Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200
- 216)
TUESDAY 16 JANUARY 2007
MR JOHN
CHILTON, DR
DECLAN CONWAY
AND DR
DAVID TICKNER
Q200 Chairman: Mr Chilton, in your
submission you say, "After lengthy consultation, DFID still
appears not to have a coherent strategy on water research. The
UK water research community contributed ideas to the development
of DFID's research programme... there appears little prospect
from its present formulation... that water resource issues of
a technical nature will be eligible for funding." You go
on to make reference to Ethiopia, which obviously is of relevance
to us, so feel free to be expansive. James makes the point that
there may be special pleading if you make a real case for that
information, and I understand the Institution of Civil Engineers
make this point.
Mr Chilton: Yes. I am a little
apprehensive about making the point strongly because you have
correctly identified a slight sort of vested interest.
Chairman: Explain to us why it is not
a vested interest or it is more than a vested interest.
Q201 James Duddridge: Everyone seems
to be behind you. You seem to be saying it is central to monitoring
climate change, but it has not got the attention it perhaps deserves.
Mr Chilton: No, it has not and
certainly if you get together any sort of group of African professionals—and
I can think of two recent examples: we convened a meeting in London
in the middle of 2005 and had a lot of African colleagues here,
and at a recent meeting of the rural water supply and sanitation
network in Ghana in December the same message came: the water
professionals, when they get together, all agree that data is
lacking and capacity-building is needed to do that. To what extent
this is linked to a move away from technical co-operation and
project support to budget support is an open question, and I think
there is a link there. There has been a decline in that kind of
close communication and collaborative day-to-day working that
we had with professionals in African countries and it is not as
strong as it was as a result. That is one factor. The DFID research
programme was one way in which those close linkages and close
collaborations were generated. I do not have a quick fix for this
data issue except that it is sometimes also to do with rationalisation
and professional experience in collecting the right data in the
right places. I have certainly been to countries where people
are collecting data because they always have, rather than because
these are in key pinch-points or key points where information
is needed in relation to human activities in the catchment. There
are certainly some things that could be done to use the existing
limited budgets in regulatory agencies in developing countries
to do things more effectively.
Dr Conway: Again, this has been
a very long-term issue, the scarcity and poor quality of either
climatic or hydrological data in many developing countries. Climate
change brings the focus back onto those data sets and from a scientific
and research perspective long, good quality time series of environmental
indicators—river flows, rainfall and so on—are very
important and they underpin a lot of climatic research. They are
very important. Because of concerns about climate change DFID
and some other donors have been looking again at this issue of
data quantity and data quality and I know that there is a programme
called GCOS[3]
that DFID has been lobbying other donors quite heavily about to
try to get mobilisation of funding for observation systems within
Africa. That has happened over the last year or so, since the
G8 Gleneagles summit. My own experience is that precedent shows
us that it is very difficult to get sustainable monitoring in-country
and to get the political will to maintain these things, and it
is probable—this is my own assumption—that DFID over
the years has backed away from some of these activities because
once the funding falls away it is not sustained, and I can think
of many, many examples where instrumentation has been set up and
monitoring systems set up in parts of Africa; for three or four
years everything is well-maintained and we have a lot of good
quality data. When the programme has finished and the external
funding dries up, then those networks begin to fall into disrepair,
floods take out some of the equipment and it does not get repaired,
the data quality begins to dwindle and it is very hard to see
a way of getting better data recorded without having to fund some
of the recurrent costs. Donors are wary of committing to that,
but David's point about strategic networks and that we do not
need lots and lots of data but we need to think very carefully
about what data are important for practical applications and also
in terms of science research. There may be opportunities there
where we can identify a certain minimum baseline of information
that is important for the management of systems and is important
for science research and we try and fund that. The other thing
would be to try to think of novel ways that we could engage the
political will to co-fund or support that data collection in a
sustainable fashion. There is no doubt that is the big issue.
Q202 James Duddridge: To what degree
is in-country resource actually needed to do this and to what
degree can you use satellite technology to deliver certain data
sets?
