Twenty miles upstream of Portland, Maine, lies Sebago Lake, the state’s deepest and second-biggest body of water. The lake provides drinking water to 16 percent of Maine’s population, including residents of Portland, the state’s largest city. It holds nearly a trillion gallons of clear, cold water. Portland’s water utility has earned one of only 50 federal filtration exemptions in the country, which means the water, although treated to ward off microorganisms, does not have to be filtered before it flows into the city’s taps.  

“The primary reason it’s so pure is that most of the watershed is still forested,” says Karen Young, director of Sebago Clean Waters, a coalition working to protect the area. Eighty-four percent of the 234,000-acre watershed is covered in forests—a mix of pine, oak, maple, and other species that filter water and help make this system work so well. But those forests face threats. Between 1987 and 2009, the watershed lost about 3.5 percent of its forest cover. Just 10 percent of the area was conserved. In 2009, 2014, and 2022, the U.S. Forest Service ranked the Sebago watershed as one of the nation’s most vulnerable, due to threats from development.  

Over the last couple of decades, conservation groups began to worry about the future of this critical resource—and the Portland Water District (PWD) was worried, too. An independent utility that serves more than 200,000 people in Greater Portland, PWD purchased 1,700 acres around the water intake in 2005 and adopted a land preservation policy in 2007. In 2013, it established a program to help support conservation projects undertaken by local and regional land trusts. 

Most of these organizations were working independently until 2015, when The Nature Conservancy brought them together to develop a conservation plan for the lake’s largest tributary, the Crooked River. That convening evolved into the Sebago Clean Waters coalition, which includes nine local and national conservation groups, the water district, and supporters from the business community. As they explored creative ways to protect the lake and the land around it, the idea of creating a water fund surfaced. 

Water funds are private-public partnerships in which downstream beneficiaries like utilities and businesses invest in upstream conservation projects to protect a water source—and, by extension, to ensure that the supply that reaches users is as clean and plentiful as possible. In 2016, Spencer Meyer of the Highstead Foundation—one of the groups that founded Sebago Clean Waters—took a trip to Quito, Ecuador, with The Nature Conservancy. The group visited with representatives of the Fund for the Protection of Water for Quito (FONAG), a leading example of this novel source water protection model. Meyer saw some similarities to the situation in Maine. 

“We thought, ‘What if we could bring the partners together as a whole system to accelerate the pace of conservation?’” he says. “And could we apply that model to a healthy watershed, to take a proactive position and build this financial model in a place where it isn’t too late?” 

A water fund is a financial tool, but it’s also a governance mechanism and management framework that brings multiple stakeholders to the table. Quito’s fund, launched in 2000, is the longest-standing one in the world. Similar projects have proliferated across the globe, particularly in Latin America and Africa. According to The Nature Conservancy, more than 43 water funds are operating in 13 countries on four continents, with at least 35 more in the works. 

The Importance of Healthy Watersheds 

Globally, clean water is our most important resource. When upstream watersheds are healthy, they collect, store, and filter water. That provides a resource that can, in addition to meeting basic hydration and sanitation needs, support climate change adaptation, food security, and community resilience. When watersheds are not healthy, sediment clogs up water filtration systems, pollutants flow downstream, and ecosystems become degraded. 

That difference is crucial. According to a Nature Conservancy report, more than half the world’s cities and 75 percent of irrigated agriculture are likely already facing recurring water shortages. Climate change is fueling extreme drought, from the U.S. West to Australia, and pollution from sources like nitrogen and phosphorus has grown ninefold in the last half century. In many cities, the source of water is far away and under different jurisdiction, which makes regulation and treatment challenging. 

The Nature Conservancy also estimates that 1.7 billion people living in the world’s largest cities currently depend on water flowing from fragile source watersheds hundreds of miles away. That puts strain on both ecological systems and infrastructure, and demand is only growing. By 2050, two-thirds of the global population will live in those cities. That level of demand simply may not be sustainable, especially in a rapidly changing climate. Water funds can be creative, multilayered solutions to two urgent, interlocking issues: water quality and quantity. 

