Droughts, wildfires and flash floods, the UK’s weather this summer could come straight from a dystopian Hollywood film. Yet this is the reality of our changing climate affecting millions of people across the country today. Too often we take water for granted, and the risk now is that we implement short-term national fixes to the latest crisis at the expense of a measured global response.
We must coherently address the long-term supply and demand of water with international co-ordination to keep us all safe in the face of climate and health emergencies.
The current heatwave is unprecedented for the UK but by no means unique: large parts of Europe are sweltering under the same blistering sun, with people crossing the French river Loire and the Italian Po on foot — without wellies.
India has suffered more than 200 heatwave days already this year, lakes in the US are drying up, and the Horn of Africa is battling its worst drought and devastating food crisis in decades.
And climate change is at least partly to blame. At its core the global climate crisis is a water crisis and it needs a global plan of action that addresses that.
It is vital we acknowledge the impacts of climate change on the fundamentals of human existence: water, food, and energy. You can’t have one without the others and they — and our national security — are under threat because of what we are doing to our planet. This is exacerbated by the global effects of the pandemic. Crops die in drought-hit fields, reducing our food resilience for the coming winter, low water levels in rivers have a knock-on effect on hydropower which is key to the clean energy transition. Even nuclear power stations in Europe have had to reduce output because of a lack of cooling river water. The Environment Agency has warned that the extreme weather means by 2050 the UK will need more than 3.4 billion extra litres of water per day. Doing nothing will be costlier than taking action now.
First, the new prime minister must ensure the UK urgently works with the water companies, Ofwat and the Environment Agency to build modern infrastructure to future-proof quality supply for decades to come. We simply can’t afford to lose billions of litres of water through leakages or the ongoing pollution of our water. Key to a solution is creating the right investment climate and ensuring that the cost is spread equitably across all consumer groups.
Second, we must encourage the British public to play its part — and this is a responsibility of every one of us — to ensure there is enough clean water for all uses. This means investing in innovation, effective public information campaigns and personal decisions that help cut daily average use, while protecting biodiversity in nature.
Finally, it is vital that a new prime minister takes a global view and puts in place a cross-government strategy on global water security, acknowledging that water security is as vital as energy or food for communities abroad and this is critical to our future prosperity.
The World Bank estimates that 10 per cent of the rise in global migration is linked to water insecurity, with people on the move due to water and food insecurity an additional risk factor for clashes between communities. As we have seen during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, water infrastructure is frequently targeted during conflict, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without access to this essential resource. Beyond the local impact, the UN is concerned that the “ripple effect” of the war threatens to worsen a food crisis in Ethiopia sparked by conflict, which is in turn made worse by water shortages.
That is why the US Government earlier this summer launched its Action Plan on Global Water Security, branding it as a critical part of its national security. By directly linking access to water around the world to national security and global stability, and signing into law President Biden’s climate package, the US is addressing the urgency of water security at home and abroad.
Covid, conflict and climate change have shown us how interconnected the world now is, and not taking a global view on such an essential resource will inevitably come back to haunt us.
The government must ensure that a sufficient proportion of our aid budget is spent on water, sanitation and hygiene if we are to make a reality of our global Britain rhetoric and play a full role in dealing with this most global of problems.
We must make water, and the energy and food security that come with it, a top priority - from Surrey to Soweto and Sumatra. It is up to the UK and our next government, to be amongst the leaders of the step-change we need to see and encourage other nations to join us.