World Drought Atlas Launch Highlights Global Threat

With the spate of storms that have hit the UK over the autumn and early winter bringing heavy rain and flooding in low-lying places, it might be assumed that this is the one major water management challenge facing the UK.

Flooding is certainly a challenge, with water companies arguing that they can only deal with the pressing problem of sewage in rivers if there is more investment to prevent overflows when it rains a lot, while various schemes to reduce flooding include natural solutions like planting more trees in upland areas that get the heaviest rain.

Floods Are Not The Only Threat

However, this is not the full picture at all. If the climate models are even close to being accurate, floods will be far from the only problem we face, with droughts also posing a growing threat.

What is already becoming apparent is that weather events are becoming more extreme in both ways. This means heavier rain, but also that droughts are drier.

The extent of the latter threat has been highlighted in the newly published World Drought Atlas. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and their research partners at different universities have joined forces to produce the atlas and highlight how drought is a global threat, not a localised one.

For UK users, that is a significant point. One might imagine drought as something that happens in far-off places with hotter climates and poor water infrastructure, often made deadly by the catastrophic consequences of crop failure on the capacity of countries and regions to feed their populations. By contrast, a UK drought means mere inconvenience.

The Wider Implications Of Drought

However, the reality of major drought-stricken summers in the UK such as 1976 and the first half of summer 2018 becoming commonplace is not just low reservoir levels, hosepipe bans and a few moorland fires, but lasting threats to agriculture, wildlife and household supplies.

Moreover, as the new warning sounded by the Drought Atlas shows, when droughts end with heavy rainfall, the risk of floods becomes greater because the dry soil is less able to absorb moisture.

The worst case for urban areas, it notes, comes when supplies can no longer be guaranteed. This has become a serious problem in Cape Town and, nearer to home, in the urban coastal area of Catalonia centred on Barcelona.

The Threat Of Droughts In The UK

Although the UK is not yet at risk of the desertification that areas of Spain and possibly other parts of southern Europe face (hence the particular concern of the European Commission), the risks to supplies are genuine, which is why companies thinking of changing their water supplier might consider the issue of what their supplier is doing to plan for the future.

The issue of securing supplies was hinted at before the present government took power in July. That Labour Party manifesto noted that no new reservoirs had been built in England in the last 30 years, implying this is an area of priority need.

However, this statement, while technically true, did not give the full picture, as there were several reservoirs that were in the planning stage or had permission granted at the time of the election.

Indeed, since July, the government has confirmed planning permission for Thames Water’s plan for a large new reservoir near Abingdon, although local opponents are continuing to fight against it and have called for a judicial review or public enquiry.

Thames has insisted that the reservoir is needed because a drier climate in the south of England will put future water supplies at risk.

The Greatest Risk Is In The East

This view is shared by Anglian Water, which plans to spend £660 million on two new reservoirs to boost supply as part of its £11 billion investment blueprint it has submitted to Ofwat. It is currently reviewing the response it has received from Ofwat.

Anglian noted that the region is more vulnerable than most to climate change, partly because it is low-lying and therefore at greater risk from rising sea levels, but also because it is the driest part of the UK already and thus at greater peril from drought. Your commercial water supplier may not be operating on a full regional supplier basis in the

same way as Thames or Anglian Water, but every company can play their part by investing in infrastructure, taking steps to conserve supplies and combating climate change through their daily operating methods, such as using more green energy.

By ensuring you only deal with companies who act in such a way, you can play your own part as Britain faces up to a future in which drought resilience will need to be greater than ever before.