UN Water Research Articles

International water conventions, the exploitation of trans-boundary rivers and the Nile water dispute among Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt

Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt entered into dispute since Ethiopia began the construction of the Renaissance Dam along the Blue Nile in 2011. This article is aimed at assessing the core facts about water conventions, the use of trans-boundary rivers and the main argument points of Egypt and Sudan against Ethiopia's use right of the Nile. Data were obtained from conventions and laws, study reports and television interviews. Percent and ratios were used for quantifying data. The 1997 UN Water Convention, having seven criterions for equitable water use by riparian nations, is a better platform for the negotiation on the Nile water. Ethiopia contributes 86.52 billion m3 to the Nile water although Egypt's contribution is negligible. Despite the built-up of 3 huge dams by Egypt and over 10 by Sudan, these countries aggressively contest the Renaissance Dam of Ethiopia. Egypt diverts about 46 billion m3 water for irrigation. Turk, an upstream nation (alike Ethiopia in the Nile basin), built 11 dams along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers with rare contest from the downstream nations. The existence of ‘adequate rainfall’ and ‘other rivers’ in Ethiopia, the colonial treaties, the Nile as the only resource, and the impact of the Renaissance Dam are among the main points of argument of Egypt and Sudan against Ethiopia's use right of the Nile. The Nile water use by Ethiopia is inevitable as 73.7 % of the rivers' flow, 65.3 % of the hydropower and 50.6 % of the irrigation potential of all Ethiopian rivers is in the Nile basin; besides, significant share of the population has no electric service (>60), no pure water access (42.7 %) and is below poverty line (29.6 %). Thus, the three countries need to be flexible for the ‘give and take’ principle-based negotiation and ensuring the equitable use of the Nile water.

Gender-Responsive Policy in Water Management: An Outlook in ‘Citarum Harum’s Program

In Indonesia, rivers, crucial for clean water, currently face alarming pollution. Unfortunately, women, key in ensuring water quality, lack opportunities. This study aims to depict the state of the Citarum River, women's involvement, and propose ways for women to optimize their role in managing domestic waste for river restoration. Using qualitative methods, the research identifies a connection between environmental issues and patriarchal challenges, emphasizing the need for comprehensive, gender-friendly policies. Recommendations from UN Water policies can be adapted for effective implementation in Indonesia. According to the research, the issue of the environment or water is a component of the traditional patriarchy problem, requiring gender-friendly strategies at all tiers. Even with initiatives to include women in areas such as water empowerment, women continue to be excluded from decision-making processes. Based on the research, it is recommended that women be made aware of their significance in gender-friendly policies and that their opinions should be considered during the decision-making process. Keywords: rivers, water quality, women's empowerment

Missing in action: The UN Water Action Agenda needs an overhauled commitment-setting process

Missing in action: The UN Water Action Agenda needs an overhauled commitment-setting process

Lost expectations from a watershed moment—The 2023 UN Water Conference

Highlights The anticipation and optimism surrounding the 2023 UN Water Conference led to high expectations in addressing the global water challenges. The international community gathered in New York did not avail some key opportunities to create robust water institutions and implementation mechanisms. A drastic change in financial mobilization for global water challenges is required, and it must go together with significant institutional enhancements. The global water crisis must be considered a standalone issue and so propagated, while creating meaningful engagements with other sectors of the economy.

A Water Scarcity Treaty for the Future

Water scarcity is an increasing global problem, but an international agreement on this issue does not exist. The UN Summit of the Future in September 2024 focuses on achieving existing international goals. The Water Convention and the Watercourses Convention however do not provide sufficient legal basis for mitigating global water scarcity. Since international trade is an important cause, water footprint experts suggest measures from a geographic, a production and a consumption perspective. Obligations to set maximum water footprint caps on river basin level and to formulate international reference values for water efficiency (geographical and production measures) can be inserted in the existing conventions. A consumption-oriented target does not fit in their scope. A separate Water Scarcity Treaty, introducing a reduction target of the global average water footprint per capita per year, is needed. The next UN Water Conferences, in 2026 and 2028, offer new opportunities for proposals towards such a treaty.

CONTEMPORARY ISSUES OF INTERNATIONAL LEGAL REGULATION OF TRANSBOUNDARY WATER MANAGEMENT

The issues of rational use of water resources occupy the main place in the sphere of sustainable development of both the Central Asian region (CA) and Uzbekistan. According to the UN Water and Sustainable Development Programme, water resources are a fundamental factor for social, economic and environmental components of sustainable development.Despite the fact that Central Asia is one of the regions with abundant water resources, experts predict that water scarcity will only increase over the next decades, which makes it necessary to resolve the problem promptly.

