Interdisciplinary explorations in ‘DRY Thinking’ – bringing together stories and science for better decision-making in UK Drought Risk Management
Come and join the ongoing conversation at the final event for DRY (Drought Risk & You) part of About Drought, the UK’s £12m drought and water scarcity research programme.
Drought in the UK is a pervasive, creeping and hidden risk. How can ‘the hidden’ be revealed and how can science and stories work together, in this process, to support better decision-making in UK drought risk management?
This conference is the next stage in an ongoing dialogue, not only between different disciplines, but also but between researchers and stakeholders.
Over the past five years, DRY has worked with diverse sectors in seven catchments in England, Scotland and Wales – co-researching droughts past and scenario-ing droughts future, with strong attention to thinking about adaptive solutions and behaviours. DRY has explored how science and narrative can be brought together, in different ways and on different scales, to support statutory and non-statutory decision-making of a wide range of stakeholders, the general public and communities.
Core to this research has been a series of ‘creative experiments’, exploring how science can be used as a stimulus for stories and stories as a stimulus for science. This has included creative scenario-ing of possible drought futures and explorations in how drought might be visualised using science interweaved with storying.
DRY’s interdisciplinary team has involved drought risk scientists (hydrologists, ecologists, agronomists) working with hazard geographers, social science researchers in health and business, along with those working in media and memory, and applied storytelling.
This conference shares themes researched within the DRY project, including how we might:
Rethink ‘drought data’ – its hybridity and variations in scale
Explore drought values and perceptions that influence behaviours
Scenario future drought working with science and narrative
Exploring drought cultures within the UK
Develop ‘DRY Thinking’ as a process – Drought Risk and You
The conference will be accompanied by the DRY Exhibition, showcasing resources generated by the DRY process, including the DRY Story Bank, the DRY Utility and DRY Action Learning Resources (e.g. around UK Drought Myths in engagement).
Organised by Professor Lindsey McEwen (UWE, Bristol), Emma Weitkamp (UWE, Bristol), Joanne Garde-Hansen (University of Warwick), Antonia Liguori (Loughborough University), Mike Wilson (Loughborough University) and the DRY consortium
For any further information, please email: DRY@uwe.ac.uk
Drought and Water Scarcity: addressing current and future challenges, International Conference
View presentations below
This international event was held at Pembroke College, University of Oxford over 20-21 March 2019.
Speakers from around the world gathered to present and discuss their research on drought and water scarcity. There was an impressive range of data, topics, in-depth knowledge and communication insights which demonstrated the breadth and interdisciplinary nature of research into drought and water scarcity.
Delegates heard that drought and water scarcity are expected to become more severe due to the influence of climate change and pressure on water resources from economic and demographic changes. The impacts of this affects hydrology, agriculture and farming, industry and communities. Water and the lack of water effects every aspects of society and the environment, and the lack of water has profound consequences.
A number of the oral and poster presenters have kindly given permission to share their work. You can access the presentations by clicking on the links below.
Drought status shower icons designed by Chiara and David (Falmouth University)Chiara & David’s shower icons in forecast (Falmouth University)
“The results span both social media and traditional media platforms, embracing the humorous side of water-saving and aiming to draw in a new, younger audience with different attitudes to consumption and waste”
By Dr Rebecca Pearce
Research Fellow at University of Exeter, who was the social science coordinator for About Drought
What’s the secret to persuading Millennials to change their habits and save water when drought looms? Who better to come up with effective answers than students from the School of Communication Design at Falmouth University?
The results are an inspiring range of peer-to-peer dynamic ideas and three will be showcased to delegates at this week’s Drought & Water Scarcity Conference at University of Oxford’s Pembroke College.
Having visited Falmouth in December 2018 to brief students extensively, I wasn’t sure how much of what I had said or presented to them would engage their creativity but they clearly listened carefully, carried out a substantial amount of work, and have come up with some great concepts. They have done a really excellent job and I would have liked to be able to showcase more of the results.
The quality is so high that I believe there may be some key players among the water companies and regulators that will have specific interests in some of the proposed approaches.
