Tuesday, September 01, 2020

Drones can be a source of disturbance to wintering waterbird flocks

Newly published research, in Bird Study, carried out by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) in Scotland, shows that wintering waterbirds, such as ducks, geese, swans and wading birds can easily be scared into flight by drones.

In recent years, drone technology has improved rapidly, while at the same time the drones themselves have become ever cheaper and produced in ever greater quantities. Drones are now being used for recreational photography, surveillance, ecological research, remote sensing and even to deliver packages. The mass proliferation of drones and the increasingly likelihood of commercial and recreational drone use taking place close to wildlife creates a new and potentially significant source of disturbance to wild birds.

Such disturbance, which could affect rare and protected species, causes birds to waste energy and reduces their feeding time. In extreme cases, birds might stop using an area altogether, and be forced to feed elsewhere, where feeding opportunities may be poorer or the risk of predation higher. This could be particularly harmful during the cold winter months, when vast numbers of waterbirds come to Britain from the Arctic to feed up before the breeding season.

BTO scientists flew a commercially available quadcopter drone towards waterbird flocks in coastal, freshwater and arable crop farmland habitats. While one researcher flew the drone at a standard speed and height towards the flock, another observed the flocks through a telescope to record any responses to the drone as it approached, including alarm calls, signs of heightened alert levels and taking flight.

The BTO team found that larger flocks were more likely to take flight than smaller flocks, and large flocks also took flight at a greater distance from the drone than smaller flocks. This is probably because the larger the flock, the more likely there is to be a sensitive individual present—in almost all cases, once one bird had responded to the drone, the rest of the flock followed.

The researchers also found that the habitat the birds were in had a strong effect on responses. Birds at inland lochs where there was already lots of human activity were very unlikely to respond to the drone, while birds at coastal sites were more likely to respond. Birds in arable farmland were particularly sensitive—flocks feeding in this habitat are probably most susceptible to disturbance because of the need to be on the lookout for predators.

Lead author, David Jarrett, said: "While we expected that the drone would cause large flocks to flush, we were surprised that birds hardly seemed to respond to the drone at all at those inland lochs where there was already lots of human activity taking place. Hopefully this research can be used to help inform guidance and regulations on drone use in proximity to wild birds."

Britain hosts internationally important flocks of waterbirds outside the breeding season. While it has been thought that drones could be useful in monitoring their numbers, the disturbance caused by such monitoring would have to be carefully evaluated. If drone use were to become more frequent at important sites for our wintering waterbirds, and birds did not become accustomed to this novel form of disturbance, then the resulting increases in energy expenditure and stress would be likely to negatively affect their populations.Engineers teach a drone to herd birds away from airports autonomously

More information: David Jarrett et al. Behavioural responses of non-breeding waterbirds to drone approach are associated with flock size and habitat, Bird Study (2020). DOI: 10.1080/00063657.2020.1808587

Provided by Taylor & Francis

California is on fire. From across the Pacific, Australians watch and buckle up

by David Bowman, Ross Bradstock, The Conversation

California is ablaze, again. Currently, the second and third largest fires in the US state's history are burning at the same time, and are only partially controlled. Already, seven people have died and 2,144 structures are damaged—and their fire season still has months to run.

The outbreak continues a relentless trend of bigger and more destructive fires in the western US, including California' largest fire in 2018.

For Australians, the spectacle of California burning is deeply concerning. It's just months since our last fire season, concentrated in a band of eucalyptus forests along the continent's southeast coast.

There are strong parallels between the two disasters: drought, parched landscapes, high temperatures, prolonged heatwaves and dry lightning storms to set it all off. And both Australia and California are particularly vulnerable as climate change makes bushfires worse. So let's look at the fiery fate we share with those across the Pacific—and how we must all adapt.

An uncertain future

We know bushfires are being made worse by human activity and climate change. But, owing to a lack of long-term data and the complex interactions between humans, climate and fire, it's hard to predict exactly how fires will change—for example how frequent or severe they will be, how long fire seasons will last and how much land will burn.

In research published last week, we describe recent trends in fire activity and examine projections for the near future. From this, it's clear the global impact of bushfires due to human-induced climate change will intensify.

Among the areas expected to be worst hit are flammable forests in populated temperate zones, such as Australia's eastern states and California.

Climate is not the only driving factor here. Human changes to landscapes—such as urban sprawl into flammable forests—are also making fires worse.

The damage is not just environmental, but also economic. Already, Australia's last bushfire season is likely to be our most expensive natural disaster, costing around A$100 billion. And the California fires in 2017–2018 caused an estimated A$55 billion in structure losses alone.

The escalating threat demands an urgent rethink of our inadequate and inappropriate fire management strategies. These span land use planning, fuel management, communications, evacuation and firefighting capacity. All are constrained by complex administrative arrangements, limited physical and human resources, and poor budgets.

Climate change also raises the frightening scepter of a "positive feedback" loop in which climate change exacerbates fire, producing carbon dioxide emissions which worsen climate change further. This vicious cycle threatens to fundamentally alter the Earth system.

What's more, fire seasons in southern Australia and the western US increasingly overlap. As California burned last week, uncontrolled winter bushfires ripped through northern New South Wales. Australia is sending firefighters to California this time around. But as fires increasingly rage in both hemispheres simultaneously, our respective nations will have fewer firefighting resources to share.

The COVID-19 crisis is making these difficult circumstances even more challenging. For example in California, authorities are dealing with both the fires and the pandemic; the state reportedly has the highest number of infections in the US.

Firefighters must practice social distancing: that means fewer people in each vehicle and no communal eating or sleeping arrangements. And Australian firefighters will be forced into quarantine for two weeks upon their return home.

