[00:00:00] Bridget Scanlon: Welcome to the Water Resources Podcast. I am Bridget Scanlon. In this podcast, we discuss water challenges with leading experts, including topics on extreme climate events, over exploitation, and potential solutions towards more sustainable management.
So I would like to welcome Rob Hope to the podcast today, and we're delighted to have him to speak with us. Rob is a Professor of Water Policy at the School of Geography and Environment at Oxford University. His research focuses on water policy, poverty and economics, primarily in Africa and Asia. He's led many large programs over the years, REACH, been involved with Uptime, and has been working with various groups, including governments, NGOs, and communities to expand access to safe drinking water.
Much of your work, Rob, it seems focuses on Ethiopia and Kenya in East Africa and Bangladesh in South Asia. So thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me today. I really appreciate it. So maybe we'll start off Rob with a recent paper that you have published in Nature Water on science practitioner partnerships for sustainable development.
I really enjoyed reading that and it's interesting to hear your thoughts on how to link science with communities and governments and other groups to develop sustainable water access. So maybe you can describe how the role of science varies with time as the programs develop and things like that.
[00:01:39] Rob Hope: Sure. Well, thank you for the invitation, Bridget. Great pleasure to be here today. Yes, the sort of recent paper in Nature Water is a collaborative affair with many colleagues in Africa and Asia, and also through the REACH program where we've reflected over the last 10 years, I guess, in terms of the evolving role of science, that it increasingly has an impact side to that scientists have always, I think, been interested in that, but has the science funding provided the means by which scientists can use their science to to make a difference,
influence policy and practice. So the paper tries to explore some of these issues and thinks over time how science can contribute, particularly to the practitioner space around some of these sort of enduring challenges that we have, whether it's pollution, whether it's flooding or droughts or drinking water services, what roles that we play.
And we try and think about it in four broad buckets versus the foundational science of the sort of the bread and butter the things that we do advancing our agendas as we go forward and explore this in a second area in terms of how this may be worked through in terms of advisory science. So how we then translate and communicate that to policy audiences in a collaborative fashion We then discuss a third area, which is more of operational science, which I guess is one of the newer areas that we're looking at.
So after that phase, how do scientists stay engaged after projects? And how do we stay engaged in this process to help governments and partners modify and adapt and scale up or scale out their programs of work? And then the fourth dimension we talked to is evaluative science. So the things, again, that we're quite familiar with in terms of how we evaluate what we're doing.
And I guess the broad argument within the paper, certainly for many partners in Africa and Asia, and some of these geographies, is just to have more patient and sustainable funding that allows this process, which takes potentially a decade or more to be available, and how we think to put together programs of scientific funding that allows that to happen. And we'll talk a little bit about the REACH program that's been doing this for a number of years now, but there have been lots of other programs that we feature in the paper as well.
[00:03:58] Bridget Scanlon: Right. Well, I think it was very enlightening and it's nice to consider these different types of science and how they can play a role.
I mean, yeah, foundational science. Sometimes I think we don't do enough of it because people don't see that it's applicable and they're kind of unwilling, unless they see a return immediately, they're not willing to do it. And sometimes in some of these developing countries, we're relying on maps that were developed during the colonial era. It's just ridiculous. They did more back then, I think, than we are doing today. And with so many tools now, geophysical tools and all sorts of things to apply. And so I think there seems to be a need for more of that. You mentioned operational science and an operational aspect of it. I mean, reading some of your papers and others, Sustainable Development Goals 6.1. Still, I think like half a billion people without access to safe water. And so oftentimes NGOs and other groups install capital equipment and everything to provide access to water and then leave the scene. So staying engaged and looking at the operational aspects, I think is becoming more and more important. And I think agencies like USAID and others are, are acknowledging that and, and trying to develop these sorts of things. I mean, I think you've been very fortunate with the REACH program, having a 10 year lifespan, most of us are looking at one to two years of funding for anything and you barely get to know the players.
But to develop that trust with them, especially if you're working with these communities, it takes a long time. So very enlightening and hope that that might help change some of the funding models for science in the future. You mentioned in some of your work also, Rob, that working with governments and governance issues and things like that It's so important.