Europe’s Water Crisis: From Overshadowed to Potentially Catastrophic

Water crises and scarcity can be seen as a result of the recent heat wave in Europe. The problem has been occurring in many countries for many years, so from a general point of view the water crisis may seem normal. However, Europe's drought and water crisis is now reported to be the worst in 500 years. Water crises could be chartered as national priorities that, at worst, could spark conflict on a global scale. Unfortunately, at the same time, the water crisis not only overshadowed by major political issues, but also other environmental issues. In order to better understand and analyze the global water crisis and climate change, green theory is used as a theoretical basis for the discussion. Through green theory, we can understand that Europe's water crisis is a cause of its own actions, becoming an environmental injustice through its effects. To solve the water crisis, Europe can participate in the 2023 UN Water Conference and implement reductions in water consumption. Europe's future depends on how successful it is in finding the best solutions. If left unchecked, Europe's future could be bleak.

Hydrogeology in Algeria

As climate change is growing, water security becomes an urgent challenge in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the most water scarce region in the world (World Bank, 2018; UN Water, 2020). Algeria is one of these countries under large stresses (Kwasi & Cilliers, 2020). The water stress index is poor with a water availability ratio of 411 m3/cap/year. Forecasts estimate a value of 300 m3/cap/year in 2050 (Falkenmark et al., 1989; Kherbache, 2020). Although, the natural factors (climate change) affect the access to water and lead either to severe water shortages and regional disparities, the water deficit is mainly due to a lack of sustainable groundwater management associated to poor knowledge of the resource (PNE,2010; Kherbache, 2020) [...].

Capacity Development and Cultural Heritage: Toward a New “Culture of Water”

In 2020 UN Water, the entity coordinating the United Nations’ work on water and sanitation, identified capacity development as one of the five accelerators required to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal on Clean Water and Sanitation (SDG 6). In today’s practical application, capacity development is mostly financed to deliver a product specified in advance, not to arrange a longer time frame and process to structurally learn from various activities and discover sustainable development paths (Alaerts and Zevenbergen 2022). The inclusion of traditional knowledge and cultural heritage in our joint-learning efforts will help us enlarge capacity for a more sustainable culture of water.

Global crisis in water management: Can a second UN Water Conference help?

Global crisis in water management: Can a second UN Water Conference help?

The challenges of Process Engineering for the reuse of treated wastewater within INRAE’s REUSE network - the need for a multidisciplinary and multi-scale approach

The reuse of wastewater aims to mobilize and treat, for certain uses and under certain conditions, water that has already been used. Rather than discharging wastewater into the natural environment, this practice aims to recover it by replacing the mobilization of water withdrawn from the environment [van Loosdrecht and Brdjanovic, 2014]. By moving from a linear logic of the mobilization and use of water to a circular approach, the objective pursued is to reduce the pressure, qualitative then quantitative, on the resources while limiting, as far as possible, the usage conflicts. It is in fact a question of passing from a simple competitive mode which strongly mobilizes resources, to a complex mode, known as “circular”, of putting in complementarity of uses. This approach initially mainly concerned agricultural uses insofar as agricultural needs represent the majority of the water mobilized, including developed countries [UN Water 2018]. Cities integrate specific issues that are characterized by significantly different options from those that can be found in rural areas. In the city, the recovery of wastewater has both material aspects (water, nutrients, critical metals, biopolymers, etc.) and energy aspects (recovery of heat from the networks, production of energy by biological means and /or thermal,…) which should be integrated on an appropriate scale according to the problems addressed (housing, building, district, city, territory or hydrological basin). To study the conditions under which REUSE can develop and be implemented in a safe and sustainable manner, research is needed [Ait-Mouheb et al., 2018]. If it represents an opportunity in certain territories where wastewater can be mobilized, it is also necessary to underline the limits of this practice in territories where the wastewater discharged into the environment is necessary to maintain the low water levels of rivers and rivers, or where soils may be affected, for example, by the salinity of these waters. In addition, studies of the social, economic and environmental dimensions differ significantly depending on the uses envisaged and the situations considered. To meet these challenges, the REUSE network of INRAE (cf. www6.inrae.fr) proposes to adopt a multidisciplinary and multi-scale approach by mobilizing not only the disciplines that can be considered as falling within the field of technologies and environmental engineering but also all of those relating to the human and social sciences, economics, legal, and participatory sciences.