Posters to encourage water-saving behaviour in Millenials by Dannie & Max (Falmouth University)
I asked the students to shake-up the way we talk about drought and water-saving. Challenged to create a media campaign to raise awareness of water scarcity, drought, or a water-saving product, the results span both social media and traditional media platforms, embracing the humorous side of water-saving and aiming to draw in a new, younger audience with different attitudes to consumption and waste. They have clearly understood that I wanted a new narrative and approach to drought and water scarcity and they really delivered on this, having undertaken their own market research to fully understand their audiences.
Poster to encourage water-saving behaviour in Millenials by Watson and Cox (Falmouth University)
Much of the work is based on humour rather than education or negative approaches such as rationing and threatening hosepipe bans. As the students pointed out, Millennials use a lot of water, few have gardens and hosepipes, and most don’t pay for their water directly as they either live at home, where parents pay, or in shared accommodation with bills included. They have no idea of the cost of water or the impact of using too much and therefore our current approach to water-saving campaigns will cease to be effective as baby boomers decline in number.
Innovative ideas include:
A Spotify Drought Playlist of 3-minute songs to shower to
Water-saving superheroes who feature in a series of funny and effective YouTube & TV adverts
A public installation of a glass shower cube which projects a water-saving superhero inside – viewers see the benefits of switching off whilst soaping up
A drought severity traffic light system applicable to weather forecasts, weather apps and water bills
Social media water-saving challenges
A water-saving week in June with plenty of neat ideas to make people sign-up to be water-savers and show-off their water-saving habits on Instagram etc. Popular online green influencers would be approached to get involved
Ambient stickers for sinks and toilet floors, with associated poster campaign showing things that Millennials save for, going down the drain as they waste water
Spotify playlist to encourage 3 minute showers by Dannie & Max (Falmouth University)
If you are joining us at the Drought and Water Scarcity Conference on March 20-21 (2019) you can see a display of work by the students on the 1st floor, in the Andrew Pitt room. The students would love to hear from anyone interested in taking forward any of the campaign ideas commercially. It would be great if this competition could provide them with a springboard into a rewarding and creative career.
Transcript of Podcast Three: Water Saving Campaigns in focus: 1976, 1983 and Yorkshire in 1995
Hello, welcome to podcast three in the Who’d have thought that, About Drought series. I’m Dr Rebecca Pearce and if you have been following us so far, I’ve been talking about droughts with lots of different people and I for one have found in every conversation, something quite new and interesting to talk about. I think after all the conversations I’ve recorded for the Historic Drought Oral History Collection, I know quite a lot about how we talk about droughts but what about you, the listener? Are you responsible for drought communications? Have you ever had to try and organise a water saving campaign? Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be on the front line, communicating with water users, when reserves run critically low?
Here’s Martin recalling his experiences working for the South West Water Authority in 1976:
Martin“Well, you can try your very best and the first stage in a water supply emergency is to put out lots of media campaigns, and South West Water started doing that, but it had no real political support from any of its predecessor local authorities. It had a very, very unfortunate reactive relationship with the media. So it never put out any good news, it never put out any positive news, it just hid in its bunker and when someone said something nasty about it it didn’t react. So, it didn’t really have a relationship with local political representatives to any great degree, and it didn’t have it with the media. So when it started putting out stuff saying, “Things are getting tight, we’ve got to save water”, there’s a mixture of some people listening and saying, “Oh yes, I can understand there’s a problem” to other people saying, “This a joke” to other people saying, “If they want us to save water they’ve got another thing coming.” Interestingly a lot of the visitors who came down said, “I’ve paid for my holiday, I’m going to have as much water as I like in my two-week holiday, and so long as there’s still some water there when I go, that’s it, it doesn’t matter, I’ve had my holiday.” So you had this big set of conflicting responses coming back, and most people are angry that the authority had let them down. They hadn’t, they didn’t have a system to cope with a drought of this severity. They felt the authority should have, but the authority hadn’t had the money, hadn’t had the time to invest in anything.”
