Tiempo Climate Newswatch

Participants at World Water Week endorsed the Stockholm Statement to the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (RIO+20). The statement calls on governments to show leadership by committing to achieving "universal provisioning of safe drinking water, adequate sanitation and modern energy services by the year 2030." Targets to be achieved by the year 2020 include 20 per cent increases in total food supply-chain efficiency, in water efficiency in agriculture, in water use efficiency in energy production and in the quantity of water reused and a 20 per cent decrease in water pollution. Anders Berntell, executive director, of the Stockholm International Water Institute, commented: "If we do not take dramatic, immediate strides to create more resource-efficient societies, then water shortages will constrain economic growth and inhibit food and energy production in many regions."

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released the water chapter of its Green Economy Report during World Water Week. The assessment concludes that an annual investment of 0.16 per cent of global gross domestic product in the water sector could reduce water scarcity and halve the number of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation in less than four years. As it stands, failure to invest and to collect, treat and re-use water efficiently is making water shortages worse in many parts of the world. As a result, global demand for water could outstrip supply within 20 years. "Improving access to cleaner drinking water and sanitation services is a cornerstone of a more sustainable, resource-efficient society", observed Achim Steiner, head of UNEP.

A new report on ecosystems services, water and food security was also released during World Water Week. The report, from UNEP and SIWI, argues that policymakers should consider farmland, fisheries and other agricultural areas as "agroecosystems", providing sources of food as well as performing diverse ecosystem services such as water purification and flood regulation. Made worse by climate change, by 2050, declines in these regulatory ecosystem services could result in crop yields that fall up to 25 per cent short of demand. To protect dryland agroecoystems, the report recommends creating corridors for livestock movement to reduce overgrazing and land degradation, diversification of land to integrate crop, tree and livestock production and promote soil fertility through manure, crop residues and provide tree fodder for feed and the cultivation of local plants better adapted to dry conditions.

According to researchers in the United States, the El Niño climate cycle doubles the risk of civil war in 90 tropical countries. During the study period, 1950 to 2004, one out of every five civil conflicts was influenced by the phenomenon. "It's the poorest countries that respond to El Niño with violence," said study co-author Mark Cane from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Surveying 175 countries and 234 conflicts, it emerged that countries with weather affected by the El Niño cycle had a six per cent chance of civil war breaking out when the El Niño pattern was in force, compared with three per cent when the La Niña pattern was dominant. Countries not affected by the cycle stood at two per cent. While the researchers did not project their findings into the future and a warmer world, "what [the study] does show, beyond any doubt, is that even in this modern world, climate variations have an impact on the propensity of people to fight," said Cane. "And it is frankly difficult to see why that won't carry over to a world that is disrupted by global warming."

Low-lying Suriname, on the South American coast, has created a climate-compatible development agency. "We owe it to our children to prepare ourselves for the effects climate change will have on our country," said President Dési Bouterse. Sea-level rise threatens the country with worsening erosion, inundation, loss of farmland, a reduction in available freshwater, drought and extreme rainfall.

The new agency will coordinate policies on climate change mitigation and adaptation and forest conservation and seek funding to deal with climate impacts and develop a lower carbon development strategy. "Our agency is established to consolidate Suriname's climate change adaptation efforts. We're here to combine and complement the work of other institutes. When you want results in these matters, it's best to execute from one central point. A multitude of institutes that sometimes work across each other doesn't work," said John Goedschalk, who will lead the new institution.