Westminster, water supply resilience and climate change: a POSTbrief for parliamentarians

Dr Jade Ward has recently finished an Academic Fellowship at the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) writing a POSTbrief on water supply resilience and climate change in England. The Fellowship was funded by the UK Droughts and Water Scarcity Research Programme.

POST makes the latest scientific research accessible to parliamentarians through the publication of POSTbriefs and POSTnotes. POST publications are impartial, balanced, peer-reviewed and evidence-based, covering a diverse range of topics that are of interest to policymakers. POST publications are also freely available to the public.

Introduction

The extensive drought of 1976 in the UK is etched in the memory of those who lived through it. For those of us who are too young to remember, the stories of stand-pipes in the street have been recounted many times. But how many people realise that England is heading for more frequent and severe water shortages in the future if no action is taken?

Having completed this Fellowship, I know the answer is, not many.

Water supply resilience and climate change is a vast and diverse topic, as evidenced by the wide-ranging and diverse work and content of About Drought, the UK’s Droughts and Water Scarcity Research Programme, funded by NERC. The POSTbrief I completed explores the drivers of drought and water scarcity, the water resource management framework and options to consider for building resilience into England’s water supply system. Climate change impacts will be similar across the UK, but as the environment is a devolved issue in Parliament, the nations of the UK manage their water resources in different ways. In England, private water companies have been responsible for water supply since privatisation in 1989.

The issues of water resilience and climate change

The public are, in general, unaware of the impending water scarcity crisis that could impact some areas of the UK as soon as the 2040s. Around the world, England is perceived as a place that gets a lot of rain, and it is no secret that everyone rejoices when the sun comes out, but in reality England is facing a water scarcity crisis. In fact, it doesn’t rain as much as you might think, especially in Eastern and Southern areas of the country, and population growth is putting increasing pressure on natural resources and the supply system. Climate change projections forecast hotter, drier summers and warmer, wetter winters in the UK. This increases the chances of extreme drought and flood events. The south east of England, with its high population density and drier climate, is already classed as a water stressed region and is likely to be the first to experience water shortages, but the whole country is at risk.

Over the past couple of decades, evidence for climate change and its impacts on water resources has been building, with researchers, water companies, trade associations, consultancies, non-governmental organisations and governmental departments all producing literature on the topic. The National Audit Office, The Public Accounts Committee and the Climate Change Committee have all given stark warnings about the risk to water supply if we don’t act now. However, to date, little progress has been made in policy to set targets and implement mechanisms to achieve them, from reducing carbon emissions to improving water supply infrastructure and water efficiency. Recent developments include the Environment Bill, the Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan and the legally binding net zero carbon emissions by 2050 but implementation strategies will be key to meeting the targets.

In recent years, the impacts of climate change have become reality, with the UK experiencing more frequent severe flood and drought events. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of many systems, which have struggled to adapt to such an extreme global event. There is a growing understanding that such extreme events do occur, and the consequences are severe if our systems are not resilient. The water supply system suffered from increased demand during the first lockdown in March-July 2020 due to most people spending all their time at home coinciding with hot weather and the sunniest spring on record.

Building resilience in England’s water supply system

There is an established process for water resource management planning, with water companies required to produce 25-year water resource management plans (WRMPs) and revise them every 5 years. Until recently, this process has focussed on individual water companies managing water within their own area. However, the next review of water company plans, due in 2024, requires input from the new national framework for water resources and regional planning groups.

This new approach enables collaboration between regions and water companies, which will be required in the future to minimise the risk of shortages across the country. For example, large-scale inter-regional water transfers could be set up if droughts are forecast to occur at different times in different regions. The regional planning groups facilitate cross-sector collaboration for water resource management for the first time, recognising that the issues of water scarcity would have impacts across society. Water security is closely linked to food and energy security and the wider environment. For example, if ensuring the provision of public water supply led to water shortages for agricultural use this could reduce crop yield with impacts for food security, farming businesses, the food and drink supply chain and ultimately the public. Bringing the stakeholders together ensures that improving resilience in one sector does not leave another more vulnerable. This is called a systems approach, where cross-sector risks and trade-offs are explored under different management scenarios to develop integrated management plans.

Analysis of historic droughts continues to improve our understanding of such events and develop early warning systems for the future. These results can be used to inform the planning process. Going forward, a more integrated approach to modelling the water cycle – from rainfall, river and groundwater flow to water supply distribution systems – would better support the move to a systems approach for water resource management planning. These models would require sufficient data, with the potential to include real-time monitoring data in the future, which would enhance forecasting and decision-making.

Improving water efficiency, by reducing water consumption for individuals and businesses and making our appliances and properties more efficient, would ease demand on water resources.  This is likely to require an increased awareness of water consumption rates, as the majority of the public are not aware of how much water they use in a typical day or how much water their appliances use. Effective communication of water scarcity issues and the social, economic and environmental impacts, could help to empower citizens and businesses to be part of the solution.

