The Pacific's water security challenge during a searing El Niño

Pacific Islands countries face increasingly tough challenges in water security as drought and other impacts from El Niño worsen over the region.

But experts in water security and water technology say Pacific communities can continue to build resilience, have numerous solutions at their disposal and are working together as a region.

The current El Niño, which the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said is one of the strongest on record, is placing a huge strain on Pacific countries' water systems.

Pacific Community (SPC) water security and governance coordinator Dave Hebblethwaite told RNZ Pacific that El Niño impacts varied between countries as well as within countries.

"For example, in the Cook Islands, we know the the Southern Cooks are more vulnerable to water scarcity in this event, whereas the Northern Cooks are experiencing heightened levels of rainfall at the moment.

"Also, throughout Melanesia, whilst we're having generally dry conditions, we know that some communities are more vulnerable to those conditions than others," Hebblethwaite said.

"We have communities that are actually living in fairly water scarce conditions at the best of times, so the El Niño dry conditions that we're experiencing are really putting those communities to the test at the moment."

Dr Lokesh Padhye is the associate director for the New York State Centre for Clean Water Technology, and founded the Oceania Research Consortium with a team from the University of Auckland, to research water security challenges in the Pacific.

With the El Niño forecast to strengthen over the coming months, he said freshwater resources would be in increasingly short supply.

He said limited local water quality education and community self-reliance would be essential.

"What is really required is having some expertise in the water quality, water treatment," he told RNZ Pacific.

"There needs to be some investment to get the local people to participate in water quality, water treatment education and get actively protect their own communities."

The age-old method of rainwater harvesting remains a low-cost method for Pacific communities to source water, but harvested water must be treated before drinking.

Desalination processes can help too, but they often require funding, expertise, and skills training.

However, Dr Padhye noted other, more affordable options for securing fresh water in dry times.

"Even there are safer, simple treatments like sedimentation, filtration, and most importantly, disinfection, which is what really many of these communities need. It's just protection from the microbial pathogens."

Resourceful

Hebblethwaite said that with drought in many parts of the Pacific leaving communities less able to collect rainwater, groundwater is an increasingly important resource.

"Even in small islands where there's shallow aquifers, so small layers of fresh water that sit on top of the salt water under the sand, that resource is harvested by communities.

"We're seeing communities actually getting more clever about the way that they can harvest these by installing shallow galleries on small islands, so that there can be a greater volume of groundwater that can be harvested or that can be collected."

He said many Pacific households were familiar with regularly travelling to water sources, sometimes over quite a distance, often buckets to collect from a from a borehole. a well or from a community water storage.

"For example, in Tonga at the moment, the government is carting water, shipping water, basically transporting from Tongatapu to Ha'apai to some of the affected islands there.

"And we're seeing in Fiji, in some of the maritime areas, governments involved in trying to transport water to those communities in need."

Hebblethwaite said it was integral for communities to be able to treat their water, whether it be through boiling or filtering.

"[SPC's] country counterparts at the moment are spending quite a bit of time on messaging with communities just to make sure that communities are aware of the heightened risk during times of drought of waterborne disease, and ensuring that they've got those those safety practices in place."

Pacific self-reliance

Globally, it is expected that in the coming years climate change will increase competition for water resources, adding to the potential for conflict.

Dr Padhye said the Pacific's water quality and water systems were already under significant pressure from extreme weather.

"[They] are not standing for such kind of extreme events, and I think relying on international aid is becoming unreliable as well. So I think for countries, especially smaller countries in Pacific, the self-reliance would be the key."

Hebblethwaite said that while the Pacific has its challenges, its transboundary cooperation and collaboration on water issues is unlike that of any other region in the world.

He said the level of information sharing in the Pacific is encouraging.

"For more than 10 years, SPC has been working with New Zealand and with Atoll countries to support a community of practice - we call it the Pacific Partnership for Atoll Water Security.

"A lot of the work in information, in institutional strengthening, in infrastructure, a lot of that work now is coming into play at times like this," Hebblethwaite said.

He said the unprecedented conditions that the Pacific Islands were experiencing through this extreme El Niño was a test of the work that has been done already on water security.

The lessons from this El Niño can help inform further work in the Pacific for planning future disaster response and water management in the face of deepening climate change impacts.