Dr Conway: We have many opportunities
now to utilise new remotely sensed information which can replace
or complement in situ observations, and there is huge potential
for that. For example, there are satellite systems which can monitor
lake level changes and water level changes within wetlands, and
that is fantastic given the remoteness of many of these systems
and the logistical difficulties. From a climatic perspective and
actually also from a water resources perspective, of course, many
of those records are not very long, so if we want to look at the
implications of variability—and of course in Africa and
other parts of the Tropics variability is quite high—and
manage water resources efficiently you need to have a good understanding
of the causes and the consequences of variability. In those cases
we need to complement the new technologies with old-fashioned
in situ measurements, and where we have long time series
records in strategic locations we should invest in trying to maintain
the quality of those, but to be careful about how many and how
involved we get in that.
Dr Tickner: What Declan said is
absolutely valid in terms of water quantity, but if you are looking
at water quality—bearing in mind that MDG target 10 says
safe and sustainable water supplies—you cannot beat on-the-ground
monitoring of water quality. As far as I know, anyway, there is
very little that satellites or remote sensing can offer in terms
of that. To some extent some sort of basic hydrometric monitoring
network looking at river levels will always be necessary as well,
so to some extent on-the-ground monitoring is always going to
be necessary, but Declan and John are absolutely right in saying
that there is a lot that can be done using more sophisticated
techniques as well.
Q203 Richard Burden: Could I take
you back to a theme that is underlying a lot of the questioning
and a lot of your answers, which is just what kind of aid mechanisms
work in promoting effective water resources management. You have
been fairly critical of some of the effectiveness around budget
support and you have said that, in a sense, the trend towards
budget support has quite often gone in the opposite direction
in terms of effectiveness and promoting integrated water resource
management. That is in your written evidence and it has come out
again today. I suppose I am inviting you to say what actually
do we want to have happen on that. One of the ideas you have come
up is that it needs to be a lot more explicit in terms of things
like Poverty Reduction Strategies and getting this issue in there
much more explicitly. John, you talked about the need for a sharper
focus, but when we come to produce our recommendations the three
things you want to see in terms of trying to make budget support
more effective would be what?
Mr Chilton: The first thing is
that we would go back to the focused and targeted in-country support
to get the message upwards because there is plenty of research
that shows, as we said in our written evidence, that if you ask
the communities themselves water supply provision would be a high
development priority for them, but there must be a disconnection
in the national chain between communities and the Poverty Reduction
Strategy because that does not come through properly. That is
the area that needs the external local champion to help that happen
and to promote ways of making that happen. It is not my specific
area but there is probably more community and social research
that could be done to look at reasons why that does not happen
and how that could be facilitated better. That is local champion,
targeted research and, again, those are aid mechanisms distinct
from budget support. The potential for problems with budget support
is greater in relation to water resources management than in relation
to water supply and sanitation.
Q204 Chairman: If budget support
was more closely linked to the poverty reduction programme which
was mentioned earlier, would that be a significant help?
Mr Chilton: Yes, it certainly
would be a significant help and then that should direct more support
towards water, sanitation and water resources. Then the next step
is to produce more support for the implementation capacity because
it then follows that if you have strong demand on a national budget
for water resources and water supply then you need the national
implementation capacity to run with that and that, as we have
also said already, also needs external support.
Dr Tickner: From my perspective
there is a very basic question that we have got to ask first,
which is if we believe budget support is fine, but is predicated
on getting the right issues in Poverty Reduction Strategies, and
we know that water generally—never mind water resource management—does
not seem to be appearing in PRSs as much as it might, but the
basic question is why is that the case? We touched on some of
the reasons earlier, that perhaps water resource management is
seen as very complex and very long-term and so on and so forth,
but quite often as well it is not a political priority in developing
countries, largely because the political elite have adequate access
to water and it is not a problem because it is not on their doorstep,
whereas perhaps it is for some rather more disenfranchised groups
in the poor, rural and remote communities for whom access to water
or problems with pollution or rivers running dry and so on and
so forth is a day to day problem, but they are not politically
powerful. There is perhaps a role for donors to try and resolve
that political dilemma, and that should lead to water per se becoming
more of a common issue in poverty reduction strategies. If we
can combine that with a better explanation of water resource management—what
it is, why it is important—then that should help as well.