Working with POST

My work began with a literature review of scientific papers, government reports, POSTnotes and more, to establish the key areas of focus and who I should interview for more information. Interviewing researchers (including the principal investigators and others across the DWS programme), stakeholders, regulators, and government departments is a key part of developing the POSTbrief. I really enjoyed speaking to such a wide range of people with different perspectives. Although I have been working in the water industry for nine years, I learnt a lot about different areas of research. My task was then to put it all together in a coherent, simple, impartial briefing to present an overview of the topic. Once complete, the POSTbrief was sent out to over 30 external reviewers, the majority of whom I had interviewed as part of the process. Their comments were incorporated into the final POSTbrief.

At the beginning of my Fellowship, I completed training in the POST style of writing and then learnt how to put this into practice throughout the editing and internal review process. It was sometimes quite a challenge to reduce such a complex topic into a short summary and make sure the main point is not missed. This is the true art of a POST publication!

Read the POSTbrief in full

Dr Jade Ward

Far reaching influence of MaRIUS research into water risks

By Dr Helen Gavin, Project Manager for MaRIUS

Research from the MaRIUS project is widely recognised as having transformed how water risks are managed by the Government, water suppliers and regulators.

MaRIUS (Managing the risks, impacts and uncertainties of droughts and water scarcity) developed the first national-scale water resource model for England and Wales, triggering a transition in government policy and industry practice. Between 2014 and 2020 MaRIUS research involved new theory, the creation of new datasets and models, validation and demonstration in case studies of how the risk of droughts can be assessed and better managed through system modelling and ‘outcomes-based’ approaches to decision making. To date, four major reports have drawn on its work: ‘Water UK Long Term Planning Framework (2016); the National Infrastructure Commission’s ‘Preparing for a drier future, England’s water infrastructure needs’ (2018); the Committee on Climate Change’s CCRA3 Water Availability study (2018-19) and the Environment Agency’s report ‘Meeting our Future Water Needs: A National Framework for Water Resources’ (2020).

Prof Jim Hall, Principal Investigator (PI) of MaRIUS and Professor of Climate and Environmental Risks at the University of Oxford, is a member of the Prime Minister’s Council of Science and Technology and an Expert Advisor to the National Infrastructure Commission. The project was based at the Environmental Change Institute in Oxford.

“Our research has caused a transition in government policy and industry practice for water resource management in England. It has shown how drought risks can be assessed and better managed through system modelling and ‘outcomes-based’ approaches to decision making.

“We have achieved a significant shift in thinking and practice by the regulators, through interaction over eight years with water companies, the Environment Agency, Ofwat, Defra and the National Infrastructure Commission.”

Professor Jim Hall, University of Oxford

The increasing frequency of droughts and water scarcity in our warming climate, combined with our growing population and increasing demands for supply present huge challenges for national and local government, water suppliers, energy, agriculture, infrastructure, industry and communities.

MaRIUS’s work has provided conceptual frameworks and methodologies that have enabled government and its agencies to address these challenges and has provided data, systems models and other evidence that are transforming policy and practice. The new water resource system simulation model integrates public water supplies with use of water in agriculture, power generation and other industries. It has been used to explore different future scenarios of drought and assess the frequency, duration and severity of water shortages now and in the future. Tools have been developed to explore trade-offs between different aspects of risk and the cost of alternative management plans.

Key to the take-up of MaRIUS’s research was a series of well-managed and effective workshops where potential users sat down with the leading researchers to explore datasets, models and tools in development, sharing their real-world decision-making and communications processes.

“We are continuing to work very closely with the Environment Agency and Ofwat, at their request. We are undertaking joint resilience assessments and exploring the impacts on water resources. We continue to train Environment Agency staff on our model and will transfer this tool to them as they wish to use it to fulfil their regulatory responsibilities.”

Professor Jim Hall, University of Oxford

Trevor Bishop, Director, Water Resources South East & MD of H2Outcomes

Translating academic research for policy-makers

“About Drought has brought policy-makers, scientists and academics together and that is becoming more important because the complexities and uncertainties in the science are fundamental to making the best policy decisions, especially with climate change playing an increasing role”

Trevor Bishop, Director, Water Resources South East & MD of H2Outcomes

The person in the driving seat of the UK’s response to the 2012 drought was Trevor Bishop, then Deputy Director of Water Resources at the Environment Agency and Ofwat’s Director for Strategy & Planning during the 2018 hot dry summer of peak demand.

With a water crisis looming in 2012, he was appointed to co-ordinate the first multi sector cross cutting National Drought Group, reporting directly to the Government,  and bringing together companies, regulators and government departments, representatives of agriculture and power groups and chaired by the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Caroline Spelman.

Trevor recalls: “In a worst-case scenario we were within 160 days of running out of water for some parts of London, with the 2012 Olympics on the horizon, 20 million people were on water restrictions and so were several thousand businesses for which water was critical.”

2012 drought triggered investment in research

Many parts of England had experienced the driest 18 months for more than 100 years and the crisis triggered the Research Councils’ £12m investment in the UK’s Drought & Water Scarcity Research Programme and several projects, now collectively known as About Drought.

He says: “About Drought is helping us to understand what the evidence is really saying so people like me can get behind the science. The events About Drought has held are the best I have seen at doing that.”

