All the energies of water

Over the centuries, the relationship between humans and freshwater has influenced the development or disappearance of entire communities. Even today, an in-depth understanding of how hydropower determines our daily lives is crucial to imagining a sustainable future

Freshwater energy is sustainable and renewable but at the same time can threaten billions of people. It is an energy on which the jobs and livelihoods of 80 percent of the population living in low- and lower-middle-income countries depend, but at the same time, to use it, infrastructure is needed with huge and disruptive impacts on ecosystems and communities. So do we need more or less energy than water?

Water energy for life 

Let us start with the basics. Water is life energy: it enables the fulfilment of the basic needs of us human beings, hence food security, health and the economic, and technological development of communities around the world.

Where there is water there is prosperity – always has been. Although there is no measure of the direct correlation between freshwater availability and socio-economic growth, according to estimates published in 2024 in the UN World Water Development Report, “in low- and lower-middle-income countries between 70 and 80¹percent of jobs depend on water”. There is ample evidence that the cost-benefit ratio of investments in water can provide positive returns, particularly through additional benefits in health, education, employment and thus human dignity.

The use, presence, and management of freshwater by communities is the first sign of the quality of life and the social, economic and environmental benefits that characterise an area.

The life energy of water generates peace and social stability.

This seems even more important if we consider that in 2024, almost half of the world’s population will experience severe water scarcity, at least for part of the year. As the UN study reports, a quarter of the world’s population faces extremely high levels of water stress, using more than 80 per cent of their annual renewable freshwater supply.

The United Nations therefore points to the path of “cooperation” between communities as a necessary horizon to be reached so that the vital and social energy of water can truly produce shared effects. There are numerous examples of projects that have grafted processes of people’s co-participation into the management of strategic water basins in their territories.

How to manage freshwater together

In the study The Contribution of Integrated Land Use Planning and Integrated Landscape Management to Implementing Land Degradation Neutrality², published in 2023 by the Convention to Combat Desertification, there are two examples of successful water management projects with communities.

The first one, “Spatial Modeling of Participatory Landscape Scenarios³“, was realised in the coastal plains of Honduras in the northern Caribbean. Three river basins coexist here, providing livelihoods for 3.5 million inhabitants. In this context, communities have had to confront each other to share a common strategy for improving livelihoods and food security, from increasing sustainable palm oil and cocoa production to sustainable watershed management.

The result was a pioneering integrated landscape partnership project, “PaSos”, which involved a wide range of stakeholders from the palm oil, cocoa and ecotourism sectors, as well as indigenous peoples, farmers, community organisations, municipal administrations, research institutes and universities.

By bringing together the aspirations of the various stakeholders, three landscape management scenarios of both business and conservation were identified, allowing an analysis of the trade-offs necessary to achieve a balance between the two requirements.

Shared decision-making was also the key to addressing the socio-economic crisis in the Cuitzmala watershed, a 1,100 km river basin on the Pacific coast of Mexico. Under the pressure of uncontrolled development, this area has been transformed over time into a patchwork of active and abandoned crops, pastures and remnants of primary and secondary forest. The social structure of the area is complex and consists of small-scale farmers, tourism entrepreneurs, environmentalists, civil servants and indigenous communities.

This is where the European Commission’s pilot project “ROBIN-Role of Biodiversity in Climate Change Mitigation” was born, in which a team of international researchers worked with local communities to identify the best options for sustainable management of the area with the help of OPTamos⁴, a multi-criteria analysis tool that supports a social assessment decision-making process. Unlike conventional tools, which usually assist the individual without necessarily taking into account the perceptions of other actors, this tool incorporates a participatory approach to make the decision-making process social, i.e. enhancing it as a joint learning experience. Through a series of stakeholder workshops, therefore, it was the various actors in the area who identified the key issues associated with the Cuitzmala Basin and brought out the best options for managing the area in which everyone and everyone lives⁵.

Two cooperation projects were born around water and represent a model of shared decision-making around strategic resources for entire communities.

Water that lights up the planet

The generating power of water is decisive in keeping the planet switched on: in 2024 hydropower still generated more electricity than all other renewable technologies combined and, according to estimates by the IEA, the International Energy Agency, it will remain so until at least 2030⁶. Hydropower remains the most important renewable electricity technology by capacity (38% of total renewables) and generation (50%).

