afrialliancesocialinnovationWater Use Efficiency The overall objective of the AfriAlliance Social In-

novation Factsheets (SIF) is to highlight innovation op-portunities that scientists NGOs managers and SMEs can act upon in order to foster short-term improve-ments in the preparedness of African stakeholders for water and climate change challenges

Over the duration of AfriAlliance (2016-2021) four sets of SIFs will be delivered Each set will cover one main theme and explore it across five Social Innova-tion Factsheets CC proof IWRM is the main theme of this second series of SIFs covering the following five sub-themes

Innovation in water reuse and the potential of new water resources

Water use efficiency (this SIF)

Local knowledge amp climate change adaptation

Ecosystem based approaches amp Ecosystem ser-vicesIntegrated Water Resources Management at ri-ver-basin scale

As detailed below social innovation combines four dimensions technological governance capacity deve-lopment and business road map Each is described in a specific section of this thematic SIF

DESCRIPTION

Water demand may refer to water withdrawn which describes the water extracted from source or water consumed which describes the water permanently lost from source This water is no longer available to the system due to processes such as eva-poration or contamination

Water demand has seen a continual rise over time influenced by population growth and change in lifestyle and demo-graphy [a] This is seen in all major water uses namely drinking water agriculture industry aquatic and fisheries bathingrecreational energycooling and trans-portation

Integrated Water Resources Manage-ment (IWRM) is a process which pro-motes the coordinated development and

management of water land and related resources in order to maximise economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems and the environment [b] An IWRM approach includes complementary me-thods to water management which may include technical improvement of infrastruc-ture and water networks human capacity development for operations and applications social acceptance and productive change of water smart behaviours legal adaptation with regulation economic measures ecosystem-based responses and virtual water and exchanges of water footprint between territories

Water Use Efficiency (WUE) is a direct action approach for better water management of scarce resources and can be part of an IWRM approach WUE gains can be achieved in all sectors [c] The biggest gains are linked to the sectors with the highest water withdrawals and consumption such as the agricultural and domestic sectors which accounts for 70 and 10 of the total worldrsquos water withdrawals respectively [d]

2

1

3

4

SOCIETAL CHALLENGESIN AFRICA DUE TO CLIMATE CHANGE

bull Given the manifestations of Climate Change and the constraints of ecosystems as well as socio-economic systems the societal challenges in Africa are to

ndash ensure food security water security and energy security and the balance among them (short term)

ndash transform into a low carbon resilient and sustainable society (long term)

5

SOCIAL INNOVATIONbull In AfriAlliance social innovation means tackling societal water-related challenges arising from Climate Change by combining the technological amp non-technological dimensions of innovation

bull Social innovation refers to those processes and outcomes focussed on addressing societal goals unsatisfied collective needs or societal ndash as opposed to mere economic ndash returns It is particularly salient in the context of the complex and cross-cutting challenges that need to be addressed in the field of water and Climate Change ndash and which will not be met by relying on market signals alone

bull Social innovation consists of new combina-tions (or hybrids of existing and new) products processes and services In order to succeed social innovation needs to pay attention to tech-nological as well as non-technological dimen-sions 1) technology 2) capacity development 3) governance structures and 4) business road map As such these four dimensions of the social innovation process cut across organisa-tional sectoral and disciplinary boundaries and imply new patterns of stakeholder involvement and learning

bull The success of social innovation is reliant on the accountability of diverse stakeholders and across all government levels

Social Innovation Factsheet

2 bullCLIMATE CHANGE

PROOF IWRM

2AfriAlliance

AfriAlliance is a five year project funded by the European Unionrsquos Ho-rizon 2020 research and innovation programme AfriAlliance facilitates the collaboration of African and European stakeholders in the areas of water and climate innovation research policy and capacity development by sup-porting knowledge sharing and technology transfer

Rather than creating new networks the 16 European and African partners in this project consolidate existing ones The ultimate objective is to strengthen African preparedness for future climate change challenges AfriAlliance is led by the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education (Project Director Dr Uta Wehn) and runs from 2016 to 2021

Website httpafriallianceorg

AfriAlliance activities Africa-EU cooperation is taken to a practical level by identifying (non-)

technological innovation and solutions for local needs and challenges AfriAlliance also identifies constraints and develops strategic advice for improving collaboration within Africa and between Africa and the EU

