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Press Conference WMO - Global Water Report 2022 - 12 October 2023
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Edited News , Press Conferences | WMO
WMO: With the global hydrological cycle out of control, more early warnings needed
STORY: State of Global Water Resources Report 2022 - WMO
TRT: 3 min 12s
SOURCE: UNTV CH
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
ASPECT RATIO: 16:9
DATELINE: 12 October 2023 GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
- Exterior medium shot: UN flag alley, UN Geneva
- Wide shot: speakers at the press conference
- SOUNDBITE (English) – Prof. Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General: “The key message is that the global hydrological cycle is changing and many of the impacts of climate change they are felt through water, flooding, drought, and also melting of glaciers. We have to invest in better understanding of the water cycle and monitor the resources to understand what kind of impacts of climate change we have been facing so far, but especially what we are going to face in the future.”
- Medium shot, photographers in briefing room
- SOUNDBITE (English) – Prof. Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General: “About half of the world has experienced an increase of flooding events and about one third of the planet has been facing an increase of drought events. We know that one degree of warming of the climate means that we have seven percent more humidity in the atmosphere, which means that it is enhancing the flooding potential.”
- Wide shot: speakers and attendees at the press conference, screens with speaker
- SOUNDBITE (English) – Prof. Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General: “The melting of glaciers is speeding up. In the report we are showing that, for example, the Swiss mountain glaciers, especially the Alpine ones, they have lost about ten percent of their mass last year and this year which is a record.”
- Close shot, journalist in briefing room
- SOUNDBITE (English) – Prof. Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General: “We will have challenges to get water for agriculture, for human beings, industry, and also for hydropower production. We also know that the warming of rivers and waters in general is causing problems for power production.”
- Medium shot: speakers at the press conference on podium
- SOUNDBITE (English) – Dr Stefan Uhlenbrook, WMO Director of Water and Cryosphere department: “More than 70 percent of the water that is used by humans is used for agriculture. It is used to produce food – and therefore it is absolutely critical for food and nutrition security. In some countries it is even more than 90 percent of all the water withdrawals from the systems, so the water supply is actually used for food production. Drinking water – as your question is very important – is globally roughly ten to twelve percent of the water that is used for the direct human consumption or domestic use.”
- Close shot, photographer in briefing room
- SOUNDBITE (English) – Dr Stefan Uhlenbrook, WMO Director of Water and Cryosphere department: “What is the solution? We need to manage the demand. Using 90 percent of the water withdrawals for agriculture in largely inefficient irrigation systems is not the way forward. We need to think about more efficient irrigation technology. We need to think about: only irrigate where necessary, think about which crops are produced there. For instance, very thirsty, very water intensive crops to grow them in the middle of the desert is maybe economically still viable but environmentally not sustainable anymore.”
- Wide shot: press conference room, screens with speaker
- Medium shot: attendees at the press conference
- Medium shot: photographers in briefing room
WMO: Global water cycle is out of control, more early warnings needed
The earth’s water cycle is spinning out of balance and human activity is to blame, the UN Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Thursday, as it called for increased early warnings and more coordinated water management policies.
“The key message is that the global hydrological cycle is changing and many of the impacts of climate change they are felt through water, flooding, drought, and also melting of glaciers,” said Prof. Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General.
He added that “about half of the world has experienced an increase of flooding events and about one-third of the planet has been facing an increase of drought events. We know that one degree of warming of the climate means that we have seven per cent more humidity in the atmosphere, which means that it is enhancing the flooding potential.”
Speaking in Geneva, the WMO chief urged greater investment in a “better understanding of the water cycle”, to monitor the resources and to understand “what kind of impacts of climate change we have been facing so far, but especially what we are going to face in the future”.
The WMO State of Global Water Resources Report 2022 builds on a pilot project issued last year and contains more expanded information on important hydrological variables such as groundwater, evaporation, streamflow, terrestrial water storage, soil moisture, cryosphere (frozen water), inflows to reservoirs, and hydrological disasters.
Information was gathered via field observations, satellite-based remote sensing data and numerical modelling simulations to assess water resources at the global scale.
The overwhelming majority of disasters are water-related and so water management and monitoring lies at the heart indicates the report. In the summer of 2022, severe droughts impacted many parts of Europe posing transportation challenges in rivers including the Danube and Rhine and disrupting nuclear electricity production in France owing to the lack of cooling water.