And I think in Bangladesh, you describe in some of your papers, the pollution issues in the surface water in Dhaka and, and places like that, and what they're trying to do with the planned sewage water treatment plants and, how your work then can help optimize the locations and the ranking of these systems. I think they're planning on building maybe 12 or before 2030. And maybe you can describe that a little bit and how you were engaged with the government in some of that aspect.
[00:06:19] Rob Hope: Of course. I mean, I think the area that we've worked with is in Dhaka and looking at sort of river water quality. So this has been sort of part of the REACH program with our collaborators in Bangladesh, academic partners, Bangladesh University of Engineering Technology in particular, but also a lot of the government authorities.
There's around 20 agencies that have some responsibility for water resources or services. So you end up with the inevitable coordination challenges. But when we started the work, there was a lot of very good work going on by many, many partners. But what didn't really exist was some of the foundational science in terms of a complete river system model in Dhaka that has two of the major rivers flow down there, the Brahmaputra and the Ganges, the Padma in Bangladesh.
And this creates this very amazing network of about 12 river systems that flow through Dhaka that makes hydrological modeling quite difficult. I'm an economist, so I'm always humbled by my colleagues who manage to work these things out. But it was a gap in the current scientific or policy landscape that they didn't really have a model that could look at the hydrological flows and particularly water quality.
Bangladesh, as many of us know, has been through this remarkable development cycle since independence in 1971, where its GDP per capita now is higher than India and Pakistan. It's been a remarkable growth over that period. And some of it's been related to sort of quite rapid industrialization, particularly in the remaining garment sector.
But as in the history of the US or Europe, this comes at a cost. There are damages to the environment and it's not unique to the garment industry necessarily, but it's on point pollution from agriculture. A lot of sewage around 80 percent is released untreated. So you've got this cocktail that flows into the system, that creates lots of challenges.
So some of the foundational work that the team were leading on this was to try and do sort of basic monitoring of river water quality in the river systems, and then developed a process-based hydrological model that could look at the spatial and temporal distribution of where pollution was.
And we had a particular interest in understanding which social groups were in harm's way with a view that these investments that the government and development partners are putting in around 20 billion worth of water treatment infrastructure over the next 25 years, how do you sequence and prioritize those so that you reduce the pollution, but also you make sure that those vulnerable people benefit from this as soon as possible.
So I think I completely agree with you. The foundational science, if you don't have that there, you're doing this blind. You don't know what you're doing and then it becomes political. and you just get suboptimal results as a consequence of that. And generally the poorer, more vulnerable people have less voice in the process and benefit less as a consequence.
[00:09:15] Bridget Scanlon: I think it's great that oftentimes we're talking about water resources and looking for new resources and everything like that, but managing wastewater and considering one water so that we're not polluting water is so important. And sometimes, I know I spoke recently with Veena Srinivasan in Bangalore, and she was emphasizing the importance of that too, but the economic drivers are not there to manage it that well, but it's with the government in Bangladesh, then emphasizing that.
I think that's great. Great. And also talking with Charlie Vorosmarty in the past, it seemed like we have this impair and then repair. It seemed like with economic development, we impair the systems and then we have the money that we can repair them. It seems like we can never short circuit that and avoid impairing, it seems like.
So you've also been working with the government in Bangladesh on school systems and clinics and providing water for, for these systems so that students have access to safe water. And in the past, it seemed like it was the teacher's responsibility to do this. And so maybe you can describe that a little bit, Rob, what happening there.
[00:10:23] Rob Hope: Sure. I mean, this is the work that I've been more directly involved in. So we've been looking here and this is how you provide safely managed drinking water to people, not only in their communities, but also in schools and healthcare facilities. So globally, the figures, the estimates is around 2 billion people don't have these safely managed services and water quality is a major consideration here, and the program has looked at this very carefully, particularly in coastal Bangladesh, where we've worked with the government as a priority area. It's the forerunner of the apocalypse in coastal Bangladesh, because you've got the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Meghna, 93 percent of the flow comes down through the monsoon cycle.
You've got cyclonic storms before the monsoon that flow up and create damage as a consequence of that, depending on the year. You often have bacteriological contamination above ground, and then you've got arsenic and salinity below ground. So it's a really complex environment to live in and try and provide services.