To help improve water and climate Monitoring amp Forecasting in Africa AfriAlliance is developping a triple sensor approach whereby water and climate data from three independent sources are geo-spatially collocated space-based (satellites) in-situ hydro-meteorological station observation networks and data collected by citizens

Sharing of knowledge is facilitated through a series of events and through an innovative online platform Demand-driven AfriAlliance lsquoAc-tion Groupsrsquo bring together African and European peers with relevant knowledge and expertise to work jointly towards solutions

Realisation Authors Chris Mannaerts (ITC) Megan Blatchford (ITC) Angeles Men-

doza-Sammet (IHE) Natacha Amorsi (OIEau)

Contributors David Smith (WEampB) Edouard Boinet (INBO)

Graphic Design OIEau

Version May 2019

References DESCRIPTION

[a] Wada Y I E M de Graaf and L P H van Beek (2016) High-resolution modeling of human and climate impacts on global water resources J Adv Model Earth Syst 8 735ndash763 doi1010022015MS000618[b] GWP httpswwwgwporgenGWP-CEEaboutwhywhat-is-iwrm[c] Chapman D (1992) Water Quality Assessments - A Guide to Use of Biota Sediments and Water in Environmental Monitoring - Second Edition UNESCOWHOUNEP Cambridge[d] UN Water (2016) The United Nations World Water Development Report 2016 Water and Jobs Facts and Figures

TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS

[e] WaPOR httpwwwfaoorgin-actionremote-sensing-for-water-producti-vitywaporen[f] WATER4CROPS httpwwwwater4cropsorg[g] Booysen MJ (2017) Smart Geyser project closure report ndeg contract K17163 WRC

GOVERNANCE STRUCTURES

[h] Lautze J de Silva S Giordano M Sanford L (2011) Putting the cart before the horse Water governance and IWRM Natural Resources Forum 35 1-8[i] GWP (2017) Efficiency in Water Management (C6) httpswwwgwporgenlearniwrm-toolboxManagement-InstrumentsEfficiency_in_Wa-ter_Management[j] UN (2017) Water use efficiency for resilient economies and societies roadmap High Level Panel on Water June 22p [k] Wehn U (2017) Digital transformations and the governance of human societies presentation at EC Joint Research Centre ISPRA Italy 7 April

CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT

[l] Vallejo B and Wehn U (2015) Capacity Development Evaluation The Challenge of the Results Agenda and Measuring Return on Investment in Capacity Development in the Global South World Development Vol 79 pp1-13 doi101016jworlddev201510044[m] Wehn U (2015) The Global Context National Capacity Development Strategies Tailor Made Training for contact points of Ugandarsquos National Water and Environment Capacity Development Strategy in collaboration with the Ministry for Water and Environment (Uganda) Kampala Uganda 10-11 November[n] Winter D (2009) Research impact assessment of the water adminis-tration system Report to the Water Research Commission Sullivan Inter-national WRC Report No TT 44709 December 77p[o]httpswwwun-iheorgnewscrop-productivity-africaback=747643

LIST OF ACRONYMS

bull CC Climate Change bull CD Capacity development bull IWRM Integrated Water Resources Management bull SIF Social Innovation Factsheet

bull WAS Water Administration System

bull WUE Water Use Efficiency

Further reading Presentation of

AFRIALLIANCE HAS RECEIVED FUNDING FROM THE EUROPEAN UNIONrsquoS HORIZON 2020 RESEARCH AND INNOVATION PROGRAMME UNDER GRANT AGREEMENT NO 689162

Both global and local technological initiatives are underway to improve WUE in the agriculture and domestic sectors Global solutions can include monitoring and assessment yet the application and develop-ment of solutions needs consideration of the local factorscharacteris-ticscontexts

Monitoring and assessment to learn from current practices WaPOR is the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) portal to mo-nitor crop water productivity (or crop WUE) through open access of remote-sensing derived data [e] It monitors and reports on agriculture water productivity in Africa and the Near East and provides open access to the water productivity database including its thousands of underlying map layers

Integrating water saving techniques that address issues in multiple sectors The collaborative Euro-India project WATER4CROPS provide

Since Climate Change may increase water stress on the African continent collaboration across all sectors is key to achieve WUE from local to basin level In Sub-Saharan Africa the agricultural sector is the largest water-consumer thus water users and authorities should jointly allocate water resources to support IWRM and reduce conflicts