One of the other things that donors like DFID could do as well
is specifically support water governance, and specifically we
are talking about access to water for a range of different needs
including agriculture, as well as water and sanitation, and supporting
governance helps us resolve conflicts over water allocation between
different users. Governance of course can happen at a number of
different levels, at the national level and the local level, but
for water as well at the kind of river basin level. If I look
back at Tanzania, they actually have quite a good national level
water policy which is built around water resource management concerns
and they are putting some effort now into setting up water user
associations at the community level. I have visited some of those
and they can be really quite impressive, these poor rural communities
safeguarding water supplies themselves, taking out invasive vegetation
like eucalyptus which sucks up a lot of water and wastes a lot
of water. Where perhaps there is a particular capacity gap is
at the intermediate level, the river basin level. If you look
at the Rufiji Basin Water Office in Tanzania, this is an institution
that is really struggling, it simply does not have the capacity
to look after the most important river basin in Tanzania. So support
for water governance, particularly at the river basin level, would
be quite useful. The other thing is we have talked a lot about
the integrated part of integrated water resources management and
in many ways that is probably the most difficult and the most
ambitious part of it, somehow or another trying to get all these
government departments and all these stakeholders together and
agree exactly what should happen. That would be lovely, but actually
a first step towards that is simply co-ordination. I have been
to a number of countries where an agriculture ministry, a forestry
ministry, a water ministry and an economic development ministry
simply do not talk to each other and I think there is a role for
donor agencies to get these guys to talk to each other and to
start thinking, perhaps, a little bit longer-term. Of course,
that implies that DFID itself should be thinking slightly longer-term.
Just for comparison, as it happens I was at a dinner last night
with Ian Pearson, the Minister of State at DEFRA and some water
industry people from this country, and one of the interesting
things that was being discussed was we have five year investment
plans for our water companies, which Ofwat monitors and regulates,
but perhaps we need a 25 year vision for the whole water sector
in this country to give all of that a little bit of context. I
find it quite interesting that that is being talked about in this
country but it does not seem to be talked about within the international
development community.
Chairman: One of the issues that is interesting
is that people keep speculating that water will be a major source
of conflict. John Barrett would like to explore that.
Q205 John Barrett: Thank you, Chairman,
I would like to follow that and explore the issue of potential
conflict over water supplies. We have seen changing weather patterns,
decreasing rainfall, drought, desertification, population growth,
pressure on land use all happening. There are a few questions
I would like to ask: are you surprised that there have not been
more conflicts over water supplies and what can DFID and other
donors do to promote a peaceful dialogue because we certainly
see coming down the track more potential for local or wider regional
disputes over water supply. What can be done to prevent this?
We have seen examples of dialogue between nations over rivers,
as you mentioned, in Eastern Europe and of course it is a growing
problem in Africa but one would have thought that there is a very
strong potential for a local or regional conflict, yet we have
groups saying that this has not really been a cause of conflict
up to now. David, you have seen examples in Malawi and Tanzania
where there have been conflicts and I wonder if you could explore
this.
Dr Tickner: John's was the Malawi
example. In Tanzania there have been conflicts, but they are not
necessarily conflicts between states. It is quite instructive
that one of the few things that Israel and Palestine seen to be
willing to talk about is, somehow or another, water resources.
When it comes down to it water is such a fundamental issue, it
is so important just for simple survival, that nations are willing
to talk about it almost regardless of their differences and perhaps
that is the reason why the long-predicted water wars have not
really materialised, at least not yet. Water probably has been
an underlying factor in some inter-state conflicts, but where
there have been conflicts and there are on-going conflicts it
is at the sub-state level, in particular between different sorts
of user groups. Again, in Tanzania, an example I know well, the
nomadic pastoralists and the commercial rice farmers and then
the subsistence rice farmers are quite often in conflict with
each other. In Kenya, around the Naivasha area, there have been
riots and people have been killed, specifically over water resources,
so it does happen but it happens slightly below the radar, if
you like. What can be done about it? There are things that can
happen on a number of different scales and an example of the global
international scale, there is a UN convention on trans-boundary
water management, signed in New York in 1997. The UK co-sponsored
the text but it has not yet been ratified by enough countries
to come into force; we need about 20 or so countries to ratify
it to come into force and the UK has not ratified it itself yet.