So this is why the government rightly saw this as an area that they saw was very vulnerable. And what we were trying to help them through was thinking through institutional models of how they could rethink the process in which they supply water. So Bangladesh has been very successful in improving access. So they've made access available to somewhere in the region, 99 percent of the people in the country. But the water service side of things in terms of the quality, the reliability, affordability of the services is an ongoing challenge. So we had a particular focus to try and rethink from just giving access to a school.
So you're a head teacher in school and we come in and sort of say, right, here's a tube well or a pipe system now in terms of not only teaching and managing in your school, you've got to manage this water pump. So you'll probably be very good at it, Bridget, but most people struggle with it to some degree. So we were trying to, we've been developing these ideas in other countries of professional service delivery models. So like a utility, like an urban utility, they're responsible for a geographic area for all of the water infrastructure. And they have to be accountable for the reliability and the water quality of services.
So we did this over a sort of 18 month pilot period got very good results in terms of dramatically improving the water safety bacteriological and chemically and also the reliability of the systems The government's been very pleased with that. It's very low cost so as an economist you sort of look at the costings of this and it's less than 1 USD per person per year, so it becomes relatively affordable.
So the government now put this into their national budgets to support this program to 2030 in this one district, there's 64 districts, but they've made that commitment and putting in 50 percent of the operational costs, which is quite an unusual thing. Governments generally build things, they don't maintain things. So this is quite a change. And then we have donors who will support the other costs, which are quite modest over the seven years for the one district. It's around $2 million, which is a drop in the ocean, given how things are spent in the sector. So that's very encouraging. And I think it's a lot of credit to the government.
They set up a national steering committee to look at this very carefully, headed by senior government officials through health, education, local government,etc. UNICEF was a key partner in this as well. And then the University of Oxford and our partners, we worked in terms of helping them design the system.
And now we would look to sort of see how we scale it up in Bangladesh, but also how it may be applicable in other countries in the future.
[00:13:54] Bridget Scanlon: And it's great to have the government involved and more likely to have the longevity then and maintenance and then expansion and scaling up. So that's great. I know sometimes you think, Oh, well, let's just do it ourselves and it's easier, but developing all those connections and making that happen, I am very impressed.
You also mentioned when we spoke recently about another program in India, the Jal Jeevan mission to provide access to tap water for all households by 2024 and I guess this is, are you very involved in that program or are just kind of on the outside providing some advice and any thoughts about it?
[00:14:37] Rob Hope: Well, it's a remarkable program. So it was Prime Minister Modi's commitment in 2019 when he was elected to give all 1.4 billion citizens in India a functional household tap connection, a remarkably, ambitious, I mean, staggering proposal. I mean, they've spent an estimated $70 to $80 billion on this at the moment. So India has the economic clout and the ability to do that. But they also have the leadership and it's something for the sector that I work in. It's wonderful to see that leadership because it just flows down the system in terms of state governments and then district governments then implementing that.
So we we have some sort of modest engagement in that program and in a couple of the state governments looking at how they then look at the operational sustainability because the big push at the moment is to build the infrastructure this year, and they're around 80 percent coverage, so they won't get there, I don't think, but they'll get very, very close from a base of around 20%. So it's a remarkable achievement. But then the longer term achievement is to make sure the infrastructure keeps working and delivering those services. So we're trying to similar to Bangladesh to some degree, think of what the institutional or funding model for that would be in the future to try and support that and with a view to try and document it as well so other governments could look at that and hopefully they can sort of see these things are potentially achievable in lots of other geographies that need these types of services desperately.
[00:16:03] Bridget Scanlon: Yeah, I, that's fantastic. And as you say, also installing the systems, but also maintaining the operations and then the financing and maintenance of those things would be critical because I think, I'm not sure what the numbers are, maybe, but half of the water point systems in Sub Saharan Africa are not functional.
And so, maintenance and all of that sort of thing is critical. We mentioned the REACH program a couple of times, and I think you've served as the principal investigator of that program, I guess, extended from 2015 to 2024 and supported by the UK FCDO, forget what that stands for, foreign, And I guess the idea, the goal was to provide safe water to 10 million people focusing on Ethiopia, Kenya, and Bangladesh. So that's been a huge program and very impressive. Maybe you can describe a little bit about that and the ideas that you have learned from that that could be applied elsewhere also.