“Water funds sit at the intersection of land, water, and climate change,” says Chandni Navalkha, associate director of Sustainably Managed Land and Water Resources at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. “They are an example of the kind of cross-sectoral, multi-stakeholder governance and collaboration that is required to maintain water security in a changing climate.” 

Navalkha recently oversaw the development of a case study of the Sebago Clean Waters initiative, which the Lincoln Institute will distribute through its International Land Conservation Network. Changing the way water has been historically managed isn’t easy, particularly because it’s tangled up in issues like city planning, economic growth, and public health. So groups like the Lincoln Institute and The Nature Conservancy are working to spread the water fund model by showing the science behind source water protection, giving communities tools to find ecosystem-specific solutions, and sharing the experiences of places like Portland and Quito. 

Lessons from Quito 

In the late 1990s, officials in the Metropolitan District of Quito started to worry that they were running out of water to support the city’s 2.6 million residents. The upstream ecosystems that filled the city’s aquifers were eroding, and those impacts were trickling downstream. 

A full 80 percent of the city’s water supply originated from protected areas within its watershed: the Antisana Ecological Reserve, Cayambe Coca National Park, and Cotopaxi National Park. “But they were only paper parks,” says Silvia Benitez, who works for The Nature Conservancy as water security manager for the Latin American Region. Instead of being protected, the area’s páramos—biodiverse high-altitude grasslands that are home to a range of rare endemic species and filter the upstream water supply—were facing multiple threats from livestock grazing, unsustainable agriculture, and construction. 

Where conservation was an option, lack of funding made it difficult to achieve. Benitez says water managers knew the situation needed to be addressed, so the Municipal Sewer and Potable Water Company of Quito and The Nature Conservancy set up a fund to support the upstream ecosystem with $21,000 in seed money. Over the next four years they built a board of public, private, and NGO watershed actors, including Quito Power Company, National Brewery, Consortium CAMAREN, which provides social and environmental policy training, and the Tesalia Springs Company, a multinational beverage corporation. All of those stakeholders had a vested interest in water, and each contributed to the trust every year. 

Today, FONAG is regulated by the Securities Market Law of Ecuador and has a growing endowment worth $22 million. That funding is used to support upstream environmental projects like agricultural training and plant restoration in the páramos, which helps limit sedimentation. 

“It’s a financial mechanism that harnesses investments from private and public sectors to protect and restore forests and ecosystems,” says Adriana Soto, The Nature Conservancy’s regional director for Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. It’s also a forward-thinking way to manage water, says Soto, who was previously vice minister of Environment and Sustainable Development of Colombia and serves on the board of the Lincoln Institute.  

Traditional water infrastructure—often called gray infrastructure—consists of pipes, water filtration systems, and chemical treatments, which are designed to purify water before it’s used. Gray infrastructure has long been relied on to ensure that water was potable and accessible. But it’s expensive and energy intensive, it can negatively impact wildlife and ecosystems, and it breaks down over time. Climate change is also posing threats to gray infrastructure; for instance, intensifying wildfires have led to increased sedimentation that chokes existing filtration plants, and virulent storm cycles have overwhelmed water treatment plants and other key pieces of infrastructure. 

By contrast, green infrastructure is a water management approach that takes its cue from nature. Protecting upstream water sources is a form of green infrastructure investment that can help alleviate the pressure on water systems. There are almost as many ways to manage source water as there are water sources, but The Nature Conservancy’s “Urban Water Blueprint” report, which surveyed more than 2,000 watersheds, identifies five archetypes: forest protection, reforestation, agricultural best management practices, riparian restoration, and forest fuel reduction. 

For instance, in the páramos above Quito, FONAG funded work to keep cattle off the most fragile grasslands and employed guards to stop rogue burning, because rebuilding the ecosystem was a top priority. Working across nearly 2,000 square miles, the fund has now protected more than 70,000 acres of land. This effort has benefited more than 3,500 families, providing funding to support sustainable, profitable farming operations. 