That is one particular thing that the UK could do so that there
is an international framework which somehow or another sets some
common principles. It is not a terribly detailed convention, not
nearly the same as the EU Water Framework Directive which governs
our domestic water resources, for example, but it sets out some
common principles and encourages countries to work together and
to share their water resources. That could happen at the global
level. There are a number of trans-boundary river basin commissions
which could perform a very valuable role. There is the Nile Basin
Initiative as perhaps one example, there is the Mekong Basin Commission—there
are dozens of these things all over the world. In strategic locations
there is a role for the UK Government to perhaps support those
commissions to fulfil their capacity. Then within the countries
as well, again referring back to my example from Tanzania of the
Rufiji Basin Water Office, this river basin level commission needs
more capacity in order to specifically manage that water that
provides half the power for Tanzania and livelihoods for other
people as well. Those river basin level commissions need help
as well, so there are a number of things that could happen from
the international level down to river basin levels, and probably
a lower level even than that as well, which could help put in
place frameworks and help put in place the dialogue which would
perhaps prevent some of these conflicts breaking out.
Mr Chilton: David is right; on
the grand scale of international conflict, in the end water is
just so important to everybody that it does not actually come
to blows. The issues are often at sub-basin level and between
different user groups and I have certainly been involved in work
in Mexico on groundwater management and waste water projects where
the things that can be done to resolve a potential conflict between
historical agricultural water users, who have been there a long
time, and expanding urban water demand are related to financial
activities, transfer of saleable water rights, swapping treated
waste water for agricultural use against clean groundwater for
urban use and the financial compensation that goes with that.
There is quite a lot of work that DFID has been doing—this
was with DFID support—at that level, and it is very clear
that there is great potential within countries for conflict between
different water users. I am an optimist and there are two reasons
why I say that. I have been working with the UN Economic Commission
for Europe on trans-boundary waters in Eastern Europe and the
work on the Danube kept going through thick and thin really, through
war and so on. I am also currently working for DFID in Palestine,
Jordan and Israel, and again with sensitive external donor support
the dialogue between professionals has been maintained, again
through thick and thin.
Q206 John Barrett: Is that last example
you give not a real potential for future conflict?
Mr Chilton: Yes, it is.
Q207 John Barrett: Do you see the
ownership of land as one issue, but the control of water supplies
as a key issue which could damage—it would not drive people
into conflict but would add to an already very dangerous situation.
Mr Chilton: It could do, yes.
Dr Tickner: Can I just offer a
couple of other perspectives briefly as well, firstly just to
follow up on John's mention of the Danube. One of the reasons
why the Danube work has kept going through thick and thin—including
the Yugoslav break-up, the NATO bombing of Serbia and so on and
so forth—is because the EU has played a very, very proactive
role in supporting the Danube Commission and there has also been
a UN Development Programme Danube Regional Project as well, which
has really helped to build capacity. That is a really good example
of how external donor agencies and external governments can really
facilitate a very strong and sustainable process which can help
to reduce conflicts and prevent them. The other perspective that
I wanted to add on this—and I do not pretend to have all
the answers on this—is something that we all need to think
about, and that is the role of the private sector in this and
perhaps in particular the international private sector. The reason
why I think of this is because when thinking about water conflicts,
one of the water conflicts that is most in the news is the conflict
between drinks manufacturers—in particular Coca Cola and
Pepsi—and local communities in places like India, and that
is just another example of the conflict between different water
users. Something I think we often overlook and forget about is
that as economic development begins to take off in some countries,
water use for industry could be of growing importance. Of course,
the involvement of the private sector in anything to do with water
is potentially particularly fraught, but I do think that there
has to be a role for the private sector, even if it is a stakeholder
participating in the discussions in certain places. That is something
that DFID could explore. I am not quite sure how, it is a little
bit woolly and I apologise for that but I think it is potentially
a growing area of conflict.
