I
am a State Engineer in Water and Environment. I am also committed to
several environmental, agricultural and social causes. I've been
invited to speak at the EDYF because I’m aware of the various
aspects of the administration's decisions on water but also the
various needs and demands of society.
What
can we, as citizens, do regarding the problem of water in Europe?
First
of all, what is the state of water bodies in Europe?
Most
waters are in good condition in terms of quantity, but at least one
in ten groundwater tables are in deficit. And so, about 6 out of 10
cities overexploit their water tables. And, in terms of quality,
nearly half of the surface waters are in a bad chemical state due to
human activities: chemical pollution, alteration of constructions
(dams and canals), pollution due to nutrients from agriculture,
saltwater intrusion due to over-pumping. Only 4 out of 10 bodies of
surface water are in good or very good ecological status.
The
actions of societies have innumerable negative influences on the
water cycle, such as the sealing of soils with increased risk of
flooding, an influence on climate, where human action is
unmistakable. Concerning water and climate change, rainfall patterns
will change with increased flooding in some places and more drought
in others, the sea level will rise and, among other things, increase
the salt intrusion into the water table. Access to water is going to
be increasingly competitive between regions and may threaten our
European cooperation...
While
freshwater ecosystems are critical to our health, well-being, economy
and habitats, these results are worrisome and must be acted upon.
The
European authorities became aware of the need to protect water
resources as early as the 1990s. In Europe, we have several
directives that oblige us to get results. These texts bind the Member
States on the objectives to be achieved, but leave them the choice of
means and form, within set time limits. There are directives
concerning flooding, ground waters, swimming, drinkable water,
wastewater, and nitrates.
The
most important directive is the EU Water Framework Directive, adopted
in 2000. It aims to prevent and reduce water pollution, promote the
sustainable use of water, protect the environment, improve the state
of aquatic ecosystems and mitigate the effects of floods and
droughts.
In
2015, the "good status" or "good potential" of
water bodies, in chemical, ecological and quantitative terms were
laid out. As I said previously, this objective has not been achieved
and has been postponed and will undoubtedly be again...
There
are a number of barriers to achieving these objectives. Some water
bodies have been so badly modified that it seems impossible for them
to be brought back into good condition. Insecticides that have been
banned for a long time and solvents are the first cause of
downgrading for France because of their long lifespan. The
administration still has work to do!
Since
these European policies are not enough, it is a matter for all
citizens to protect the common good that is water. But let us look at
how much water is being used, and by whom, to see if we, as ordinary
citizens, can have an impact on these bodies of water.
In
France, half of the water consumed is tap water. A quarter is used
for industrial needs and the other quarter is used for irrigation.
I'm not going to talk about the water used for canals or the cooling
of power plants because the water is returned to the environment
after being used, even though this may have a local impact on
ecological continuity or the temperature of the water. Thus, through
our individual consumption of water, we have an impact on the
resource. For example, if we do not take showers too often, and use
very little water, this has a positive impact. Or we can reuse water
from our shower or dishes for the toilet. It is likely that in 10
years' time some parts of Europe will experience the same situation
as in South Africa: the Zero Day Crisis. That means: no more tap
water! And so, we will have to find solutions to live with much less
water.
Everything
we produce – not just food – needs water. We have a “water
footprint”. For example: 1kg of beef needs 16.000L of water, a cup
of coffee needs 140L, a computer needs 20.000L… It is necessary to
change the way we consume, by reusing, recycling, etc. If I eat in 1
day, 2 hamburgers with meat, a tomato salad and an apple, drink two
coffees and buy a Tee-shirt, my footprint will be the equivalent of
40 baths! The water footprint is influenced by our cultural practices
and the industrial process, and by transport too. Buying local things
can decrease that water footprint. The low-tech usage can be
important too. I mean, there is no vital need to have a digital
tablet, plus a computer, plus a smartphone, plus a connected
loudspeaker, plus an oven that announces that your aunt is pregnant,
plus a car that reads your text messages, is there?!
If
we are a majority with sustainable practices, if we talk loud enough
and choose wise policies - and why not if we become the
politicians? - we can influence Europe and the world. We can change
the political choices in terms of industry and agriculture.