[00:17:05] Rob Hope: So the program specifically is about being improving water security for 10 million vulnerable people in those in Africa and Asia based on the three geographies you mentioned, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Kenya, and as we're aware, Bridget, and I think many of your people on this podcast have talked about, I mean, the whole world.
Water security agendas has grown quite dramatically over the last 10, 15, 20 years, particularly between the intersection between water resources, the climate systems, hydrology, surface water, groundwater, and then water services that are used by industry for municipal supply, for agriculture, for the environment.
And that intersection was one of the things that FCDO were particularly interested in, in terms of how it could help more vulnerable people in different geographies. So traditionally you separate them out. People look at the water resource side and focus on that. Other people look at the water services side and never the twain meet.
And so they were sort of saying, how do you look at this to sort of help out people who are most in need? The way that we've looked at it predominantly, and some of it sort of gets mentioned in the nature water paper, is through these observatories that we identified in the countries. So these are long-term interdisciplinary, instrumented locations, whether we look at a particular water security challenge and they vary in all the different locations.
So we've mentioned the Dhaka one about river water security. This was the challenge there, that there was a big gap that people didn't understand. We've done work in northern Kenya and Turkana looking at groundwater security, particularly in relation to climate and climate change, and how that works. In Ethiopia, we've looked at water allocation in the Awash River Basin, which is the large river basin that in which Addis Ababa is located as well.
So we look at very specific issues guided by our sort of government and practitioner partners. We don't set the agenda. We try and work out what science that we could potentially provide and then set on looking at a specific water security challenges and how that may be addressed.
[00:19:09] Bridget Scanlon: And I guess one of the critical issues then is maintaining these systems and financing them.
Maybe you can talk a little bit, and then monitoring whether they're operating or not. And maybe that's where Uptime comes in, where you're partnering with 16 different countries, I understand to look at the volume that's being pumped, the revenue and the reliability and the water quality, and then subsidizing some of those systems.
So I guess REACH and Uptime programs are somewhat linked, are they, or one evolved from the other?
[00:19:42] Rob Hope: Yeah, I mean, they're quite closely associated. I mean, there are strong partnerships, so we have worked quite closely together. I mean, Uptime has been looking, as you've sort of said, at this issue of maintenance and sustainability challenges, specifically in rural water areas in Africa and Asia and also Latin America now. So very much the point that you mentioned that infrastructure is built, but then it's not maintained. And part of that is a financial challenge. The World Bank estimates the urban water systems have somewhere in the region of a $300 billion subsidy each year, excluding India and China.
So it's a huge subsidy that goes into urban water where you generally have higher levels of wealth and employment. You have to pipe systems, you have economies of scale and things like that. You look at the rural landscape where people are more remote, they're scattered, often lower education, lower and more variable income.
The opportunity to get full cost recovery in rural areas is very rare in my opinion. So you have to be realistic and think there is a subsidy challenge. And how do you address that subsidy challenge to make sure you get these reliable and safe services? So this is what Uptime has been trying to look at designing standardized contracts where you've got good verifiable data that allows donors to pay the subsidy based on the results.
So you de-risk it, the results are provided, and then based on those results, the payments are made. So this is what we've been piloting in different countries since 2018, and now we're around 16 countries, and the model in Bangladesh that we've spoken about, Uptime will provide the subsidy with the government.
So we work with the government to cover that remaining subsidy, which is again, is quite modest, Globally, it's less than one US dollar per year to do that sort of work, and it's starting to get corporate interest. Corporates are looking at this. I think they've been very disappointed, should we say, over the years because they've built the infrastructure under a lot of advocacy to help people, but then the systems fall apart, they're abandoned, and this is problematic.
So the corporates, I think, are interested in this. They are engaging in some of our work in some of if they can sort of see a very clear outcome to the work and they don't face risks of investing in things that then fail, which then becomes problematic on lots of levels. And in terms of the links within REACH, what's been very interesting, the cross fertilization of science, et cetera, is looking at rural water use behaviors.
So an area that I look at quite a lot with some of my team that people look at how people pay for water across the year. And generally people, well, they shift to surface water often in wetter, rainier periods because the water is free. It can, depending on how it's stored, be safe as well. But you see this quite clear signal in terms of people shifting from the improved structure.
So from a water kiosk or something of that nature in the rainy season. The volume being sold is much, much lower, and this is where the climate signal comes in. As you sort of see the frequency duration onset off of rainfall seasons affects these behaviors, which then plays through in terms of how you finance and how you set up the sort of infrastructure in these areas.
