In her article, our festival guardian Saara Kankaanrinta dives into the relationship between humans and water from both her own and global perspective. How could understanding the importance of water cycle affect our understanding of climate change?
The trickling of a stream…Oh, how it thrills you, almost the way it did when you were young. The stream tickles the mind. Where does the water come from and where is it going?
My work centres around this question. Water and its cycle.I think about water in the seas, on the surface, underground and up in the clouds.
I live by the Baltic Sea, and in my spare time, I like to take photos of waves, rain, fog and clouds. So photos of water. I got married by water, on the island of Gullkrona. Later, we established the largest private water protection zone in the Finnish Archipelago Sea on the island together with our neighbours.
The sea is the landscape of my soul. Most of my body is water, too. If you were to squeeze me like a wet towel, you’d be left with a puddle.
Earth is actually a ball of water, since most of its surface is salt water, the oceans. The rivers make it look like the continents have blood vessels: thinner and thinner lines branching out from thicker streams.
There’s a wild, fierce power in flowing water—a power that has been harnessed by humans. Humans have built around 60 000 large dams on the planet. Humans try to rule water; we have had the ‘control and command’ attitude, as said by Sandra Postel, a renowned water expert.
We have manipulated not only the water cycle but also the conditions of existence of many aquatic species. Fish that spawn in streams cannot reproduce as dams prevent access to their spawning grounds. It’s not just the love life of fish that’s withering away but the entire species. In Finland, too, almost all our migratory fish species are endangered.
We have tried to force water to do things our way. Currently, local ecosystems are being restored around the world by dismantling dams. The largest mega-dams, in turn, are in danger of collapsing.
In Finland, we have broken world records in forest drainage. And by digging the ditches, we have channelled carbon and nutrients into shallow waters, making them eutrophic and their bottom water low-oxygen or oxygen-free. That’s when it can start to produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
If we had the patience to treat water with less violence, we might find a way to get more by doing less.
We should be working together with nature and water, not against them.
***
WITHOUT water, life will not continue. This is why freshwater scarcity is becoming one of the biggest crises.
Almost a billion people are already suffering from a severe lack of water and roughly 4 billion from some degree of water scarcity. That’s more than half of the world’s population!
In August last year, scientists reported that perfluoroalkyl chemicals, or PFAS, used in many everyday products, have become so widespread that rainwater is no longer safe to drink. Humans are able to create new chemistry yet totally unable to assess its impact.
Groundwater is potable water stored underground. Globally, there is a dire shortage of it. Even in Finland, we haven’t always valued our groundwater. There was a time when the state expropriated gravel from above the groundwater area located in the woods on our Qvidja farm to build highways, and they didn’t restore the area. This happened elsewhere, too.
According to the Finnish Water Act, we don’t own the groundwater, even though it’s in our land. Rightly so. The philosophy of ownership doesn’t fit with nature in the first place, as we are talking about the conditions of life. Water, air and nature are common necessities.
Around the world, water has been privatized. The consequences have been bad almost without exception.
But there are also other kind of, interesting legislative reforms.
The constitution of Ecuador prohibits privatization and enshrines that nature “has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes”. Bolivia’s constitution also prohibits disturbing the ecosystem.
And what about this: New Zealand gave a river the legal status of a person.
In all these examples, the appreciation towards nature stems from indigenous people. Māori people have long fought for the rights of their sacred river. Underlying this is a profound ideological difference: the river is a living being and an ancestor, as humans are descended from nature.
The contrast is fascinating: indigenous people, who are seen as “primitive”, are giving us the keys to a more progressive legislation.
Perhaps the so-called “developed” societies should learn a thing or two from the indigenous people’s relation to nature.
***
SEAS and oceans are among the most important places for the temperature regulation and biodiversity of Earth.
The rise in temperature due to the influence of climate change affects the relative strengths and living conditions of species. The state of waters is already alarming.
The rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels intensify the dissolution of carbon dioxide into seas, including the Baltic Sea, where it forms carbonic acid. Acidic water dissolves calcium compounds and hinders, for example, the growth of important clams. Sea species and processes are changing.
