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Josh Visits the South Pacific: Climate Chaos, Chinese Bribes & Mosquitoes · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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Get a humans, welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas.
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Something different for you today, a little bonus episode, live from the front lines of
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the South Pacific, I am broadcasting, well not right now, but in a moment I will be broadcasting
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to from the Solomon Islands, a fly spec semi-order critic Pacific Island nation, which has
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sort of become a front line of the clash between the Chinese Communist Party and the West
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in their attempt to curry favor with tiny island nations by bribing them with infrastructure.
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Also a critical place for looking at the impact of climate chaos on smaller countries,
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what's going to happen to their populations, how they're going to get water, will they
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all become refugees and so on.
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I felt like I traveled so much that I am missing an opportunity to bring you to some of the
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places that I go to, where I end up having really fascinating conversations with some
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experts on the ground, just out of my own curiosity and sort of natural interest and instinct,
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that then you don't get to hear.
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So this is an attempt to actually bring you onto the ground in the jungle, clad rainforest,
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clad hills of a volcanic Pacific Island country to sort of see how the big geopolitical
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forces and climate forces are playing out on the ground.
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The reason I bring it to you this week, even though I traveled there some months ago,
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is because this week is the 54th Pacific Islands Forum meeting in the capital of the Solomon
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Islands, Honiara.
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If you haven't really heard of the Solomon Islands, don't really know about it.
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You may have heard of Guadalcanal as a pivotal battle in World War II.
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In fact, at Guadalcanal, John F. Kennedy was in the Solomon Islands in 1943.
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His patrol torpedo boat was sunk by a Japanese destroyer on the night of August 1, 1943,
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and he heroically led his surviving crew to safety.
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He received the Navy and Marine Corps medal and that contributed to his rise from being
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a young naval officer to being the 35th president of the United States.
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It was a critical turning point in the Pacific War with the Americans and the Aussies on one
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side and obviously the Japanese on the other.
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Today, the Prime Minister of Australia is in Honiara meeting with the leaders of lots
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of Pacific Island nations and essentially trying to bring them into the Western sphere
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of influence, signing landmark deals with them on climate and migration and economic
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and security matters to try to nudge, push back, really, the growing Chinese influence
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in developing countries, especially in our backyard.
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You can see the battle between the Chinese Communist Party and the Australian Department
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of Foreign Affairs and trade playing out in the pages of the Solomon Islands newspaper.
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I just saw this on social media a screenshot from the main newspaper in the Solomon's
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and a headline, Prime Minister, meaning Prime Minister of the Solomon's, receives new
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vehicle fleet from China for 54th Pacific Islands Forum leadership meeting.
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And then, on next page, an identical headline, Prime Minister receives new vehicle fleet
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from Australia, ahead of PIFLM Pacific Island Forum's leaders meeting literally an
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identical headline in identical font on neighbouring pages and the only word different
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is China and Australia.
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The battle reduced to dueling pages of the local newspaper about who gets to curry favor
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the best with the locals.
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But beyond the geopolitics, there is a fascinating story of how a dirt poor country grapples with
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a changing climate rising seas and a lack of water.
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So when I was there, I caught up with one of the nation's leading hydrogeologists.
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In fact, one of Australia's leading hydrogeologists who is stationed in the Solomon Islands working
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for an organization called the Pacific Community to manage that country's water in the long
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term.
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And he took me to see the wells and the aquifers and the springs and to tell me about
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how geophysicists are using MRI technology, like you would have in an MRI machine that
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would scan your body, to scan mountains for underground water caves and rivers.
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What the possibility is for countries like the Solomon's and lots of other small, small
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developing countries around the world for desalination plants, wells, rainwater tanks,
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whether they can use the ocean.
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And this has implications also for the way that we deal with water in our own countries.
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So we go into some of the extraordinary facts about subsidence in the Central Valley of
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California, thanks to growing almonds and the fact that Indian aquifiers in India pull
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so much water out of the ground that they are measurably increasing sea levels on the
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other side of the world.
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I hope you enjoyed this conversation, something a little bit different.
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I hope it paints a picture for you of what it's like in one of these places on the opposite
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side of the world from where you are.
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The hydrogeologist's name is Sam Buchanan.
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He happens to be a very old friend of mine as well.
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Enjoy this conversation about the future of climate and China in the Solomon's.
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So we are driving through one of the most remote and poor countries in the world where
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you are responsible for doing what exactly.