Dr Conway: Very quickly, if we
are optimistic about it we can look at water as a catalyst or
an opportunity for co-operation alongside being a potential cause
of conflict. I agree that it is very much at the local and sub-national
level where many instances of either direct conflict or some type
of confrontation between different communities and different water
users has been much more common. At the international level generally
I think countries have had opportunities to be able to replace
water by importing food, for example, and not using as much water
for growing crops in the agricultural sector. What these challenges
and what the increasing pressure on water resources and access
to water resources in different sectors highlight is the need
for co-ordination and for effective structures to be able to identify
what is the value of water in different sectors and how do we
allocate equitably and in an economically efficient way water
between sectors. As we move into increasing scarcity and with
growing demand, many countries are going to have to face very
difficult decisions about the way water is used, whether it is
in agriculture, where perhaps economic productivity is less, but
of course it provides jobs and political security and perhaps
move some of that water into other sectors. To do that you need
quite strong mechanisms and that underpins the need for building
capacity and institutions and policies for effective water resources
management.
Chairman: I gather Richard Burden wants
to ask a supplementary on that, but I must say that we are coming
up against a bit of a pressure of time and two colleagues have
not asked any questions yet. Please make the next section brief
without in any way constraining it.
Richard Burden: Very briefly I would
just like to ask John to elaborate a little more on the Palestine
situation because that is something we are also doing an inquiry
on. Whilst I am aware of the dialogue between professionals, perhaps
you could tell us what that dialogue has actually achieved in
terms of more equitable distribution of water resources?
Q208 Chairman: Could I ask you to
keep it brief because it is slightly tangential.
Mr Chilton: I do not think at
this stage it has achieved very much in terms of actual physical
agreement over the distribution of water, The point is that it
has prevented things from getting worse and it has maintained
a constructive dialogue at times when you might have expected
that dialogue to fail. You might think, given the pressures that
our colleagues in the region are under, that that in itself is
quite an achievement.
Chairman: You have got a summary.
Q209 John Battle: It strikes me that
the main conflict in development terms over water, certainly in
the last century and in recent years, has been at the local level
over infrastructure, building receptacles to collect water in,
otherwise known as dams. You mentioned the 25 year vision for
water; the Victorians in Britain had one: they built huge dams
in the north of England, Wales and Scotland and built capacity
that has lasted for well over 150 years in terms of the huge capacity.
In some cases they moved a few small villages out of the way and
the historical records, to my knowledge, do not show great conflicts
at the time, but if we look back in recent years to China and
India the building of dams has caused massive conflicts with local
communities. From the evidence we got from the World Bank, storage
in the UK is 3,000m3 per person; in Australia it is 5,000m3 per
person; in Africa it is less than 50m3. It would strike me that
they need to build some more storage capacity known as dams, and
I would just like to ask you how can the private water developers,
NGOs and governments actually make sure that social and environmental
considerations are built in, so that when dams are being planned
whole communities are not either up in arms or driven off. There
is the World Commission on Dams, but are its guidelines any use
at all to anybody?
Dr Tickner: That is a very good
question. It is interesting, I am from Wales and I know that a
lot of my compatriots are still slightly resentful of the people
in Birmingham for stealing some of their water resources so to
some extent those issues are still there.
Q210 John Battle: It is true in Yorkshire.
Dr Tickner: Perhaps it is best
not to dwell on that here You mentioned the World Commission on
Dams and certainly from WWF's viewpoint that is as good a starting
point as there is to these kind of debates. It was by far the
most authoritative report that I am aware of that has ever been
written on dams—it is multi-sectoral and there were people
from the private sector there, people from multinational developments
banks there, the whole thing was co-sponsored by the World Bank,
there were stakeholder representatives from across the board and
it is an authoritative report. It came out with, if you like,
two tiers of recommendations, principles and then the guidelines.