Climate change also impacts the water cycle on Earth. A warming climate evaporates water faster. It’s a broken cycle, and it’s accelerating.
Warm air also stores more water vapour, which contributes to the increasingly powerful storms.
The consequences are painfully familiar from the news of recent years. Violent hurricanes, storms, rains, lethal floods. At the same time, heat records are broken, resulting in dry rivers, dry crop lands, and well… dry everything.
And it’s not all happening in faraway countries. Germany’s most important inland waterway, the Rhine River, is in danger of drying up completely. Last summer, you could see the bottom from the edge of the river. A friend of mine wondered: “Where does the water go?” It’s a good question.
As I help my primary school kids study for exams, I often wonder how we adults have forgotten about the importance of the states of water. They do teach them at school.
Solid, liquid, gas. When water changes state, energy is either absorbed or released. The change of liquid into water vapour, ice or back takes up a significant amount of Earth’s heat energy.
Condensation releases heat into the atmosphere, while evaporation absorbs it.
Air pollutants and particulate matter from air pollution interfere with the natural cycle of water.
For the Earth, the water cycle is a question of maintaining life. It doesn’t come up enough in the public discussion on natural crises. If we were to remember and internalise it, we would understand climate change significantly better. Not just the consequences of it but also the reasons behind it.
We must think how we are breaking the water cycle and what it entails. Above all, we must think what could be done differently. Are there other ways to mitigate climate change, in addition to systematically reducing the use of fossil energy?
***
I LEAP over the stream and head towards a slumbering grass field. I’m wandering around the Qvidja research farm, which I own with my husband.
For over 15 years, we have been working for the Baltic Sea through a foundation we started. The Qvidja farm is home to research on soil carbon stocks, and we conduct it together with Finnish Meteorological Institute, University of Helsinki and other research institutions.
I’m often asked what the soil and carbon have to do with the Baltic Sea. I start by explaining that nitrogen, phosphorus and carbon leach into the sea from fields and forests. In sea water, they then feed the growth of algae at an abnormal rate. We can see the result every summer in the form of blue-green algae mash.
The nutrients are needed in the fields and forests, and that’s where the root cause of the emissions needs to be addressed. We need to look into the soil to understand how to make it healthy.
Carbon and water go hand in hand in the soil. If the soil is rich in humus, it means that it has a lot of carbon and healthy microbe activity. It doesn’t release nutrients and water for no reason. The soil retains water for drier days and can withstand larger masses of water in excessively wet times. A bit like a sponge.
A one percentage point increase in the organic matter formed around carbon can mean that the soil is able to retain over 100 000 litres more water per hectare. This is a huge amount of water!
Water scarcity can be the most significant factor limiting plant growth also in Finland. If it’s dry in June when plants need the most water, crop yields will be low.
In other words, organic matter content is an important stop for the water cycle in the soil.
A healthy soil doesn’t pollute the Baltic Sea. It stores carbon, adapts to extreme weathers and produces better yields.
One of the most important means of increasing the carbon content in regenerative farming is a diverse field with more than one species, constant vegetation cover and a living root. The photosynthetic machinery is ready to go, and the plants and their roots hold the soil in place.
”The cycles of water and energy are closely linked. The water cycle between vegetation, soil and the atmosphere is crucial for global cooling”, as stated by the UN’s scientific paper, which was backed by dozens of scientists.
Here, “energy” doesn’t refer to human-made energy. In its simplest form, it refers to the energy produced by the sun that powers the entire life of Earth.
When solar energy strikes the ground, much of it is used for transpiration in trees and other plants, i.e. to evaporate water from the soil through the plants into the air. Plants maintain the water cycle: water turns into steam, and heat energy is consumed in the process.
This is why the water cycle is intertwined with land use. Vegetation and its microbes are the motor and thermostat. A bare soil won’t do the trick.
“In a desert, I realised that rain is not from the sky but from the earth. It is not the lack of rain that causes the desertification. It is the lack of vegetation that stops the rain”, a Japanese microbiologist summarised in their book.
We are holding the keys, and the technology is there. If nature can be called technology—at least it’s more complex than human devices.
Article was first published in Helsingin Sanomat 22.3.2023.