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We're investigating some new sources of groundwater that there's a lot of rainfall around here,
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rainfall is an obvious one to collect but it doesn't rain all the time and there's droughts.
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So we're investigating different types of groundwater sources.
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The aquifers that the water comes from comes from.
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We're looking at the volcanic aquifers and they're a little bit harder to understand than
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the carbonate which is like the limestone aquifers.
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And so just back up about the aquifers, where are we the locals get their water from?
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Are they on piped?
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That's where does the pipe water come from?
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Now that's a good question.
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So in Honiara about there is piping to most houses, not everyone can afford.
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The piping as we're driving along here you might see tar polons, we're passing one now.
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Yeah, we're driving along it.
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It is a paved road but a badly paved road that's winding up through a tropical jungle
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where lots of palm trees and lots of lake.
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If you were dropped here and you didn't know where you would assume you're in Africa
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and little roadside shacks with what seemingly no electricity or little kids running around
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would seemingly nothing.
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So what's the level of infrastructure here in terms of water and...
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Right.
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Yeah, so there is pipes to most of Honiara, groundwater pipes, significant reports of the population
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kind of forward, treated water.
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And so they will connect buckets to tar polons off their roof.
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And that works during times of rainfall but during drought then they will often work
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out a way to get some water.
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Paid water from pipes, the more affluent people within Honiara use the pipe water all
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time.
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Is the pipe water drinkable?
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Yeah.
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The pipe water is really good actually.
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Huh.
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Why am I not drinking the pipe water?
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Well, I do.
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Do you?
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You should.
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Wow.
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Yeah.
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All right.
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The water here is chlorinated to a level that satisfactorily kills all the bugs and that
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is okay.
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One of the big things though is reliability of water, reliability of that pipe water and
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the quality of it.
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So it is good but maybe once every month or two months we will get what's called the
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oil water alert.
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And that means, oh goodness, we are not quite so short on that.
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Right.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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No, I will stick with the bottle stuff if I am going to get a monthly GRDR or crypto sprudy
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and dose.
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It is going to leave me on the toilet for a week.
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But look, you get warning about that and interestingly one of the things that we are doing
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right now is intimately involved in that water quality issue.
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So that is, we are going to look at a groundwater spring, a spring is where the water comes
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out of the ground.
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This is us right now physically, you and me, not you as an organisation.
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You mean we are going to go to a spring?
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Yeah.
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Josh and I are driving and as an organisation part of the project we are doing is to really
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understand this spring, this spring is really valuable to the people of Honiara as our
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springs all across the Pacific.
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It is a blessing from God or a blessing from gravity as I prefer it to be known because
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the water is brought to the surface as opposed to needing to be pumped from wells around
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the place.
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There are about 15 groundwater wells in Honiara and they are situated inside the urban areas
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in Honiara but it costs…
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Sorry, why do we need wells if we have got high water?
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So we have got wells and those wells deliver water to strategic reservoirs that these
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water tanks, big water tanks, million liter water tanks and that is what feeds the pipes.
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I see, got it.
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So just to back up this about the pipe water and what water people use, people, the average
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person if there is such a thing in Honiara is getting pipe water that is good enough to
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drink and LA is there enough of that and is it affordable enough that they are bathing
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in that and they are washing clothes in that or are there two levels of water?
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Typically, the water they receive in the pipes, they bathe in and wash in so that is all
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the water they would use.
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And that is all coming from wells which come from springs.
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Yes, so about half of Honiara's water comes from wells and that is pumped from about 50
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metres below the ground.
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The other half of Honiara's water comes from three groundwater springs, one of which we
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are going to visit now.
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Got it.
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The benefit of the spring is that the water is brought to the surface, it doesn't cost anything
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in terms of electricity to pump.
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The groundwater wells need to be, the water needs to be brought up from say 50 metres below
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the ground.
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Right.
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So there is no expense, there is diesel generators all throughout town here bringing water
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up and it's an interesting double edged sword of there's pros and cons to both of this.
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The wells provide water that almost never is polluted but it costs a lot of money to
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pour it out of the ground.
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The springs bring the water up out of the ground for you but as soon as you get some heavy
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rains they will get polluted and by pollution I mean sediment levels rise and when sediment
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level rise are you people thinking oh this doesn't look good to drink but there's a reality
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in that chlorine can't adequately kill the bugs in turbid water that is sediment in water
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because it won't actually grab the bugs and kill them.
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Right.
