IHE Delft alumni highlight SIDS vulnerabilities at inaugural Islands Water Congress
Being geographically separated from each other, communities of small islands often find it a challenge to meet each other. Modern-day tools like online meetings help a bit, but are never the same as shaking a hand, greeting people with a smile and having good conversations over coffee. A recent congress in the Faroe Islands, a small archipelago at almost the midpoint of Scandinavia and Iceland, offered a rare opportunity for small-island communities to meet.
IHE Delft alumni and PhD Candidates from Small Island Developing States (SIDS) were among those taking part in the International Water Resources Association (IWRA) Freshwater Island Congress, held September 4-6 in the Faroe Islands. They were joined by other water professionals, researchers and policymakers from 33 islands in the Caribbean, Africa, the Pacific, Europe and Canada.
IHE Delft researchers hosted a special session on freshwater that raised awareness of the vulnerability of SIDS and fostered co-learning to enhance their liveability, sustainability and resilience. The session involved IHE Delft alumni from Fiji, Cabo Verde and Jamaica, as well as IHE Delft PhD Candidates Adam Mubeen, from the Maldives, and Adele Young from Trinidad and Tobago.
“SIDS are hit hardest by climate-change driven disasters and global economic crises, and they take longer to recover,”
SIDS: What’s so special?
Assela Pathirana, Associate Professor in Water Infrastructure Asset Management, set the scene for the session by highlighting the unique challenges SIDS face, emphasising that the climate change impacts hitting the islands now soon will affect other areas of the world.
“SIDS are hit hardest by climate-change driven disasters and global economic crises, and they take longer to recover,” he said, noting that their economies rely, to a large part, on tourism income. The islands also face water challenges, with limited freshwater supply. Because of their unique local contexts, solutions that used elsewhere often don’t work in SIDS," Pathirana said.
A core part of the challenges facing SIDS is their ‘islandness’, which refers to the unique social, cultural, and environmental characteristics that arise from living on or interacting with islands, Pathirana said: “Islandness goes beyond mere geography, exploring how isolation, connectivity and the interaction between humans and nature shape distinctive ways of life, identities and worldviews. It often brings challenges including limited resources, a lack of economic diversification, exposure to environmental risks and economic dependencies.”
Including water in NDCs
IHE Delft alumna Atishma Lal, from Fiji, emphasised the need to integrate water management into the Pacific region’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), to address institutional fragmentation and strengthen climate resilience. By doing so, Pacific Island countries can better leverage climate finance and loss and damage funds to tackle water-related challenges.
She also reflected on the evolution of Fiji’s draft national water resources management and sanitation policy, which she contributed to while working for the Water Authority of Fiji: “In the real world, policy formulation is not a simple process, but it is a messy one of negotiation between various actors involved.”
Equitable service delivery
IHE Delft alumna Helen Deise Barbosa, a PhD Candidate focused on practical implementation of managed aquifer recharge at Södertörn University in Sweden, , said her research shows that the public utility in her home country, Cabo Verde, provides lower levels of services to lower-income groups. The utility is unwilling to improve service delivery to those groups because it does not meet their commercialisation principles, she said, adding this must change:
“The only way for consumer groups in low-income areas to get out of low-service level is for the state to provide financial support.”
Rainwater harvesting only part of solution
IHE Delft alumna Dannielle Townsend said her research in her home country, Jamaica, shows that climate change will cause a decrease in rainfall and stream flows supplying water to Kingston. She found that though communities are willing to use rainwater harvesting in an urban context, this measure would only satisfy 4-7% of the water supply deficit in the study area. Therefore, it needs to be complemented by other measures, such as reducing the water loss due to leaking pipes and other poor infrastructure.
The session ended with a discussion on shared experiences related to the lack of data standardisation and the mismatch of island policy needs vs policy standards required by donors.
Townsend said she found the congress enlightening and inspiring, as many of its participants struggle with similar water management challenges and water sustainability matters – but use different solutions. She welcomed the rare focus on small islands: “Islands usually get grouped in a very small space, and the focus is on the larger players. The island players tend to get lost.”
IHE Delft impact on SIDS
About 130 students from 30 SIDS countries in the Pacific, Caribbean and Atlantic, Indian Ocean and South China Sea (AIS) region, have graduated from IHE Delft, many of them sponsored by scholarships through the Institute’s Water and Development Partnership Programme (Phase 2). Several of these alumni worked with IHE Delft staff to co-develop an Open Online Course (MOOC) on managing small island water and marine resources, released this month. IHE Delft also is involved in a project that supports communities in the Maldives in identifying underlying causes for water shortages and addressing them through practical, sustainable measures.
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