"Access to clean drinking water is the most threatened right of Caribbean people," says Zachary Harding, CEO of Hyperion Equity, the Private Equity firm that manages the Caribbean Climate Fund.
Harding, in his post as the first CEO of the Caribbean Climate Smart Accelerator, facilitated the implementation of a water harvesting technology that has effectively taken a Jamaican children’s hospital off the water grid.
This is a massive achievement in the local context, where one in four people (usually among the poorest 20 per cent) does not have domestic access to piped water and droughts and infrastructural issues result in periodic “lock-offs” for the remainder of the population.
To put the situation in context, Barbados, given its lack of fresh water resources, has a water availability of just 306 cubic metres per capita per year, which makes it the 15th most water‐scarce nation in the world.
Jamaica has suffered from an aging and overburdened water system with tens of thousands of reported leaks per year, and in Dominica, water service was not restored to many areas until mid-2018— more than half a year after Hurricane Maria devastated the island.
It is not surprising that, of the 37 countries that the World Resources Institute has identified as having “extremely high” levels of water stress, seven are from the Caribbean – Dominica, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados and St. Kitts and Nevis, with the latter three being designated as water scarce (less than 1000 m3 of freshwater resources per capita).
“The paradigm of publicly provided water, originating largely from traditional sources and processed through energy-intensive technologies will become less and less feasible,” says Harding.
“Every effort must be made to take the water supply chain off the grid and ‘out the box.’” Over the past half a decade, national governments have invested in infrastructure upgrades and implementations, including mains replacement, water treatment plants and leakage reduction initiatives, each with limited degrees of success, mostly due to financial and logistical difficulties, inferior design and construction and inconsistent and short sighted planning that has overlooked the burden of long term maintenance.
According to the Caribbean Regional Fund for Wastewater Management, up to 85 % of wastewater across the Caribbean is untreated.
Climate change-related challenges such as floods, sea level rise, drought and extreme weather are the new norm for the Caribbean.

The new law defines minimum quality standards for reclaimed water to be used for agricultural irrigation.
It also sets out obligations for production, distribution and storage operators, as well as risk management measures.
Reclaimed water (i.e. urban wastewater that has been treated in a reclamation plant) will be used to irrigate food crops, processed food crops and non-food crops.
The Commission will have to assess within five years whether reclaimed water can be used in other ways.
“We must move towards a circular economy, also in the way we use and re-use water”, said rapporteur Simona Bonafè (S&D, IT).
“We could potentially reuse 6.6 billion cubic metres of water by 2025, compared to the current 1.1 billion cubic metres per year.
The draft legislation was adopted with 588 votes to 23 and 66 abstentions.
Negotiations with EU ministers will start after Council sets its own position.
Ensuring that treated wastewater is more broadly reused could limit extraction from water bodies and groundwater.
Water over-abstraction, in particular for agricultural irrigation, but also for industrial use and urban development, is one of the main threats to the EU water environment.

BHUBANESWAR: With reports of drinking water scarcity in some parts of the State coming to fore even before the onset of summer, the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) on Monday slammed the BJD Government for its failure to meet the basic needs of people even after 19 years in the saddle.
Coming down heavily on the State Government, OPCC president Niranjan Patnaik said while ruling party is splurging tax payers’ money to dole out freebies to people ahead of the upcoming General Elections, a majority of the population are out of reach of safe drinking water.
Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan are making tall claims on the achievements of the NDA Government at the Centre, they have done precious little to provide safe drinking water to people of Odisha, he said.
“Neither the State nor the Central Government has taken any step for rain water harvesting resulting in fast depletion of groundwater in Odisha,” the OPCC said.
Around 80 per cent people of the State depend on groundwater for their daily needs.
The medium and heavy industries set up in the State are extracting groundwater for their needs and this has led to water shortage in drinking and agriculture purpose.
According to Central Ground Water Board report, the groundwater level in 24 out of 30 districts in Odisha is going down.
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India is home of only 4% of total world water resources.
Around 2 lakh square kilometers of area is having salinity high as eight times of prescribed standard for drinking water.
In some locations of Rajasthan and Haryana states, 20 times of standard salinity had been reported.
The other elements of deep concerns are heavy metals such as Flouride, Arsenic, Iron, Uranium etc.
11 states of India including Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh etc which houses nearly 60 % of population are majorly affected by high flouride level above the required BIS limit of 1.0 mg/l.
65 % of rural population is experiencing flouride contamination in our nation.
Currently 15811 habitations are suffering arsenic problem in drinking water.
Water provided to us by nature through melting snow from mountains and rain, stored and flowing in beautiful rivers, lakes, ponds has been drastically polluted by our activities.
In case of water scarcity, reasons are multidimensional, we are premier agriculture based country, Over 90 % of water is used by agricultural sector of India and problem doesn’t lies in the use of water in growing crops, problem lies in efficiency of water use.
India use two to four times more water for growing same amount of crop as compared to Brazil and China.

