The impact of monsoon on flood-control infrastructure in Bengalaru, a metro-area city living through the fourth rainy season

In its four months, the monsoon provides most of India’s water. So any changes in how and when the rains do and don’t come can have huge effects. For cities, heavier downpours create further problems for flood-control infrastructure that is chronically insufficient. Bengalaru, formerly known as Bangalore, with a metro-area population of 13 million, found that out the hard way this summer, experiencing major floods.

In Pakistan last year, more than 1,500 people died in floods and two-thirds of the country’s districts were affected by a fifth failure of the rainy season, two other examples of the impacts being felt. One child dies every 17 seconds from waterborne diseases, 2 billion people don’t have access to safe drinking water and 3 billion people are in food scarcity due to the scarcity of water.

Those efforts include altering landscapes by digging trenches on slopes and planting more trees to slow runoff so that more water percolates into the ground. Educational efforts include teaching people how to develop a water budget, how to monitor groundwater and how to use less water.

How Sustainable is Fashion Week? The New York Times’ Chief Ecologist Explains Climate Change, Water, and the Disruption of Southern Africa

The New York Times’ chief fashion critic discusses the environmental impact of Fashion Week. Can it ever be truly sustainable? You are free to watch for free.

Even though industrialized nations have agreed to provide $100 billion per year by 2020 to help developing countries adapt to climate change and to cut emissions, we haven’t been able to keep our word. Most of the $83.3 billion of developing countries’ money received in 2020 went to project that mitigated the negative effects of climate change.

Water is also a vehicle through which climate injustice propagates. Climate-change impacts and unequal access to water are experienced differently by people depending on gender, caste, sexuality, class, race and location1,18. For example, in 2017, Hurricane Harvey caused catastrophic flooding in Texas and Louisiana and inflicted $125 billion in damage. Neighbourhoods with larger Black and Hispanic populations were disproportionately affected owing to existing vulnerabilities, including poorer infrastructure and access to health care1. The majority of the world’s population are living below the poverty line, with sub-Saharan Africa having the highest concentration of poverty and few resources to overcome it. Emigrating or selling valuable assets such as livestock, can lead to permanent income and livelihoods losses, and further impoverishment.

The UN Environment Programme’s executive director Inger Andersen said in the report that political will is needed to increase adaptation investments and outcomes.

“If we don’t want to spend the coming decades in emergency response mode, dealing with disaster after disaster, we need to get ahead of the game,” she added.

The World is at Risk: Why We’re Not Here At The Right Time, But We Need To Change Our Think about Investments in Climate Change

The UN published the report days before its annual climate conference starts in Egypt. In a separate report published last week, the UN said the world isn’t cutting greenhouse gas emissions nearly enough to avoid potentially catastrophic sea level rise and other global dangers.

The UN climate negotiations are scheduled to start in Sharm el-Sheikh over the weekend. They are likely to focus on raising money to deal with climate change in developing countries.

“You have to raise the level of ambition to make it possible for you to continue to do the things that you’re doing at the same time as meeting the needs for adaptation,” says Mafalda Duarte, CEO of Climate Investment Funds.

To prepare for more extreme weather, the world needs to invest more money in projects to reduce the hazards, vulnerability and exposure that people face, the UN says. That could include building water reservoirs in areas at risk of drought, ensuring infrastructure is built to stand up to the impacts of a hotter climate, and providing communities with early warning systems to help people evacuate in emergencies.

Duarte says that the world is at risk because the money that’s needed to limit and prepare for climate change isn’t being spent. Those risks could include armed conflicts, refugee crises and disruptions in financial markets, analysts say.

“We need to change our minds and think in a different way because an investment across borders in other places is a domestic investment,” he says.

Eby Emmanuel’s phone call after the 2018 rains ended the universe in the Hindu religion: A tale of two deaths and four deaths

The rains did not stop all summer. By 14 August, most reservoirs had filled up and the people had grown weary of the monsoon. That day, Eby Emmanuel’s phone started buzzing repeatedly with messages from neighbours warning that the Meenachil River was overflowing. He realized areas downhill could flood in hours, endangering a hamlet of 90 poor families living on the sandy riverbank.

The secretary of the council in Kidangoor, which is a collective of local riverists, organized with other community workers to get the people out of the way. T. Raju refused to give up his belongings. He lay down on his bed frame and thought he had seen a lot of rain. Then, his bed moved and his television floated by. This was not normal.

