The Sponge City Initiative: A Solution for Flooding and Water Scarcity?

By: Emily Michienzi

In 2010, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 64/292 which declared that water is an international human right.[1] In this declaration, the UN called upon member nations and international organizations “to provide financial resources, capacity-building and technology transfer, through international assistance and cooperation, in particular to developing countries, in order to scale up efforts to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable drinking water and sanitation for all.”[2]

Despite this UN resolution, seven hundred million people across forty-three countries live with water stress or water scarcity.[3] Water scarcity can be defined in a variety of ways.[4] It can be defined in terms of lack of physical access to water, lack of infrastructure to transport water to the people, or lack of institutional management to ensure that water is distributed to the people.[5] No matter the root cause, by 2025, the estimated number of people living in water scarce countries will increase to 2.8 billion across forty-eight countries.[6] The causes of water scarcity are varied.[7] The causes can be natural phenomena such as aridity and drought.[8] However, human causes, such as soil degradation, overconsumption, and urbanization are also increasingly exacerbating the water scarcity issue.[9]

As some countries struggle to find water, other countries have more water than it can handle.[10] While many factors contribute to the imbalance, one exacerbating factor is the increase in urban infrastructure that causes water run-off.[11] Impermeable urban areas, like paved roads and concrete or brick buildings, do not allow water to soak into the soil and make its way into plants to be transpirated or to recharge the aquafers.[12] This not only causes increased water-based natural disasters, like floods, but it leaves other areas drier than usual because excess water in one location means a decrease in water availability in another area.[13]

To account for increased development and urbanization, the UN Water Development Report suggests that governments implement green infrastructure plans.[14] Green infrastructure is defined as “natural or seminatural systems that provide water resources management options with benefits that are equivalent or similar to conventional grey water infrastructure.”[15] Green infrastructure uses natural areas, open spaces, rain gardens, permeable pavement, and much more to manage and control water without the use or in conjunction with grey infrastructure.[16] Grey water infrastructures, in contrast, are human made water infrastructure such as pipes, water treatment plants, and reservoirs.[17]

One country that is attempting to address its water scarcity and increased flooding problems through the use of green infrastructure is China. China’s water problems include severe shortages in some areas and extreme flooding in other parts.[18] Over six hundred seventy-eight million people across the country live in extremely water stressed regions.[19] Two main causes for China’s water scarcity problems are industrialization and urbanization.[20] As China’s population continues to increase because if its industrial advancements, urban areas have become the solution to housing the larger population.[21] However, it is these urban areas that are experiencing extreme flooding.[22] In essence, the water cycle is no longer balanced as some regions are searching for water while other regions have too much to handle.[23]

To address the water cycle imbalance, China created the Sponge City Initiative.[24] This initiative began in 2014.[25] The Sponge City Initiative’s stated goal “is to mitigate the effects of urban development on natural ecosystems and solve urban related problems at the same time.”[26] To begin the initiative, the national government chose thirty cities to receive assistance in implementing the initiative.[27] The initiative calls for the chosen cities to implement green infrastructure such as “green roofs, green spaces, artificial rainwater wetlands, infiltration ponds, biological retention facilities[,] and water permeable pavement.”[28] By creating and implementing this green infrastructure, rainwater should be able to soak into the ground, rather than running off or overflowing the grey water infrastructure causing massive flooding.[29]

While the goal of the Sponge City Initiative is to protect urban areas from massive flooding, implementing green infrastructure has the dual purpose of recharging the aquafers that are currently overdrawn.[30] Recharging the aquafers allows other regions of the country to have greater access to water, reducing the number of people living in extremely water stressed regions.[31] Further, the initiative also benefits water scarce regions because cities can harvest rainwater for farming and landscape irrigation. Redirecting water from the cities to the agricultural regions contributes to the overall water security, a key global and regional challenge given that Asia is the most water insecure region in the world.[32] So, while the stated goal with the Sponge City Initiative was not to combat water scarcity, that has been the effect.