Or maybe it came when the enormity of the project became clear: Crews from the little village of Mejote had been working on this pipeline to bring fresh water to their village for two years, and had about another year to go "We weren’t there to do the physical work as much as we were to witness what they were doing," Roche said.
The "we" in this case was a group of about two dozen volunteers brought to Honduras by the Sister Water Project of the Sisters of St. Francis of Dubuque, Iowa.
But project committee member Sr. Judy Sinnwell said the venture has been as much about changing those involved as it is about changing the lives of those given fresh water.
Franciscan Sr. Donalda Kehoe — then 91 — attended a bowling fundraiser last year for the trip and had so much fun she now bowls once a month to stay in shape.
He had read about the project in the local newspaper and heard about it several times at various community events, so when the project committee — made up of sisters, associates and volunteers — needed help with strategic planning, he volunteered.
"I feel like I need to go there when it’s done and drink that water," Roche said.
"And we chose two countries where we either had or still have sisters, Tanzania and Honduras."
But it also changed everyone on the team.
"It was just going to be this one time," Sinnwell said.
Project committee members have been to Tanzania to see the work, Goedken said, but work teams are not needed.

During the bilateral talks on the treaty in Lahore in August last year, India, rejecting Pakistan’s objections to the construction of the Pakal Dul and Lower Kalnai hydroelectric power projects (HEPs) on the Chenab river, had invited Pakistani experts to visit the sites to address their concerns regarding the impact on the flow of water into their country.
Pakul Dul will not only be the largest hydroelectric power project in Jammu and Kashmir, but will also have the first storage unit.
Also, subsequent to its commissioning, Jammu and Kashmir will get 12 per cent free power after 10 years.
Pakal Dul is a storage project with a capacity of 88,000 acre ft, but this is within the permissible limit of storage of 0.6 MAF on the tributaries of the Chenab.
Pakistan has been attributing its problems of water scarcity to Indian action of constructing hydel projects on the western rivers.
In Pakistan’s perception, the construction of dams by India could lower the quantity of water in these rivers.
In 1950, the water available per capita annually was 5,500 cubic metres when the population of the erstwhile West Pakistan was 33 million; at present, it is down to 850 cubic metres annually, while the population has increased to 210 million.
As per a recent report, Pakistan is receiving about 154 MAF of water annually against an authorisation of 136 MAF.
Despite India’s generosity in the sharing of the Indus river waters, Pakistan has consistently adopted an obstructionist strategy since 1977, raising issues regarding run-of-river projects under construction on the western rivers by India.
The reduction in discharge is the result of construction of hydel power projects with storage facilities by Afghanistan and China.

Eluru: District Collector Praveen Kumar has directed the panchayat officials to prepare an action plan for summer to tackle drinking water scarcity.
He wanted the immediate execution of the plan to avoid troubles to people.
He reviewed the progresss of panchayats here on Thursday.
Speaking on the occasion, he focused on the possible drinking water shortage during summer.
He asked the panchayat officials to act in coordination with Rural Water Supply officials.
He said the local bodies should make use of panchayat resources and ZP funds for the purpose.
In order to deal with emergencies, the district administration would keep ready fund for the purpose, he explained.
The Collector advised the officials to take technical support of RWS in conducting repairs to hand pumps and keep spare parts for their replacement if necessary.
They should ensure that no drinking water problem should arise and warned them of any media reports in this regard.
District panchayat officer Nagarjunasagar and others were present.