Mmm does that sound familiar? I think that could be a fair description of the relationship between water suppliers and water users in any drought. In episode two we explored some of the ways people coped with water rationing in 1976. Let’s hear some more from Martin.
Martin“People did their best to eke out new supplies or turn to supplies and reduce these compensation flows that were in the rivers. So everything was done to try and keep as much water available as possible. I did meet a couple in Salcombe, who were making prodigious efforts to save water, and they were both in their seventies. They’d taken their little allowance of water for the day, which they’d decided on, which was something like two kettles of water, and they’d manage to use that in a combination of cooking, and then dishwashing and then personal washing, and then lastly putting it on the garden to try and keep the vegetables alive. I thought, “This is extraordinary, these are people who’ve taken the message on, and interpreted in their own way from their recollections of what it was like to be really short of things during the war, and they’ve applied their moral code to using almost no water at all.” Then you’d see some massive great house a bit further down the road with people splashing around in a swimming pool, and you’d think, the business of getting a big different social group to behave in one way isn’t possible. You can impose, you can dictate, you can shut things off, you can do everything you want, but unless people agree with you, it won’t happen.
This split between people who do their bit, those who don’t and quite frankly those who complain is definitely evident in the local news reporting of the time. I think it is fair to say the water authority was criticised and reports of this criticism were aired but the papers did not directly accuse the water authority of mis-management. They let others do that via the letters pages.”
Now here’s Martin recalling a drought in the 1980s. Had anything changed I wonder…?
Martin“But there was one interesting appeal we put out in the 1983 drought, that was carried by the radio companies and so on, and we got a phone call from a chap from Bodmin. He said, “I heard your appeal on the radio to save water, I just want to let you know, that I’m off on holiday for two weeks, and I’m locking up the house, but I’ve left all my taps on, and I hope you run out of water” and he put the phone down.”
Rebecca“Really?”
Martin“I said, “This is magic, we’re actually getting a public response.” The fact that it’s 180 degrees different to the one we wanted, we have to put on one side. Someone has actually bothered to get in touch with us.”
Rebecca“Yes, they are communicating.”
Martin“Yes, they are communicating. So, you know, from planet headquarters to the real world, there were some beginnings of interaction.”
Who’d have thought someone would be so cross with their water authority that they would deliberately try to waste as much water as possible and who’d have thought that Martin would be so pleased to receive his call?! But how difficult is it for people to receive and accept directions from planet headquarters and are there better ways of communicating with people when we are in a tight spot?
On another planet in another time – Yorkshire Water in 1995 to be precise, Geoff was busy trying to get different departments within the company to share information relating to the looming water shortage in the Halifax area.
Geoff“Yes, you mentioned cultural change and that cultural change Um, looking back, the change from being erm, an Authority to a Company probably took fifteen years.”
Rebecca“Right”
Geoff“The culture, even in the mid-(19)90s. When was privatisation? 89 I think, or somewhere around there anyway. In the mid-(19)90s the culture was an engineering culture, sometimes caricatured in terms of drinking water supply, caricatured as ‘if it’s wet, it’ll do!’, which was less and less the case.”
Yeah, I spent a long time trying to, well not trying to, we did change the culture eventually but it’s a slow process and it was embedded in the way that this emerging water supply situation because it wasn’t called a drought for a very long time, the way the emerging water supply situation was being handled. It was being handled behind closed doors in a technical way, without any thought about customers and the potential implications about customers.”
So did we stop talking about droughts in the 1990s? The local newspapers didn’t but there appears to have been a change to the way information was communicated. I’m looking at an article from the Halifax Courier reporting on the fact that Yorkshire water intends to apply for a drought order introducing rota cuts in 15 days’ time. The headline says it all: Deplorable! It cries; Health Chiefs demand probe into Yorkshire Water. The prospect of 24-hour rota cuts is a great cause of concern to public health teams. The article is placed next to the Water company’s Water Watch campaign information, which is simply a factual update of the water shortage.