In 2022, snow cover in the Alps - crucial for feeding major rivers such as the Rhine, Danube, Rhone, and Po - was much lower than average. The European Alps witnessed unprecedented levels of glacier mass loss.
“The melting of glaciers is speeding up”, said WMO’s Secretary-General. “In the report we are showing that, for example, the Swiss mountain glaciers, especially the Alpine ones, they have lost about ten percent of their mass last year and this year which is a record.”
In 2022, over 50 per cent of the global catchment areas experienced change from normal river discharge conditions. Most of these areas were drier than normal, while a smaller percentage of basins displayed above or much above normal conditions. This was similar to 2021, according to the report.
“We will have challenges to get water for agriculture, for human beings, industry, and also for hydropower production,” said Prof. Taalas. “We also know that the warming of rivers and waters in general is causing problems for power production.”
“More than 70 per cent of the water that is used by humans is used for agriculture and to produce food and therefore absolutely critical for food and nutrition security,” said Stefan Uhlenbrook, WMO’s Director of Water and Cryosphere department. “In some countries it is even more than 90 per cent of all the water withdrawals from the systems, so the water supply is actually used for food production. Drinking water is globally roughly 10 to 12 per cent of the water that is used for the direct human consumption or domestic use.”
Currently, 3.6 billion people face inadequate access to water at least a month per year and this is expected to increase to more than five billion by 2050, according to UN Water.
“What is the solution? We need to manage the demand. Using 90 per cent of the water withdrawals for agriculture in largely inefficient irrigation systems is not the way forward,” said Mr. Uhlenbrook. “We need to think about more efficient irrigation technology. We need to think about: only irrigate where necessary, think about which crops are produced there. For instance, very thirsty, very water intensive crops to grow them in the middle of the desert is maybe economically still viable but environmentally not sustainable anymore.”
-ends-
Teleprompter
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, Biavenu Bourgeois.
Madame de Missouri represented La Presse.
The World Meteorological Organisation is releasing today the second State of the Global Water Resources Report and this one covers the year 20/22/19.
Institutions provided their data and inputs for this report and it provides a global overview on river flow, groundwater, terrestrial water storage and more.
And monitoring is not only useful to manage the water resources, but it is also crucial for early warnings.
Today we have with us Professor Petri Talas, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organisation, who will be presenting the main findings of this report.
We have Mr Stefan Ullenbrock, Director of Hydrology, Water and Cryosphere at WMO, and we have Mrs Solania Mishra, who is a scientific officer who was key to prepare this report.
So, Professor Talas, can you tell us a bit more about this report, please?
Thank you and it seems that that there are certain some other other things happening today with self-interest for the for the media.
But thanks for you for coming and thanks for you who are following us via video systems.
First of all, I would like to say that WMO is the United Nations only specialised agency on water issues.
We are dealing with weather, climate and water and we have very much responsibility to follow what's happening to the water resources worldwide and how this this hydrological cycle with rainfall and and evaporation and melting of glaciers is, is functioning globally.
We know know only now that about half of the world has experienced increase of flooding events and about 1/3 of the planet has been facing increase of drought events.
We know that 1° warming of the, of the climate means that we have 7% more humidity in the atmosphere, which means that it's enhancing the, the flooding potential.
And we, we have also also seen changes in the weather patterns in the whole Northern hemisphere thanks to warming of the Arctic.
We have started seeing more often stagnant weather conditions, **** pressure systems with drought and heat waves.
And, and then we have seen also that we, we, we see these low pressure systems moving along the same path day by day, leading to flooding, flooding problems.
And, and, and we, we, we also know that the melting of glaciers is speeding up.
And in the report, we are showing that for example, the Swiss mounting glaciers, especially the Alpine ones, they, they have lost about 10% of their mass last year and this year, which is a record **** amount of loss of, of that.
And unfortunately we have lost this this glacier melting game or re the glacier melting and sea level rise may continue for the coming thousands of years because of or re **** concentration of of carbon dioxide.
In general, we will have challenges to get water for agriculture, for human beings, industry and also for hydropower production.
And we also know that the warming of of rivers and and and and waters in general is causing problems for power production.
Both classical fossil fuel based power plants need the cooling power and also nuclear power plants need needed.
So that's that's a challenge at the moment.
The demand of water is globally growing and, and the population growth is, is, is is causing also this partly and, and also the economic growth is enhanced leading to enhanced need for water resources.
