Tag / Water table

by sheilasingapore

Newspaper Column #6: Have Greens, Will Rain! – Part III

As it appeared in the Sunday Standard, Botswana on  Sunday November 25, 2012 edition.

What goes around comes around. The Good and Bad.

 Today we move to the more exciting bits of this series!

We will uncover the vicious cycle causing water tables to decline and learn how they contribute to growing aridness to seeing the economy turn around.

The take-away from last week was if we take care of this long-term position, it will take care of the fast-changing short-term worlds for us (food security to household incomes).   We ignore this; the cycle brings the problem back harder and faster.  But such long-term positions do not happen by accident.  There is a reason.

I left you with a question at the end of the article.

What is the circle of causality that is pushing the water table down?

What did you see?  Perhaps you saw different versions of it.  Looking carefully, they were not quite circles but were straight-line thinking.   Linear thinking makes up parts of circular causal thinking.

So, let’s take a few examples.

Sometimes I get, the water table is down because our consumption levels have gone up.  This is because population numbers and therefore its related activities have gone up.  And this is because … and sometime we stop here.  In half-jest I proceed by adding, that ‘while fertility rates are up we are not dying fast enough’.  At this point, the class roars into laughter.  Mostly at the ludicrous reasoning.

We also know this is so, because we know of countries, whose population numbers and life expectancy are way higher than ours, yet do not see declining water table levels (see Picture 1).

Tips

So, here’s yet another tip.  Any causal factor used in a vicious cycle has to stand the tests of space and of time.  The above reasoning has not withstood the test of space.

At other times I see, water tables are going down because the rainfall levels are going down, and rainfall levels are going down because global warming levels are up.  Global warming levels are up because ….

Usually at this point, I would pause the group and question it.  Does this line of reasoning suggest that before the advent of global warming, while the water tables may have been higher then, than it is today, were its levels rising with each year.  Which means to say the water tables in 1960s or 70s were higher than it was in the 50s?

Stillness settles in the room.  Sometimes, it is because we do not know if this is true, mostly because we have not seen the data.  But again, it sounds like another ludicrous reasoning.  The reason is not passing the test of time.

So, what have been your thoughts about the cycle?  Had it looked like the above?  Not to worry.  It happens to the best of us.

So, what then is the circle of causality that is causing the water table to go down?  To uncover the cycle, we would need to learn to watch reality like watching a movie – as if without shutting our eyes.  Snapshots will not do.  So here we go.

Watching the reality like watching a movie

Rainfall is a part of the story.  Yes?  As more rains fall on the earth’s surface, they run off into rivers and seas.  And where they fall on land it sinks through the soil and seeps downwards.   As they do so, they help to recharge underground aquifers which in turn help to cause the water tables to rise.

The reverse is also true.

The less rains fall, the less there are seepages and recharges the water tables fall instead.  Here we have come back to last week’s question.  But notice; be it whether it is good news or bad news, the causality is the same.  So for now, we will continue watching the cycle as if it is positive.

Let’s go back to where we left off the cycle.  When the water tables rise, what does that lead to happening next?

Here, imagine the water tables across the region rising through the underground soil.  As they do so, we see more moisture in our soils and as they emerge through the surface, we would now have surface water.  They could either become a pond or your dam.  The more the underground water rises, the bigger the pond.  And so is the reverse.

What happens when surface water rises?  Just as when water levels drop in our dams, we impose water restrictions.  Well, we may say, this time we allow consumption of water … by humans, animals and plants.

When we do not have enough water, notice who we take off the list first?  Did you say plants?  That’s usually true or we introduce plants that resist droughts.  Then we try by as much as possible to share the available water resources between humans and animals.

To continue the thinking, we take it off from where we see plants consume water.  Should we leave them out of the story; it will be less than about the whole.  So, let us say plants consume water.  What happens to the cycle next?

We are now more than half-way around the cycle.  Remember we started with rising rainfall levels?  And we have now reached partway around the cycle to increased vegetation (see Picture 2).

When the vegetation increases over time alongside with surface water, what do you think will be their impact on rainfall levels in the next cycle?

These will be the subject of discussion in Part IV of this series in next week’s column “Have Greens, Will Rain!”  Well, I am sure; you and your friends will enjoy closing the cycle!  You may notice different responses along gender or age lines.  Try it out and notice.

Would rainfall levels decline?  Or could they increase?  What do you think?

Thinking ahead, what will be the impact of this causality on economic diversification?

Don’t forget the tips!

Till then have a lovely week discovering and learning!

This is the 3rdof a five part series of this article.  Each part will build on the earlier article to an eventual conclusion.  We invite you to participate in the column as well as do your ‘own homework’ – searching and discussing the issue to build your own conclusions.

Ms Sheila Damodaran, an international Strategy Development Consultant in the use of systemic thinking for managing national persistent issues, welcomes comments at sheila@loatwork.com.  For upcoming programmes, refer to www.loatwork.com/Senior_Leadership_Introduction.html.

by sheilasingapore

Newspaper Column #5: Have Greens, Will Rain! – Part II

As it appeared in the Sunday Standard, Botswana on  Sunday Nov 18, 2012 edition

Cycle?  What cycle?