Raju jumped up, grabbed some clothes and 270 rupees (US$3.30) and fled to the evacuation site, he recalled in an interview with Nature last October. The water filled his home during the 2018 flood, Raju said, pointing to a water stain about 1.5 metres up his wall.

The Pralayam is a flood that ended the universe in the Hindu religion due to more rain than normal in the state of Kerala. Since 1924, it’s the biggest in the state. More than 400 people died, more than one million were displaced and damages amounted to US$4.25 billion, according to an Indian government report2.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00341-5

The Meenachil River is not a tropical climate, but it is an important part of the weather forecasting process in the Indian Ocean

Since 2018, “the sound of the rain beginning really disturbs my mood,” says Emmanuel. “It is not like before — we were sleeping peacefully even when it’s raining all season. But not any more.

The human element in extreme weather risk makes it challenging for meteorologists to issue granular ‘impact-based forecasts’ that warn people about events such as flooding, lightning strikes and landslides in their immediate vicinity. That’s why Emmanuel and his community on the Meenachil River decided to take matters into their own hands. Emmanuel says that they aren’t following the government forecasts. “We are depending on our trusted volunteers’ reporting.”

K.S. Hosalikar, head of climate research and services at the IMD, said predictability is a problem in the tropical region. Climate change is causing fury to it.

Over the past year, bad news has been frequent in the region. During March and April, a heat wave in India and Pakistan killed at least 90 people and destroyed wheat crops across the world, compounding a worldwide grain shortage caused by the war in Ukraine. May saw landslides, floods and heavy downpours in northeast India. The monsoon arrived in June and there was widespread flooding, from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka. After weeks of heavy rains, August was a big problem for Pakistan. More than 1,500 people died and damages exceeded $30 billion.

Every June, South Asia nervously awaits the summer monsoon, also called the southwest monsoon, which decides the fortunes of hundreds of millions of people. As the Northern Hemisphere tilts closer to the Sun during May, the land heats up and the warm air above it rises. The trade winds reverse course and flow in from the Arabian Sea, pushing moisture-laden rain clouds up the towering Western Ghats mountain range in Kerala and nearby parts of southwest India, triggering rain.

Over the past seven decades, the monsoon has become more erratic, with a propensity towards extreme precipitation. The Indian Ocean, which has warmed more than other oceans since 1870, is said to be the reason for this. Extreme rises in ocean temperatures are caused by frequent marine heatwaves. The trade winds did not seem to be strong.

A scientist at the IMD in New Delhi says that they have a wide range of users. People who are more advanced are able to handle mobiles and computers. There are people that have never seen a computer or a mobile device.

Cloudbursts and floods: How far can we go? An expert report on Kerala, where the Indian Ocean weather station complies

“If rain is there for one day all over Kerala, the entire Kerala is flooded. Not because there is more water, but because the water has no way to flow easily,” says S. Ramachandran, president of the Meenachil River Protection Council.

Cloudbursts can drop over 100 millimetres of rain in less than an hour, and accompanied by strong winds and lightning, over an area of up to 30 square kilometres. Very little is known about these cloudburst events. The weather forecasting models are unable to account for the increase in chaos caused by climate change. “It is a challenge in the tropics.”

The IMD can forecast some of the rain in a day or two. It says that the forecasts are even less accurate than before 5 days ahead and 10 days later.

In the region there are not many observation stations that can be used for forecasting storms before they develop. The IMD has the best set-up in South Asia, and it gets data from 33 doppler weather radars, 56 balloon-launching sites, 25 lightning-detection sensors and 725 automatic weather stations, as well as meteorological satellites, ships and other sources. The Indian government and agencies in the US also observe the Indian Ocean.

But only some of these data are shared or used in monsoon forecasts, Koll says. It should be possible to use the data in the open domain for cutting-edge research. He adds that the IMD sometimes releases data when requested, but the process is slow and it doesn’t provide all data. The IMD’s Hosalikar responds that data are freely available for researchers, except for commercial purposes.

Every year before the monsoon, millions of smallholder farmers on the Indo-Gangetic Plain turn on pump sets and flood their rice fields during the dry season. The forecasting models predict that the irrigation water should cool the land surface and make it less hot. Mondal and her friends found that forecast models underestimate cooling by five times. She says it is difficult to measure and predict what is happening at the local level. That creates a gap between what is being predicted and what actually happens.