So that's been interesting. And one of the facts from one of the PhD studies is that in wet periods, you sort of see a 30 percent reduction in revenue as people start using these systems. So you can't plan that everybody's going to use 2050 liters and pay all the money every day of the year. It's just not the reality in these rural areas.
[00:23:18] Bridget Scanlon: And I think we can do more in monitoring these systems and seeing if they're working and everything now with all of these mobile apps and sensors. And I think maybe you were mentioning Andrew Armstrong from Water Mission. And so their database where they monitor, put in sensors to monitor pumpage and water levels and stuff like that. So it's great to have those data then to understand if the systems are functioning and where they are, where they aren't. And so that you can get services out. And I know reading some of the papers, how fast you can get those services out to repair them and things like that. And, and the different types of finance apps, monthly payments versus advanced payments and all this sort of thing.
It gets quite complicated, but you know, we think of these things as issues for developing countries, but I mean, we are facing the same thing here in the and stuff. I mean, during COVID, or not just during COVID, but I mean, utilities, they ask you to conserve water during drought and stuff like that. Then their revenue goes down and, and they're grappling with that.
And they're trying to keep infrastructure going. So it's a lot of the same type of thing. And then you mentioned urban versus rural, the issue we have in the US anyway, is there's a lot of the systems that have problems with water quality are small rural systems that have in semi arid regions, they've only got one water source, like groundwater, and a lot of the contaminants are naturally occurring. So like arsenic or radionuclides or things like that, and they have to treat them. So having the expertise to do that and maintaining those systems is just overwhelming. So we talk about these things in developing countries. And I think you mentioned also UK and Australia and other regions, a lot of similarities, but maybe to a different extent.
[00:25:07] Rob Hope: Yes, very much so. I mean, I've colleagues in the U. S. and Canada who point out the same sort of issues with First Nations, you have in Australia with the aboriginal groups, you sort of see enormous inequalities in terms of the services and public health outcomes, and this is some of the richest countries in the world.
So these issues are found there, I'm based here in Oxford in the U. K., we have public health scare now with one of the pipe water systems where they have cryptosporidium that's got into the water supply and it's affected quite a large number of people. There was a bad case in Walkerton in Canada many decades ago now, but that changed a lot of thinking within Canada and they have a very, very good Canada water agency now that has got much clearer evidence and regulation to enforce these things, but it can happen in the wealthiest countries and there's plenty of documented cases.
So it's the institutional structures having the right data, having the right accountability for these systems and the right financing. Often people are very reticent to pay for drinking water. I mean, it's something you'll be familiar with the Irish case. There's been lots of riots around a number of years ago about bringing that in, which you will know a lot more than I will.
And it ended up the government took that on. Ultimately, people will pay because they'll pay through their taxes. It's not that it's free anymore, but it's just a circular route to pay for the water. But no politician is going to say that because they won't survive the next election likely as not.
[00:26:31] Bridget Scanlon: All right. And you mentioned cryptosporidium issues. I think in Western Ireland, they have a lot of problems with that there and the treatment systems and stuff like that. And I think one of the interesting things is in the U S they put forward 50 billion for the bipartisan infrastructure law to provide water, money for water infrastructure, clean water and safe drinking water and stuff like that, but it's all capital expenses.
There's nothing for operations. And so I think that's missing. You install all this expensive capital equipment, but then they can't manage it or keep it going. I think that's a big issue. And. I think USAID and other groups are recognizing they need to stay in the game and make sure that they maintain operations of these systems.
So I think that's very important. Going back to your recent paper in Nature Water, you talk about foundational science and there are some nice examples in some of your other papers. The Lodwar alluvial aquifer system is very interesting. And then how you link that to climate. And we've seen in the Horn of Africa, long term droughts over many rainy seasons, and then recently very wet periods.
So nothing in between really is just either drought or flood. And, and, and that's very challenging for water systems. And then also I think work in coastal Kenya, where you've got salinity issues and others and industrial programs, titanium mining and other things. So how to, maybe you can describe those cases a little bit. I think they were very interesting, Lodwar and coastal Kenya issues.
