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| Image credit: Ralf Roletschek, permission from - Marcela auf Commons. |
From August 2015 to
January 2016, I was lucky enough to enjoy an ESRC-funded placement at the
Environment Agency. Located within the Water Resources Team, my time here was
spent writing a number of independent reports on the behalf of the agency. This
blog is a short personal reflection of one of these reports, which you can find
here. All views within this work are my own and do not represent any views,
plans or policies of the Environment Agency.
In a world away from Melanie Phillips and David
Bellamy, it is widely accepted that the twinned-spectres of climate change
and population growth will likely affect levels of water availability in
England and Wales, whilst also exposing the geographic imbalance of water
supply-demand dynamics within the country. The Environment
Agency has utilised a number of socioeconomic scenarios to predict total
demand to change at some point between 15% decrease (if the nation undergoes a
transition towards sustainability) to a 35% increase (in a scenario of
continued and uncontrolled demand for the resource).
It is within this context that the need to understand future
patterns of water demand has become essential for the future resilience of the
nation’s water. The Labour government’s Future Water strategy (signed-off by
Hilary Benn) 2008 set a national target of reducing household water consumption
by 13%. This plan was further incentivised by Ofwat’s scheme to reward
companies that reduce annual household demand by one litre of water per
property, per day in the period 2010/11-2014/15.
What does our future household water use look like? Whilst
per capita consumption will decrease, the number of people using the water grid
will increase: resulting in a growth of overall demand. 22 predictions related
to public water supply projected a median change of +0.89%. However there are
additional complexities: as certain uses of water will decrease, others will
increase; as appliances become more water efficient, they will be more likely
to be used; and as one business closes, another may join the grid. It is this
complexity that creates a great deal of uncertainty in gauging the future water
demand of the sector.
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| Image credit: Nicole-Koehler |
But, there exists a problem. Whilst the legally-mandated
water management plans of the public water suppliers provide us with a wealth
of forecasts of the future water usage within our homes, there exists a lack of
available information on the current use of water within many other sectors and
how such usage may shift and transform in the years between today and 2050.
This report
lays out an extensive review of available literature on the current and future
demand of a number of sectors within the UK. It found nine studies of the
agricultural sector – with a median projection of 101% increase in water usage.
Three studies of the energy sector projected a median decrease of 2% on a 2015
baseline. But, it also found some gaps that restrict our understandings of
future water demand.
Want to find out how much water is used in the construction
sector? Tough, no chance. The mining and quarrying sector – ready your Freedom
of Information request. Want to calculate the future water footprints of our
food and drink – prepare to meet that brick wall. If such information is
available, it is not in the public domain. Without having a publicly-available
baseline, how can we even dream of predicting what our future demand may be?
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| Crop irrigation. Image credit: Rennett Stowe. |
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Water is not just turning on the shower in the morning or
boiling the kettle at the commercial break. It is present in our food, our
energy and our infrastructure. As a result, it is of the utmost importance that
we look to gauge the water use of sectors. Yet, in this regard, we are blind. Although
there do exist academic studies and research into the future water demand of
the agricultural
and energy
sectors, this has proved limited and relatively inconclusive, due to the nature
of the studies. Furthermore, there is an absence of any such work conducted
across the manufacturing and industrial sectors (with the exception of the food
and drink industry). This limitation of information makes providing a confident
summary of what the water demands of many of these sectors will look like in 2050
highly difficult.
Yes, the key areas of missing research identified in this
document do not necessarily equal a lack of information within these sectors –
just that such information is either not publicly available or is very
difficult to find. It would be unwise to believe that the sectors in question
have no understanding of what the future may hold, regarding their water
demand. But, in a world of the interdependencies of the food, energy and
manufacturing sectors with water usage – it is important for research to know
how this nation’s water is used, where it is used and how this demand can be
met and/or decreased in an increasingly uncertain future. The food and drink
sector is heavily linked to the agricultural sector; the power industry is
linked to decisions made within the extractive industries (such as those surrounding
fracking); and all are linked to mains water supply and direct abstraction.
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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Ed Atkins, a PhD student at the University of Bristol who studies water scarcity and environmental conflict. |
| Ed Atkins |