The water flows downhill now because of people. Villas have been built on paddy fields, irrigation canals and the riverbed, which has been mined for sand. Koshy had his home flooded for the first time.

Flooding and droughts happen when the local water cycle is overwhelmed because of changes in how people use the land, and sometimes because reservoir managers make the wrong decisions as a result of imprecise forecasts, says Mondal.

The schoolchildren log daily rainfall and river-flow measurements in their rain book and send the data by WhatsApp to a group that oversees the operation. The bank manager in the nearby village is 70 years old. He is part of a team that analyses the readings from 220 river gauge and 13 rain gauge across the 1,272-square-kilometre watershed. When there isn’t any rain, the data is taken once a day. During the rains, the team increases the frequency to once an hour or more.

Emmanuel, his team and their data are able to predict when areas downhill will flood thanks to their deep knowledge of the surrounding topography. It’s not yet entirely scientific, but it works, says Emmanuel. The family of Koll, who hails from the area, is collaborating with the group to make sure scientifically rigorous data collection is done through an online portal.

This effort is “the best working example” of grassroots action, says Koll, which is something that the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has called on local communities to do to adapt to climate change. Climate action can be tailored for climate challenges and land use changes across South Asia using the early-warning system along the Meenachil River.

After visiting his volunteers all day, Emmanuel took a break in an office he shares with another community group. A traditional lunar calendar is on a wall. Farmers use it to plan their planting and harvesting schedule, but these days, nature’s rhythm is wonky: there is less constant rainfall, and more unpredictable fury. There is a need for the early-warning system. Ensuring data collection, getting buy-in from local officials and securing funding for gauge are just some of the tasks that a lot of his time is spent on. Emmanuel is committed to the community because his ancestors were elected leaders and social workers here; it’s his family’s legacy.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00341-5

The role of public perception of risk in flood-risk monitoring: the example of a Muslim man in China, the Middle East and the world

But he knows it might not outlast him unless he is able to build a strong team. “Something may stop when I stand still at any time. But I hope that is not going to happen.”

The effectiveness of measures and perception of risk have to be explored by researchers. Social factors need to be explored — such as age, gender, education, income, ownership, culture, religion and political context. For example, past experience is important for recognizing risks and adapting behaviours. But, for rare events, memories fade and only catastrophes are remembered for a long time.

By 2020, we estimate that 39% of the world’s population will live in drylands, compared to 40% in 2000. Such regions will host 51% of the world’s population growth by 2025, with half of those people living in low-income countries, and only 1% in developed ones4. Cities are expanding rapidly in areas such as the Middle East, India and China5. And the proportion of the world’s land area classed as arid or semi-arid is projected to increase as the world warms — from 41% in 2000 to 48% by 20254.

Researchers, international organizations and non-governmental organizations need to help such countries to update their flood-risk information. Initiatives include the Global Flood Partnership run by the European Union (https://gfp.jrc.ec.europa.eu), which is developing flood observation and modelling infrastructure in low- to middle-income countries such as Myanmar. The United Kingdom gives out flash-flood risks online and the governments should do the same.

The dry lands need to be protected with barriers and Dams. For example, China has been building thousands of kilometres of levees along the main stream and tributaries of the Yellow River. This is expensive, however, involving hundreds of projects with costs ranging from millions to billions of dollars.

Land-use regulations need to be tightened, such as by preventing informal development in floodplains. Flood-protection standards for buildings need to be improved. For example, the International Residential Code, used as the basis of many national and local guidelines, requires the lowest floors of buildings to be 30 centimetres above the average level of a ‘once a century’ flood. Such levels no longer reflect flood probability in a warming world.

Nature-based solutions cost less. In Pakistan, the government has restored almost 350,000 hectares of forests in itsBillion Tree Tsunami planting drive. In the Yolo Bypass project in Sacramento, California, levees are being replaced with weirs to divert flood waters away from houses and onto natural floodplains. Large residential areas should adopt ‘sponge city’ techniques that reduce run-off, such as permeable pavements, green roofs, rainwater harvesting and swales (ditches). These are being installed in cities throughout China, including Xining in Qinghai province, the largest city on the Tibetan Plateau.

Natural features should be quantified to see how effective they are in storing and conveying water. Local differences in soil and vegetation conditions must be considered. More needs to be known about how the systems degrade and how to maintain them. The World Bank has created a Program on Nature- Based Solutions for Climate Resistance, as well as water and soil stewardship initiatives in the northern part of China.