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Now, sorry, as we're driving past this I can't help but notice we've reached the top
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of a hill and there and there's a vista over very steep rolling what look like greenfields
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which people might associate with you know Scotland or New Zealand or something like that
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but on the side of the road they're building these new houses that don't look at all like
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the developing world houses that we've been passing by but look quite modern and they're
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on gigantic concrete stilts that look like they might be 30 or 40 feet high seemingly
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needlessly except what do you want that is what is that there's no flat ground here you
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need to have stilts just to be able to have a level kitchen but they were perched so much
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higher than they needed to be they were still 15 feet above the ground they've been careful
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they were also then typically built something underneath where they might do the washing
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they might have family who come and stay for now their islands live yeah these houses are
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out here are very very communal and you'll get people from all over the place staying there
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okay got it that's that reason okay excellent and just on the question of electricity because you
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mention how expensive it is to bring water up from wells you're mentioning the other day
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electricity is more expensive here than anywhere almost in the world yeah I think it is one of
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the within the top 10 most expensive places in the world to to buy electricity I'm not sure
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about the producing some might be making some some money on the side but for the average person
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here electricity is almost prohibitively expensive so you certainly don't get any electric stoves
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it's typically wood stoves around here and you'd use electricity for lighting and the on-person
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forward air conditioning on a limited basis right but I mean that would be a vanishingly small
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minority of Solomon Islanders I have access to universal lighting or air conditioning right most
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of them most of them might be lucky to have one light bulb yeah absolutely vanishing certainly
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no air conditioning it's not the it's not the norm at all and then the other thing is that
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electricity goes out relatively often there's fire giving there a brown out some blackouts across
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the ground out some blackouts there's five relatively old diesel generators throughout the town
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so diesel is I mean it's amazing to me that this island in the middle of nowhere is shipping in
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diesel for all of its electricity when it's blessed with a tropical climate tons of sunshine
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tons of rain tons of mountains tons of volcanic activity tons of water I mean you could take
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your pick from renewables and easily power this island with a one one off up front investment
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if you wanted to instead we ship in diesel it does seem like the wrong way to go about it and
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things are being done there is a hydropower the Tina River which is a river 60 kilometers to the east
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of Honiara there's a dam currently being built there and that will provide quite a significant
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portion of electricity at Honiara we're actually just passing Josh you'll know this is a water
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reservoir what a tank being built it's been built well now concrete and steel it's the size of a
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built of a big building of an office building and can I just point out to you can you see the sheer
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through the fence the thickness of the steel that is being used yes we are on the Pacific rim of fire
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here where earthquakes are relatively common and to you're holding in there millions of tons of water
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right on top of a hill on top of a hill live and the hill all happens to be made just of
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limestone and coral which is not necessarily all that structurally sound right so you've really
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really got to hold the shaking water back and that's what that's about right that tank but presumably
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there is some level of earthquake that would destroy the hill itself and
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hamster water yeah I think if that water tank goes there's problems everywhere else as well it's
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it's a good water tank yeah okay amazing who pays for that oh that's a project funded I believe
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by the well bank okay there's a donor funding is a significant portion of the economic activity
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within the Solomon Islands and there really is a lot of good work that and a lot of expertise that
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are brought in and one of the challenges is keeping the expertise and developing expertise within
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the islands to keep it here one of the things that you notice driving around here is the incredible
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difference between the poverty of everyday people although I must say it is a kind of a cheerful
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poverty as well it's not like a decrepit distribution where the culture is falling apart or
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something in the same way that I might have seen in parts of rich countries that have completely
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collapsed like bits of New Orleans after Katrina or something like that but the stark difference
