169 research outputs found
Swajaldhara: âReversedâ Realities in Rural Water Supply in India
For the last two decades and more, nations, international organisations and civil society, both local and global, have been rallying for the cause of âefficientâ and âequitableâ water supply and distribution. To this end, the New Delhi Statement, a precursor to the Dublin Statement, in many ways marks the first step in reforming the water sector. This article explores how ideas of community ownership and participation lauded in the New Delhi Statement and reiterated in the Dublin Statement later translate into practice when they meet the complex sociopolitical and institutional realities at the ground. It locates the genesis of Swajaldhara, the flagship rural water reform programme in India, the origin of which can be traced to the Delhi?Dublin configuration and shows how a success model became a story of poor implementation defined in the language of âgaps and slippagesâ or âpolicy reversalsâ. It argues further that the objective of âSome for Allâ still remains a target yet to be achieved in many parts of the country. The work underlines the disconnect between the global paradigms and local manifestations of such ideas and investigates the reasons for the same. Based on field research in two villages of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, the article unpacks the processes that lead to policy?practice dichotomy
The european water framework directive facing current challenges: recommendations for a more efficient biological assessment of inland surface waters
High quality water is vital for human life, and ensuring its availability is a basic requirement and a
major societal aim. The Water Framework Directive (WFD; 2000/60/EC) is a key piece of legislation
for the protection and sustainable use of water in the European Union. In this work we briefly review
the WFD directive and the current status of European inland surface waters. Additionally, we
summarize major challenges and threats for the biological assessment of inland surface waters
under climate change effects and invasion by alien species, and highlight the emerging tools
and approaches that might help improve biological assessments, including molecular indices
based on environmental DNA (eDNA), to new data from the Earth Observation programmes, and
data-sharing platforms. Finally, we present recommendations to improve monitoring systems
and assessments in the context of the WFD. Developments in this field may increase the
likelihood of assuring high quality water for societyFRESHING Project funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science
and Technology (FCT) and COMPETE (PTDC/AAG-MAA/
2261/2014 â POCI-01-0145-FEDER-356 016824). AFF,
AGR, and JPR were supported by FRESHING. FMSM was
supported by FCT grant SFRH/BD/104703/2014. MJF was
supported by the strategic project UID/MAR/04292/2013
granted to MAR
Water quality and its interlinkages with the Sustainable Development Goals
Interlinkages among the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) lead to important trade-offs and synergies among the goals and their underlying targets. The aim of this paper is to review the role of water quality as an agent of interlinkages among the SDGs. It was found that there are a small number of explicit interconnections, but many more inferred interlinkages between water quality and various targets. A review of case studies showed that interlinkages operate from the municipal to near global scales, that their importance is likely to increase in developing countries, and that new SDG indicators are needed to monitor them. The analysis identifies many different SDG target areas where a combined effort between the water quality community and other sectors would bring mutual benefits in achieving the water quality and other targets
Self-Potential as a Predictor of Seawater Intrusion in Coastal Groundwater Boreholes
This work was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council in the UK, as part of the Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet Doctor Training Partnership, run by the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London. We thank Southern Water for access to the boreholes at Saltdean and Balsdean. We thank Southern Water and Atkins Global for funding the installation of the equipment. We also thank Dr Amadi Ijioma for providing a prototype of the electrodynamic modelling code in MATLAB, which has since been adapted for use in a coastal chalk aquifer. Three anonymous reviewers are thanked for their comments, which greatly helped to improve the manuscript. The data used in this paper are in the tables, figures and cited information. The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.Peer reviewedPublisher PDFPublisher PD
Wetlands for wastewater treatment and subsequent recycling of treated effluent : a review
Due to water scarcity challenges around the world, it is essential to think about non-conventional water resources to address the increased demand in clean freshwater. Environmental and public health problems may result from insufficient provision of sanitation and wastewater disposal facilities. Because of this, wastewater treatment and recycling methods will be vital to provide sufficient freshwater in the coming decades, since water resources are limited and more than 70% of water are consumed for irrigation purposes. Therefore, the application of treated wastewater for agricultural irrigation has much potential, especially when incorporating the reuse of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous, which are essential for plant production. Among the current treatment technologies applied in urban wastewater reuse for irrigation, wetlands were concluded to be the one of the most suitable ones in terms of pollutant removal and have advantages due to both low maintenance costs and required energy. Wetland behavior and efficiency concerning wastewater treatment is mainly linked to macrophyte composition, substrate, hydrology, surface loading rate, influent feeding mode, microorganism availability, and temperature. Constructed wetlands are very effective in removing organics and suspended solids, whereas the removal of nitrogen is relatively low, but could be improved by using a combination of various types of constructed wetlands meeting the irrigation reuse standards. The removal of phosphorus is usually low, unless special media with high sorption capacity are used. Pathogen removal from wetland effluent to meet irrigation reuse standards is a challenge unless supplementary lagoons or hybrid wetland systems are used
Challenges Using Extrapolated Family-level Macroinvertebrate Metrics in Moderately Disturbed Tropical Streams: a Case-study From Belize
Family-level biotic metrics were originally designed to rapidly assess gross organic pollution effects, but came to be regarded as general measures of stream degradation. Improvements in water quality in developed countries have reignited debate about the limitations of family-level taxonomy to detect subtle change, and is resulting in a shift back towards generic and species-level analysis to assess smaller effects. Although the scale of pollution characterizing past condition of streams in developed countries persists in many developing regions, some areas are still considered to be only moderately disturbed. We sampled streams in Belize to investigate the ability of family-level macroinvertebrate metrics to detect change in stream catchments where less than 30% of forest had been cleared. Where disturbance did not co-vary with natural gradients of change, and in areas characterized by low intensity activities, none of the metrics tested detected significant change, despite evidence of environmental impacts. We highlight the need for further research to clarify the response of metrics to disturbance over a broader study area that allows replication for confounding sources of natural variation. We also recommend research to develop more detailed understanding of the taxonomy and ecology of Neotropical macroinvertebrates to improve the robustness of metric use
Surface runoff and accelerated erosion in a periâurban wellhead area in southeastern Brazil
Degradation of hydrological conditions can adversely impact water resource quality and quantity. This degradation can
generate social and economic losses, including losses for users outside the basin area. Therefore, studies focusing on surface
runof and accelerated erosion processes are needed to enable interventions that address degradation-induced challenges.
In the present study, the surface runof and accelerated erosion potential of the FeijĂŁo River basin were presented in charts
at a 1:50,000 scale. The FeijĂŁo River basin has an area of 243.16Â km2
and is used as the main water source for the city of
SĂŁo Carlos, Brazil. Geoenvironmental attributes, such as substrate, climate, relief, soil, water bodies and land cover and
use, were integrated and assessed in a GIS environment, using a multicriteria analysis and weighted sum tool. The results
show that a large part of the area (86.12% of the basin) exhibits a low surface runof potential and a moderate accelerated
erosion potential. Accelerated erosive processes are triggered by changes in soil cover and have a direct relationship with the
removal of existing vegetation and implementation of anthropogenic activities. In this case, as well as for most of the areas
in southeastern Brazil, extensive grazing followed by sugar cane cultivation was the main driving force of erosion, acting as
trigger for accelerated erosive processes at the water source area
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