“One of the beauties of the strategy is the social and economic results,” Soto says. “It’s not just tackling water regulation, it tackles climate change resiliency, biodiversity conservation, and it strengthens communities and creates gender equality. Most of the farms are led by women.” 

Quito’s model inspired a swell of other water funds, many launched by The Nature Conservancy. Like these examples, each has place-specific strategies and funding structures: 

• In 2021, the Greater Cape Town Water Fund invested $4.25 million in removing invasive plants such as gum, pine, and eucalyptus trees, which were absorbing an estimated 15 billion gallons of water each year from this drought-stricken watershed—equal to a two-month water supply. More heavily engineered solutions like desalination plants or wastewater reuse systems would have cost 10 times as much, The Nature Conservancy estimated. 
• Since the Upper Tana–Nairobi Water Fund launched in 2015, organizers have worked with tens of thousands of the watershed’s 300,000 small farms to keep sediment from running down the region’s steep slopes into the Tana River, which provides water for 95 percent of Nairobi’s 4 million residents. The effort has reduced sediment concentration by over 50 percent, increased annual water yields during the dry season by up to 15 percent, and increased agricultural yields by up to $3 million per year. In 2021, the fund became an independent, Kenyan-registered entity. 

• The chemicals used in conventional bamboo production were polluting China’s Longwu Reservoir, which provides drinking water to two villages of 3,000 people. With an initial investment of $50,000, the Longwu Water Fund has helped local farmers adopt organic and integrated farming methods, now used in 70 percent of the area’s bamboo forests; promote ecotourism; and provide environmental education programs. In 2021, the water utility and local government agreed to pay into the fund on behalf of all water users. 

Measuring Progress 

Water funds support conservation projects that address a range of issues, including sedimentation and turbidity, nutrient build-up, and aquifer recharge. They also create social and environmental cobenefits, like protecting and regenerating habitat and sequestering emissions. 

There are financial upsides as well: according to The Nature Conservancy, these investments in land management can provide more than $2 in benefits for every $1 invested over 30 years. One in six cities could recoup the costs of investing in upstream conservation through savings in annual water treatment costs alone.  

Creating a water fund requires establishing governance systems, securing funding, identifying conservation goals, and defining benchmarks for measuring progress. “The business case development is hard: how much money, where is it going to be invested,” Soto says. Part of the business case is demonstrating the ecological and financial benefit of a fund. Soto says that’s the biggest challenge, because the benefits of conservation are long term, and don’t present themselves immediately. 

“Water is difficult,” she says. “The challenge is not only time—we have to prove the case over many years—but also the aggregated result. How much of the water quality or quantity is because of the water fund?” She says FONAG struggled to find a way to quantify that, but researchers from San Francisco de Quito University helped set up a monitoring system that tracked water quality and quantity. That system has been used to mark progress and to show investors the direct benefits of this work.  

“It’s not an easy sell, especially when you’re talking about committing funding for 50 or 70 years,” Benitez says. “But now, 20 years later, we have a lot of tools to show the benefits of nature-based solutions.”  

She says that over those years, as The Nature Conservancy has introduced water funds in Colombia, Brazil, and other countries, they’ve learned to show potential partners concrete, measurable outcomes, and they’ve gathered tools and science to back up the work. 

Scaling Up 

Quito’s project has been considered a success over the years, but while building a single water fund is one thing, scaling the concept is another. As the water fund model has expanded to other countries and continents, challenges have come up. Changing the way water institutions think and operate takes time and negotiation. On the financial side, transaction and set-up costs can be high, and there’s no clear framework to compare the costs of nature-based solutions and gray infrastructure. Logistically, setting up a fund is different every time; Cape Town’s invasive species problem is different, for example, from Quito’s páramo protection needs. 

To address these challenges, The Nature Conservancy—along with the Inter-American Development Bank, the FEMSA Foundation, the Global Environment Facility, and the International Climate Initiative—formed the Latin America Water Funds Partnership in 2011. The goal of the partnership, which is described in From the Ground Up, a recently published Lincoln Institute Policy Focus Report, is to scale the development of water funds in the region and provide a global model for how to help urban centers with source water protection. 