And, and then as part of the climate mitigation, we need to invest more in hydropower and also there's a demand growing from that perspective.
And in the report, we are showing that there has been net that loss of water in the in the rivers and, and there has been also net loss of, of water groundwater resources.
And this has been especially the case in Eurasia, in Central Europe, Middle East, Mediterranean region, Central Africa and, and, and both Western Americas in the US, United States and Canada and and also Central and southern parts of Latin America.
We have seen an increase of the groundwater resources in central and Southern Africa and and also southeastern Australia, which is related to **** amounts of rainfall in those those parts of the world.
In soil moisture, we have seen both increases and decreases and, and, and, and in the long run, this is going to be a major driver for agriculture, agricultural conditions.
And for example, in both Americas, Eastern Asia, Middle East and the Mediterranean region, we expect to see more drought and, and poorer conditions for, for agriculture.
In the report, we are also showing what's happened, what has happened to the European rivers last last year and, and in many rivers, we have had record low amount of water.
And that's valid for Bow River in Italy, in, in Rhine River, in Rowan River and, and also in Danube.
That's that's what I will soon show you those and we have seen quite severe flooding events in 21.
We had this flooding event in Germany with casualties.
Last year we had very severe flooding event in in Pakistan and, and this year we have seen this Libyan tragedy.
Just some weeks ago in 2022, we had the droughts in Europe, in China, in the United States and also Horn of Africa.
And in Horn of Africa we had also big negative impacts on food production and, and, and, and we had the malnutrition of the population in that part of the world.
We had flooding events related to Hurricane Iron in Florida with 113 billion U.S.
dollars losses.
We had flooding events in Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, in Sahel region, Afghanistan, of course Pakistan, also India, Philippines and Australia.
This is in a nutshell the report and now I would like to show you some slides to confirm that what I said is based on on scientific facts.
So the key message is, is, is that that the, the global hydrological cycle is changing and many of the impacts of climate sense they have fell through water flooding, drought and also melting of glaciers.
And, and, and, and we have to invest in a better understanding of, of the water cycle and, and monitor the resources to, to understand what kind of impacts of climate change we, we have been facing so far, but especially what we are going to face face in the future.
And as, as, as WMO and with our partner organisations, we have a programme called Early Warning Services for all.
We are improving the early warning services in hundred countries which don't have proper early warning services in place.
And also this water component, drought, flooding events, they are very important from that perspective.
And it's also triggering landslides and forest fires in in what many cases next, please.
So we, we started this new practise of publishing these reports last year and, and, and, and these reports are based on, on collaboration of several organisations worldwide and, and, and several of our, our members and, and we have been using both satellite data and EC2 data for this, this, this report and we have altogether 19 contributing institutions.
And this is the river discharge status for last year.
And you can see globally that it has been slightly negative and, and, and we have seen decreases in, in, in parts of Asia, especially in Russia, of course, Southern Europe, Northern Africa and, and also Central and Eastern Africa and Middle East, southern parts of Latin America and parts of parts of North America, especially the United States and, and Canada.
And then we have seen increases, it's are related to very much the flooding events as I already mentioned in for example, India, Pakistan, Australia, Philippines, southern parts of Africa and Sahel region, parts of Brazil and and also in Colombia and also in the Alaskan region.
We can, we can see enhancement of river discharges which are related to also flooding problems in those, those areas next, please.
And, and then we have also in, in the report, we are showing what's happening to the water research wars worldwide.
And we can see lots of brownish colour, which indicate that we have, we have had less water in the reservoirs.
And, and that's the case especially in Middle East, in large parts of Europe and, and, and, and also parts of Latin America, for example, in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and, and, and, and Paraguay.
We have seen difficulties with, with that.
And, and also in, if you look at the US map, it's mostly brownish.
So we have, we have less and less water in the reservoirs there.
And then in these flooding areas like like India in southeastern part of Asia and parts of Scandinavia, we have seen increased amount of water in the reservoirs.
Next please.
And this is groundwater map which is showing that that we have we have negative anomalies as a net worldwide and and you can see quite strong negative situations in the Middle East, in Central Asia, large parts of Europe, large parts of North America and and southern and central parts of of Latin, Latin America.
And in Africa, both in the central part of Africa and southern part of Africa and also in Australia where we had these flooding problems, we can see enhancement of water storage is.
But as a net globally, we have lost, lost that, that resource.
