From left, National Geographic Explorers Arati Kumar-Rao, Malin Fezehai and Marc Bierkens answer questions from the audience following their individual presentations Tuesday morning in the Amphitheater, part of the Chautauqua Lecture Series Week Eight theme “Water: Crisis, Beauty and Necessity.”
National Geographic Explorers Marc Bierkens, Malin Fezehai and Arati Kumar-Rao took the Amphitheater stage together on Tuesday for the Chautauqua Lecture Series, giving a joint presentation on how water can be used — and will continue to be used — in resilient, adaptive ways. The 45-minute lecture period was divided into three segments, with the three speakers giving 15 minutes of remarks each.
Bierkens presented first about his research at Utrecht University, studying the global water cycle. He began his lecture with an explanation of the amount of water on Earth, how it is distributed and what percentage of water is accessible versus inaccessible. He said 97.5% of water is in the planet’s oceans and of the 2.5% remaining, much of it is frozen in glaciers and ice sheets, or in groundwater.
Bierkens explained the differences between renewable water, sourced from evaporation from bodies of water like oceans, and less accessible water in reservoirs and aquifers below the earth’s surface. He compared the two sources to a payroll and a savings account, in that the former is recurring and more easily accessible, while the latter is less accessible — but more dependable and stable.
“The water I was talking about here before is basically water that’s in a savings account, but we also have a yearly income,” he explained. “That’s 450,000 cubic kilometers of water that’s in our rivers and lakes that flows to the ocean. Why do we have this? That’s because of the water cycle.”
Water is used in different ways the world over, from domestic to industrial, and models are used to calculate water use in specific areas.
Bierkens said the current models can be out of date, or misrepresentative of how much water is used or in what ways, and his work with National Geographic aims to use better models to calculate how much water different areas need, and how those areas are using the water they have. Bierkens and his team divide the Earth into individual squares of 10 kilometers and use a model to determine what happens to a drop of water that falls within the confines of the square.
He asked: “What will happen? What is its fate? Is it entering the soil, or is it running off to the river directly? Is it taken up by the roots of a plant? Is it being taken out for irrigation and applied to the field?”
Human water use is not only determined by consumption, he said, but also by human-driven climate change caused by pollution of water sources. To understand water use more accurately, the water maps must take into account pollution and environmental factors that impact water’s usability.
“These things together we put in the model,” he said, “and what we get out of it is how much water is in the soil, how much is in the river, how much is in the groundwater, how does it change over time? But also how much water do the people need? What is the shortage of water?”
He and his team are dealing with the science behind water use, but they also must work alongside storytellers to understand impact at the individual level.
“We’re looking at these hotspots of water scarcity, but also these environmental issues,” Bierkens said. “The thing is that we’re not only doing the science there, trying to understand what are the drivers behind that water scarcity and the detrimental effects there, but we also cooperate with storytellers that are people that go into those regions and tell the story of the people there.”
That’s critical, he said, because doing so “shows how people are dealing in their day-to-day lives with water scarcity, but also how they cope with it. What type of coping mechanisms are there? That will help us a lot to understand which of the measures we have to try out to alleviate water scarcity worldwide.”
After Bierkens concluded his portion of the lecture, photographer and filmmaker Fezehai took to the podium to explain her work studying and documenting communities that live on water permanently. Inspired by the water-based community of Makoko, Nigeria, Fezehai described her amazement at the innovation required of the community, which sparked an idea to photograph water-based communities around the world.
“I started this project with a question: Is it possible for communities to live on water and is this a sustainable way to live?” she said.
As the global population, having passed 8 billion, approaches 9 billion, countries and their governments are becoming more inclined to explore innovative living solutions, like some of the models Fezehai has studied. She provided an overview of four communities she’s documented, and the similarities and differences of their lifestyles.
The first community is Ganvié, Benin, comprising 45,000 people and 3,000 homes, according to Fezehai — a village designed to consist of artificial islands and streets that foster social interaction and community. She showed a number of photographs from her time spent in Ganvié and told the stories of a few individuals residing in the village.