Developing disaster-resilience strategies for dryland flood risk management: a case study of China, Indonesia, and the rest of the world

Managed resettlement is more equitable and efficient than leaving people to fend for themselves. Cross-disciplinary research in social science, geography, engineering and psychology needs to investigate the best way to manage retreat, by giving essential services and assistance, while avoiding food insufficiency and lost livelihoods.

Risk-transfer schemes — such as flood insurance, catastrophe bonds and solidarity funds — should be developed for drylands. In China, there is a national system of flood insurance. These have been incorporated into the national emergency-management system and launched in dozens of pilot cities, including Zhengzhou in Henan province. It is possible to receive compensation for the loss of crops and livestock if there is more than a certain amount of rain. Catastrophe insurance protects businesses and residences against extreme events that are too expensive for insurers to cover, such as super typhoons or floods that occur only once in 1,000 years.

Algeria has made catastrophe insurance mandatory. Every insurance company must join the national catastrophe risk insurance pool to make sure they cover their disaster losses in proportion to their market share. All properties must be insured, with premiums set by the government.

Collective behaviours need to be understood. Information about locations, impacts and responses to dryland floods can be found in social-media messages. Models can integrate complex human behaviour into quantitative risk assessments, to improve management strategies. Given that flood risks are evolving, it is important to adapt policies as information becomes available. Interdisciplinary analysis will also be needed to evaluate the robustness of flood-resilience strategies for a range of risks and future scenarios12.

The UN meeting that takes place this week gives the world a chance to put water at the core of climate action because of the water and climate crises.

The answer is that water was not high on the agenda until now.

Several low-income countries were turned down for financial support and instead proposed a study on how to finance water projects, as reported by Nature at the time.

But setting up a new treaty or institutional UN body will take many years. Instead, delegates want water to be prioritized in existing treaties and the UN system.

Some countries will be calling for more funds, especially in the form of grants for projects such as desalination of seawater or wastewater treatment. A spokesman for the water and irrigation ministry in Amman says that many existing international supports are loans. “However, loans exacerbate the financial pressures on already-struggling economies,” he says.

The UN secretary-general will look to raise funds for his plan to create climate warning systems in all UN member states, so that they are better prepared for extreme events. The World Meteorological Organization, based in Geneva, Switzerland, is working with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to implement a plan to provide appropriate early-warning services to half of its members. “We need some US$3 billion during the coming five years,” adds Taalas. Around 10% of the money has been raised by different sources.

The world is facing a looming global water crisis that threatens to “spiral out of control” as increased demand for water and the intensifying impacts of the climate crisis put huge pressure on water resources, a UN report has warned.

According to the UN World Water Development Report, published Tuesday, water use has increased by 1% a year over the last 40 years, driven by population growth.

The report said that the climate crisis is putting pressure on the ecosystems and could affect plant and animal species.

Efforts to reduce pollution should open the door to further collaboration and increase access to water funds, he said.

We should go past our current focus on capturing blue water, which makes up 10% of all fresh water on land, to also encompass green water, which makes up 65% of fresh water on a global scale. Flows of moisture and vapour from land and vegetation are essential for regulating the water cycle and securing future rainfall, as well enabling carbon sequestration in soils and forests.

Historians, economists and political scientists need to set budgets for green and blue water across scales, while keeping the sources of fresh water within ranges typical of the past 12,000 years during which humans evolved. Recent analyses suggest that features such as soil humidity are deviating from historical ranges in some places.

To illustrate, we used such data3,5 to calculate volumes, ratios and flows of evaporation and precipitation in several regions (see ‘Atmospheric watersheds’, ‘Terrestrial moisture flows across borders’ and Supplementary information, Fig. S2). When the winds blow from the ocean, some countries have a constant source of water and few or no dependence on other nations. Landlocked countries are more vulnerable to natural variability and the practices of neighbours over which they have no control.

Researchers need to understand better how these processes interact and how atmospheric flows of water vapour connect different regions. A new view of interconnectivity is emerging, through combining meteorological databases (including on water vapour, humidity, wind speed and direction) and computer models that connect likely sources and sinks.

Moreover, no country acquires over half of its moisture from within its own boundaries, implying that even the largest countries rely on evaporation from other areas to sustain their precipitation. Even Russia, the most self-reliant in rainfall and with 45% of its moisture recycled internally (see Supplementary information, Fig. S2a), is still heavily dependent on neighbouring countries (20%) and the ocean (35%).