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between the material poverty and the prosperity of things like the stadium that you drive past
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when you're coming from the airport which alohonniara airport is a tiny rickety little
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airport I was flying out of a regional airport that was built with Chinese money which was
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gleaming and new and air conditioned it had like a VIP lounge in this tiny regional city the police
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cars are shiny and new so there's like clearly a development aid budget and then the budget budget
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and you can obviously spot the difference is there a battle for currying favor with the
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Solomon Islands government by big international donors I mean I mentioned China in Australia would
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be the other big player here yeah that is right and as I understand it Australia is the most
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significant foreign donor of eight but like the examples you've just given if you look around
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you see big stadiums and the stadium happens to have been built by by China aid as has the hospital
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it is just going up in town so there's a I guess a different focus on what the aid is there are more
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prominent things that have been built largely by the Chinese and some of the Australian aid sits in
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the background and I think that is something that has been looked at the way the way the aid is
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shown to the public in the way it's marketed I think there's something that is being worked on
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and the Chinese Communist Party has never been accused of not being good at spectacle you know
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showing off and big displays of pump so have we we did has that changed do you know because I
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get the impression and maybe this is just my bias that a generation ago we all became a little
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a squeamish in the West about overt displays of development aid because we didn't want to seem
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colonial and so we've followed a path of more like let's make sure that development aid gets in
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the hands of the local community and let's make sure that the chieftains of the local villagers are
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empowered to you know nobody knows what the community wants better than the community does so let's
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just liais with local NGOs and funnel the money in that way quietly and not make too big a deal
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out of it and as a result the Australian gets absolutely no credit for being the number one donor
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in the Solomon's and everyone drives past the gigantic Chinese stadium and goes wow the Chinese
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are fabulous is that fair that's totally fair my colleagues within these fat would agree
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that's the part of foreign affairs and trade the Australian foreign yeah correct and so it's been
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acknowledged as as an issue and as I understand it whilst we don't want that colonial colonial
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way that was done in the past we do also need to be able to visibly demonstrate where the
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Australian money is going and for that matter any of the aid donors around the world part of it
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is bringing people along for the ride and it needs to be it needs to be visible for that to happen
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yeah right let's just build a much bigger stadium right behind the Chinese stadium with a giant
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Australian flag on it so we're at the spring where we just had a very relaxing swim with about
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a dozen and a half two dozen local kids who were all splashing and playing and the spring is and
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then we took a jungle walk to look for ripe cacao fruit to suck on which tastes kind of like a
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slimy sherbet and now as we dry off and look at this vista surrounded by tropical jungle with this
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freshwater spring and all the local children playing in it in the middle of nowhere the spring is about
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what six eight meters wide 20 feet wide or something and it's running down from what looks like
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no offense a ram shackle we're of some kind with grapes that the water is
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loosening through and some mossy unkempt white pipes descending from it is that
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am I being unfair what am I looking at this is our water supply this is your water
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wait including the stuff that I just swam my stinky balls in we've we've decanted a bit off
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before your balls got infected our water so is the water supply downstream of these kids swimming
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no so just stop streaming you can see the what you what just what you talk about yeah as the ram
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shackle bit of metal that's just to stop people climbing into the spring because that is just
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a limestone cave and it goes for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of meters we've done some
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exploring and you can actually see sinkholes that the contribute water to this flow here
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and so this this is the input one of the three very important springs for honey ara this one
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here providing about a third of all honey ours water get out yeah so the water that we just
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swam in is the overflow water that's the overflow water and there are pipes inside the inside the
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cave system yes extracting water to to wear to a purification plant or something or purification
