No water, no life. It is a fundamental element for the sustainability of the planet and for our survival, but its rampant consumption for years has forced us to rethink a new way of managing water to guarantee supply for all.
To remember that water is a natural treasure that must be preserved, the UN celebrates World Water Day every March 22, an opportunity to reflect, seek new solutions to challenges and, above all, accelerate them. Because today, we are a long way from achieving number 6 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): the promise that everyone would have safely managed water and sanitation by 2030.
According to the United Nations, the latest data shows that governments must work an average of four times faster to meet SDG 6 on time, because 2.1 billion people still do not have access to safe drinking water, approximately 4.5 billion lack sanitation services sanitation and water scarcity affects 40% of the planet’s inhabitants. In addition, 90% of natural disasters are related to water and 80% of wastewater returns to ecosystems without having been treated or reused, according to UN data.
And for a few years, these figures have been added to those of persistent drought. Already in August of last year, the spokesman for the European Commission, Johannes Bahrke, assured that “the current drought seems to be the worst for at least 500 years.” And it still doesn’t rain enough. The Spanish water reserve was at 51.2% of its capacity on March 14 and the month of February was the ninth driest February since 1961, according to the Ministry for Ecological Transition. The situation in Catalonia is no better, since the water reserves in the reservoirs were at 27% on March 14.
Coinciding with World Water Day, the United Nations Conference on water is held in New York and new and important commitments are expected from the countries regarding the use of water and its sanitation. “The conference will be a unique opportunity to find solutions to the current crisis of water and sanitation,” they say from the UN. And it will be these commitments that form the so-called Water Action Agenda. To promote them, the International Decade for Action has already been created. Water for Sustainable Development, 2018-2028, because “access to drinking water and sanitation is essential for life and a recognized human right”, recalls the UN.
Industry uses 22% of the water, against 8% for personal consumption, and 70% for agriculture, indicate UN data. Recycling and regenerating all this water is one of the most important priorities, in addition to saving it. So that not a drop is lost, there is an increasing commitment to regeneration and reuse, which means treating purified water again to return it to rivers and aquifers, to supply it to industry or cities -for irrigation of parks and gardens or for cleaning the streets-, and for agriculture.
Circularity and, in this case, regeneration, make us less dependent on climatic conditions and allow us to preserve the ecological state of rivers and aquifers, to protect ecosystems and biodiversity. It is one of the strategies of companies like Agbar and its action in the aquifers of the Llobregat river delta, highly degraded by human consumption and industrial purposes. To reverse this situation, a series of wells were built to inject reclaimed water from the Baix Llobregat treatment plant.
In fact, according to the Government of Catalonia, in 2050 rainwater will be reduced by 18% and to cover this water deficit, the use of reclaimed water will almost triple in two decades and will go from the current 56 cubic hectometres to 130 New technologies have also allowed the conversion of treatment plants into eco-factories, where water is regenerated and waste is converted into resources to produce renewable energy.
Irrigated agriculture represents 20% of the total cultivated area and contributes 40% of the total food production worldwide, according to the World Bank. In addition, it is twice as productive as rainfed agriculture. According to the projections of the experts, if in 2050 the population of the planet exceeds 10,000 million inhabitants, agricultural production should increase by 70%. That will not be possible if we do not use the water in another way. Reclaimed water is once again the key.
A team from the Rey Juan Carlos University participates in a European research project to develop wastewater treatment systems for irrigation. This is the AWARE initiative, which aims to build the first fish and vegetable production system in Europe using reclaimed water using an aquaponics method, a technique that combines the breeding of aquatic animals with the cultivation of plants in water without the need for soil. . Another example is the water reuse system of the Cabezo Beaza treatment plant in Cartagena, 100% focused on agricultural use and which produces more than 412,000 tons of vegetables per year.
And it is that last year, the olive oil harvest was the second worst of the current century. According to the Junta de Andalucía, olive production fell by half, which threatened the supply to the markets and the price of oil. A situation that is reproduced all over the planet, since UN climate scientists affirm that climate change has reduced food production and estimate that agricultural crops in the Mediterranean could drop by 17% in 2050.
A quarter of the water supplied to the network for domestic consumption is lost along the way, according to the INE. New technologies allow water savings and much more intelligent management. There are sensors that detect leaks, for example, and thanks to algorithms we can know when more demand is expected. It is what is called ‘Smart water’, one of the six components that define a smart city, a concept that many cities already apply.
From iAgua they remember that among these new technologies would be the robots that go through the networks to control and repair errors, the digital twins that allow reality to be represented, to carry out simulations and anticipate possible problems. But the key to this smart management is connected data. Thanks to them, anomalies in consumption patterns can be identified for both public services and end users, they recall from the Aquae Foundation, which ensures that “improving operational efficiency through actionable data will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and will reduce costs simultaneously.”
Climate change has a strong impact on the planet’s water. The increase in temperatures causes droughts, but also natural phenomena such as floods, the rise in the water level of seas and oceans, and effects on the flora and fauna of aquifers or rivers. From the United Nations they warn that, in the last decade, more than 90% of major natural disasters were caused by floods, storms, heat waves, droughts and other meteorological phenomena. And their frequency and intensity are predicted to increase due to global warming.
To mitigate these adverse effects, experts point to nature-based solutions that employ or mimic natural processes to increase water availability, such as wetland conservation and restoration, forest reforestation, or conserving natural floodplains. the water courses. These solutions are relatively low cost and offer many advantages, however, water resources management is still dominated by much less efficient traditional artificial infrastructures.
From urban planning and architecture, many proposals are being made so that cities can store rainwater, for example, or to avoid large avenues of water when there is a storm. Traditional sewage systems waste urban stormwater and can discharge polluted water into the environment.
New urban planning techniques, such as Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS), are used to redesign the urban landscape by imitating nature in reproducing the hydrological cycle. They integrate into the urban landscape and can be on the sidewalks, parks or on the roofs, for example, with green roofs that also regulate the temperature of the houses.
Other examples are green ditches, long, shallow, vegetated depressions that separate pedestrian areas from the road. There are also permeable pavements that, at first glance, are similar to the traditional ones but allow water runoff to be reduced in case of rain or storm.