A year after its launch, the partnership published a manual intended to provide resources that could guide work everywhere, even though each place faced specific challenges. “We have water funds that work with indigenous groups upstream, and we have other funds that have more large landowners, or small farmers,” Benitez says. “Our common purpose is to establish agreement with the groups and set up the responsibilities of the fund.”  

That’s different in every case, but there are certain elements that can help make a water fund successful, like political involvement. For instance, Soto says that in Bogotá, Medellín, and Cartagena, fund organizers made sure to involve Colombia’s Ministry of Environment and Ministry of Housing, which is in charge of graywater. “Having them on board provides a platform to facilitate policy change, so we don’t start from scratch,” she says. The Nature Conservancy also offers strategies to engage companies, and to show them how supporting water funds reduces their long-term risk. 

In 2018, The Nature Conservancy took the framework a step further, building a Water Funds Toolbox designed to guide potential partners through five stages of a project: feasibility, design, creation, operation, and consolidation. The toolbox, which leans on 20 years of accrued knowledge, shows how and where a water fund can help with water quality and availability, and provides a framework for the financial and conservation side of planning, too. 

Maine Adopts the Model

In Maine, the members of Sebago Clean Waters took that toolbox and ran with it. “From the very beginning, we strived to design Sebago Clean Waters as a replicable model for other coalitions, regions, and water funds to learn from,” said Meyer, of the Highstead Foundation. 

The coalition assessed the fund’s feasibility, commissioning a study by the University of Maine. The study found that reducing area forest cover by even 3 percent could noticeably increase pollutants. If forest cover decreased by 10 percent, it would cause the watershed to fall below federal filtration standards, the study said: “Protecting the filtration-avoidance waiver saves PWD and its customers an estimated $15 million per year in expected additional annual filtration plant costs.” 

The economic argument was strong. The researchers found that every dollar invested in forestland conservation is likely to yield between $4.80 and $8.90 in benefits, including the preservation of water quality. If a filtration plant became necessary, however, PWD would need to increase water rates by about 84 percent to offset the costs of construction. There were ecological benefits to conserving the watershed, too, like providing habitat for trout and salmon, reducing erosion, and managing floods. 

Sebago Clean Waters came up with a plan to ensure that a total of 25 percent of the watershed—35,000 acres—was conserved over the course of 15 years. They started with projects like the 1,400-acre Tiger Hill Community Forest in the town of Sebago. That tract was protected through a partnership between the Loon Echo Land Trust, a member of the coalition that has worked to protect the northern Sebago Lake region since 1987, and the Trust for Public Land. In 2021, Sebago Clean Waters announced its participation in a deal that would protect more than 12,000 acres in Oxford County, including the headwaters of the Crooked River, the lake’s main tributary. The amount of protected land in the watershed has increased from 10 percent to 15 percent.  

Land conservation isn’t cheap or easy, especially in New England, where much of the lakeside land has long been in private hands. Achieving the water fund’s goals will take an estimated $15 million. But the fund is gaining momentum: building on an initial capacity-building grant of $350,000 from the U.S Endowment for Forestry and Communities; private and corporate funding; and a commitment by the Portland Water District to provide up to 25 percent of funding for each watershed conservation project that meets its criteria, the coalition recently landed an $8 million Regional Conservation Partnership Program award from the USDA. 

Local businesses have also stepped up. In 2019, Portland’s Allagash Brewing offered to donate 10 cents from every barrel of beer it brewed, a total of about $10,000 a year. Allagash was the first of about 10 companies—including four other breweries—that have joined the coalition. MaineHealth, a statewide hospital network, just got involved as well. 

“Drinking water is so compelling, it’s not a hard sell to talk to people about protecting it—particularly the breweries, because beer is 90 percent water,” Young says. “They understand the benefit as a business and as a community member.” She’s been surprised at the reasons so many partners have come on board. Many aren’t doing it because of their bottom line; they’re concerned with sustainability, and with supporting the communities where their employees live. 