As stated by GWP [i] water is wasted and inefficiently used by many sectors and at the same time water demand is steadily increasing To ensure that all the needs of water users are balanced one key objective is to set policy and institutional support that sets the baseline for greater benefit from less water [j]

UN roadmap [j] on WUE for resilient economies and societies sets clear objectives and a focused approach to improve WUE with practical tools Sectorial measures are suggested in terms of

(i) Systemic water management improvements through policy namely the WaterGuide One key element deals with the policy settings viewed as a strong element creating incentives for water users to improve their own WUE both on a voluntary or elementary approach

(ii) Systemic water management improvements through technology reducing metering costs

(iii) Sectoral measures for agriculture improving irrigation water use efficiency

Implementing IWRM requires strengthening the adaptation capa-city of institutions and other stakeholders in the water sector To drive stakeholdersrsquo behaviours towards WUE knowledge centres and water agencies need resources and technical training for personnel in data analysts and modelling to downscale climate models and improve local forecasts This includes increasing the awareness of sustainable wit-hdrawal limits and obtaining access and training in datasets to monitor assess and improve the current practice

Water Administration System in South Africa The need to improve wa-ter management in the agricultural sector particularly water release dis-tribution and utilisation culminated in the development of an integrated information system to manage these processes [m] This system the Water Administration System (WAS) was designed as a management tool for Water User Associations Following the success of the Water Use Efficiency and Accounting report dedicated efforts were developed on training material and documentation Three training methods are pro-posed (i) step by step documentation (ii) on-site training at the selected

irrigation schemes (iii) WAS training course

A complementary training module to the WaPOR FAO portal is proposed by IHE-Delft for professionals such as agricultural

researchers policy makers and irrigation scheme mana-gers [n] The training covers data access extraction and interpretation along with discussion in potential appli-cation Potential applications are particularly focused

on improving crop water productivity The database allows for the iden-tification of high and low performing areas in terms of crop water pro-ductivity By identifying best performing farmers and fields researchers and scheme managers can identify the practice associated with high crop WUE and apply these practices in low performing areas

solutions that integrate bio-treated wastewater reuse and valorisa-tion with enhanced WUE to support the Green Economy [f] WATER-4CROPS involves multidisciplinary issues of water management pro-vides an opportunity to efficiently utilize low quality industrial (food) and municipal wastewater in agriculture

Improving WUE in the domestic sector Smart Geyser laquoTool to Change Water Behaviours and Promote Efficiencyraquo [g] The technology is an in-telligent geyser monitoring device designed for monitoring electrical water heaters in households The device is attached to a geyser to monitor water flow while saving energy Additionally it allows for detection of bursts and shuts off the supply of water and electricity This permits the user to plan control in order to optimize energy usage The innovation comes with a sim card and a modem which automatically reports to a server where the data is processed to give feedback to the user The innovation promotes awareness about the importance of sustainable management of water and assists users in the conservation of water and energy It provides easily comprehendible water consumption information in real time identifies in-frastructure complications ie leaks bursts on taps and running toilets as well as instantaneous notifications of glitches The highly efficient system can be retrofitted and thus does not need additional plumbing or appliances

(iv) Sectoral measures for municipal and household users water effi-ciency labelling

(v) Sectoral measures for the environment improving environmental water use efficiency

The scheme below highlights the key business opportunities that exist at the different stages indicating key activities and their socio-en-vironmental values for co-creators

TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTIONS CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT

GOVERNANCE STRUCTURES BUSINESS ROAD MAP

Improving water use efficiency is essential to relieve the increasing pressure on the worldrsquos water resources a result of a growing population urbanisation and climate change

laquoGovernance is essentially the processes and institutions through which decisions are made raquo ([h])

laquoCapacity Development (CD) is conceived as the inherent responsibility of peopleorganisations and societies themselves in which support by external parties

can play an important roleraquo [l]

Social innovation relies on means other than market mechanismsin order to link the demand and supply sides

Stakeholders from both sides (solution providers and potential users) need to interact during the different stages of the innovation process to create a common ground for the co-production of the re-quired knowledge from the comprehension of the need to the design implementation and use of innovative solutions

source [k]

source [m]

httpwwwfaoorgin-actionremote-sensing-for-water-productivityen monitoring related to groundwater is treated in SIF14 monitoring dealing with drinking water is treated in SIF11