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and my two optimistic yes what happens to pipes that the kids are standing on now there's some
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concrete that they house two pipes and they get pumped up to tanks that will then be distributed
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to town but you were saying earlier that it has the highest quality water that you're proud to
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drink from its chlorinated everything where how does the chlorine get into it okay so we're
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purification that would be like going through a sand filter or something oh sorry no I just
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mean going into a plant that doesn't happen well a plant so if you turn around yeah that little
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brick building we walk past that heart is the plant yeah and it just drips a little bit of chlorine
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into the water is that right right there just behind the yeah pretty chlorine in the water and then
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it's pumped up okay and what's really interesting is that the chlorine is effective when the water is
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clear but after heavy rain this becomes cloudy and so this is one of the sources this important
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source gets turned off and so honeyara goes into they'll either shed water and it will be sort of
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distributed across the network in different times or there's just a lower water pressure so one
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of the big things at the moment is to understand where this water is coming from why it gets so
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turbid that is cloudy to try and reduce those number of days a year that there are water supply
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problems and the water supply problems come when they're counterintuitively is too much rain
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because then that makes the water cloudy that's correct that is correct excuse my novices question
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here but if the problem is that when there's too much rain it makes the spring water cloudy couldn't
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you compensate for that by having rain tanks in the city or on houses that step in when there's a lot
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of rain it's an infrastructure problem and it's a problem of economics there's people can barely
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afford gutters so a lot of people with roofing won't have gutters so the collection of the rainfall
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is a big problem there are buckets there it's our problems that are used but it's not a long-term
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solution for four or five days in a row where the the water might be turned off the best bet
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and what is being built here is a filtration plant that's that's in the future a sand filtration
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plant so that this turbid water can still be used through filtration the other big thing to do
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is understand why it's becoming turbid and where it's becoming turbid and that's the million dollar
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question it's not just like a normal river because this water will just percolate into the ground
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literally into these underground caves it's groundwater in the form of caves around here and underground
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rivers so we're doing some work as well looking upstream of this catchment to understand the areas
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that are contributing most to the sediment problem and introducing or trying to help develop
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policies that promote land uses to reduce that sedimentation and the sediment problem is
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happening because the water that's coming out of this spring is leaching down from rainfall through
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areas that might be being used for other things like logging or agriculture or something
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and rather than just pristine jungle yes and agriculture agriculture is not too much of a bad one but
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logging done in the wrong spot is a particularly bad bad problem especially around here where you've
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got such steep hills because the water goes through the logged out area and what catches all the
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a lot of dirt that it wouldn't be catching if it was trickling through a rain forest yeah that's right
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and if we had sort of a sedimentary a normal sort of groundwater system that you might have
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in a big large river basin the Central Valley in California for example the water slowly percolates
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through sanded sediments which is a natural filter here the water will run straight off the
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mountains in many cases directly into gaping sinkholes and then here into the collection for honey
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ara so finding where that is coming from is the big one and you were saying that this ground
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this whole island it is not volcanic this is this is mostly coral and limestone
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with that we are now at about a hundred meters above sea level and limestone so there's about a
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hundred meters of limestone beneath us and for the next six hundred meters above us there is limestone
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above us above us what are you doing yeah so we're on the Pacific rim of fire here and the
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net this is the Australian plate that is pushing up against other oceanic plates so there is a
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volcanic base a bedrock a volcanic rock and that might be in the form of lathers like you see coming
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out of a volcano but also just magma that is cooled underground it's slowly moving up it's
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still moving up and it's pushing up any reef any coral reef the forms around here over the last
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two million years 20 million years has been pushed up so we've got 700 meters of coral reef that
