Transcript
DIANA ALLEN: We have carried out a research contract for UNESCO as part of the trans-boundary waters assessment program and even though small islands are not trans-boundary there is one small island development state that is a trans-boundary. There was a desire on the part of UNESCO to include Small Island Developing States in the overall assessments. So the first part of this work was looking at what do we know about the groundwater conditions and water conditions a little bit more generally on 43 small island developing states that are distributed world wide. And of the many variables that we synthesised and compiled there were two that were of interest to my research and one of them is recharge. How much water is recharging the aquifers on these small islands developing states. And when we did an assessment of this using a standard recharge model. Applying the same model to all of these 43 islands it turned out that many of them where showing signs of water stress. At the current time. So we used an indicator of water stress and surprisingly a large number of them, 44 percent of the islands were in a state of water stress as defined by this particular indicator.
DON WISEMAN: And that is due to drought?
DA: No not due to drought it is due to an imbalance between the amount of water that is recharging the aquifers on an annual basis and the amount of evaporation that is taking place.
DW: Okay, so warmer climates?
DA: Warmer climates, but not warmer looking into the future. This is current. So this is taking a look at the current amount of evaporation on these islands. So the bottom line is a limited supply of water on the islands and some of the islands already have an indication that when you compare the amount of water that would be available compared to some other region of the world, 44 percent of the islands we looked at would be in a state of water stress in comparison to other areas around the world.
DW: You also looked at the quality of this water or the threats to quality?
DA: Right we looked at the main thing on islands is the presence of a saltwater wedge. And there is a freshwater lens sorry that sits on top of fresh water so it is a bit of a bubble and if we take too much out of that freshwater lens and it is not replenished at a sufficient rate then there can be encroachment of something called the freshwater, saltwater interface. Which can lead to gradual salinisation of the aquifer and essentially depletion of the fresh water supply. So that is a primary indicator of water quality concerns on these islands, but there are other concerns as well, just as there are in other places around the world. Natural contaminants for example and agricultural contaminants, like nitrate. So we looked at the available literature to say, well, how many of these islands are actually experiencing problems with their water quality as well. Recorded problems.
DW: Did you isolate the solutions or what it is that these island nations can do to protect their water?
DA: Well one of the I think surprising aspects that came out of the review was that we took a look at various legal instruments so laws and regulations surrounding groundwater and we also looked at the institutional capacity in these small island developing states. And found that there were there is a very large percentage of the islands that really had very limited capacity to manage and govern their water appropriately. And I think as one of the major conclusions of this study trying to improve on that overall governance of water on these islands would go a long way towards improving for example monitoring programs. So looking at the quality and quantity of groundwater over a long period of time. Surprisingly there was a survey that was distributed to local experts and we had a lot of help from UNESCO in trying to find who those local experts would be that could complete the survey on behalf of particular small island developing nations. And on many islands we had a terribly hard time trying to find somebody local who had knowledge of the ground water system on the island. Which suggests that local expertise is also lacking and that wasn't really discussed in the paper that came out in nature climate change. But something that I observed was the lack of experts on ground water systems on these islands despite the fact that ground water is an important resource on many of the islands.