It says: Reservoir Levels – Yesterday 14.4%, Tuesday, 14.6%, Monday 15%, to give readers the sense of the rapidly dropping water levels. Under this there is rainfall yesterday 0mm, rain for the month, 56.6mm, and then Demand – yesterday, 53.3 thousand cubic metres, Tuesday 52.1 thousand cubic metres. Do you get the picture?
The now infamous tanker drought caused a lot of upset in West Yorkshire but the facts are that reservoirs in West Yorkshire were small and there was not system in place to easily transfer water from the East where supplies were plentiful, to the west. Nevertheless, local people were very unforgiving and local papers were happy to print readers letters that were in the main, critical of the company, alongside the factual and informative water watch campaign.
In the next podcast we’ll continue looking at how communicate in a crisis as we take a look at the two-year drought that mainly affected the south east of England between 2004 and 2006.
In the meantime, you can find more references to the 1995 drought from the Yorkshire Post, Halifax Courier and Hebden Bridge Times, in the Historic Drought Inventory.
Transcript of Podcast Two: Water Saving in the Westcountry in 1976
Welcome to the Who’d Have Thought That, About Drought, podcast series. I’m Dr Rebecca Pearce and I’m glad you can join me to hear some of the interesting and unusual things that happen during droughts – the sorts of things that make you stop and say, “well who’d have thought that?”
For the past four years I have been traveling around the UK talking to people who have specific memories of droughts. For anyone who doubts the accuracy of a person’s memory in this regard, particularly from a drought that happened perhaps twenty, forty, or even nearly sixty years ago, fear not! For these people, the retrieval of their memories is easy because they recall something else that happened at the same time, that had a great impact on their lives. For some these impacts are positive; the birth of a child or a marriage for example. Sometimes it can be something more personally testing that brings the memory back.
In the first of this series we heard from Brian and Glyn who both fought wildfires in the Welsh Mountains in 1976. It was the added impact of wearing heavy uniforms, the extreme heatwave, and resulting dehydration, that helped to strengthen their memories of these fires over the countless others they have attended.
There is often an assumption made that oral history testimony is not terribly reliable. However, I have been able to find evidence that supports these memories, in local newspaper reports. By doing this The Historic Drought project may have cleared up a number of methodological issues for future researchers. I have every confidence in saying that it really is fine to use memory retrieval practices to gather information. Memory does not diminish exponentially over time. Important memories stick and can be recalled at any time, so the key is to find people who say they can remember something because it coincides with something else that had a lasting impact on their lives.
Jane’s testimony of the 1976 drought is an excellent example of this. Though she was only nine years old in 1976 the cliff fire that threatened to engulf her family’s holiday chalet at Whitsand Bay in Cornwall was very memorable indeed.
Jane contacted me after reading an advertisement I placed in a local newsletter, appealing for oral history donors to come forward with their memories of 1976. Jane’s testimony is really worth listening to but here I am going to play a short clip of her talking about the thing that helps her to remember the drought:
Jane“Yeah, that’s why it stuck in my memory. That’s why, when I saw the article, it just took me back to the smell of the smoke and the excitement but being frightened at the same time because it was pretty full-on fire”.
Rebecca“Because I would have thought you were quite brave to stay overnight.”
Jane“Yes. It’s really weird because I did a fire fighting course when I was in the reserves, Naval reserves, ooh, 20 odds year later and they put you in a situation where you’ve got all the gear on and your safe and I suddenly… I was there again, waking up looking out the window, seeing the fireman hosing the garden down. It was the smell and everything and the noise.“
Rebecca“So it does stick.“
Jane“It sticks, yes.“
Rebecca“For that reason.“
Jane“And even now, if I smell… you know, if you go somewhere like… well now you get gorse fires on the moor or the New Forest or somewhere like that. That smell just takes me back to being 9 years old again.“
The fire Jane remembers is well reported in the 16th August edition of the Western Morning News. You can find the full reference for this in the Historic Drought Inventory.