The principles are the easy bit and pretty much everybody has
said yes, of course, the principles are right, we should take
on board environmental concerns and social equity concerns and
so on and so forth. When it comes to the guidelines, the real
nitty-gritty about whether you need a dam in the first place,
how do you carry out options assessments, how do you operate the
dam and how do you somehow or another ensure some sort of social
equity and minimise environmental damage, that has been harder,
but there are a few organisations that have begun to be influenced
by those guidelines. I am aware of discussions that I have had
with HSBC and they have built a freshwater infrastructure lending
policy, which is largely predicated on those guidelines. The Equator
Principles—we are talking about private sector involvement—have
been influenced in part by those World Commission on Dams guidelines
and even some of the multilateral development banks—the
World Bank and the Asian Development Bank—have in some ways
been influenced by those guidelines, without necessarily embracing
them wholesale. Are they any use to people? Yes, they are, but
they should be used more. When the World Commission on Dams report
first came out in 2000 DFID was really quite supportive of a community
of NGOs, to hold some sort of stakeholder forum so that we could
explore how those guidelines might be interpreted and utilised
by UK stakeholders, including industry. That does not really seem
to have gone much further and I guess I would like to see DFID
and perhaps other government departments like the Department of
Trade and Industry, ECGD[4]
and others perhaps reopen that debate a bit and start being a
little bit more proactive on this. I would say it goes a little
bit further than that, and we should be a little bit humble about
the influence that the UK can have as well because a lot of rapidly
developing countries are financing their own water structure—Brazil,
Russia, India, China. They are financing it by themselves and
some of them, China in particular, are beginning to finance infrastructure
in Africa as well, so there is also a role for the UK Government
to work in the international context to influence those other
governments. I just want to put a bit of a climate change gloss
on this as well. Clearly, with climate change taking hold and
increasing awareness of that, there is going to be a push for
more dams for hydropower as well as for water storage. To some
extent that is inevitable and WWF would never turn around and
say there should never be another dam again, be it for hydropower
or anything else, but where DFID could really play a very proactive
role, given this Government's emphasis internationally on climate
change, is in saying to developing countries, governments hang
on a second, before you start building this dam here and that
dam there and so on and so forth, why do we not take a look at
how we can put together some sort of plan for generating as much
energy as possible by a broad range of renewable sources, of which
hydropower would only be one. Using that much more strategic view
could lead to much less conflict, a much broader agreement amongst
stakeholders about how much hydropower capacity is needed. That
kind of strategic view is absolutely fundamental if we are going
to do this right and if we are going to learn the painful lessons
from the past of things like the Narmada River or the Three Gorges
dam.
Q211 Joan Ruddock: I am just wondering
what the likelihood is, in terms of what David Tickner has just
said, that DFID can be in there when a state decides that they
will build a new dam and that DFID can actually then shape the
strategy for that country. I would like to think that that were
the case, but it is somewhat unlikely and maybe this is a much
bigger conversation that has to be held internationally about
how to assist Africa in terms of climate change. UNEP[5]
tells us there are 14 African countries already in water stress
or water scarcity and there are 11 more likely to join in the
next 25 years, so the pressures on African countries, which again
the Stern Report indicates, are so great already but they are
going to be exacerbated by climate change. You said earlier that
DFID ought to be more assertive regarding water resources management;
are you saying also that DFID ought to be more assertive regarding
climate change mitigation?
Dr Tickner: In short, yes, that
would be very nice. There are always issues of sovereignty here
and I am not saying that the UK should wade in, in some post-colonial
way and tell countries what they should do; clearly, that would
be unacceptable. DFID can play a role, either directly in some
countries, or perhaps through influencing multilateral institutions
in other places, to encourage these questions to be asked. I think
that is an entirely valid role for the UK development agencies
to follow and it comes back to John Bercow's point about taxpayers'
money: I want to make sure that my taxpayers' money is used well
and I think we have a right to ask those questions. I would just
like to throw up a couple of other examples as well of where this
can be done or has been done sensitively in one way or another.