One of the most complex messages to translate from academia to policy and decision-makers is uncertainty. As a scientist by background, Trevor says: “Uncertainty is absolutely key, confidence in evidence data and About Drought’s better and more timely presentation of data is helping decision-makers to better manage uncertainty.

Trusted relationships for scientists and decision-makers

“The people making key decisions in a water crisis are generally not scientists and they may not always understand some of the subtleties behind academic report headlines. There are so many different layers in pure science, and decision-makers are always at risk of mis-representing some of the science.”

The solution is to build trusted, working relationships between policy-makers and the scientists behind the research, Trevor believes, involving more scientists in policy-making, working closely with universities and research organisations and maintaining that network beyond the life of the About Drought programme.

He explains: “Academics tend to operate in a semi-closed community but About Drought has brought policy-makers, scientists and academics together and that is becoming more and more important because the complexities and uncertainties in the science are fundamental to making the best policy decisions, especially with climate change playing an increasing role.”

Reliable data, meaningful and effective tools

The benefits of the relationships and community created by About Drought were felt in last summer’s dry spell. Trevor credits the MaRIUS project, in particular, with providing reliable data through meaningful and effective tools, such as the National Water Resources Model (WATHNET).

He says: “The models of drought we had were already starting to not perform as well as they used to because we are already seeing the subtle shifts that are taking place due to climate change, so we can’t rely on past data so much. But About Drought helped us and it was really good last summer to see key policy-makers and decision-makers thinking big and acting early.

“At least once a year we should bring this community we have formed together again – the policy-makers, the top scientists and academics – because that link needs to be rock solid.”

Interview by Sally Stevens

Posted October 2019

Dr Chris Lambert, Supply Demand Senior Technical Advisor, Thames Water

Putting the needs of stakeholders at the heart of drought research

“Climate change is decreasing water availability and this research has definitely demonstrated how that can cause significant problems in water treatment works and has given us a better understanding of different types of water resource options.”

Dr Chris Lambert, Supply Demand Senior Technical Advisor, Thames Water

From the initial proposal for funding in 2014 to the final event on November 7, 2019, About Drought was driven by the needs of the organisations, communities and people who would be relying on the results of its research. Their practical requirements, regulatory restrictions, governance and operational methods have informed the structure, design and accessibility of the datasets and tools.

Even at the stage of drafting the funding proposal Thames Water was invited to review it by MaRIUS’ project leader Jim Hall, Professor of Climate and Environmental Risks at Oxford University.

Matching the needs of water industry, NGOs and government

Chris Lambert, who is responsible for developing Thames Water’s Water Resource Management and Drought plans, joined the MaRIUS Stakeholder Advisory Group (SAG). The aim of drawing this expert group from industry, NGOs and government to steer the project, liaising with MaRIUS’ social and natural scientists, was to ensure its outputs, including the ‘impacts dashboard’, matched the needs of the group in an evolving policy context. This early access proved crucial to the benefits Thames Water has gained.

Chris says: “Being on the SAG as well as being involved in the parts of the project that were relevant to Thames Water, gave me wider visibility of the total work of the project. I had a much better understanding of how we could use some of the research in developing Thames Water’s water supply strategy.

“It led to us commissioning some tailored, specific work that gave us a better insight into the reliability of future water resource development and then we fed into our 2019 Water Resource Management Plan.”

Algae growth impact on reservoirs and abstraction

Of particular interest was the work on algae growth in rivers and ‘drought coincidence’. As a result, Thames Water commissioned its own more detailed research on how projected algae growth could impact on extracting water from reservoirs in conditions of water scarcity or drought, slowing its passage through the filtering system and therefore the speed at which public demand for water could be met.

Thames Water also commissioned the development of a bespoke application from MaRIUS’s water quality research data, focusing on the catchments of the Severn and Thames, and the added likely impact of climate change on water availability.

There are further potential impacts of the timing and positioning of water abstraction, i.e. from the bottom of the river catchment as opposed to higher up, including for the health of the Severn and Thames catchments. The results led to a change in plans for the management regime of Thames Water’s reservoirs.

Climate change is decreasing water availability

Chris says: “If you look into future likely scenarios, climate change is decreasing water availability and this research has definitely demonstrated how that can cause significant problems in water treatment works and has given us a better understanding of different types of water resource options.

“Part of my role is to engage with academic bodies to understand the latest thinking and communicate it internally to our senior executives and board members and to our external stakeholders as well. Another part is ensuring we have effective communication for public and community consultation on our Water Management Plans for the more practical aspects of day-to-day water supply. Through my involvement with MaRIUS and About Drought I have found the events – such as the one-day water suppliers’ feedback workshop in Oxford – very useful in giving me visibility of what has been done and in supporting me in getting internal funding.

“I have been able to follow-up with UK-based speakers who have always been very responsive and my colleagues have also found them very helpful.

“I do think that it would be worthwhile continuing bringing this community together, even if it is just once a year, to keep us up to speed. The work isn’t going to stop just because About Drought has stopped.

“It’s important to ensure the good work that has been done to date continues and doesn’t dry up just because the funding dries up.”

Interview by Sally Stevens

Posted October 2019