And that's, that seems to be the long term trend which which we sold already in our previous report.
Next, please.
And here we have some individual parts of world, perhaps there's no need to go to details here next, please.
And, and South Africa, we, we saw increase which was related to flooding and, and ****, **** prohibitation events.
And in France this, this drought that we had last summer.
And we have added also also this this year's summer has has led to loss of groundwater resources.
Soil moisture is very much driving, driving the agricultural conditions.
And, and in the report, we are also showing what's what has happened there.
And we have two examples here.
We have August which is summer in Northern Hemisphere and winter in Southern Hemisphere and December where we have this opposite case, winter in Northern Hemisphere and and somewhere in southern Southern hemisphere.
And we have seen both both negative and positive cases there.
This is 1 very important map that we saw in our previous report demonstrating what is the fraction of water in in main rivers worldwide which have the origins from melting glaciers, which are these these light blue colours here.
And then we have these dark blue colours which indicated what is the fraction of river water having the origin from from rainfall.
And you can see that, for example, in Central Asian region and, and many parts of Asia, very large fraction of the, of the, of the water in rivers is, is having origins in the, in the, from, from the, from the glaciers.
And once these glaciers are retreating, we are getting, getting less and less water.
And that's going to be a major problem by the end of this century.
Gradually we will have less and less such water and, and, and, and this water shortage is going to be a challenge.
And, and, and, and it's it's boosted by the fact that the population in many parts of the world is still still growing and, and same is true for America's.
You can see that that there are there are rivers which have the origins from Andean region.
And for example in Peru, the capital Lima, it's it's it's main source of water is, is from from the melting of melting Andean laziers.
And same is true for, for example, Colorado River, where about half of the water is having the origin from, from, from melting glaciers.
And, and once we are changing also the climate in such a way that the the amount of rainfall is decreasing, the situation is quite desperate.
And this, this we have seen that happening already in in western parts of United States and also the populated countries, China and India are, are are in a long, long run going to suffer of this.
And of course, it's going to be a major, major challenge in the long run.
Next, please.
And I already said that, that we have seen record amount of water in, in some European rivers here we have this red colour indicates what was the situation last year.
And especially Paul River has seen very low amounts of water, which is having impacts on water supply and and also on on on transportation beans in the river.
And same is true for Rhine and and also partly Danube River, but especially Paul River and Rhone River.
They have seen record low amount of water last year.
Next, please.
And I already said that, that, that this is Swiss mounting glaciers are treating as, as to all of the mounting glaciers.
And, and in Switzerland here, we, there's an estimation that that altogether last year and this year we are, we, we, we have lost 10% of the glacier mass, which is so far a record, record amount.
And last year was record-breaking.
But, but the number 2 is this year, this heat wave that we had had this summer, a low amount of rainfall led to this, this situation next, please.
And then we have the selected events for last year.
And these red dots indicate the drought problems.
And as already said, we have had such problems in China, in Europe, especially Central and Southern Europe and also western parts of North North America.
And then we have seen flooding problems in Sahar region in some parts of Central Asia.
And of course, this Pakistani case was the most, most severe one where we had both human losses and, and, and also also we had economic losses and, and, and same was true for for India, for, for, for, for Philippines salary or we mentioned.
And unfortunately, we, we have started seeing the frequency of these events growing because of, of, of climate change.
Next, please.
So this is the just in to summarise, we have studied this this reporting and and and this is very important because the impacts of climate change, they're very much fell through water and and this is also one of the challenges when it comes to climate adaptation, how to how to deal with the growing amount of these these challenges.
I think that's that's all.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr Secretary General.
Now I want to open the floor to questions and you can ask questions to our Secretary General, of course, but also to Mr Stefan Ullenbrook and Suliana Mishra, who can give more insights about the the figures and how the report was done.
So we'll find with Christian you can start with your question.
Thank you very much.
Good morning and thank you for the report.
I was wondering is it is it legitimate to to summarise this as drinking water reserves are diminishing worldwide and is it possible to quantify that over a certain time frame?
Thank you.
Yes, we can.
As I was showing on the map, globally we have we have less water in the reservoirs and and, and globally we have also lost groundwater resources.
But perhaps our experts might say something more about the numbers.
Yeah, thank you.
In general, if you look at the use of water, it's actually more than 70% of the water that is used by humans is used for agriculture.
It's used to produce food and and therefore it's absolutely critical for food and nutrition security.