[00:28:01] Rob Hope: Well, I mean, this is work that's been led by the University of Nairobi. So the good scientist there, Professor Daniel Olago, and his team has led this work, which we've been happy to collaborate with. But what they've been looking at specifically in Lodwar, which is the capital of Turkana County, which is one of these poster counties for drought.
Unfortunately, I mean, they suffer a disproportionate amount of drought in that region, which causes extreme human hardship and and suffering and the the small urban centers around 80,000 to 90, 000 people that live there depend very much on this, this alluvial aquifers system that you refer to. But there hasn't been that foundational science of understanding the geophysical characteristics, the water quality, recharge, sustainable abstraction.
This is what Professor Olago and his team have been doing under the REACH program for a number of years, working with the government to understand how best to manage, protect, and conserve the water in the reservoir, to understand recharge points either through rainfall, but also from a river, the Turkwel River that flows from Uganda. It flows sort of northeast from Uganda and is one of the the critical recharge points, but that river's under pressure, distant from Lodwar with plans for irrigated agriculture, which would have a major implication if that happens on recharge into the aquifer. But that scientific understanding then gives policy makers a route to go forward, which, thankfully they have taken.
So there are now very strict land management, conservation, protection areas to protect the aquifer, certainly from contamination as the city grows. I mean, people don't take these things generally very seriously, unfortunately. And you can sort of see across many, many cities in Africa that there are aquifers, but they're very, very badly contaminated. And once they're contaminated, you know this much better than I, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to remediate.
The other study, which you mentioned in coastal Kenya, and again, Professor Olago and his team were involved in that, was through a NERC project that I was involved in as well, where you had two large commercial interests in this very sort of sleepy part of southern coastal Kenya on the border of Tanzania.
There was about $1 billion of commercial investment in irrigated sugar cane and also this large titanium mine run by an Australian company and then they both arrived and started pretty much at the same time and obviously water and water resources. It was extremely important. There was some surface water, but there was also a need to use the groundwater.
And again, Professor Olago’s team looked at the characterization and he established that there were these two paleochannels, these sort of ancient riverbeds, which ended up being very generous supplies of, of water. And the interesting thing for me as a sort of non specialist in this area is that the aggregate, the irrigated agricultural company and the titanium mining company, they would have licenses to drill boreholes to get water.
Sometimes they would get lucky and get very high production boreholes and other times they'll get unlucky and nobody had the spatial analysis to understand they were either going in or outside of the paleochannels. So when the studies were published then it became a lot clearer and they were very fortunate they've got a very good sustainable supply of water resources now in this area.
The World Bank and other groups are looking to invest, take advantage of that, but this is the foundational point that you pointed to if you don't have that you're just guessing. So licenses were being given for water that nobody had any idea what quantity what quality was there. But people would pay they would get a license and it was not the most sustainable way to approach things
[00:31:45] Bridget Scanlon: yeah, I think geophysics is amazing and I think we're seeing more and more of it applied in not just water dowsing anymore, but geophysics and Grundfos Foundation and University of Aarhus has a transient electromagnetic system that they drive over and map. So it's another set of eyes to see what's happening in the subsurface and, and having that understanding, then you can much better manage the resource and understand what you have. But I mean, we still doing that in the US, I mean, in the last several years, Rosemary Knight in Stanford has been doing airborne electromagnetics for the Central Valley aquifer.
And that helps understand where they could do managed aquifer recharge and where paleo channels are and all of that sort of thing. So we're all trying to get into the game because if we're going to manage subsurface, we need to kind of have a bit of an understanding about what it looks like and what we're dealing with.
So that's really interesting. And I think another thing that you emphasize in some of your work is the linkage between climate and the hydrology and these extremes that we've been exploring. And I'm not sure if you interact much with the Famine Early Warning System, people like Chris Funk and others, and if you had that predictive skill, then would be better able to manage? Because Chris has been able to project forecasts and maybe six months out, whether they're going to get rain or not. And then that allows the agencies to get together and provide funding so they, they can avoid some of these famines that they've experienced in the past in Ethiopia and other regions around there.
So do you interact with FEWSNET or, and I know you've been trying to link with climate your work.
[00:33:29] Rob Hope: Well, I mean, certainly colleagues here, again, this is isn't me. But through the REACH program, one of the reasons that we chose to work in Ethiopia and Kenya is the global climate models were very imprecise.