While China’s attempt at incorporating green infrastructure into its urban design following the UN directive is a good step, the Sponge City Initiative can shed light on some significant implementation problems concerning green infrastructure. One of the largest problems is that urbanization and development are outpacing local government’s ability to overhaul the infrastructure to comply with the Sponge City Initiative.[33] Another problem is that the finances needed to actually create the green infrastructure is more than any one local government can handle.[34] Yet another problem is that developers are not incentivized to help local governments meet the Sponge City Initiative requirements because the guarantee of a return investment does not exist.[35] Finally, the pace at which the Sponge City Initiative is meant to be implemented at is too fast leavening local governments and developers unable to keep up effectively.[36] These problems likely stem from the rigidity in the Sponge City Initiative. The Initiative was designed to be implemented quickly, but local governments are not given the resources through the Initiative to meet the implementation pace, incentivize developers to actually create green infrastructure, and manage all of the requirements while also struggling to meet the ever-increasing pace of urbanization.

While the UN initiative encouraging urban areas to incorporate green infrastructure is important, countries that undertake to comply with the initiative should learn from the successes and failures of countries like China that have already begun to take this step.

 #China #Michienzi #Water #SpongeCity

Image taken from google images.

[1] G.A. Res. 64/292, at 2 (June 28, 2010).

[2] Id.

[3] Water Scarcity, United Nations, http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/scarcity.shtml (last visited Nov. 12, 2018).

[4] Id.

[5] Id.

[6] Sofie Hellberg, The Biopolitics of Water: Governance, Scarcity and Populations 73 (Routledge, 2018).

[7] Luis Santos Pereira, Ian Corder, Iacovos Iacovides, Coping with Water Scarcity: Addressing the Challenges 9 (Dordrect Springer, 2009), https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=TnNZ1zK3Y74C&oi=fnd&pg= PA1&dq=water+scarcity+causes&ots=4w8fIFegP8&sig=BeWsctCd2Id3E3FrV59Tb3frQug#v=onepage&q=water%20scarcity%20causes&f=false.

[8] Id.

[9] Id. at 10-11.

[10] U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Nature-Based Solutions for Water, iv (2018), http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0026/002614/261424e.pdf.

[11] Id.

[12] Id.

[13] Id

[14] Id. at 31.

[15] Id.

[16] Id. at 31.

[17] Introduction to green infrastructure and grey infrastructure, Alberta Water portal Society, https://albertawater.com/green-vs-grey-infrastructure (last visited Nov. 12, 2018).

[18] Chris Zeverberg, Dafang Fu & Assela Pathirana, Transitioning to Sponge Cities and Opportunities and Problems to Address Urban Water Problems, in 10 Water 2, 7 (2018), file:///C:/Users/Emily/Downloads/water-10-01230%20(2).pdf.

[19]Jiao Wong, Lijin Zhong,  Charles Iceland, China’s Water Stress is on the Rise, World Resources Institute (Jan. 2017),  https://www.wri.org/blog/2017/01/chinas-water-stress-rise.

[20] Id.

[21] Id.

[22] Zevenberg, supra note 18, at 2.

[23] Wong, supra note 19.

[24] Thu Nguyen et al., Implementation of specific urban water management-Sponge City, in 652 Science of the Total Environment 147, 148 (Feb 2019), https://www-sciencedirect-com.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/science/article/pii/S0048969718340518.

[25] Id.

[26] Id. at 149.

[27] Id.

[28] Id.

[29] Id.

[30] Graham Dwyer, Piloting “Sponge Cities” in the People’s Republic of China, Asian Dev. Bank (Jan. 2017),  https://www.adb.org/results/piloting-sponge-cities-people-s-republic-china.

[31] Id.

[32] Id.

[33] Zeverberg, supra note 18.

[34] Id.

[35] Id.

[36] Id.