The launch of the new portal “Climate Smart Water” seeks to encourage water and sanitation operators to integrate a clear vision of how their activities are linked to climate change, and how they can take measures to improve their efficiency and reduce their carbon footprint.
The “Climate Smart Water” Portal is a new resource for the water and sanitation service providers (Operator Organizations, as they are known in Mexico – O.O.s), to integrate a clear vision of the link that the activities of providing drinking water and treat wastewater have with regards to climate change.
In Mexico and many parts of the world, most O.O.s have a delicate job. Water is fundamental for a dignified life, as well as for any productive activity, for which the adequate and sustainable management of water resources becomes critical for sustainable development. However, due to political and social issues, the reality of many O.O.s is of little continuity in their direction, financial difficulties, inefficiencies and significant water losses.
Therefore, O.O.s have a strong focus on reducing operating costs to continue providing the service to a growing population, with stricter environmental standards and unpredictable new effects of climate change, whose main impacts are caused by meteorological events that involve the water cycle.
Given this delicate situation, it is crucial to recognize that the impacts to the water and sanitation sector are not the only link with climate change, but that there is also a significant contribution of greenhouse gases (GHG). This is due to the emissions produced for the energy required to supply water to cities, and for the production of GHG in the management and disposal of wastewater.
Being clear about the relationship of climate change and the O.O.s allows increasing the awareness of the importance of ensuring quality services and implementing improvements that at the same time help to mitigate the effects of climate change.
The “Climate Smart Water” portal provides a roadmap that allows O.O.s to identify the link of their activities with the mitigation of climate change, and provides tools and resources to evaluate how to reduce their carbon footprint.
The structure of the road map has 5 stepped stages.
• Provides information on the importance of reducing the carbon footprint
• An online tool allows accounting for the emissions of the systems administered by the O.O.s
• The same tool allows identifying opportunities for improvement
• Provides information on how to implement solutions in the areas of opportunity identified
• After the implementation, it allows to monitor the O.O.s´ performance and how GHG emissions have been reduced or modified over time
The address of the portal is http://climatesmartwater.org/
The “Climate Smart Water” portal was developed within the framework of the Global Project “Water and Wastewater Companies for Climate Mitigation” (WaCCliM, www.wacclim.org), a project implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and the International Water Association, part of the International Climate Initiative (IKI) of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) of Germany.