Sebago Clean Waters has accomplished a great deal, but its members are very aware of the time-sensitive need to protect this relatively pristine resource. After all, conserving land and water is easier than restoring them. Once a clean water source is gone, it’s hard to bring back. 

As the water fund model spreads, it’s illustrating the real potential of upstream-downstream partnerships to make meaningful change. This work is not simple or immediate, but it can have lasting positive impacts in watersheds and communities around the world. Meyer said the model holds great promise: “It’s powerful to see how far a trust-based partnership can go.” 

Heather Hansman is a Colorado-based journalist and the author of the book Downriver. She’s a Registered Maine Guide and a lover of the state’s rivers. 

Lead image: Sebago Lake, Maine. Credit: Phil Sunkel via iStock/Getty Images Plus. 

The Lincoln Institute’s 2022 Journalists Forum brought together 30 reporters and editors on the climate beat for two days of conversation about the role of land in the climate crisis, highlighting the need for new ideas, innovations, and policies to help head off the worst impacts of global warming. 

Land and land policy thread through just about every aspect of the crisis, whether deforestation, land conservation for carbon sequestration, the interplay of land, water, and agriculture, or the fact that usable land is disappearing, raising the important question of where millions of displaced people will go, now and in the future. 

Meanwhile, powerful private market actors are at work, in many cases swooping in and buying land that will be prime and prized as flooding, wildfire, mudslides, and sea-level rise make other locations unlivable—a classic case of real estate speculation. 

“We need to elevate . . .  the understanding of the important role that land plays and will play in our ability to address this existential crisis. And if we get it wrong, we’’re going to leave a planet that’s very, very different for whomever is left to exist on it,” said George W. McCarthy, president of the Lincoln Institute, in this collection of highlights from the forum for the Land Matters podcast. 
 
“And the big question is, are we prepared to? And can we navigate between the really, really powerful claims, private claims over dominion over land in exchange for the collective needs to use land differently to get to better global outcomes?” McCarthy asked. “Everything hangs in the balance.” 
 
The journalists considered the intense competition for land, with the siting of solar and wind facilities, transmission pipelines, and other needs in the transition to net-zero emissions; emerging strategies in agriculture and the management of dwindling water resources; and current practices in land conservation, which make it possible for natural areas to continue to soak up carbon. 
 
They also heard about how land can be used to pay for climate action, through land value capture—the harnessing of a portion of increases in private land values triggered by government investments in infrastructure—and the need for more coherent climate migration policies that take into account the vulnerable populations being forced to move from their homes. 
 
The Journalists Forum also featured some practical tools to help cover the story of the century, led by Jeff Allenby of the Center for Geospatial Solutions and Peter Colohan from the Internet of Water initiative, both new Lincoln Institute programs. Advances in technology have enabled a real-time monitoring of land use changes and water flows, which serves as a critical foundation for planners and policymakers — and journalists for telling the story of this turbulent time. 
 
The convening also included a discussion of the business of climate journalism itself, led by Nancy Gibbs, director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School; Andrew McCormick from the collaborative Covering Climate Now, Amrita Gupta from the Earth Journalism Network, and Trish Wilson, who established the first climate team dedicated to coverage of global warming at the Washington Post. 

You can listen to the show and subscribe to Land Matters on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Further Reading

How to Fend Off Land Speculation (Land Lines)

Demands on the Land: To Secure a Livable Future, We Must Steward Land Wisely  (Land Lines) 

Return on Investment: Research Links Climate Action with Land and Property Value Increases (Land Lines) 

Uprooted: As the Climate Crisis Forces U.S. Residents to Relocate, a New Conversation Emerges (Land Lines) 

The Colorado River is in crisis, and it’s getting worse every day (The Washington Post) 

How Can We Change Land Use at a Time of Climate Crisis and Competition?  (RedAcción)   

Deforestation Remains High, Despite International Pledges (New York Times)

Locals Worry Wind and Solar Will Gobble Up Forests and Farms (Stateline) 

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor of Land Lines. 