We
haven't talked about the oceans, which are a great source of energy
and food and which are under serious threat, but I appeal to your
curiosity and creativity. We haven’t talked about the situation in
the World, but Europe is not alone and is fully connected in terms of
culture, people and goods. That means that the world situation is
extremly linked with the national, regional and even individual
situations. We are a part of the whole!
My
last words here are inspired by Aesop: together we stand, divided, we
fall.
Hi Pierre ! I found during my trip in Guatemala an ecological filter to clean water. It is used in city, where water is alterated by chlore etc... But also in villages, where the water is polluted by agriculture. I let to each of you the link of EcoFiltre. For now, it's expensive, but I think this practise could be generalised in all big cities of France and Europe. I wish all of you good continuation. Camille https://ecofiltroeurope.com/collections/all
ReplyDeleteMaximilien BIDET writes: I didn’t know that there are EU laws to protect water resources... I found a website which shows the average water footprint per person by country. All the countries of Europe have an above world-average consumption, except for the U.K (why is the UK more frugal do you think?). How can the EU water laws be more efficiently applied? The countries with the highest footprints are the U.S.A, Australia and Indonesia; are they just wasteful or are their water laws even less adequate than our own? 97% of the planet's water is salt water; do you know if there have been recent technological advances to convert salt water into drinkable water (ecologically)?
ReplyDeleteI agree with you of course that we need to reuse dishwater and water from the shower to flush the toilet. I saw, quite a while back, an engineer on TV who demonstrated how easy it is to do this. It's a pity that so few people have adopted this good practice... Should the French Ministry of the Environment and/or the EU not do something about encouraging people to use grey water?
Link to the website:
https://australianmuseum.net.au/get-involved/citizen-science/streamwatch/water-catchment/streamwatch-water-around-the-world/
Pierre replies:
DeleteHello Maximilian!
I will not answer all your questions because I have a duty of confidentiality: it is not for me, as a civil servant, to respond to the need for guidance on European Community policy. Nevertheless, I am sure that you will be able to seek out the relevant information and even engage in a debate that will be very productive for both France and Europe!
There are European directives that oblige States to achieve results, such as the good status of water bodies by 2015. However, only the governments in Europe have the right to enact laws, so it is up to them to decide how to meet the European-set targets by writing the laws which they consider appropriate...
Thank you for your reference of the water footprint. This indicator seeks to take into account all the water used directly by citizens, but also, for the production of food, consumer goods (computers, bicycles, etc.), energy (thermal power stations needing water to cool reactors for example), and transport, etc. However, care must be taken to take into account the resource available directly on site, which is renewed differently depending on the climate, the area, etc. Thanks to the natural renewal of the resource, where Canada has more than 80,000 m3 of water/per capita/year, Israel has only 500 m3/per capita/year. Also, a large Canadian consumer will have little quantitative impact on the resource, while in Kingdoms of the Persian Gulf it will have a huge impact on the local resource. Also, it is important to be careful to adapt consumption to the habitat: a globalized culture based on Western consumption habits is simply not viable. A striking example in Europe is the Spanish region of Andalusia, Europe's fruit and vegetable granary, where there is less and less water since everything is taken for industrial-scale agriculture in greenhouses, and where salt water pollutes the freshwater tables which are overloaded, and where the environment - not yet the population - is dying...
As to your question on the possibility of desalinating sea water, yes, there are various techniques that have been known and employed even in Europe (Barcelona for example) for decades, which are becoming cheaper and cheaper as a result of technical progress, but which require a huge amount of energy. Thus, to put it in a caricatured way: energy in the world is mainly produced from oil, coal and gas (unlike France, which is based on nuclear power and hydroelectricity), which implies more greenhouse gases released (and a dependence on non-renewable energies for… water), therefore more climate disruption, therefore globally less rainfall, therefore a fragile water resource.You can refer to the following articles for more information (the first one is about mediation, the second one is a bit more technical):
https://ecotoxicologie.fr/impacts-dessalement-eau-mer
http://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.iea.org%2Fpublications%2Ffreepublications%2Fpublication%2FWorldEnergyOutlook2016ExcerptWaterEnergyNexus.pdf
The State and local authorities do try to raise awareness about the limited water resources and encourage citizens to reduce their consumption. And the State constrains activities such as the filling of swimming pools and the use of hose pipes, water use in industries or for irrigation in agriculture in the event of a drought. The main problem with reusing grey water is one of hygiene. Household wastewater (despite the fact that it is treated) is in fact increasingly used for the maintenance of green spaces, golf courses and in agriculture.