Governance and Sustainability Challenges in the Water Policy of Morocco 1995–2020: Insights from the Middle Draa Valley

Since the UN Water Conference in 1977, international debates have centered on global water scarcity and achieving sustainable development. In 1995, Morocco introduced a water policy to strengthen the country’s socio-economic development through irrigated agriculture, while ensuring the long-term sustainability of water resources through integrated water resource management (IWRM). Empirical research, however, reveals decreasing groundwater levels and increasing inequalities around water access. The purpose of this article is to shed light on the challenges this policy provokes for achieving sustainable development, the limitations it faces to implement IWRM, and provide insights on how the policy is linked to the increased pressure on water resources as reported in the literature. We conducted a content analysis of ten key water policy documents and thirty-seven in-depth semi-structured interviews undertaken between 2020 and 2021 with governmental actors and inhabitants of the Middle Draa Valley (south Morocco). We found that sustainability and social-inequality problems unintendedly triggered by the policy were linked to three factors: the use of a disciplinary approach for policy formulation and its limitations to encompass the complexity of the water-related problems, the compartmentalization of government sectors hindering the development of sound solutions to water-related problems, and the neglect of social, economic, and political factors affecting actual access to water.

Editorial Issue 1/2022

The Blue Papers journal provides a platform for the growing network, with the first issues launched in time for the UN 2023 Water Conference in New York, 22–24 March 2023, which coincides with the Midterm Review of the UN Water Action Decade. A growing number of people have come to realize that valuing water needs to go beyond technological, political and economic changes. The conference provides the background for a broad exploration of the role that culture, heritage and social practices play in current water challenges, and those they can play to support future inclusive and sustainable development. This requires an advanced engagement with the social, cultural and intrinsic value of water, by creating a new embedded water awareness 2.0.

The Private Sector as a Partner for SDG 6-Related Issues in Megacities: Opportunities and Challenges in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

This article reviews recent studies that address water sustainable management opportunities and challenges in megacities around the world, with an emphasis on the case of Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Region, one of the two megacities in Brazil. With reference to recent debates on water, megacities, and the climate crisis, as well as UN Water and Global Report Initiative documents, we focused on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda Sustainable Development Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation for All. The new Brazilian sanitation legal framework regulates public–private partnerships. In this context, the manuscript discusses the main question concerning water, sanitation, and hygiene that arises in the Brazilian case study: is universality possible in profit-oriented models? Through the current technical and academic literature consulted, the paper compares initiatives involving multiple stakeholder governance models that depend on private resources to implement universal access to drinking water, sanitation, and water-related extreme event controls, pointing out alternatives that can help to achieve the targets of SDG. Validation by key informants supports the synthesis of the reviewed documents, and the findings illustrate that concerted public efforts together with market mechanisms can help to overcome challenges and surpass the profit-oriented logics of private companies to achieve access to healthy and safe water, adequate sanitation, and improved hygiene, especially for vulnerable populations. This finding has transferability to other megacities in emerging countries that are facing public–private partnership debates on the provision of clean water and sanitation for all.

Editorial: Can communities manage their water services?

From the early years of the first UN water decade (1981–1990) and for the following two or three decades, community management of rural water services has been the norm. This management model – synonymous with what many countries refer to as community-based maintenance (CBM) – seemed to be the only and best option for ‘keeping the water flowing’ in rural water services, in particular those provided via water points such as handpumps.

Co-development of East African regional water scenarios for 2050

Summary The development of and access to freshwater resources in East Africa is fundamental to the region's sustainable development goals. Following vision documents for regional development and working with local stakeholders, we developed water scenarios up to 2050 that inform the hydro-economic modeling analysis of the extended Lake Victoria Basin, the headwaters of the Nile River. Water scenarios that take an integrated approach to assessing the combined effects of climate change, land use, and increasing human water use suggest that the flow regime of the Nile may remain relatively stable. However, if this stability is to be achieved, while at the same time sufficient water is preserved for healthy freshwater ecosystems, a large fraction of water infrastructure must rely on advanced, often costly technologies and management. Interconnected analyses of both upstream and downstream water resources over time, guided by co-developed scenarios, are indispensable for planning sustainable water-development pathways.

Water Theft Maleficence in Australia

The United Nations has repeatedly identified that freshwater security is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity, and that water theft is a global problem exacerbating human conflict, denying human rights and accelerating environmental despoliation (UN 2019; UN Water 2020). Australia is the world’s driest inhabited continent where water security is seriously threatened and constantly monitored by federal, state and local authorities. The devastating 2019-2020 bushfires across Australia serve as a stark reminder of the nation’s vulnerabilities to drought and the imperatives of water security and sustainability. Whilst some threats are undoubtedly climate induced, it is widely reported the ‘theft’ of water is playing an increasingly significant role in compromising Australia’s water security. This article provides a critical overview of the contemporary significance of water theft and its governance. It interrogates official documents of government inquiries, examines court proceedings, and provides a green criminological perspective on future policy, practice and prevention.