Food systems have always been defined by uncertainty, from unpredictable weather to shifting consumer proclivities. But escalating threats such as climate change, resource depletion, and economic crises are presenting a bounty of new challenges to the global landscapes and systems that grow and provide our food. Over the coming year, six research projects commissioned by the Lincoln Institute will apply scenario planning to anticipate these forces and plan for their effects on various communities around the world, from Wisconsin to the West Bank.  

The research projects were identified through a recent request for proposals issued by the Consortium for Scenario Planning, a program of the Lincoln Institute. The RFP invited proposals for research focused on several types of places: regions where external forces (such as climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, or economic uncertainties) threaten the viability of agriculture; areas that support vital commercial agriculture; areas with a healthy or limited local food supply; communities that wish to encourage the growth of family or small-scale farming; or urban and rural areas that struggle with food accessibility.  

“As climate change and economic instability have greater impacts on communities, food systems planning can be a key part of a community’s resilience,” said Heather Hannon, associate director of planning practice and scenario planning at the Lincoln Institute. “Planning for food systems in particular touches on many of the Lincoln Institute’s core initiatives, such as establishing resilient communities, addressing spatial inequality, sustainably managing land and water, and promoting fiscally healthy communities.”  

“We are always looking for ways to stretch our scenario planning practice into new areas,” said Ryan Handy, policy analyst at the Lincoln Institute. “We hope this latest RFP cycle on food systems planning will introduce new models that other communities can use to address similar issues.”  

The following research projects were selected by the Lincoln Institute:   

• Gabriel Cuéllar and Athar Mufreh, assistant professor in practice and lecturer respectively at the University of Minnesota, will use scenario planning to address the complex relationship between land access and food in Palestinian enclaves of the West Bank. Their work will identify models, spatial resources, and access to local markets for food-based businesses.  
• Researchers from the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems at Canada’s Kwantlen Polytechnic University will develop a toolkit of best practices in bioregional food systems planning to help communities run scenario planning processes around food uncertainty. 
• Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison will develop an adaptable workshop model for food systems and scenario planning. They will partner with local groups to test the model in the agricultural town of Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. 
• The National Young Farmers Coalition will write a scenario planning guide as part of its Young Farmer Organizing Handbook. The guide will assist farmers and communities in managing locally led scenario planning exercises to address climate change and other uncertainties.   
• Gabriela Rengifo Briceño and Carolina Zegarra Tipismana, researchers based in Lima, Peru, will develop a scenario planning workshop model to address food crises and uncertainty in Lima’s peripheral areas. 
• Food Systems Foresight, a U.S.-based consulting firm, will run two scenario workshops, one in the Hudson Valley of New York and the other in Cape Town, South Africa, to address food systems planning and uncertainty.    

All projects will be completed by June 2023. The Lincoln Institute issues an annual RFP for scenario planning projects; learn more about the projects selected in 2021, which focused on using scenario planning to advance climate strategies in communities, and those selected in 2020, which focused on equity and low-growth scenarios.      

To learn more about all Lincoln Institute RFPs, fellowships, and research opportunities, visit the research and data section of our website.  

Image: A farmer working in an olive grove in Aboud, a Palestinian village in the West Bank. Credit: Joel Carillet via E+/Getty Images.

In the battle to confront drought, flooding, pollution, and other water-related challenges made worse by climate change, information is perhaps the most important weapon. How much water is in a particular location? What is the quality? How is it used? 

Answering such questions is the mission of the Lincoln Institute’s new Internet of Water Initiative—so named because it will do for water what the internet did for real estate, weather forecasts, and countless other sources of data. The initiative, housed at the Lincoln Institute’s Center for Geospatial Solutions, will standardize and connect water-related data in the United States from thousands of different sources to enable better decisions, ultimately making communities more sustainable and resilient. 

“The nation’s land and water managers are under significant strain as they grapple for sustainable water, land, and energy management solutions,” said Peter Colohan, director of the Internet of Water Initiative for the Lincoln Institute. “We have the opportunity to provide decision makers with a complete, up-to-date picture about their water resources.” 

The Internet of Water Initiative will modernize existing systems for managing water data, and help government agencies and private organizations coordinate with each other and make their data more accessible. 