Paula KAUFFELD writes: Water is essential to our lives so it is important to save it as much as possible. Since the beginning of Earth’s existence, it is the same water that we have, and it goes round in cycles. Human actions disturb this cycle. For a start, we can begin by using less tap water. For example, when we brush our teeth, we should not let the tap run, and when we take a shower, it should not last more than 5 minutes. Also, we should take showers rather than baths. Indeed, one bath uses 80L on average and a shower uses 60L on average. Why not use a container in the garden for the rainwater in order to water the plants with it? In my family, we have two big containers in the garden, and it is enough to water the whole of the garden. Everyone can do these little things and it will help to reduce the amount of tap water that we use daily. And, as regards the oceans, oil spills pollute a lot, causing damage to both the water and the animals. Also, people have to stop throwing waste into the oceans; it doesn’t require more effort to throw rubbish into a trash can than into the sea, so let’s throw waste where it belongs!
ReplyDeletePierre replies:
DeleteHi Paula!
Water is a chemical molecule composed of two hydrogen atoms and one of oxygen. The conformation - or the existence depending on the point of view - of this molecule makes it applying a kind of tension around it (a "dipole moment") and with the other water molecules that surround it. It is in strong cohesion with certain molecules and will be very repelled and react strongly thanks to this nature with others (to simplify very strongly, of course). Also, the water molecule is involved in many chemical and physical reactions: combustions, esterifications, acid-base reactions, etc. Also, water is at the base of most of the reactions in living organisms, but also in many processes in the air or on the ground. It seems correct to say that the Earth's water arrived at the moment of its creation, through processes that are not necessarily yet agreed upon (meteorites called chondrites or comets for example). However, as our beloved guillotined Lavoisier used to say: "Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed." By this I mean that, on a geological scale, a water molecule has NOT remained the same, with its three atoms, for 4.57 billion years or more...
Moreover, it is certain that humans have an impact on this water cycle: evaporation, movement of water in the atmosphere in the form of gases, precipitation, stagnation in the form of snow/ice or run-off to rivers and then to the oceans or infiltration into water tables, then evaporation again, etc. These impacts are such (artificialization of soils modifying runoff and infiltration, watering, modification of the physico-chemical quality by consumption, watering, etc.) that we speak of a small water cycle to qualify this "by pass" imposed on the natural water cycle.
You put a lot of emphasis on the individual responsibility of each person to protect this fragile resource, I would add the need to act elsewhere by making more responsible consumer choices: less high-tech and clothing, more local products and less meat. However, as long as these goods are sold, as long as people buy them, agreable as these goods may be, but destroying the resources (and not only water) in the process obviously, the situation can improve very little...
Of course people are responsible for their choices and may or may not look at themselves in a mirror. But a family doesn't have the right to prevent an industry operating next door to them, using 1 million times more water than they do. A family will not be able to stop local or global agriculture from wasting water on crop choices that that family disapproves of. And even if it could, would it be desirable?
Living in society means setting aside some of its wants and needs, even if they are scientifically valid and obvious. The law serves to ensure that most of our needs are guaranteed, including the "needs" of those that have no voice, such as water and ecosystems. If these choices (and making choices is the very definition of politics) are not the best, objectively because they destroy the environment and many do not accept them, then DIFFERENT POLICY CHOICES MUST BE MADE don't you think?
Hello Pierre, I’m Mali CHARGROS, a lycée pupil, and I sent a video talk to the EDYF too. Your speech about water problems in Europe made me even more aware of this issue. As you said, we Europeans use a lot of water but seem unaware of being “part of the whole”. I didn’t know that we use so much water to make a computer or a T-shirt; it's shocking! We really have to do something about preserving this vital resource. Your speech helped me understand the data in my Geography textbook (Hatier, édition 2019) better.