One is in the Mekong Basin where the Asian Development Bank has
worked with the Mekong River Commission—WWF supported this
but it is much broader than just WWF—to put in place a strategic
assessment across the whole river basin in terms of how many dams
are needed and where they might go, and perhaps where there might
be no-go areas for dams. There might be some parts of the river
basin where, either for biodiversity reasons or for social reasons
or for reasons to do with other environmental services—fisheries
are hugely important on the Mekong Rover because people get a
vast amount of their protein from freshwater fish—you would
say we actually do not want to ever build any dams here, but in
other places we can think about it. If the Asian Development Bank,
which has not always been the darling of the NGOs, can start thinking
about this, that is very encouraging. Another example from South
Africa is coming at it from a different angle but very much from
the water resources management point of view is a programme called
Working for Wetlands. As you know, South Africa has real water
resource problems, it has a rapidly growing population and it
obviously wants to develop, and there was a proposal a few years
back to build a lot more storage infrastructure to help address
problems of water management. A few stakeholders were obviously
a little bit concerned about this, for all the reasons we have
talked about, and so they did a bit of analysis of the national
hydrology. What they realised in doing so was that South Africa
has got a real problem with invasive vegetation—things like
acacia trees and eucalyptus trees which suck up vast amounts of
water. A single eucalyptus tree can suck up hundreds of litres
of water in a day in the right environmental conditions. Working
with the South African Government, shortly after the apartheid
regime came down, they put together this programme called Working
for Wetlands which employs and trains unemployed, rural poor people
to form work parties to remove this invasive vegetation and to
restore wetlands. The calculations are that in doing so, as well
as actually addressing a large part of the water resources management
problems that South Africa has, they have had some huge economic
and poverty reduction benefits. I cannot remember the figures
but there has been an evaluation report. It has gone a bit further
as well and they have built in things like HIV awareness education
and have done all sorts of things around gender issues as well—it
is quite an interesting evaluation to read. I just think that
if you are a little bit creative a donor agency can actually help
governments to explore these things in slightly more sensitive
and more appropriate ways.
Q212 Joan Ruddock: What you describe
is a very good water resources management programme and perhaps
I can ask Declan Conway—you have all been saying that most
donors are not very good at this, we have not got really big partners
who are prioritising and have great expertise. Here we are not
just dealing with how to improve water resource management, we
are saying there is another greater factor there already, making
everything much worse, and yet my impression is, from my limited
visits to Africa in particular, that nobody in either the international
community or in the African governments is really getting a grip
on the concept of climate change, how rapidly that is occurring
and how to deal with it. May I ask Declan Conway about his views,
about DFID's declared policy in terms of their White Paper: where
are we going on this, what is it that we have got to do, how can
we put some urgency behind this?
Dr Conway: Up until four or five
years ago it was very much the case that within the development
community climate change was not seen to be a strong concern and
certainly not a priority. That is partly because the whole atmosphere
around climate change, the evidence and scepticism and so on was
all part of that reticence to really do very much about climate
change, and also along with that another barrier to action is
that climate change was perceived to be very much a long-term
concern and there are of course other shorter-term, more pressing
development priorities, for example water supply and sanitation,
health, education. Over the last few years, as we have seen more
evidence about climate change scientifically proven and more examples
of climate extremes and the effect of climate extremes on communities,
particularly in developing countries, the development community
has begun to realise that actually things are happening now and
that more and more of budgets are going towards emergency relief
and responses to climate hazards, so there is a very clear and
pressing shorter term need to begin to look at climate change,
climate variability and climate hazards. There has been a sea
change and it is quite remarkable how much emphasis has been placed
on climate change over the last couple of years.
Q213 Joan Ruddock: But is it all
rhetoric?
Dr Conway: No, there are lots
of activities which are now coming into play and a lot of careful
thinking about what are appropriate measures. I am talking about
adaptation to climate change which is about responding to the
effects and the opportunities that climate change may bring—I
am not talking about mitigation, reducing emissions of greenhouse
gases. When we look at adaptation to climate change it is quite
difficult to identify measures which we can take in the present
day which are primarily driven by the threat of climate change
in the future. The entry point which many people are now focusing
on is to look at existing pressures and problems that climate
variability and climate extremes are creating for individuals
and for countries and to see how we can reduce the vulnerability
to those extremes and build capacity to anticipate and respond
to those extremes as a first point before we begin to think about
longer-term climate change. In many cases climate change is likely
to occur or the effects of climate change will be felt through
changes in the extremes, so if we look at the current vulnerability
and reduce that vulnerability it puts us in a good position to
deal with climate change in the future.
Chairman: Can I bring in Ann McKechin
to ask more specifically about the Nile and Ethiopia and then
Joan will finish off the questions?
Q214 Ann McKechin: I know this is
an area which you have got particular interest in and I just wondered
if you could outline what steps are currently taken by the countries
in that region to address the issue of climate variability and
change. A specific secondary question to that would be are donors
doing enough to support them in these steps and with these initiatives
and is there any way in which UK experts can assist in terms of
providing the necessary technical information that they require?
Dr Conway: Again, up until a few
years ago there was very little discussion and very little work
done on climate change and the implications of climate change.