The paper tells how an all-night watch was kept by firemen at Whitsand Bay as Fire raged along cliffs dotted with chalets and tinder-dry gorse. It mentions that several vehicles on the cliff top were destroyed and describes how Firemen, chalet owners and holidaymakers worked hard, forming a human chain passing buckets of sea water as tenders were soon emptied, while Local people supplied cups of tea. All this detail triangulates Jane’s testimony perfectly.
There was something else that Jane talked about that I didn’t expect. She had a very detailed knowledge of the wildlife on the cliffs and what managed to escape the fire and what didn’t. And then she said:
Jane“I can remember finding a completely baked slow worm that I carried around for years until it disintegrated. That was one of my sort of –“
Rebecca“A treasure from 1976.“
Jane“souvenirs. Yes, a treasure, yes.“
I never expected that!
Anyway, in this podcast, we are going to remain in 1976 and with the Western Morning News. Undoubtedly the 1976 drought is still the drought that had the greatest social impact around the UK. After two years of below-average rainfall, the long, hot summer, that most people of a certain age remember so well, threatened the nation’s health and the economic health of the nation. Devon and Cornwall were badly affected areas. Reliant in the main on surface water supplies and only having a small number of reservoirs, the influx of summer tourists who left the cities in droves to escape the intense heatwave, were not so keen to cut their water use, despite the ongoing water saving campaign.
What I find interesting about local news reports from that time is the ‘matter of fact’ style of reporting. Coverage of the developing crisis represented the plight of the different sectors of society that were struggling to cope, and their opinions. There were detailed descriptions of the problems dairy farmers encountered as the main impact initially was on grass, grazing, and the hay crop. The rising price of staple foods such as potatoes were monitored. Details of villages and towns that were due to be rationed by standpipe were also covered, with every street and village named, with its cut-off date. There were appeals for volunteers to come forward to help the elderly and less able collect their water and of course, some criticism of the Water Authority. However, in the main things were broadly positive in that most reports championed triumph over adversity. Novel water saving ideas, canny gardeners winning prizes at flower shows despite having to minimise watering and water-saving ways to wash were all given column inches, creating a backdrop to the drought that was definitely one of the community doing its best to save every drop, from buying 18pence bars of sea soap and heading off to the coast for a bath, to the Navy ordering ships in Port to operate as if at sea, where fresh water would presumably be routinely in short supply.
What really brought the drought into sharp focus was the rather hastily appointed drought minister, Dennis Howell, who had plenty to say on the subject, which was widely reported by the local press. He demanded water savings of between 30 and 50% and was happy to share his opinions on which towns and cities were meeting his demands and which were lagging behind and letting the country down. At one point he said certain parts of the Westcountry had done “too little, too late”, and he meant it. He also made it clear that workers would not be put on short hours and the tourism industry would not be made to suffer. Householders were to shoulder the bulk of the restrictions, eking out the water they collected from standpipes across all the usual household functions; washing, cooking drinking, and toilet flushing.
This is reported in the WMN on August 25th. It says: The people of the Westcountry are told by newly appointed Drought Minister Denis Howell, that the water-saving target has been set to safeguard industry and save jobs. Households will be last in the queue for water after agriculture and industry.
Now listen to how Jan and Paul coped when the supply to their village was cut off.
Rebecca“What was it like in 1976?“
Jan“I can’t remember the actual month that we got cut off completely and had standpipes, but I’d got Becky as a little 18-month-old, and I was either very pregnant or I’d just had Emily. The standpipe was about 150 yards from our house, and the only way to get water back from it was to persuade Becky, at 18 months old, to walk, not go in the pushchair. Because I had to have the five-gallon container in the pushchair and stagger along the road to fill the blessed thing up and then heave it into the pushchair and then push that back with Becky beside me, so it was all around the time, I think, that I, I think I was pregnant.“
Paul“I think we had one set of, was it Terry Toweling Nappies to wash? “
Jan“Becky’s nappies, yes.“
Paul“Then the problem, the problem then was that, because I was working in Exeter in those days, was when I came back this five gallon container then had to cover all the water things. But one of the water problems was that we had this ancient, sort of, mark two converted Rayburn cooker, which had been a solid fuel one, but had been converted to oil, but it was a turn on turn off oil thing, it was just a pool of oil burning. So you had to keep it, that kept burning all the time, and it had a header tank in the roof, which had to keep topped up because of the, sort of, evaporation things, because it becomes dangerous otherwise for the hot water cylinder. So then this water had to be taken up, at least every couple of days, up into the roof, to top up this tank. So some of that water had to be transported into another container and then up a ladder through a little hatch, and what have you. Then it had to cover everything, and with little children of course, the main problem is the nappies because they weren’t disposable in those days. So Jan had a wonderful system of using the water in stages.“
Jan“Yes, reusing water about five times.“
Paul“So apart from drinking it, which we didn’t use it for anything else, the stuff that we were drinking, what,”
You see what I mean about memory? Jan was expecting and that makes the whole thing much more memorable.