Editorial: Implementing Environmental Flows: Lessons for Policy and Practice

Water resources and freshwater ecosystems are under pressure from a growing human population, thirstier lifestyles, and climate change (UNESCO and UN water, 2020). Consequently, water-related risks to society are increasing (World Economic Forum, 2020) and freshwater biodiversity is rapidly declining (Grooten, 2018). The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include targets for improved water management, including SDG 6.4, which stipulates sustainable water withdrawals, and SDG 6.6, aimed at halting the degradation of water-related ecosystems. The hydrological regimes of rivers and other wetlands can be regarded as a litmus test of whether these targets are met (Tickner and Acreman, 2013). Environmental flow assessment (EFA) is the science-based process of determining appropriate flow regimes for individual water bodies given environmental, socio-economic and cultural objectives. Researchers have developed sophisticated EFA tools (Acreman et al., 2014; Poff et al., 2017) but implementation of environmental flows has been problematic, and research into the challenges of implementation is scarce.

Water insecurity: An agenda for research and call to action for human biology.

Water insecurity-the lack of adequate and safe water for a healthy and productive life-is one of the greatest threats facing humans in the coming century. By 2030, half of the world is expected to be living in water-stressed conditions, given current climate change scenarios. A key goal of the UN Water Action Decade and Sustainable Development Goal 6 is to improve water security for the three billion people globally affected, but the future looks grim. For many communities, from Cape Town, South Africa to Flint, United States, the imagined dystopian future of severe water shortages has already arrived-shaped not so much by lack of water, but by aging infrastructure, underfunded utilities, social exclusion, politicized commodification, and environmental racism. Stepping off from my biocultural research in Cochabamba, Bolivia, I discuss how recent research is dramatically advancing our understanding of water insecurity, such as new findings around the biocultural causes and consequences of dehydration, contamination, and water stress. But, much more needs be done to support local communities in creating fair and just water systems. I discuss how human biologists can make crucial contributions toward the advancement of a much-needed science of water insecurity, while highlighting some practical and ethical challenges to advancing a core mission of providing safe, sufficient water to all.

Strengthening International Water Security: The European Union’s proposal

AbstractThe UN World Health Organization reports that 80% of diseases are waterborne. Bacterial, viral, and parasitic diseases like typhoid, cholera, amebiasis, poliomyelitis, hepatitis A, skin infection, and gastrointestinal are spread through polluted water. In 2013, the UN Water defined water security as “The capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water for sustaining livelihoods, human well‐being, and socio‐economic development, for ensuring protection against water‐borne pollution and water‐related disasters, and for preserving ecosystems in a climate of peace and political stability”. The notion is quite new, but it does not mean that international law does not include rules and principles relevant to water security. Compared to some other regions in the world, most people living in Europe already enjoy very good access to high‐quality drinking water, in part thanks to over 30 years of European Union legislation for ensuring drinking water quality. On February 2018, pressed by the successful result of the first European Citizens' Initiative “Right2Water,” the European Commission proposed to revise the European Union legislation for improving access to higher quality of drinking water and provide better information to citizens. Considering the latest scientific knowledge and recommendations of the World Health Organization, the proposal made by the Commission suggests improving water quality by adding new and emerging substances (such as legionella and chlorate) to the list of criteria for determining water safety. The new provisions require the member states to improve access for all people, especially for vulnerable and marginalized groups who currently have difficult access to drinking water, set up equipment for access to drinking water in public spaces, launch campaigns to inform citizens about the quality of their water, and encourage administrations and public buildings to provide access to drinking water. According to the European Union Commission, the new measures would reduce potential health risks associated with drinking water from 4% to below 1%. Based on the presumption that the right to safe water, and the related concept of water security, emerges as a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the approach conducted by the European Commission and, compared it with a fragmented panorama in the International regulation. In this sense, it will be necessary to refer to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes, its Protocol on Water and Health, the General Comment No. 15 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on the right to water, and the World Health Organization’s Water safety plan to identify and manage the risks that climate change poses to water security (quality and quantity) in the framework of international law obligations. Finally, in order to consider future scenarios and promote possible implementation, the new European Union approach is fully consistent with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In particular, the initiatives will make a meaningful contribution to reaching the Sustainable Development Goal 6 to “achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all,” along with the Paris Agreement objectives on climate change, thanks to safer, more efficient, and sustainable management of drinking water, reducing the CO2 footprint and unnecessary water loss.