Rajamahendravaram: Due to insufficient water in river Godavari, only water coming from Sileru is the only way to protect paddy crop during this Rabi season in the Godavari delta area.
The farmers and officials are expressing concern over the water scarcity in river Godavari.
Earlier, the officials expected that there will be no water problem in Rabi season, but their estimations were found wrong.
According to sources, the paddy was under cultivation in four lakh hectares in the delta area and the cultivation was commenced from the second week of December month.
The present of water in river Godavari also not even 300 cusecs as against of 3,900 cusecs of water 20 days ago.
Moreover, 6,629 cusecs of water came from Sileru, which is not sufficient for paddy cultivation.
In addition, 2,000 cusecs of water was also released from Sileru through power generation canal.
In spite of these arrivals, there is no sufficient water to release into canals.
A farmer K Lakshman Rao of Kadiyam, said the officilas have failed to estimate the water problems properly and now there is no sufficient water for paddy crop.
The government should put its efforts to draw water from other sources which is the need of the hour.

Water resources are under immense pressure from climate change, soaring demand for water for domestic use, increasing population, agriculture and industrial sectors.
In addition to this, the changes in crop boundaries could happen due to changing rainfall and temperatures, another consequence of climate change.
Alarmingly, the groundwater level is declining in Lahore with a depletion rate approximately 2.5 to 3.0 feet per year across the district.
2: Prevalence of waterborne diseases such as dysentery, diarrhea, malaria, and dengue, particularly in urban centers, is due to poor quality of water which is increasing health risks and jeopardizing the quality of life.
Stakeholders should discuss and recommend solutions such as improvements in water allocations between surface and groundwater levels, increased levels of treatment for industrial and municipal effluent and improvement in environmental flows.
National Water Policy drafted on April 2018, with a rapidly growing population – 208.8 million – Pakistan is heading towards a situation of water shortage and by corollary, is at high risk of facing food insecurity.
Pakistan is no different, as according to World Bank’s calculations, only approximately 41 percent of the country’s urban population has access to safe drinking water.
The situation in rural areas is worse.
Access to safe drinking water in rural and urban areas is declining and the provision of potable water is a key issue that people face.
A large population of major cities in Pakistan does not have access to safe drinking water as freshwater resources are being contaminated due to multiple reasons and safe drinking water should be made available to the population and industries need to ensure proper disposal of solid and liquid waste.

TEHRAN — Based on the dada collected over the past decade approximately 97 percent of the country is affected by long-term drought, director of the national drought warning and monitoring center, Sadeq Ziaeian, has said.
Some 12.7 percent of the country is hit by extremely severe drought, 53.6 percent of the country is affected by severe drought while 24.8 percent of the country is facing moderate drought and 5.9 percent of the country is withstanding mild drought, ISNA news agency quoted Ziaeian as saying on Wednesday.
He went on to say that extremely severe long-term drought has had negative effects on 14.2 percent of the country’s total population, severe long-term drought has hit 47 percent of the country’s population, 30.7 percent of the country’s population is affected by moderate long-term drought and 5.1 percent of the population is stricken with mild drought.
Over a one year period ending on January 20 nearly 72 .2 percent of the country’s total population have been negatively affected by drought, he said, adding that 22.7 percent of the country’s population is struggling with mild drought, 17.7 percent of the population is affected by moderate drought, 13 percent of the population is stricken with severe drought and 28.7 percent of the population is hit by extremely severe drought.
In the same period 19 percent of the country is affected by extremely severe drought, 10.5 percent is facing severe drought, 23.3 percent is suffering moderate drought and 20.9 percent is experiencing mild drought, he highlighted.
Iman Babaeian, caretaker director of the Climatological Research Institute, also told ISNA that over the coming months the country will receive normal precipitations, however, regarding climate change in long-term precipitation amounts will drop, so that national plans to provide the country with sustainable water resources and taking measures to adopt to water scarcity specially in southeastern regions of the country is a must.
The report stated that over the summer, due to decreased rainfalls and snowfalls in the past water year (September 2017-September 2018), some 36.8 million people constituting 46 percent of the country’s total population had problems accessing drinking water.
Such challenges, the report warns, would contribute to social unrest which may become a security issue.
The data released on Friday by the National Drought Warning and Monitoring Center stated that the whole country received 130 millimeters of rain since the beginning of autumn which almost triples last year’s precipitation and also indicate a 23-millimeter increase compared to long-term averages.
Despite the increase it is projected that dry spells are awaiting the country due to the adverse effects of the climate change in the near future.