The initiative continues a project that began in 2018 at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute of Environmental Policy Solutions, which will continue to play a key role as a partner in the new Internet of Water Coalition.  

“Over the past three years, the Internet of Water has worked to develop essential technologies and build a network of water data stakeholders to accelerate the uptake of shared and integrated water data,” said Martin Doyle, director of the Water Policy Program at the Nicholas Institute. “We believe that the Center for Geospatial Solutions and the Lincoln Institute are ideally suited to continue advancing this work because of their commitment to empowering decision making with data and facilitating collaboration for collective impact.” 

In addition to the Lincoln Institute and the Nicholas Institute, core members of the coalition include the Water Data Collaborative, the Western States Water Council, and the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences. The Internet of Water Coalition will provide a forum for dialogue among participating agencies and organizations, while the Internet of Water Initiative will develop new technology and foster its adoption. 
 
If it is difficult for policy makers to answer water-related questions, it is not for lack of raw data. At the national level alone, the U.S. Geological Survey monitors groundwater and stream flows, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps manage reservoir information, and the Environmental Protection Agency monitors water quality. State and local governments and private organizations collect data for a wide range of purposes, from drinking water management to flood prevention to land conservation. However, the data from these many and varied sources are not always easily discoverable or are formatted in ways that don’t enable ready analysis. 

“While vast amounts of public water data are available, they are collected by different public, private, state, and federal agencies, and organizations, for different purposes, at different scales, and are scattered across multiple platforms with different standards,” said Colohan, who led the development of the Internet of Water at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute before joining the Lincoln Institute this year with his colleague Kyle Onda. 

In the startup phase of the Internet of Water, the Nicholas Institute and its partners have already demonstrated the project’s potential. For example, a partnership of Native American tribal governments, state agencies, and private organizations developed a system to strengthen the monitoring of harmful blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, which covers lakes and rivers in thick green film and causes illness in people. The project yielded a new data model that helps coordinate algae bloom investigations, assess trends over time, and incorporate data from more diverse partners. Other pilot projects have dealt with a wide range of water data and challenges in New Mexico, Texas, California, and North Carolina.  

In addition, the Internet of Water team developed the Internet of Water Principles to help guide public agencies in managing water data. These principles were referenced in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 as useful guidance for state agencies when managing water data. 
 
In its next phase, the Internet of Water Initiative will partner with federal and state agencies, as well as nonprofit organizations to develop and implement critical new tools for sharing water data. At first the initiative will focus on further developing novel, open-source technology that will enable users to discover and access water data in a new way. Also, the initiative will focus on two specific uses of the Internet of Water: improving community access to data about sustainable hydropower opportunities in partnership with the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and improving access to utility information to improve water quality and water equity outcomes. 

The Internet of Water adds to the suite of tools employed by the Center for Geospatial Solutions, which already uses technologies such as geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing. 
 
“The addition of the Internet of Water extends the center’s core capabilities in using proprietary technologies for land conservation,” said Anne Scott, the center’s executive director. “We can now offer open-source solutions and holistic insights for land and water conservation. We are honored to help carry forward this groundbreaking initiative.” 

Will Jason is the director of communications at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. 

Image: Montana. Credit: Tony Reid via Unsplash.

Citing the increasing demand for water even as drought is shrinking supplies, several national organizations representing planners, water utilities, and other key stakeholders have issued a call to action urging more comprehensive integration of land and water planning and management.  

The statement emerged in the wake of Connecting Land and Water for Healthy Communities, a virtual conference held in July 2021 that was cosponsored by the American Water Resources Association (AWRA) and the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy. After the conference, which was attended by more than 200 water and planning professionals from around the country, organizers released the findings to address why fragmentation of land and water management occurs and how to repair and prevent it. They also released a set of guiding principles to help land and water managers better recognize and build upon the connections between their work. In addition to AWRA and the Babbitt Center, the American Planning Association’s Water and Planning Network and the American Water Works Association (AWWA) signed on to the statement. 