When I started working on the Historic Drought Project I didn’t really think about people’s heating systems and how they would be affected by water rationing but this type of problem was reported widely.
By September 9th, there appeared to be no end in sight and the water authority took out a half-page advertisement in the paper prescribing what all households should try to achieve:
Water, Cut it by Half Now. Don’t have a bath – have a short shower or a wash. Flush the toilet only when it’s absolutely essential. Keep wash days to an absolute minimum – wash by hand if possible and use waste water for flushing toilets. Don’t use a dishwasher or waste disposal unit. Don’t put sanitary towels, disposable nappies etc. down toilets. low flows in sewers will cause blockages. Don’t leave taps running for washing/rinsing vegetables/cleaning teeth/washing off sand and dirt. Turn your stopcock by 90% to reduce the flow. Don’t leave taps dripping or overflows running. Use waste water wherever possible. See how you can save 20 gallons a day. Here’s where the water goes: An average bath – 20 gallons. Toilet – 2 gallons every flush. Automatic washing machine – 25-50 gallons/load. Twin-tub washing machine – 15 – 20 gallons/load. Dishwasher – 10-12 gallons/load. Waste disposal unit 1.5 gallons/minute. Running tap – 40 gallons/hour.
Let’s hear from Jan and Paul again, did they follow this advice?
Paul“I can’t remember the sequence. It went from drinking to cooking.”
Jan“Yes, washing vegetables.“
Paul“Washing vegetables, but then if you cooked the vegetables you poured the water when you drained them, you didn’t throw it out, it went doing something, flushing the loo or something.“
Jan“Yes, flushing the loo water was pretty awful by the time it got to that point.“
Paul“Everything else went eventually to the last stage, which was sloshing nappies to do the worst bit of it. Then they had to have clean water to wash them. So some had to be kept aside for that, wasn’t that right?“
Jan“I think so, yes, I think I used to do them in the bath actually, the nappies. “
Paul“Yes, but you had, they had to be soaked first didn’t they, and get the worst off.“
Jan“Yes.And that was the last stage before this water that had done washing up … washing up –“
Paul“Washing us, washing up.“
Jan“The cooking up, the cooking water, that went to the slushing off nappies bit, and then that went out into the garden. But then some water had to kept to wash nappies and to wash ourselves. Baths were out of the question, obviously. “
It seems as though the people may have been quite annoyed that the water authority could not provide to the level they were used to but they understood that they should all pull together and do their bit. And I don’t know about you, listeners, but it sounds like Jan and Paul had quite a tough time. I’m not sure how many of us would be that keen on having to manage with collecting five gallons of water at a time – that’s around 22 litres and about 15% of the average daily usage per person today.
In the next podcast we’ll be hearing from some of the people on the front line, trying to manage customer expectations in droughts. Until then I leave you with this there are 89 items from the Western Morning News and the Western Evening Herald from 1976 covering water crisis, in the drought inventory. One of the interesting things about them is that whilst drought is often mentioned in the headlines, most of the reporting is focused on managing with limited water resources. In the next podcast I’ll be introducing some of the people who have found themselves on the front line, managing water shortages, and looking in more detail into how we actually talk about droughts.