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has been pushed up as it's been produced in the ground and it has just formed a very very large
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and a vast network of caves and underground aquifers and that's what's provided in the water for us
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here is that a good thing I mean which do you want to be on a volcanic island covered in
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crushed up coral when you're thinking about being up provide water for people which it's
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I assume it's better than being on an atoll which is just what sand and coral it's such a big
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question there are so many interesting parts to that being on the the coral in many ways is great
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because of its permeability there is water to access and almost everyone who's got a groundwater
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around here is in the limestone so it's easy to put one of those boars in it is also unfortunately
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easy to get contaminated I mean and by boar you just mean that someone in their backyard is just
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digging a hole in the ground until until water starts welling up in that hole or they've paid someone
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a driller to come along and put a six inch pike down into the ground that might have a pump
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or just a little small bucket goes down and collects it right so there's lots of the water in the
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limestone but there is a sewage problem no one here has reticulated sewage and this goes across
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the Pacific what's reticulated sewage part of me so when you poo and you flush the toilet in
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west in most western countries that gets taken to a sewage treatment plant here it goes to a very
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very basic every house will have a very basic septic system and the poo essentially leeches into
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this groundwater system so there's a lot of nitrates a lot of fecal matter that is in the groundwater
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in the downstream portions the project that I'm working on is actually looking at water
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in these volcanic aquifers so that the volcanic rocks are talking about they're deeper and harder
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to access but potentially they hold water that is less likely to be polluted and might be a
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more pure water source going into the future particularly in light of climate change when the
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rainfall might change you don't need too many dry days for everyone's small water tanks to dry out
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and creeks to run dry and really shallow wells to also run dry so we're on a big island now
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on Guadalcanal there are you know countries like Solomon Islands have archipelagos of hundreds
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I don't know if not thousands of different islands some of which are much smaller and one of the
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islands that I was on before I came here they were saying that the village is talking about the
30:07
possibility of having to be moved completely and relocated completely people might have heard
30:11
about you know the prime minister of the Maldives and countries like that talking about maybe
30:16
having to relocate entire national populations or at least regional populations away from
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islands that are either going to be inundated by storm surges and rising sea levels or are going
30:26
to have problems getting drinking water and in the case of this this regional island and the
30:30
Solomon's where I was they were saying that they're starting to to taste brackish salinated water
30:37
in their water supply because they're using groundwater and the surrounding ocean is rising
30:42
enough that it's starting to contaminate the bore water that they drink and my question was
30:49
well why aren't they just why are they drinking bore water in the first place why aren't they
30:51
drinking rainwater since this is a tropical environment that gets plenty of rain but can you answer
30:57
that question and tell me about the impact of rising sea levels on all this yeah and rising sea
31:02
levels is definitely one problem it's it's not just that as sea levels rise you get salt water
31:09
encroaching into that fresh groundwater it's also that when you get a storm the waves will
31:17
what they turn over top so it'll come onto the flat Athos and once you've got salt water that has
31:24
been pushed into the centre of an island it'll slowly percolate down and can have a really huge
31:30
impact on adding to the salt content of all that fresh water that was there so that's a big problem
31:36
the other problem is if you're pumping fresh water and you keep pumping eventually
31:43
you need something to replace the fresh water that you've pulled out of the ground and that will
31:47
also encourage the salt water to flow inland and I think that might be one of the things that your
31:53
village was talking about there there's a kind of suction effect and the idea of desalination
32:03
gets thrown around so does storage but we're talking about let's just start with rain before
32:09
we get to desalination and so I guess storage is the rain yeah right so a gigantic why not put
32:15
it just a gigantic tank it is purely economics and that a water tank might be one person's
32:23
nearly wage and the ability to save that and then get a water tank delivered and have
32:33
guttering porony roof is out of the reach right but that that's an answer on an individualistic
32:38
basis but the solutions to these problems are not going to be conducted on an individualistic
32:44
if you're relocating a village the villagers aren't going to be expected to pay for that presumably
32:49
there's going to be some coordinated institutional effort to do that and similarly if you're building
32:53
uh I'm not so sure about that but you reckon they just have to wander off we're talking about small
32:58
villages and the ability of Pacific governments everywhere to facilitate that is relatively low
33:06
so they're just self-deport essentially moved moving with family in different areas there is not
33:12
you know large-scale support systemic support offer it's not okay we'll let them
33:18
yeah maybe I'm being too polyanneral about what the future might entail but even if you're just
33:23
looking at the spring where we currently stand and you're saying that all right you know the
33:28
the chlorination shed behind us in the jungle is going to be replaced by an actual purification