Water is also a crucial element in the production of energy from other forms, from the extraction of fossil fuels to the cooling of thermal and nuclear power plants: the UN estimates that between 10% and 15% of total global water withdrawals are used for energy production⁷.

We have been trying to draw energy from water for millennia: from the ancient dams built in Jawa, Jordan, around 3,000 B.C., to the water wheels for millstones on rivers in 1st century B.C. Alexandria, Egypt, to the industrial revolutions of the 19th century, with the introduction of the water turbine, capable of transforming the energy of moving water into mechanical energy, to the first hydroelectric power plant in the United States, in 1882. Larger and larger infrastructures followed, up to the Itaipu dam on the Paraná river on the Paraguay-Brazil border, the largest operational hydroelectric plant in the world, inaugurated in 1986.
This story continues to flow: in 2022, hydropower production grew by 2 per cent compared to 2021, and the IEA’s 2023 and 2024 projections predict new record levels. However, not enough to reach the “Net Zero”⁸, target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Hydropower is so important because it has another fundamental characteristic: resilience, i.e. “the ability to withstand threats and disruptive events, limiting damage or disruptions caused by external factors⁹“. External factors are often related to climate change: water is always flowing, even under extreme conditions, and therefore the energy it produces remains constant under conditions of extreme variability. 

In the conclusions of the US study on Hydropower’s Contributions to Grid Reliability and Resilience Indeed, it is pointed out that “future systems will see more weather events that have a greater impact on the availability of wind and solar generation. Hydropower uses its flexibility to bridge the gap, using long-term storage to provide power and capacity when needed”,

The destructive energy of floods

Ma c’è anche un altro lato della medaglia. Se l’energia But there is also another side to the coin. Suppose hydropower is a certainty in the face of extreme events related to climate change. In that case, it is also true that these extreme events are often the increasingly frequent floods and inundations that affect the world’s communities at every latitude.

According to a study published in Nature¹⁰ “floods are among the most widespread natural hazards, with particularly disastrous impacts in low-income countries”. Estimates updated to 2022 say that 1.81 billion people (23% of the world’s population) are directly exposed to flooding (river, rain and coastal) within 100 years. We are talking about $9.8 trillion of economic activity or 12% of global GDP.

Going deeper, it quickly becomes clear that increased exposure to floods has to do with land management, social stability and, again, peace.

“Our results also show that 1.61 billion (89%) of the world’s flood-exposed people live in low- and middle-income countries and about 193 million (11%) live in high-income countries. Given that flood-exposed populations in high-income countries are more likely to benefit from flood protection systems, post-disaster social assistance and other risk management support, they highlight the significant risks faced by developing countries”.

Gallowey’s art in New Zealand

Water is, therefore, a heterogeneous and transversal form of energy, which is not exclusively concerned with aspects of physics or mechanics, but is intertwined with the socio-ecological dynamics of communities. It is in this context that the language of art plays a key role.

«Art plays a critical role: it asks the audience to consider a topic, to reflect on it, and to think deeply, in a dialectical and critical way». Matthew Galloway is an artist and designer living in Dunedin, New Zealand. His work challenges the status quo through the language of art, seeking to show alternative paths. «My practice uses the tools and methodologies of design to investigate issues of identity, understanding of place, and political implications», Galloway writes on his website. «Often starting from a simple observation of the world around me, I create open-ended research projects with multiple outcomes».

Matthew Galloway’s art projects, in addition to numerous spaces and galleries in New Zealand, have also been exhibited in recent years in Shanghai, Munich, Tindouf (Algeria), Buenos Aires, and Leon (Spain).

Visit his website

In 2022, Gallowey decided to focus its gaze on New Zealand’s second largest dam: the Clyde Dam, built on the Clutha River. The result is The Power that Flows Through Us, a multi-site installation that aims to explore the dam’s complex history not only concerning the physical generation of power but also investigating the political, social and cultural currents that determined its creation and impact.