In Part I last week, we were concluding that the water tables in the region were possibly declining.

This series of articles in November is a dedication to this subject.

It explores issues of primary industry (raw material) development to water consumption choices and their effects on families, the nature and the economies.  In short, it underscores the story of diversification of any economy.

All of this will be discussed as we take a trip around the water cycle in this series of the column.

Water tables even if they are underground are part of the water cycle, originating when part of the rain that falls on the Earth’s surface sinks through the soil and seeps downward to become groundwater.  Groundwater will eventually flow out of the ground, discharging into streams, springs, lakes, or the oceans, to complete the water cycle.  (See Picture 1)

When asked how high is the water table and how it has behaved over time, most of us picked Pattern C (refer to last week’s article.  See also red line here in Picture 1 below (refer to ‘Long-term depletion’, the line marked AB)).

That it has shown a general downward trend.

Such long-term trends become evident when we study past data spanning several decades.  They usually escape the best of us when our attention is on what’s happening today (refer to the lines CD).

Here’s the implication of seeing such patterns over time.

The long-term depletion worsens the position of each short-term variation.  We now have a persistent issue but is working its way to the levels of a crisis in the long-term.   Such issues usually resist change and defy our best planning and implementation efforts beyond the short-term.  It is a costly management process.

And if we imagined the water cycle, it would have begun to show signs of weakening intensity.  The local weather conditions could see the likes of droughts or even floods.  Of course, these conditions would reverse with long-term augmentation or increase.

In systemic thinking, we pay attention to these long-term positions rather than the short-term.  This is because of the following reasons:

  • It is these long-term positions that determine what happens in our day-to-day realities.  Ignore them and the realities get worse.  These will help us become more realistic in our planning and implementation efforts;
  • The reasons that cause the long-term position are often very different from those that cause short-term positions; and so,
  • When we find those reasons, they will present areas that will allow us to turn the situation around.  For good.  It saves our resources.

Boiled Frog

To get there, it helps that the country as a whole learns to see and understand such patterns together, with the disciplined eye of a hawk.  All of the time.  Should we not, then like a boiled frog, it would lead us to deeper crisis unawares.  We become the boiled frog instead.

And I left you with a question.  How do we know for sure, that the water tables are indeed declining?

I am sure you have figured this one out.

You might say, well it is when we notice farmers dig their bore-holes deeper.  And they do so, from time to time.  You are right!  This is an indication that the water table for his side of the land is behaving more like Pattern C and as the pattern continues to unfold the land becomes drier (a crisis is looming).

Does anyone know how deep some of the bore-holes in the Kgalagadi and possibly Namibia are?  They did not start that way.  They became that way.

The reverse, however, is true for the forests in the Amazon.  Both are happening at the same time each with its deliberate direction and goal.  This is what we, otherwise, call reality.

Uncovering the Cycle

However, most management concepts did not clarify that our straight-line goals are not designed to fight trends such as AB.  They are designed to fight the shorter-term trends like CD.  The latter, is an important view of the military and the fire-fighters.  Crisis management.

Now, if the long-term position is true, i.e. if the water tables are going down, then we have a circular causality in our hands.   This requires very different management tact.  We would need to uncover the elements of the cycle to address these long-term positions.

Therefore, rather than ask what we should do about it, the next question here is what is causing the water tables to go down?

Meaning to say, if we say the water table is going down (in the long term), what is causing that?  And in turn what is causing the cause?  And so on.  Think cycle.  Get the idea?

And remember, even when you think you have got to the “root cause”, in this work, we say, even the root cause has a cause.  Nothing exists without a reason.   It is whether we see the reason or we don’t.  In short, the 5Whys methodology does not work for persistent problems.

Do not forget to also go the other way in the cycle!  Should the water table go down, there are consequences.  Yes?  And then what are the consequences of the consequences?

Here’s a tip.  Should the circle not close in itself, then it is not the ‘right’ circle of causality.  Start again but with a different set of reasons.  This is a trick we use, before we understand more deeply the tools of this work.

Go ahead and try it!  There is something inherent about wanting to see vicious circles, as hard as it feels like to get there; it captures our curiosity and intrigue.

So, … what is the circle of causality that is causing the water table to go down?

Well, I am sure, you and your friends will keep trying and enjoy getting there!  This will be the subject of discussion next week in Part III of this series of the column on “Have Greens, Will Rain!”

Till then have a lovely week discovering and learning!

This is the 2nd of a five part series of this article.  Each part will build on the earlier article to an eventual conclusion.  We invite you to participate in the column as well as do your ‘own homework’ – searching and discussing the issue to build your own conclusions.

Ms Sheila Damodaran, an international Strategy Development Consultant in the use of systemic thinking for managing persistent issues at regional and sectoral levels, welcomes comments at sheila@loatwork.com.  For upcoming programmes, refer to www.loatwork.com/Senior_Leadership_Introduction.html.