Opinion editorial for The Times newspaper by Lord Chris Smith, Chairman of the Environment Agency
A couple of weeks ago I was battling through the cloud and rain to reach the top of a Scottish mountain, getting wetter in the process than I’ve been for many months, and I couldn’t help reflecting that all this talk of drought and the driest Spring for decades seemed rather ironic in the circumstances. But the summit of Sgurr Dubh isn’t where the problem lies, and there are many other parts of Britain that have had very different treatment from the weather over recent weeks.
It’s meant, of course, that we’ve been regularly basking in sunshine and having a terrific time with it. This dry weather, however, does carry potential dangers. During the course of May, East Anglia has only had 20 per cent of its average rainfall for the month. Central, South East, and South West England have had around half of their average rainfall for the period. In places like these we’re heading for the driest Spring in a hundred years. River flows are low in these southern and eastern areas; farmers are worried about the irrigation they need for their crops; and the Environment Agency has had to rescue fish struggling for oxygen and trapped upstream in rivers like the Lathkill and the Teme.
Whether a drama turns into a crisis will depend on what happens over the next few weeks. Northern England and North Wales, for example, have had a fair bit of rain in the last fortnight, and river levels are beginning to recover already. It’s further south that we need to be worried about. We’ve had summer droughts before, and we’re probably better prepared for them now than we used to be, but we do need to make sure that we’re managing supplies and monitoring abstraction so there’s enough water for the three essential user groups – households, farmers, and industry. There’s another essential “user”, too, and that’s the environment itself, and the wildlife that depends on it.
We tend to forget that even in normal times in southern and eastern England there’s less water available per person than in many Mediterranean countries, because of relatively low rainfall and the density of population. Too often we assume that water is an infinitely available resource – when in fact it is a precious, finite and essential ingredient for life. We need to use it wisely. And to plan for, and manage, that use as best we can.
Some businesses are showing a real lead in this. Industrial processes often use large quantities of water; so it’s hugely welcome that companies like SABMiller and Balfour Beatty are finding ways of reducing their demand for water, and that Levis are using up to 96% less water to produce their latest line of jeans. Farmers are beginning to invest in ways of storing more water during winter months in order to use during the summer. New buildings can be designed with water efficiency as well as energy efficiency in mind. And we can all try and use just a little bit less.
The problem isn’t going to go away after one dry Spring, either. All the scientific evidence of climate change tells us that we’re going to see increasing extremes of weather as it begins to take its toll. More floods, more droughts. More intense downpours, more periods without rain. We’ve already seen intense flooding and unprecedented dryness, here in Britain, over the last few years. We’re likely to see more of this extreme weather in the decades to come. In thirty years’ time our southern and eastern rivers will probably have something like 50% less flow in them during summer months – and in very dry periods they could be 80% down on what we might have in a normal year at the moment. This has obvious implications for water use, water abstraction, and discharges. It could affect water supplies, agriculture, business, and the survival of wildlife.
We need to plan ahead for this. If the dry weather continues over the next few weeks, we should enjoy the sunshine, of course; but we should think about how much water we’re using too. And we should prepare ourselves for the need to face these sorts of problem rather more frequently in the years to come.
Lord Chris Smith, Chairman of the Environment Agency
31 May 2011