In some countries, it's even more than 90% of all the water withdrawal from the systems.
So the water supply is actually used for food production.
The drinking water as you, your question is, is very important.
It's globally roughly 1012% of the water that is used for direct human consumption or domestic use.
Actually the, the part that we are drinking is is, yes, very little in, in, in Western economies, it's like 2% of the water that the human use per day is used for drinking.
So, so the drinking water use at household level is impacted, but the largest use is in agriculture as well As for industry and energy.
The supply mainly comes from groundwater and, and surface border which are rivers or lakes.
And we do see diminishing resources everywhere and not everywhere, but, but particularly in the year of 2022, we have seen lower inflows into reservoirs.
We have seen declining groundwater tables in in many parts related to the drought as a Professor Towers illustrated, yes, so, so locally regional we do have significant problems.
And if I may just one more fact, we have seen a very persistent drought in Latin America in the so-called La Plata basin which covers the country's Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and a drought for many years and and that had major implications for hydropower production for navigation etcetera.
But the the drought continued even in 2023 and we saw very close approaching these days zero in Uruguay.
That means no water supply for the city in for the cities in Uruguay anymore.
So, but it was just prevented and we will see how the the weather conditions and the only new conditions in the coming months.
Hopefully we'll replenish the water resources in this region.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
We have a question in the room, please.
Hi, good morning.
Emma Fudge from Reuters.
Just hoping to ask a big picture question on the disequilibrium in the water balance.
Do you know how long it's been going on for and how bad it's likely to get?
And then secondly, if I may, the trend seems to be towards getting drier in river basins.
I'm wondering if you can say something about the responsibility of water.
Tower Countries.
In these circumstances, and how can you get the balance right between the different demands on the?
Water for agriculture, for drinking.
Water for nuclear and so on.
Thank you.
Thank you.
It's a very, very good and complex question if I May 1st water, water towers are absolutely critical.
These are the **** mountain regions of the world.
We have seen yes last year again that the the water reservoirs in the water towers in the Asian water towers which which are the key supply to the to hundreds of millions of people living in the the, the river basin of the youngster of the indoors of the Ganges of the Yellow River, of the Mekong etcetera.
We have seen diminishing resources there last year.
Again to balance that is to 1st to, to manage the demand of water.
We, we do see due to economic development and increasing demand of water.
On the other hand the the resources going down.
So that, that is obviously a problem as as you rightfully indicate, we, we can help to, to manage that with storing more water, either replenishing groundwaters or store water in, in ecosystems, in groundwater and coastal aquifers, etcetera, or in, in, in human built storages, reservoirs.
That that is another, another option.
But we have seen how dangerous this can be as well in the, in the recent flood event in Libya where 22 reservoirs collapsed and then then probably more than 10,000 people became a victim of of that strategy.
So, so reservoirs, our solution, but do require a lot of maintenance, a lot of attention, a lot of investments as well.
Missus Mishra, you want to add something just to answer to how long this has been going on the the diminishing resources.
So we from the total terrestrial water storage map that we saw, it's, it's a remotely sensed, it's prepared from remotely sensed data.
Unfortunately this data is only available from 2002 onwards and from then on we see this trend that it's diminishing.
But unfortunately we need more data to be to able to say this if it started much further in the past or But we can say with certainty that since we have the data from 2002 onwards from the GRACE mission, we see a diminishing amount of terrestrial water storage.
Yeah, I could add that we have at the moment the programme to enhance the global observing systems and as part of this early warning services for all.
And the recent IPCC report was demonstrating that very large fraction of the world has too little data that we could say that whether there has been a change, for example, in the flooding, flooding events and, and, and that's why we are enhancing the amount of stations in African countries and island states in some parts of Asia and Latin America.
Question from Robin Millard, IFP.
Thank you.
2 questions.
If I may firstly.
The the slideshow said we have to invest.
In better understanding of the water.
Cycle.
What is it that we don't understand particularly well?
At the moment and secondly, Desalina Tion.
Taking water from the sea?
What?
What part could this play in addressing water shortages?
Thank you.
Yes, first of all, of course we have this weather forecasting models where we are, where we, we have been able to go to the cloud physics, the the in the, in the the richest countries we have already weather forecasting models which can go to cloud physics scale to this kind of half kilometre, 1 kilometre scale scale.
But with our climate models, we have a challenge.
We have difficulties in in estimating what's going to happen to the weather extremes in the long run.