Some would point in one direction, the others would point in another. And one of the ideas around that is they hadn't accurately understood the topographical features in that part of Eastern Africa, particularly that area between the Ethiopian Highlands and the Kenyan Highlands in the sort of Rift Valley structure.
And I think Chris was talking about it in his excellent episode as well, these sort of low level jets that carry vast quantities of moisture. So this is what they call locally the sort of Turkana jets. And it's estimated that 30 percent of the moisture that comes from the Indian Ocean through into Africa comes through this, this jet across Turkana and that sort of northern part of Kenya, southern part of Ethiopia.
Yeah. And that is why Eastern Africa is as dry as it is. It shouldn't, it shouldn't environmentally be as dry, but it's this jet that about one kilometre above the ground sort of pushes this moisture into the Congo Basin where it falls. But when the, the processes break, then you sort of see some of these very large flooding events.
So there's been sort of major progress by Professor Richard Washington and Callum Munday and colleagues with the University of Nairobi team again, and the Kenya Met Department working together to get better data from this. And they tell me that these, these balloons that they send up, these radiosondes with monitoring equipment. There's been no investment in this in East Africa, despite the fact that an estimated 25 million people, because the five failed rainy seasons live in these areas. There's more intelligence and understanding in Antarctica where a couple of thousand scientists live than in the whole of East Africa, and it's something that funders, I think, have to look at themselves. You've mentioned some of them. We know who they are. But this foundational science, if they don't have that, they're making policy based on very, very limited evidence, indeed. So it's been something I've been fascinated through the program, how the work this, and they now are using that data to better inform the larger global climate models, and how they they apply them in this area, because it's been a missing facet, because these climate models are ridiculously complicated, as we know, I mean, it's a modern wonder what they create with them, but these topographical features, there's increasing recognition if you don't include them, this is why you get very strange results from that.
You can get a result, you can get a prediction, but is it accurate? And we're hoping now that that will be more applied. And the partners that we work with, again, through the Met departments and regional bodies, taking advantage of this. So we're working with FAO and other groups as well, who are very interested in sort of getting a better sense with Chris's work as well, to apply this so people can plan, predict and respond to these things a lot more effectively in the future.
[00:36:30] Bridget Scanlon: Right. I think that's very interesting. And you mentioned earlier, your background is in economics and stuff. And I did speak with Francois Bertone and others from the World Bank, and I really enjoyed their report, Hidden Wealth of Nations, on groundwater. And they talk about the potential for and suggest that groundwater is underdeveloped in Sub Saharan Africa in these basement, weathered basement, aquifers and, and there's potential to expand.
And I think I really like, I don't know if the World Bank economists came up with the analogies, but I like their egg carton type of analogy where they say, there's really not that much that you can go far wrong because it's a small system. And so if you understood the dynamics of the system, then you could manage it appropriately.
So I think that's really nice. And so maybe there could be an expansion of groundwater development and also with solar power pumps and things like that in these rural areas where you don't have grid electricity and it's difficult to get diesel and all those other things. So I think things are coming together that should help advance.
And then the understanding that you're developing about financing and governance and all of those sorts of things, I think it should help improve things in the future.
[00:37:49] Rob Hope: We shall see. I mean, I would be a little bit more cautious, I think. I mean, certainly within Kenya, the aquifer systems, the Nairobi aquifer system has been badly damaged and over abstracted and polluted.
So you have to be careful with that. And I think sometimes some of the narratives around it take from different sort of alluvial aquifer systems in the eastern, eastern India and where groundwater is very plentiful and replenished compared with some of the African systems. I know Alan MacDonald and Richard Taylor have been on the program as well.
So I think it's very site specific and you have to be quite careful and this is why I think that foundational science, you have to understand your aquifer system before you start this. It's been common in Turkana that many of the politicians campaign on putting in irrigated agriculture, and it seems nonsensical irrigating in a desert, but it's jobs, it's a short term measure.
So you have these processes coming in, and there was a famous earth observation system that sort of said Turkana had all of this water. Well they did. It was very deep, it was over a kilometer deep, and it was highly saline. So it would have cost a huge amount of energy to get it up for very low value agriculture.
