, despite the regional success stories towards reaching the Millennium Development Goals, more than 2.6 billion people still lack access to basic sanitation
and approximately 884 million people do not have access to safe drinking water. Sanitation, lagging more severely behind from the targets, demands for focused attention whereas responding quickly and comprehensively to the growing pressure on water supply leading to conflicts on resource allocation asks for cross-sectoral involvement. The water sector cannot tackle balancing the supply and demand alone. The need to respond applies to every sector of our society, and a system approach is increasingly called for in the sustainable development of water management. In practice, implementation of this holistic understanding
remains still incomplete. When looking at especially water quality challenge from the perspective of responding to socio-economic and demographic changes, improved knowledge of different system levels and empowerment of their associated capacity were called for throughout the 2010 World Water Week. The systems highlighted here include communities in the developing world with special emphasis on young women, growing urban areas of different sizes and global political economy.
Major insights
Education and empowerment of young women on water and sanitation. Women are the main managers of water, sanitation and hygiene in communities in the developing world. They are the biggest beneficiaries and most efficient implementers of improvedpractices. However, the capacity of women is still under-utilised in developing more sustainable management solutions and their opportunities undermined due to lack of education. Lack of basic sanitation and inadequate water quality in the growing communities cause cholera outbreaks, diarrhoea and other diseases. Moreover, young women tend to drop out of school when they reach puberty, due to lack of sanitation facilities. Many women have no access to sanitary pads or waste disposal facilities and the information on hygiene management is often poor due to cultural and religious taboos. There will need to be major improvements especially in the mentioned sanitary and hygiene issues with consideration that they are intertwined with promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women, ultimately underlying the well-being of whole developing communities. Flexible urban systems to meet the changeability of the future. Whereas the growing mega-cities are struggling with the capacity of their existing ageing sewer systems, the new urban growth and urban sprawl takes increasingly place outside the former cities merging the surrounding areas together thus creating informal cities with no or very little water supply or treatment infrastructure. Rising living standards and growing consumption associated with urbanisation set an extra pressure on the urban water management system. The rapid uncontrolled changes lead to uncertainty of the future and demand for proactive approach with flexible solutions in different scales and application of precautionary principles in urban water management. Changing world order. In the global political economy, water quality and quantity are managed in an intertwined manner on a water-food-energy nexus. The dynamics of the nexus are increasingly complicated by climate change and shifting consumptionand dietary patterns. Most importantly, the water footprints of the decisions made on the nexus are increasingly located in other parts of the world than the decision makers themselves. Moreover, besides traditional national and public institutions, new actors are occupying the water field. Increasing foreign and private transnational investment in water poses both opportunities and challenges for sustainability of water
quality and quantity.
Challenges for progress
Cultural and religious taboos. Low income countries need more investments in sanitation facilities in schools in order to prevent young women from dropping out of the educational system after they reach puberty. Cultural and religious taboos have to be challenged by bringing the issue to policy agendas and by encouraging small scale businesses providing women with sanitary pads and waste disposal facilities. Foreign investment and the risk for neocolonialism. Foreign and private investment in land and water can also have a downside when the resources are 'grabbed' from the local communities. In order to secure their increasing domestic demand, investors mainly from the Eastern Asia and Arab world andtransnational corporations originating from the US and Europe are negotiating long term leasing agreements of land and water resources in countries in Africa that are themselves tackling with water and food insecurity. Hence the foreign investment in land and water poses also a risk of neocolonialism. Limitations of private sector engagement. When it comes to the private sector involvement, despite the increasing stakeholder scrutiny there is a risk of corporations hijacking the discourse on water governance and water footprinting for their own advocacy purposes. Moreover, there is a lack of understanding of the importance of global supply chains and networks in global water management of virtual water flows as the private sector approach is still very much limited to basin specific water use issues concerning specific operations. Stockholm Water Prize Laureate Professor Tony Allan among others emphasised throughout the week that major decisions on global water security regarding both water quantity and quality are made in water intensive agro-food supply chains by farmers, global traders, retailers and ultimately by consumers. Chemical pollution and water reuse. Chemicalisation of consumption and rising water quality standards pose new challenges for urban water management. Whereas in the developing countries waste water can mostly be recycled for re-use and the biggest obstacles are in the lack of political will and funding in implementing existing techniques, rather than in their availability, urban areas in the developed world are facing a new, creepingwater quality problem. The Malin Falkenmark Seminar discussed the effects of large consumption of drugs in developed countries. Emergent pollutants end up in the water with consequences there are little knowledge about and the effects on human fertility may have a long-term impact on world population. Heavier traffic and storm water surges and other extreme climatic events pose an additional burden on urban water man26 Photo: Frida Lanshammar agement infrastructure and water quality both in the developing and developed world. Overflow of sewage storage during peaks in rainfall lead to widespread contamination of urban water supply.
Instead of rebuilding the whole urban water infrastructure, flexible scales of solutions and application of precautionary principles are the keys to increasing resilience of urban water management in all of the mentioned cases. Small steps make bigger differences and they are more sustainable than risky direct leaps to best existing technology with insecure funding.
Conclusions
- Prioritise empowerment of young women in local communities
- Use information technology for information dissemination.
- Take into account full supply chains in corporate water
reporting. - Clear guidelines for foreign and private investment in land
and water. - Limit chemicalisation of production and consumption.
- Diversify management system scales according to local
needs and future trends.
