Gemma Carr @ Human-Water-Interactions:
Researching the feedbacks between people and water
By examining interactions, we can generate new ways to solve water management challenges.
Understanding the unexpected.
We are facing unprecedented challenges and pressures on our water resources. Meeting these challenges needs better understanding of the interactions between humans and water.
We know that often technological and engineering solutions can generate unexpected outcomes when combined with human behaviour. For example, the levee effect, where flood defences lead to increased property development on the flood plain and higher flood risk; the rebound effect, where an increase in irrigation efficiency leads to an increase in cultivation area and an increase in water demand; and lock-in, when agricultural or industrial processes generate pollution that can accumulate and create recognised risks and damages, but practices cannot be easily changed.
We want to protect people from flooding, grow enough food and attain irrigation efficiency. Engineers do a fantastic job building infrastructure to achieve this. But the non-structural elements of how flood resilience will be achieved, how water demand will be managed, and how agricultural sustainability will be maintained over the long-term are rarely included. This is the critical gap that Human Water Interactions addresses.
Themes
Advancing water reuse
Reclaimed water (from domestic and industrial wastewater treatment plants) is a valuable resource that remains under utilised. Ultimately, we need a shift in perspective, from wastewater as a problem to be disposed of, to wastewater as a product to be maximised. Huge technological strides in treatment are being made, but the social aspects are struggling to keep pace. Taking a systems approach to water reuse analysis, enables the strengths and efficiencies of the existing system to be highlighted, and pressure points, where system changes will have significant impacts, to be identified. Many challenges to water reuse go beyond the capacity of an individual or entity (for example, a nation or region’s legal framework on reuse). Identifying and integrating the limits and the opportunities enables appropriate collection and reuse plans to be developed and implemented, outreach to policy makers to be structured, and the potential for upscaling water reuse to realised over the longer-term.
Wastewater irrigation and environmental health: implications for water governance and public policy
Land use and water quality interactions
Land use and land management decisions and actions have implications for surface and groundwater quality. For example, agricultural and urban runoff often contains biological and chemical contaminants. The pathways over which water moves, and the behaviour of the contaminants in the surface and subsurface, can have negative effects on water quality. At the same time, water quality concerns and issues, often drive policy and planning decisions that aim to change the availability and pathways of contaminants. These coupled interactions between human actions and water quality need to be considered simultaneously as they are both important in evaluating long-term water resource sustainability. Generating insights on the interactions between policy and practice, and contaminant availability and movement, is the key strength of a human-water systems analysis approach, enabling policy evaluation and recommendations.
Building resilience to droughts and floods
In some areas, it seems highly probable, that climate change will generate larger and more frequent flood and drought events. At the same time, more and more people are settling in flood prone areas and living in water scarce regions. This means the potential for higher flood damages and greater exposure to droughts in the coming decades is increasing. With regards to floods, in many areas, this is being addressed through the strengthening of large scale, community level flood protection measures. But the risk of a large flood can never be fully eliminated, and an integrated flood risk management plan places considerable emphasis on raising household flood resilience. This could be through early warning systems, insurance, structural household flood protection measures, and even by having a straightforward emergency preparedness plan. Higher resilience means that in the event of a flood, the household can rapidly recover their economic capacity and functioning with minimal long-term impacts. However, raising resilience can be both difficult to obtain (there are both financial and technical limitations) and hard to maintain (preparedness plans need to be regularly practiced). Identifying ways to achieve flood and drought resilience, even when floods and droughts are unlikely and as yet to be experienced, is major challenge, but one that human-water systems analysis can provide valuable insights for policy makers, practitioners, individuals and organisations.
Conceptualising human-flood interactions