ReplyDeleteOn the “planetoscope” of the IFEN (Institut Français de l’ENvironnement) and of the “Le Conseil mondial de l’eau”, we can see that 70% of the water we use (worldwide) is for agriculture, 22% is for industries and only 8% is for domestic use. A diagram by the CIEAU (Centre d’Information sur l’EAU) shows that in France, 1% of the water we use is drinking water. It would appear that the wasting of water is caused essentially by agriculture?
Like you said, the quantity of water isn’t really a problem in Europe where it rains between 400mm to 1000mm in a year depending on the place (cf. Wikipédia). A map of France in my Geography book shows that it rains around 600mm (and up to 2000mm sometimes) per year, and there’s a lot of groundwater (covering around 50% of the country). Nonetheless, there is still a deficit in the water supply because of overuse in some parts of the country, and, because of global warming, more droughts are inevitable (the Doubt river was completely dry during the heat wave of 2018 according to my Geography book).
As you mentioned: quantity doesn’t mean quality. Human activities damage the water sources. According to a map by the “Commissariat général au développement durable”, in France there are up to 2 micrograms of pesticides per litre of water. Also, in 2016, 38% percent of aquatic life was damaged (www.statistiques.developpement-durable.fr).
I think we can talk about water quality in terms of “taste” too. I live in the country, and most people say that the water here tastes better than in the city. Where they live, how many times does their drinking water go through the water treatment system?!
Reusing the water from our showers and from the dishes to flush the toilet is a really good idea (I had not thought of that before). I read in a magazine that we most often drink directly from the tap (especially kids) which is very wasteful; we should encourage people to always use a glass (which is more hygenic too!). We should shut off the water while we’re soaping and shampooing ourselves and while we brush our teeth, and use just one glass of water to rinse our mouth; we would avoid a lot of waste that way. A brochure by the water union of Île-de-France gives us several examples on how to to avoid water waste: taking a (short) shower instead of a bath, not letting the tap flow, using rain water to clean our bicycle or the car or for watering the plants, etc. Reducing the use of pesticides and chemical products in agriculture would stop water pollution and improve the quality of drinking water and food.
My friends and I are setting up a “green group” at school next term and one of our missions will be to give practical advice on how pupils (and their parents) can save water. Like you said, on this issue: “together we stand, divided, we fall”. Pierre, does the Ministry have any documents (posters, information booklets, etc.) on water conservation (but also on biodiversity loss and climate action, etc.) we could have?
Mali, thank you for having listened so attentively to my talk and for your comment! I agree with you on many points and I find the data you give quite relevant.
DeleteYour first point is quite right: the need to save water and the ways of doing so are becoming better known. One of the Ministry's missions is to make citizens more aware of the issues involved in water management and how citizens can get involved in saving water.
As regards how much water is used/available for what purpose, it depends on geographical scale. The "Banque Nationale des Prélèvements quantitatifs en Eau (BNPE)" gives very precise data on water withdrawals and consumption in a region (or even aa commune). That information is very important to have in order to decide how best to manage the water resource.
I took part in a study on the Doubs, which is a very complex river system. It was very strange to see it dry up (a very rare phenomenon). Dramatic droughts like that might make more people realize how serious climate change is?
You mention pesticides and chemical products... These are the cause of malformations and cancers in certain aquatic animals. Nitrates too are dangerous because they cause algae growth which means that the biodiversity of water ecosystems is compromised because the algae uses up all the oxygen (cf. EU's Nitrates directive: https://ec.europa.eu/environment/pubs/pdf/factsheets/nitrates.pdf). Eliminating these products would of course improve water quality, but policies regarding intensive agricultural are slow to change...
Congratulations on the green group initiative for next year; be sure to involve all the stakeholders in the decision-making process! I advise you to look at the website of the AELB (Loire-Bretagne Water Agency); it has useful documents (on the SDAGE, the SAGE, etc.). In addition, a lot of information is available on the CGEDD website.
Here also is a list of documents that you may find useful:
https://www.ecologique-solidaire.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/18189_infog_cycle-eau_web.pdf
https://www.eaurmc.fr/jcms/dma_40439/fr/vers-la-ville-permeable-comment-desimpermeabiliser-les-sols
https://www.ecologique-solidaire.gouv.fr/gestion-leau-en-france
https://www.ecologique-solidaire.gouv.fr/gerer-secheresse