And and that's why we have a new initiative that we would go to kilometre scale climate.
The modelling maybe would need the biggest possible **** performance computing resources worldwide.
And, and this is one of our initiatives for the forthcoming COP 28 to to start, start such such programme.
With the current climate models, we can say what's what is happening to the climatic average, these average temperature, average rainfall, average soil moisture and so forth.
But but to to say more about the weather extremes there we have difficulties with the weather forecasting models, we can do it.
But with the climate models where we we have to make the runs for the coming decades or even coming coming century, we have limitations.
Yeah, the hydrological cycle is changing and it's changing rapidly.
So the records of the past are not a good representation for the future anymore.
Therefore it is a so important that we keep on monitoring and improving, improving the understanding where is it changing and how these global pictures as we show in the reports, we we feel quite, quite comfortable with them.
They're they're quite solid and they kind of on a global scale and colour coding them from from red to to green that that is, that is fine.
But water management decision are very much at the local scale.
So therefore, better observation at the, the local scale, trying to understand the the change of resources at the local scale is, is very important.
That needs better, better observations in in situ observation as well as remote sensing, Earth's observation technology as well as more detailed modelling as Professor Tellers just illustrated.
And if we can go around to 1 kilometre, 1 square kilometre distributed modelling around the world, that really enable us also to have to include the lateral redistribution of water, which is so important.
And so far in, in the, in the more coarser models, we cannot account for that.
And therefore we, we, we do have the problems to to predict not only the local weather conditions, but also what does that mean for flooding, for groundwater recharge, etcetera.
If I may, on your second question, Desalina Tion is, is one of the solutions.
It is in not, not a inexpensive solution.
I need to say it is also as as there's no silver bullet in, in water management.
Also it is quite energy intensive.
Even with the with the latest reserves osmosis technology, we do need a lot of energy.
We can get this from from from renewable sources like solar in in many of the the Gulf countries, for instance.
But so we we have to realise it, it requires some significant investment.
It requires energy and also the the management of the brine that the wastewater that that comes from desalina tion of, of sea water is, is something that need to be managed carefully to not impact coastal or or ecosystems in in the oceans.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Kristen, I have a follow up question.
Yes, thank you very much.
I was wondering whether one question, I'm not sure I got this right, but data shows us that since 2002 terrestrial storage has diminished.
Is that correct?
And does that include groundwater water in river deltas?
What, what exactly is included in terrestrial storage?
And my previous question was, is it possible to quantify the, the, the amount of water that has diminished between 2002 and today?
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Very good question.
In general, since 2002, there's there's two satellites orbiting around the Earth, the so-called GRACE mission and they are measuring the gravity field of the Earth and two satellites flowing in a certain distance from under from from each other.
And one is bit bit closer to the to the Earth just because of the change of gravity.
And why does the gravity change on the planet?
That's because of water distribution.
And that water is the overall signal.
It's the groundwater to a large extent, but it's all the other sources that, that changed the gravity field of the earth and that is water stored in lakes and reservoirs and rivers and very much also in snow and ice.
So in the glaciers as well as in the snow cover of the, of the, of the **** mountains.
So, so since 2002, these two satellites orbiting around the world and, and constantly measure these changes of this gravity field.
And then with some, some methodologies, it is able, we are able to, to kind of to, to calculate what do these changes in the gravity field.
How can we relate that to changes in, in the water system, which is mainly the groundwater and snow and ice.
Actually in our maps, we, we, we, we blanked out polar regions or Greenland.
And so because the, the drastic changes of the, the rapidly melting glaciers there would, would kind of bias the whole picture.
And we mainly look at the terrestrial water storage where, where we do see changes, we, we see a decline in, in many parts of the world, as Professor Tallis explained.
But it's not that overall the, the water is, is declining of the whole world.
So it's kind of a closed system and the planet, but it's the the redistribution at regional scale is, is what what impacts the most.
I'll just add on the quantification part.
So in the maps we show with the colour code, what's the kind of trend that we have seen?
So it's shown in centimetre per per year.
There is ongoing research to, to compartmentalise the different components of there's still water storage.
So as Stefan just mentioned, it's, it's a combination of groundwater, river storage and, and river flow reservoirs and everything else.
And there is research going on which, which can eventually we, we can quantify how much of what component has been affected.
But right now we don't we, we don't have the method yet to quantify them or it's, it's not validated yet.