What there has been a lot of work done on is the effects of climate
variability in terms of vulnerability in food security and exposure
of people to floods and droughts, so many donors have been involved
in emergency responses to those events or longer-term food security
programmes, and you will see a lot of this when you go to Ethiopia—the
World Food Programme, lots of different NGOs and donors are trying
to move to combine emergency relief to drought and food insecurity
situations and to try and reduce vulnerability to those events,
particularly in the future, so a kind of combined emergency response
but also trying to build up a baseline and reduce people's vulnerability
to those events. There are of course other drivers of that food
insecurity—conflicts, land tenure, access to resources,
fertilisers and those kinds of things—and climate variability
forms one of the stressors which people are exposed to. There
has been an implicit engagement with the effects of climate variability
in trying to reduce the negative impacts of that in many parts
of the Nile Basin. There is not much recognition of what might
happen as climate change begins to occur, so not a lot of strategic
thinking in that work, but there are now examples coming on board,
so you will no doubt hear about the Nile Basin Initiative which
has been established over the last five or six years. I think
that has some remit to look at climate change issues within the
Nile Basin and I am not quite sure how much they are going to
be doing on that, and the Netherlands Government have funded a
bilateral programme in Egypt which was looking at long-term strategic
management of the Nile water and also flood forecasting within
the Nile Basin, and that has a climate change component. DFID
has recently established a very large research programme through
the Canadian IDRC, the International Development Research Centre,
and they are providing money to be administered through IDRC which
is specifically for research and capacity-building for adaptation
to climate change in Africa. They have a number of different activities
that they are financing through that and I imagine that there
will be programmes and projects which are funded through that
programme within the Nile Basin which are looking at existing
vulnerabilities and how to build capacity.
Q215 Ann McKechin: Is that information
being disseminated to the different states within that region?
Dr Conway: Yes, quite widely.
They have a website and there are calls and they disseminate information
to relevant government bodies and to NGOs and there are open calls
for institutions to try and get funding to do either capacity-building
work or research work on what kinds of responses might be relevant.
Q216 Ann McKechin: In your opinion
does that need to be developed further?
Dr Conway: DFID have actually
put quite a lot of money into it. I would say that there are some
capacity limitations in that many African institutions—in
terms of water resources, in the meteorological agencies and other
agencies that have a remit for these concerns—do not necessarily
have the capacity to use all that money. Efforts need to be spent
on trying to build capacity, and that brings me on to the opportunities
for the UK community and UK co-operation. One of the limitations
in a way to what the current IDRC programme is doing is that most
of the money—and this is rightly so—is prescribed
for African countries, for African institutions, so there are
very limited opportunities for UK or other international researchers
or advisers to engage in that programme. This again is quite a
perennial issue in terms of development money and aid money. We
want it to go to developing countries but of course to make those
projects effective and to help the capacity-building we need to
recognise that there is good value available from utilising UK
or other countries' experience. There are, I would point out,
recent initiatives by DFID which have been very positive in that
respect in that DFID has now established research programmes with
the UK Research Councils—for example, the BBSRC[6]
and ESRC[7]
are administering DFID money to look at research projects in developing
countries. There are opportunities for UK researchers to get funding
to cover their time and to co-operate on those projects and that
is a very positive step forward in the right direction. I hope
that there are some climate change projects funded through those
programmes.
Chairman: Joan Ruddock has indicated
that that has more or less answered her final question as well,
and I think it did, so thank you very much. Can I thank all of
you; we have run rather longer than we anticipated but that is
an indication of the range of issues we have covered and the explanations
you have given us. As I said at the beginning, we are now going
to Ethiopia and then we are taking evidence from the Secretary
of State. If there are any issues on reflection afterwards where
you think you could better inform us, then please feel free to
contact our staff and our advisers, because our objective at the
end of the day is to try and make as challenging and as constructive
a report as possible and your evidence is very helpful in that
respect[8].
Thanks, all of you, for coming.
3 Global Climate Observation System Back
4
Export Credits Guarantee Department. Back
5
United Nations Environment Programme. Back
6
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. Back
7
Economic and Social Research Council. Back
8
See supplementary memoranda submitted by British Geological Survey. Back
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