The second community Fezehai documented is Schoonschip, a floating community based in Amsterdam comprising over 100 residents in 46 households. Schoonschip began as a dream of a group of environmentally-conscious individuals, she said, and each home is a marvel of modern engineering and ecologically-focused design.
Fezehai showed a selection of photographs of Schoonschip residents, and shared a little bit about their backgrounds in the context of living in the community, telling stories about the residents’ sustainability, self-reliance and triumph.
Fezehai also traveled to Bangladesh, a country deeply intertwined with water and uniquely water-dominated.
She showed images of innovative floating gardens that have become a low-cost lifeline for the communities — particularly during monsoon season — and of farmers who use this technique to support agriculture.
“While these gardens have a long history, there has been a revival in recent years emphasizing their importance, and also considering them as an essential tool for adapting to climate change and alleviating poverty,” Fezehai explained.
The final community Fezehai discussed during the lecture were Peru’s Uros Islands. Keeping the islands and homes in a good state requires constant repair, and she said that it is a communal effort imperative to keeping the community afloat — literally. Tourism has played an increasingly major role in the Uros Islands’ economy, which has led to adaptation agriculture and hunting.
“After completing this journey,” she said, “my conclusion was — to my initial question — yes, people can live on water,” though that “yes” is heavily dependent on the community’s proximity to land.
“Each community that I visited presented innovation and different insights about how this can be done, but also very strong challenges,” she said. “Our journey with water is not just about survival. It is about reimagining our future. A future where we don’t just live alongside water, but with it in harmony and respect. The ripples of change are already here and I am very excited to see where it takes us next.”
Writer and photographer Kumar-Rao rounded out the lecture with a focus on her experiences working in communities in India that receive very little rainfall.
She told stories of being in India’s Thar Desert with a friend who is a local shepherd and farmer. Her friend told her that in the desert, it’s about reading the land to know where to find stored water.
Kumar-Rao talked about the resilience of people living in the Thar Desert and the innovative ways they find, harness and harvest water.
“They walk for miles across the desert and they feel the landscape with their whole body,” she said. “We tend to think of deserts as barren, as arid, as devoid of life. These are living deserts.”
Using hand-dug wells to harvest and store water, residents have access to water year-round — not just on the days surrounding rainfall in the desert.
Kumar-Rao also highlighted a technique called contour bunding, which uses built semicircles and leverages sandstorms to create a slope that slows water runoff, allowing more water to infiltrate the ground.
“What do the people wait for? They wait for this: that one day, maybe, that it will rain, but they are prepared. They have built their bund and the water comes rushing down that gentle slope and comes to rest at the bund,” she said. “This is their method of rainwater harvesting.”
After this rain is harvested, it also seeps into nearby wells, which are then replenished with the absorbed water, lasting all year for people to use.
“When you know local geographies, you know how to survive,” Kumar-Rao said. “When you know how to read the land that you are on, you know how to live.”
Conversely, when non-residents — who don’t know the land — attempt to harvest and store water in the Thar Desert, the infrastructure is ultimately unsuccessful. She also talked about the overcrowding of cities, and how one of India’s most-populated cities mismanaged its water supply.
Bengaluru, India, is prone to flooding because city infrastructure and development has blocked natural water flow, leaving rainfall with nowhere to be absorbed. In short, the people forgot their local geography, she said.
She finished her portion of the lecture with a remark from her friend, the farmer based in the Thar Desert, who said “before a drought caused by the shortage of rainfall, comes a drought of ideas.”
“We do not understand — or we have forgotten — our local geographies, which is what lends resilience to the land and it prepares us for the change that is coming,” she said.
She ended on a quote from environmentalist Wendell Berry: “What I stand for is what I stand on.”
“If we can own those local geographies and fight for it, knowing what is right and appropriate for the land, no interloper, no marketing guru with a lot of money and grandiose ideas can ever usurp that, and we will retain our resilience,” Kumar-Rao concluded.