Thank you.
Maya plants you, you had a question or we answered to it already.
Yes, thank you very much for taking my question.
My question is in two parts actually.
It's how much of the water usage in agriculture is from big farm, big corporations that farm.
And then the second part is what solutions exists to address the consumption of water in agriculture?
Could you hear me?
I, I, I can try.
As I said, globally, roughly 70% of the water withdrawals are used in, in aquaculture.
And that's, that's mainly irrigation water, part of that irrigation border, which is not taken up by the plants, which go back to the river that that's kind of maybe polluted, but it's the same water and other water is just taken up by the plants and, and, and consumptively used.
We call that.
So it is a very significant part.
And in some agrarian economies, like in Central Asia, it's more than 90% of all the whistles are going into agriculture.
But, and and this has serious consequences.
Look at France last year we had a very severe drought in Western Europe.
You might remember it was very hot and some people enjoyed the summer.
But on the other hand, it was, it was exceptionally warm.
We had very low river water in the in the rivers, groundwater levels were declining.
And that let that in in France and in parts in other countries in Western Europe, nuclear power plants had to be shut down because there was not enough cooling water anymore.
So it really has severe economic consequences, these low water levels and groundwater levels if there, if there's not a recharge happening, it's the same as with glaciers.
They they are declining, but also groundwater tables decline.
And there there's a there's a bottom line at at one stage.
So it's kind of only to some extent the renewable resource.
And if, if we take out more on the new system that naturally flows back on the long term, the the resource base is diminishing.
Your what, if I may one more answer to your question.
What is the solution We need, we need to to manage the demand.
So, so using 90% of the water withdrawals for agriculture in largely inefficient irrigation systems is, is not the way forward.
So we need to to think about more efficient irrigation technology.
We need to think about only irrigate when necessary.
Think about which crops are produced there for instance, very thirsty, very, very water intensive crops to to grow them in the middle of the desert is is not maybe economically still viable, but but environmentally not sustainable anymore.
So we need to reconsider which crops, when and which which irrigation technology are produced.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Maya, you have a follow up question.
I do.
I do have.
Thank you.
I have a follow up question.
The question is, I would like to know, but the majority of this 90% of the usage of water consumption in agriculture comes from the big corporations, the large corporations, not smallholder farmers.
Is that that was my question.
And and then isn't there a solution available too from for instance Holland that has very little land and they manage very?
Efficiently, I think the water.
Resources with all the greenhouses through to to provide you know to to have develop agriculture that is is can be used by the population locally.
Thank you.
Yes, the the examples for the for the agrarian economies were more than 90% of the water and some more than 90% of all water whistles are used for agriculture.
That is largely due to large corporations.
That is correct.
Smallholder farmers usually do not have the technology to abstract water at that at that scale.
Most if you look at Africa for instance, 95% of the food production is rain fed farming.
So no irrigation system, but due to the uncertain rainfall, irrigation is more and more needed uncertain rainfall due to climate change that we do need to invest more in these technology also in places like Africa to ensure food security.
What was the other part of the question?
There was another part of the question and it just slipped my mind.
So it is largely the Corp, the big corporations.
But yeah, sorry.
Yeah, the thank you very much.
Yes, you answered my first question.
The second question was regarding technologies that are available such as in Holland, for instance, the Netherlands, they use farming fair efficiently.
They have all these greenhouses where they produce.
Food.
You know, vegetables, they plant things inside the greenhouses, which I've imagined is a very technology that's available already that's very that provides a very efficient use of water resources.
Yeah, that's true.
While the water, the the weather is not very fortunate for agriculture in most part of Holland during most of the year, they are a big exporter of agricultural goods.
You know, with having and and that's largely because of technology, because greenhouses, as you said was a kind of almost with the minimal discharge of of water out of the greenhouses.
They they reuse and recycle as much as much as possible.
And yes, it is a technology which is might also provide a solution to to other economies that are suffering from food and nutrition insecurity.
Absolutely true.
Thank you.
Question from Isabel.
Yes, good morning.
Here is Isabel Sacco, I work for is, is the Spanish news agency FA And I would like please, if you can explain the how, how serious is the situation in, in Latin America regarding this water scarcity or the, the, and what you say if someone in the in the past, you mentioned that there is the hope that with the El Nino, it will be a replenishment of the resources.
And I could, I would like to understand how it, how it happens, how it works, this replenishment eventually with the El Nino.