33:36
uh plant or water treatment plant that water treatment plant is going to be paid for by a government
33:42
or development aid and that money presumably could also be put into subsidising or paying for
33:50
regional or suburban or even household gutters and rain tanks
33:56
for people to drink from yes but not easily here we're in honey ara where we have
34:02
like the vast majority of populations of Solomon Islands and in this instance chlorination
34:09
and filtration is viable but for in the majority of the province since you've got very small towns
34:16
very small communities where it's not economically viable to do such things yes water tanks are
34:22
something that I say are you know really expensive but you just need the three-week drought
34:28
and then these people have no water and there there is no safety net there's no need to
34:33
rescue them right and that's where ground water despite it's slightly salty taste in many
34:38
instances despite the fact that might be coming a little more salty in many cases is is crucial
34:45
and and the project I'm doing working on now digging into these deeper volcanic aquifers
34:51
where there may be less susceptibility to saltwater intrusion is is a key thing for the future
34:57
so how does that work you're basically I mean how do you know where to dig and where to drill
35:03
how can you know where good water is and where bad water is without popmarking the entire countryside
35:10
with what testing wells this is this is the the question that dogs every hydrogeologist
35:18
and you could pop mark but it's unbelievably expensive if you can't afford one water tank how
35:23
you're going to afford multiple water wells one solution and it relies on international donor
35:30
money because the equipment is expensive is geophysics and that's something that we're currently
35:37
doing here one of the techniques we've actually borrowed from the hospital it's using MRI technology
35:44
nuclear magnetic resonance to find ground water and if you'll indulge me for 20 seconds
35:51
sitting underground all the water it's a polar molecule and that means it is susceptible to a
35:59
magnetic field if it's sitting still it will vaguely be lining up with the earth's north south magnetic
36:05
pole we lay out some cables maybe 50 meters by 50 meters square 50 meters around and put some
36:13
electricity into it and we provide a new magnetic field and all the water lines up to our magnetic
36:22
fields get out it's true and it's a 150 feet by 150 feet square and is that is that the MRI is
36:31
that functioning as an MRI in a hospital wood but on a massive scale yes it is it's a
36:37
surface effectively a really big electromagnet we turn it on we turn it off and once we turn it off
36:44
the water gradually relaxes and realign with the natural north south pole of the world
36:52
and that happening all at once creates a measurable electric field in itself and that's what we measure
36:59
unbelievable and so from that we can say oh they might be they look like there's a good signal
37:03
so there'll be water maybe at 40 or so meters so we do that around the place and from that can
37:08
cherry pick areas most likely to have water so it's literally and do you get a printout of what are
37:14
you behaving like a radiologist for the body of the planet by looking at an image that shows where
37:23
water is the way that a radiologist might look at an x-ray and know where a cancer is on a scan
37:28
exactly and more than just where the water is we can also look at the hydraulic conductivity to know
37:33
what part might have the fastest flowing water the easiest water to extract amazing
37:41
so we're back in the car rumbling over dirt roads heading out of the jungle where the spring is
37:49
we didn't talk about desalination and this is one thing that came to mind because
37:54
I was not long ago in Israel which is another country that is completely dry and
38:02
happens to be surrounded by a lot of water well next to a large body of water
38:08
and solves that problem by building tons of desalination plants which are very energy hungry I know
38:15
which is not perfect for here but it is a last you know possible measure why aren't they
38:22
desalinating water just as the stop gap emergency source it's a good point and the occasional
38:32
rich household does desalinate so there are examples of that it's not possible to have a quick
38:39
stop gap measure because you've still got to buy the exp it's the capital outlay it's the fact
38:44
that there is just not the money yes the country like Israel there are plenty of other countries
38:49
that do it successfully and if you've got solar power running it in particular it's a pretty good
38:54
way to go there is just the number of small villages again it just comes back to the decentralized
39:01
living here where it just doesn't make it economic and but correct me if I'm wrong the problem does
39:06
not exist in the decentralized nature so much does it I mean isn't the problem the big population
39:12
centers like honey and aris no in honey aris case we this place here will be all right for water
39:19
we've got the money to do big boreholes and have deep deep drill holes we're in the process of
39:28
building sand filtration for the spring that we've just been to so and I guess this is like a
39:34
many in an infrastructure sense the Israel that's got desal there's enough money here to be able to
39:40
have the required infrastructure which is sand filtration to get a water supply that works it's
39:47
just in the small villages breaking a micro desalinated down just that the economics don't stand up
39:56
right at all right okay so this is as if Israel was scattered across yeah hundreds of different
40:03
little pockets away in the desert yeah and then it would be a whole different story and that's
40:07
where we're at with the Pacific it's water water everywhere without a reasonable way of
40:12
being able to desalinate is there a long term like prognostication here about what happens over
40:20
the next half century to countries like Solomon Islands and their ability to survive so I think there's
40:28
a range of issues countries that are volcanic and have high mountainous areas that they will be fine
40:37
in terms of sea level rise and in terms of climate change they'll still be rainfall it might be
40:43
more varied but a groundwater source will still be available to anywhere with mountains that the
40:50
issues arrive in the atoll states and the atoll countries and that's where even right now there's
40:57
there are big problems there's some interesting things that engineering solutions that are currently
41:04
being put in place that will prolong potentially and definitely depending on where you are but
41:10
there are things that can be done to those low-lying islands that will be most effective like what
41:15
and by the way what are those those vulnerable countries with the except I mean I mentioned
41:20
all these but where else I kind of hand tell you the names of the countries there's a couple of
41:27
atoll small atolls within the Solomon Islands I'm thinking of and atoll based countries that
41:34
you can research yes fair enough are you going to expect me to do my job as a journalist
41:38
and border this what are the engineering solutions the things that I've been talking about at the