«The Clyde Dam, as part of the “Think Big” projects of the 1970s and 1980s, represents a significant chapter in New Zealand’s history», he explains. «It was a time of economic uncertainty and bold decisions that had far-reaching consequences for the communities and environment affected. With this exhibition, I intend to encourage a deeper engagement with this history and ongoing conversations about energy production and its impact on our society»,

The Power that Flows Through Us is currently on display at the “Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery” in Wllington¹¹. «This installation is designed to immerse the viewer in the monumental scale of the dam and surrounding landscape through large-scale projections of drone footage. I incorporated archival political cartoons, enlarged into sculptural forms and sound interventions with poems by Brian Turner, to offer different perspectives on the history and legacy of the dam».

Gallowey’s project addresses the relationship between the many energies of water and the communities that, over time, have come into a relationship with the dam. «In the context of the project, energy is the ability to harness watercourses and natural resources to produce electricity, but it is also political power that decides to build an infrastructure as well as, more abstractly, it is an energy related to progress that determines such important infrastructural interventions in our landscape», Gallowey points out.

An art project, therefore, that goes beyond the “good energy – bad energy” dichotomy. «The project intentionally questions the history of this infrastructure and invites us to question narratives about “green” energy», explains Gallowey. «It wants, instead, to see the dam and what it represents as a dialectical object, through which we can critique contemporary existence».

 

1. Connor, R. (2024). Rapporto mondiale delle Nazioni Unite sullo sviluppo delle risorse idriche 2024: l’acqua per la prosperità e la pace; sintesi. In UNESDOC Digital Library. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000388950_ita.locale=en. ↩︎
2. UNCCD. (2022, May 6). The contribution of integrated land use planning and integrated landscape management to implementing Land Degradation Neutrality: Entry points and support tools. https://www.unccd.int/resources/reports/contribution-integrated-land-use-planning-and-integrated-landscape-management. ↩︎
3. Meijer, J. Shames, S., Scherr, S.J., Giesen, P. (2018). Spatial modelling of participatory landscape scenarios: synthesis and lessons learned from exploring potential SDG progress in 3 case studies. PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and EcoAgriculture Partners, The Hague. https://www.pbl.nl/sites/default/files/downloads/PBL_2018_2613_spatial-modelling-of-participatory-landscape-scenarios_UK.pdf. 
   ↩︎
4. Grima, N., Singh, S. J., & Smetschka, B. (2017). Decision making in a complex world: Using OPTamos in a multi-criteria process for land management in the Cuitzmala watershed in Mexico. Land Use Policy, 67, 73–85. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2017.05.025. ↩︎
5.  Both projects are part of the economic and land management approach to combat desertification and to support territories involved in economic and ecological crisis processes promoted by the UNCCD. A system of territorial cooperation built around the strategic role of ‘Integrated Land Use Planning’ (IULP), defined as ‘the balancing of economic, social and cultural opportunities provided by territories with the need to maintain and improve ecosystem services’, and ‘Integrated Landscape Management’ (ILM), i.e. ‘the long-term collaboration between different groups of stakeholders to achieve objectives’ related to combating land degradation. ↩︎
6. IEA. Hydropower. https://www.iea.org/energy-system/renewables/hydroelectricity. ↩︎
7. Connor, R. (2024). Rapporto mondiale delle Nazioni Unite sullo sviluppo delle risorse idriche 2024: l’acqua per la prosperità e la pace; sintesi. ↩︎
8. IEA. Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario (NZE) – Global Energy and Climate Model – Analysis. https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-and-climate-model/net-zero-emissions-by-2050-scenario-nze. ↩︎
9. Somani, A., Datta, S., Kincic, S., Chalishazar, V., Vyakaranam, B. G., Samaan, N., Colotelo, A. H., Zhang, Y., Koritarov, V., Mcjunkin, T., Mosier, T., Novacheck, J., Emmanuel, M., Schwarz, M., Markel, L., & O’Reilley, C. (2021). Hydropower’s contributions to grid reliability and resilience. https://doi.org/10.2172/1826380. ↩︎
10. Rentschler, J., Salhab, M., & Jafino, B. A. (2022). Flood exposure and poverty in 188 countries. Nature Communications, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-30727-4. ↩︎
11.  https://www.adamartgallery.nz/. ↩︎