And secondly, I have the second question is on, on the, on this on the terrestrial water storage.
You mentioned that there could be a redistribution at regional scale, at regional scale, and I would also like to understand how it works is redistribution of terrestrial water among countries.
Thank you.
If I start so, so we know that we know that the LL linear is having impacts on global weather patterns, especially at the at the low latitude areas and, and, and some of these features that we have seen both in Horn of Africa and also in in parts of Latin America, they are they have been related to the fact that we are doing the past three years we had Lani and and now we are going to a linear face and, and, and we will face opposite average rainfall patterns.
But but then we know that, for example, in the Amazonian region.
Deforestation has all relate to local climate change.
This area is getting drier and and from climatic perspective, Amazonia region has become also source of carbon dioxide, whereas in the in the past it used to be a sink of of carbon, carbon dioxide.
So, so, so we have both this global and Neolania variability impact, but we have also the impacts of climate change.
And in Amazonia region, this deforestation has unfortunately led to led to drier conditions.
And that's one of the tipping points related to climate change that we have to follow.
And if we, if we are not able to be successful in climate mitigation, there's the risk that we would we could lose the whole Amazonian rainforest ecosystem.
You'd like to say something?
Yeah, and it, it will be very interesting as in a in a press conference, I think in early July, Professor Tallas gave you the declared the onset of, of an annual conditions prevailing since early July was.
And, and we will be very much looking forward to our next year report.
And how this translates into the, the change of the, the climatic patterns, how that translates and change of water resources.
And if the land linear behaves, if I may say so, then in parts of Latin America, we, we should receive more rainfall, particularly in the, the La Plata basin and the, the severe drought, the, the, we, the recharge of resources should happen over the next months and years.
But we obviously that is very difficult to, to say at this moment.
But but the, the long year pattern would indicate more water resources available in that part of the world.
The other question, if I may, was on water storage, how that works.
Again, we have natural water storage in a, in a, in a river basin.
This is in snow and ice, in the groundwater, in the soy water or in the vegetation, in wetlands and lakes, etcetera.
And we have human, human built storage which is in in reservoirs and in other storage structures at very local level as well as large, large river systems.
The the importance is that large parts of the world share their water resources, so the countries depend on each other when it comes to the water resources.
Take denial for instance, where there is a very tense situation when it comes to water resources.
More than 70% of the water resources in in the Nile come from the Ethiopian Highlands.
So water storage, you, you try to store the water where it is and therefore it very much needs a basin bite approach.
And therefore in the upstream countries, so the mountainous countries, the water towers, as it was said before, where more water is available, more water is available.
There is also often the opportunity, the topography to, to build dams and use it for hydropower for instance, or store water for, for dry season for, for exceptional low, low seasonal flows.
But this needs a transboundary approach.
The countries need to agree on that.
So it's really need to, it needs a basin bite collaborative approach across the basin, particular for these shared water resources.
Also many groundwater bodies cross-border.
So, so we, we know that more than half of the global water resources are, are shared between countries.
Therefore, we with this information, we we hope to facilitate collaborative approaches and sharing of water resources as well as the benefits like energy and food production, etcetera.
And, and, and this is also a political challenge as as we all know, there's, there's certain friction between Ethiopia and, and Egypt because of who, who is allowed to use the water resources of, of the Nile catchment area.
And, and we have had these kind of long term challenges in Middle East, for example, who is able to use the water resources of Jordan River.
And, and, and more recently we have, we have seen heard that Afghanistan is planning to use a fraction of, of river water, which used to be used by the other Central Asian countries.
And, and that's at the moment causing certain, certain friction.
So, and, and this is also diplomacy issue and, and in the best case that there would be good agreements between countries who can use which fraction of the of the river, river water.
And, and of course this melting of glaciers, for example, in Central Asia is going to be a long term challenge.
How to how to ensure the water supply, for example, in Central Asia, 65% of the of the water resources used by the whole region is coming from the Tajikistan glaciers and and we have already seen what has happened to the RRC and that that kind of future scenarios are fairly possible.
Thank you very much.
I see that we don't have any more questions.
So this press conference, Will, is coming to an end now.
I thank you very much to our experts and to Secretary General, Professor Talas.
If you have any additional questions, please write or contact our Media Officer, Claire Nullis.
And yes, otherwise if you have interviews requests as well.
And thank you very much.
And Bunfan Martineatus, goodbye.