China, too, is heavily reliant (74%) on water evaporated from land for its precipitation. Of that, 44% comes from internally recycled moisture, and the rest from upwind neighbours, including India, Kazakhstan and Russia. Moisture from Chinese land also has a large role in rainfall across Central Asia and the Tibetan Plateau.

The view of interdependence surpasses the traditional focus of water governance and disputes in regards to rivers, lakes and groundwater. For example, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance dam on the Blue Nile has an impact on supplies to Sudan and Egypt downriver. Researchers will have to study how rifts might grow once inter-reliance is better understood.

Despite the fact that green water supports climate change, it doesn’t have an economic value. Depending on where it is, it can be a public or private good.

Whenever private companies benefit from public subsidies, governments can attach conditions to contracts to maximize public benefits. For instance, the 1996 amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act in the United States promoted equitable access to water by creating the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund to subsidize companies that provide water for disadvantaged communities. Similarly, the 2022 US CHIPS and Science Act contractually obliges funding recipients to maximize efficiency with regard to water, waste and electricity.

There needs to be new forms of public–private arrangements, including permits, property rights and procurements, to counteract the rent-seeking and value-extractive activity that plagues some national water sectors. In England, since the privatization of the water industry in 1989, over US$100 billion has been paid out to shareholders as dividends, while the water system has been left with leaks and sewage discharges.

The European Union’s Water Framework Directive requires member states to develop river- basin management plans with the public. Obligations are reviewed every six years, and non-compliance brings legal sanctions. Progress has been made but more-coordinated efforts and monitoring may help realize the full potential of the directive.

All sectors have to be involved. 70% of freshwater is used by food production, with India the largest consumer. India might focus on making sure continuity of food supply without putting pressures on green and blue water. The production and consumption processes should be changed so that they maximize water sharing.

In Australia, the national science agency, CSIRO, is working to reduce the economic impacts of the country’s droughts by 30% this decade, by making climate data accessible to farmers to enable them to make informed water-use decisions. Other countries are considering rewarding upstream water management that benefits the downstream areas.

Improving the treatment of water and wastewater can save water and cut emissions. More than 80% of waste water globally is released into the environment, despite treatment using fossil-fuel based energy accounts for only 3% of emissions. Treatment before disposal, or processing waste to produce fertilizers and biogas, would not only cut emissions but also lower pollution risks3.

Adaptivity as a whole isn’t getting the finance it needs at the scale needed. The $746 billion of global funding for climate change was mostly for mitigation. The water sector has been receiving just 3% of the climate funds. It is estimated that adaptation will cost between 140 and $300 billion a year by the year 2030. For the UN to achieve their goal of ‘universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all’, it will take about 1.7 billion dollars more than the current investment. The projected costs for water infrastructure range from $7 trillion by 2030 to $22.6 billion by the year 2050.

Water-based adaptation must fit local contexts, or else exacerbate the risks it is meant to allay. In the 1960’s international experts built embankments and gates in Bangladesh to protect the coastal area from flooding. They did so without considering the massive sediment flows that meandering rivers bring, traditional water systems such as ‘aushtomashi bandhs’ (temporary earthen levees that prevent saltwater incursion in the dry season), fishing and agricultural livelihoods, and the inability of local communities to maintain engineered flood-control structures10,19. The consequences have been dire, the worst being floods and waterlogging, as well as increasing soil and water salinity, degraded food and livelihood security, and sinking of land. Many men fleeing the region have migrated in order to find gainful employment, which has had a negative effect on women.

Failure to understand or ignoring the root causes of vulnerability is what causes these problems. For example, in Cape Town, South Africa, measures to cut water demand, such as tariff increases, fines and the withdrawal of ‘free basic’ provision, were imposed in response to prolonged drought from 2015 to 2018. As a result, poor and working-class households faced severe shortages, whereas affluent households were able to store bottled water or install rainwater harvesting tanks and boreholes20.

Local communities need to be involved in shaping and determining their futures and should lead the decision-making process. For instance, in 2021, the district council in Rangamati, Bangladesh, worked closely with local women to combat water shortages in this drought- and landslide-prone hilly region. The women chose to have a solar-powered well and tank installed in order to pump, store and deliver water to their area, and they took the lead in designing, implementing and following up the project. Such community-led projects need to become the norm.