41:44
moment the boards I've been talking about are boards that are drilled straight down into the ground
41:49
to tap this water in countries where there is no mountains they're beginning to put in these
41:56
things called infiltration galleries and so the the bore essentially is buried about two meters deep
42:04
or so but it might go for a hundred meters horizontally and so it'll just decant the fresh water
42:11
off the top of the groundwater and fresh water there's a the lovely physical
42:17
property that fresh water floats on top of saltwater so an atoll island will have saltwater
42:27
in its groundwater but the rainfall that falls in that island is kind of trapped in a lens
42:32
that sits above so if you can keep decanting off that lens through this gallery that just sips
42:38
the surface then that can buy you a lot of time and depending on the geography that can potentially
42:45
just be a perpetual solution how clever and what the why the word gallery what's a gallery
42:51
it just refers to a long long string I don't know maybe it's walking through the big halls of the
42:58
the living or something right right but it's it's a great big long area where fresh water can
43:04
infiltrate and be pumped out and lastly just pulling our focus off the Solomon Islands and
43:12
off maybe the developing world and onto the whole planet including rich places I mean that you
43:18
know one of the prognostications of dystopian futurists for some time has been that the 21st century
43:26
will be a century of water wars and you know that the Middle East and even places like California
43:31
will be driven by people by disputes about who owns what water and by a diminishing amount of water
43:38
which I've never quite understood because I remember at school there's like a water cycle isn't
43:43
there and doesn't it just go up to the clouds and then rain back down I don't know how you can
43:46
lose a net amount of water but I understand that sometimes the water will trickle away into places
43:52
where it's unusable and you know the catchments won't align with populations and so on
43:57
what does the second half of the 21st century look like water-wise not very good
44:04
and there is a water cycle and it's just that we have been living beyond our water cycle means
44:10
in that water rains down, goes into the rivers we use the rivers and you can clearly see when
44:17
you're using too much river water because the dam dries up but we have been doing that but then
44:23
unsustainably pumping water and China's a massive example a measurable portion of sea level rise
44:30
albeit very tiny can be attributed to the water that's pulled out of Indian aquifers and then
44:36
subsequently get out yes seriously just in India India alone so you pull the water
44:44
hang on you what how does pulling water out of a domestic aquifer impact the
44:50
right make the sea level rise so it's got it this is hinging on the fact that it's
44:56
inefficiently used so water's pulled out flood irrigation which flows into the rivers which
45:01
then flows into the ocean unbelievable right so yeah you're you're sucking water out of rock and
45:06
you're dumping it into the sea essentially after having it trickle over your agricultural
45:12
correct or using it in the showers toilets etc wow yeah the other thing that I think is phenomenal
45:21
and all the viewers should google it is it's in the central valley of california just have a look
45:27
at what has happened to the land there where they're growing the almonds and growing the oranges
45:33
the land is subsided about 25 feet there's a power pole you know just a stand one of those power
45:40
poles and there's a markup here saying back in the 1930s or whatever it was this was the ground
45:45
level for everywhere around it now it's a flat plain still yet everything is about 30 feet lower
45:52
purely because the water's been removed and then the aquifer just subsides a little bit in
45:58
compacts and the problem with that is it's difficult to re-inflate it once you've compacted an
46:04
aquifer like that of course and an aquifer is microscopic pockets of water that are distributed
46:12
throughout the the ground like in little pop marks or is it actually a cavern of some kind what
46:18
how we visualizing what was underneath that californian land underneath that californian land you are
46:26
looking at little bits of water in between sand it would be kind of like if you're at the beach
46:32
and you pick up some sand and you can see the water drip through your hands that's the aquifer
46:37
in the californian example where you have just been we actually are talking about underground rivers
46:43
it's not the norm this let the limestone environment a lot of people think of ground water and think
46:50
of underground rivers that's definitely not how it usually works it just happens you've seen a
46:56
place where it is like that right so the just getting back to the california example you suck all
47:02
of these little tiny bubbles of water pockets of water that are hidden but you know inside the
47:08
sandy ground out you you spray them on your armons they then what they wash off the armoured
47:15
farms and into the Pacific Ocean is that the theory and then why doesn't that water then just
47:20
evaporate back into clouds and rain back down and we get to use it all over again what do you do yeah
47:25
that is the the water cycle and overall long long we're talking millennia here that is the case
47:33
the problem is the aquifer once the water is removed and the plant is watered most of that water
47:39
then is removed through the battle transpiration it comes out of the plant very little is returned
47:46
to the ground and when that happens the compaction of the aquifer that is the pore spaces between
47:52
those grains of sand or shale which it might be there is just shrunk and the weight of the land
47:59
above it means that you can't just quickly put water back in there and refill it right so with what
48:05
the the water crisis then is a crisis of us not having ground water and just having to live within
48:11
our means of rain is that that that's right for the last you know 100 years we have been living
48:19
beyond our means through and thank you to ground water and it's just been an invisible bonus that
48:25
we've been using which we will come to a reckoning of it's alright I mean it's not that dissimilar
48:31
from the climate crisis in that sense like we've based we've we've discovered how useful fossil
48:36
fuels are we're sucking all the oil out of the ground and burning it for a massive boost of
48:42
productivity that lasts a few hundred years and then we're going to have to transition to
48:47
more sustainable and renewable sources of energy in the same way as we have to transition from
48:52
having been drinking all of the ground water into using a more sustainable water cycle that relies
48:57
on rain is that fair yeah that's a really good analogy yes all right so we're not far
49:03
to we just have to make do I wish I had a quick answer to that yeah we're not fucked
49:11
uh remain remain remain you don't tag a list remain positive have shorter showers potentially donate
49:20
quite so much beef and let's genetically engineer some more crops that can use water more
49:26
efficiently that sounds like the starting point for a whole other episode thank you