Water at COP26 - Watered down?

With COP26 in progress at the moment I think its only right that this week we try to uncover some of the ways in which water is being discussed in relation to climate change at the talks in Glasgow, and what this might mean for water and politics in Africa.

A big deal is being made of water at the talks so far, with a dedicated 'Water and Climate Coalition' (WCC) being set up to draw attention to the UN Water Decade and the Global Accelerator Framework for UN SDG 6. But what actually is being proposed? Who is proposing it? How does the WCC relate water to climate change? Do the measures go far enough? And what are the political consequences for water in Africa?

The video below gives you good idea of who the WCC are and what they do:

 

That was a lot of info for a 1 minute video! But I think the general idea we can extract is that the WCC is primarily concerned with 'closing the information gap' when it comes to water and climate change. Part of this means getting more data so we can better measure and predict changes in key metrics such as river discharge, groundwater storage, water quality etc. This is immediately relevant in Africa, where in many countries the measurement of these metrics has dramatically declined over the past 50 years. When countries experience periods of economic strife, money spent on measuring rivers and water tends to be the first to dissapear. For example, in the Upper Niger watershed between 1975 and 1999 there was an almost total decline in the number of monitoring stations (Thompson et al, 2016):

Figure 1 Decline in Monitoring Stations - Red dots show broken ones

 

How could effective conclusions or policies be drawn if we can't even measure our rivers and water storages? Well, clearly, they couldn't and this is why monitoring and increased sharing of water data is such a big part of the WCCs aims for COP26. The WCC is pushing for open water data or a 'One UN data portal', with the hope that the sharing of national and UN physical data will 'guarantee better planning and decision making'. This coincides with the Fit for Purpose Monitoring Systems Program which hopes to enhance water data collection.