It just didn't make any sense. But they think Turkana is water rich. I mean, it's like the great Nubian aquifer. But once you scratch at it and you look at the data, it doesn't make any sense. And this is the foundational science side. And this is often what's lacking. You've had Seifu on your program as well, another outstanding person working on these issues in Africa.
Yeah. building that capacity, strengthening those teams locally, and I mean, this is one of the things we argue in the Nature Water paper. You've got to build that, not through a two year project, but over a period of time to get those outstanding young African scientists, who could take on this work, and it's, it should be their work to lead and move forward, but you've only, you, you, You've got a handful of people and there should be dozens and dozens of people doing this work and they should be funded.
So that's one of the things we advocate for, to support that and put the appropriate long term funding in so these groups can provide the evidence, provide the leadership for these types of issues. It's not people like you or I, I know you don't work in Africa, but parachuting in and trying to do good. I mean, you, you, you try and support these teams where they work.
[00:40:03] Bridget Scanlon: And I think the World Bank and the USAID and other groups are recognizing that and are funding the local people, the people from those countries. So that's nice to see. And so I think when you talk about, for example, the Indo Gangetic Plain or the Nubian Aquifer, these are huge aquifers that really need to be managed.
But the small aquifers, so, those small aquifers that are in basement rocks, the weathered stuff that Alan McDonald mapped and stuff like that. So those small aquifers, I think they could support small scale domestic water supplies and maybe the smallholder farmers for some food security and things like that.
So, and these are dynamic systems that respond quickly. So the feedback will be fairly rapid. So Sustainable Development Goals 6.1 2030 is coming up. How do you think we're doing? And I guess there'll be another program or what are your thoughts?
[00:40:55] Rob Hope: Well I think, I mean, the current assessment, they had a midterm assessment last year, and it's fairly dismal reading for 6.1 and all of them, I think. I think we're making much slower progress than we need to be. So that needs to be rethought a little bit, and this is what we were arguing a little bit in the paper, the role of science, how you think about this in terms of these longer term trajectories in terms of how to get to these impacts.
It takes time. It doesn't happen quickly. I mean, some of them are decadal or generational to move these things forward. But scientific funding is often in these small pockets that policymakers, they take a look at us and they know we're gone in the blink of an eye. So why spend time and effort working particularly in some of the global South in Africa and Asia, I mean, they're used to people cycling in and out.
So I think that I'm optimistic. I think we can change things. I think you can look at the examples in Bangladesh and Kenya, where we've been working, Ethiopia also, where you can make change. But you just need to think of the architecture of the financing, the institutional relationships, of how you set those up if you are serious about these sorts of impacts over time.
Because a lot of science, I think, unfortunately doesn't achieve the return on investment that would be possible if if it was translated through. And that's not a sort of open call, give scientists liberal amounts of money with no holds or bars. You've got, you've got to work for it and you've got to deliver results.
Absolutely. And you've got to have the right scientists in place. But if you are getting that sort of progress, how do you have, different mechanisms to fund this and these are institutional challenges for some of the funding agencies because they they work for the the parliaments where they work congress or whatever there are you know there are checks and balances around this but i think it's the sort of thing that people need to think through FCDO were able to do this credit to them it was a certain type it it was an accountable grant so we were on it annual cycle are being monitored very, very closely in terms of progress.
So that wasn't enjoyable, but you know, you've got that accountability in the system. So I think you need to find a middle ground here in terms of what different types of funding models might work and might be more effective and how governments in, in some of these geographies would, would respond to this.
[00:43:09] Bridget Scanlon: And I think the advances in monitoring now and the ability to get feedback on what's working and what's not working, I think that has improved. And I really like the aspect of your work where you combine social science and your research. economics background and, and also the physical sciences together to try to better understand and optimize these systems.
Because I'm a huge fan of, I read some on behavioral economics and it fascinates me because some of it is counterintuitive, and you think it's an easy fix and we're all very well able to fix somebody else's problems. But it's when you add that social aspect. And, and then governments and how they cycle in and out so rapidly, it's very difficult to maintain a strong funding program and relationship like your REACH program to develop trust with the stakeholders and everything and, and to advance it.
So thank you so much, Rob, for taking the time today to describe some of these programs. And I'm really impressed with what you have been achieving and, and wish you luck in your future work. So thanks for joining us.
[00:44:18] Rob Hope: Thank you so much, Bridget. Thank you.