“The fact that multiple organizations signed off on this statement is a really good outcome of the conference, and we hope to build upon that,” said Sharon Megdal, director of the Water Resources Research Center at the University of Arizona, who cochaired the 2021 conference with Jim Holway of the Babbitt Center. “Places all over the world are feeling pressure to their water supplies due to water quality concerns and the changing climate,” said Megdal, who is also a board member for AWRA. “Taking available water resources into account is critically important when planning for land uses, [but] there is a lack of connection between water planners and land planners.”  

There are many reasons for that disconnect, including the fact that decisions related to land and water have historically been made by different departments or agencies. “Siloing didn’t start as a bad thing,” notes Bill Cesanek of APA’s Water and Planning Network, which provides a platform for interdisciplinary exchange about water-related issues and boasts approximately 500 members. “Different agencies focused on different problems and created different solution sets.” Too often, though, those solutions didn’t take into account the complicated relationship between land and water, leading to issues ranging from supply shortages for new developments to contamination in water sources.  

“We need to make sure we don’t stay in these siloes,” said Chi Ho Sham, president of AWWA, a nonprofit scientific and educational association dedicated to managing and treating water. AWWA’s membership includes 4,300 utilities that supply about 80 percent of the country’s drinking water and treat almost half of its wastewater. “We need to reach across to other disciplines to take a holistic view on the availability and quality of water—the world’s most vital resource.”  

That’s true whether you’re in the drought-stricken West, the flood-prone East, or somewhere in between, says Joanna Endter-Wada, professor of natural resource and environmental policy at Utah State University: “Growth-related plans have to take water into account.” Endter-Wada, who coauthored the findings statement and cochairs AWRA’s Policy Committee, noted that she knows of at least one state-level water official who has already brought the statement into policy conversations. In April, the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute will use it as a backdrop to a seminar series on opportunities and challenges facing communities due to the Colorado River Basin shortage declaration.  

“This is not just a one-off statement,” Endter-Wada says. “Given the challenges the world is confronting, we will keep sharing the science and making the argument. The power of words and the power of action go together.” 

That steady drip of communication is key, agree Cesanek and his Water and Planning Network cochair Mary Ann Dickinson, who send a regular newsletter to their members and maintain a collection of reports, toolkits, and other resources on the APA website. Cesanek thinks the message about the importance of integrating land and water seems to be getting out; he pointed to a new book about comprehensive planning written by David Rouse, a Water and Planning Network steering committee member and former APA director of research. The book touches on both green infrastructure, a nature-based urban stormwater management approach, and One Water, an integrated approach to water management that prioritizes sustainability and community vitality. This type of integrated approach “needs to be applied universally, and climate change has made that all the more apparent by exacerbating not only a lack of water but excess water,” Cesanek says. 

Promoting conceptual, scientific, and management frameworks and techniques like One Water is one of six guiding principles laid out in the joint statement. The others include balancing the health of human and ecological communities; incorporating diverse perspectives; honoring and learning from traditional and tribal knowledge; protecting land critical to drinking water source protection; and utilizing collaboration, engagement, and boundary-spanning tools.  

The call to action, which marks the first such collaboration between the four organizations, “was just one example of the partnerships that emerged from the AWRA conference,” said Faith Sternlieb, senior program manager at the Babbitt Center and coauthor of the findings statement. Sternlieb noted that plans are in the works for a follow-up conference in 2023, and said organizers hope to focus on the “action” part of the recent call to action.  

Sham said he is optimistic about the collaborations underway and looking forward to the 2023 conference, as well as other opportunities to keep this conversation going: “We need time for folks to meet up, think about the big issues, and come up with solutions.” 

It’s a conversation that is increasingly urgent in an era marked by history-making drought, floods, and extreme weather. “We face a lot of challenges due to climate change,” said Megdal of the University of Arizona, who published a reflection inspired by the findings statement. “We can only do a better job if we put our heads together.” 

Katharine Wroth is the editor of Land Lines.

Image: A national call to action recommends embracing frameworks like One Water, an integrated approach to water management that prioritizes sustainability and community vitality. Credit: Courtesy of Brown and Caldwell.