Accepting reality

In this context, recommendations handed down by the NSW bushfire inquiry last week are a landmark in how we adapt to bushfires. Central to the report is an avowed acceptance climate change is transforming bushfire management.

The report contains 76 recommendations, all accepted by the NSW government, providing creative license to rethink how we sustainably co-exist with bushfires. They include:

reforms of arrangements to manage bushfires, such as better coordination between agencies, better shared data and streamlining fuel management programs
trialing new approaches to reducing fuel loads, fighting fires and managing smoke pollution
involving Aboriginal people in managing landscapes
maintaining the safety and mental health of those on the frontline such as fire fighters, first responders and affected citizens
improving disaster management through improved training and work practices for firefighters, better communication, new technologies and investing in equipment.

The scope and scale of the recommendations underscores the huge task ahead of us.

Importantly, underpinning the recommendations is a clear commitment to analyzing which approaches work, and which do not. This accepts our current state of knowledge is partial and imperfect.

Our fire-filled futures

Co-existing with a flammable landscape is a massive and complicated task—a fact California is now being brutally reminded of. Australia can lead the way globally, but to do this requires significant investment in bushfire management to build the necessary tools, techniques and talent.

Climate change is making bushfire seasons longer, more dangerous and socially demanding. Like it or not, we have embarked on the bushfire adaptation journey, and there is no turning back.

The question now is, how far do we go? All Australians must turn their minds to this critical social and political challenge.Climate change 'clearly' fuelled Australia bushfires: inquest

by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

NASA's Suomi NPP satellite shows two views of California's smoky skies

by Lynn Jenner, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

NOAA/NASA's Suomi NPP satellite captured two images that tell the story about the smoke coming off the fires in California. One instrument on the provided a visible image of the smoke, while another analyzed the aerosol content within. The images were captured on August 30, 2020.

The first image captured by the Suomi NPP satellite using the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) Corrected Reflectance imagery shows a true-color image (called true-color or natural color because this combination of wavelengths is similar to what the human eye would see) of the wildfires still burning across large swaths of the state. Smoke is pouring off the fires and traveling in two different directions. Some of the smoke is traveling northeast into Nevada and as far east (in this image) as Salt Lake City, Utah, and some is traveling west into the Pacific Ocean.

The second image was captured by Suomi NPP with the OMPS Aerosol Indexer and shows not only the direction of the smoke's travel but the thickness of the aerosol layer that has moved outward from the fires. The OMPS (Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite) Aerosol Indexer on Suomi NPP is an instrument that indicates the presence of ultraviolet-absorbing particles in the air coming from dust (desert) or, as in this case, soot from fires. The Aerosol Indexer found on the image as a scale is unitless, that is, the lowest and highest range do not relate directly to each other. It just indicates whether the scale is low or high. In this image of smoke coming off the California fires, the aerosols found were mostly in the moderate range (yellow) with some higher range areas (red). Higher concentrations can reduce visibility and impact human health. The Aerosol index is also useful for tracking long-range transport of these aerosols that move along jet streams.

NASA's satellite instruments are often the first to detect wildfires burning in remote regions, and the locations of new fires are sent directly to land managers worldwide within hours of the satellite overpass. Together, NASA instruments detect actively burning fires, track the transport of smoke from fires, provide information for fire management, and map the extent of changes to ecosystems, based on the extent and severity of burn scars. NASA has a fleet of Earth-observing instruments, many of which contribute to our understanding of fire in the Earth system. Satellites in orbit around the poles provide observations of the entire planet several times per day, whereas satellites in a geostationary orbit provide coarse-resolution imagery of fires, smoke and clouds every five to 15 minutes.

NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Worldview application provides the capability to interactively browse over 700 global, full-resolution satellite imagery layers and then download the underlying data. Many of the available imagery layers are updated within three hours of observation, essentially showing the entire Earth as it looks "right now." Actively burning fires, detected by thermal bands, are shown as red points.

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NASA's Terra Satellite shows smoky pall over most of California

Provided by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Climate change could increase rice yields

by Rachel Schutte, American Society of Agronomy

Rice is the most consumed staple food in the world. It is especially common in Asia, where hunger concerns are prevalent.

Rice is classified as an annual plant, which means it completes its life cycle within one growing season then dies. However, in some tropical areas, rice can continue to grow year after year when taken care of properly.

Just as grass grows back in a lawn after it is mowed, rice can be cut after it is harvested, and the plant will regrow. The farming practice of cutting the rice above ground and allowing it to regrow is called ratooning.

Although Rice ratooning allows farmers to harvest more rice from the same fields, it requires a longer growing season compared to traditional single-harvest rice farming.

In many areas of the world where rice is grown, a long growing season isn't a problem due to the tropical climates. But in Japan, cooler weather means rice ratooning has been a rare farming practice.

Hiroshi Nakano and a research team set out to learn more about the potential of ratooning to help Japanese rice farmers. Nakano is a researcher at the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization.

Average temperatures in Japan have been higher in recent years. As climate change continues to affect the region, rice farmers may have a longer window for growing rice. "Rice seedlings will be able to be transplanted earlier in the spring, and farmers can harvest rice later into the year," explains Nakano.

"The goal of our research is to determine the effects of harvest time and cutting height of the first harvest on the yield of the first and second rice crops," says Nakano. "Ultimately, we want to propose new farming strategies to increase yield as farmers in southwestern Japan adjust to climate change."

During the study on rice ratooning, researchers compared two harvest times and two cutting heights of the first crop. After the first harvest, they collected the seeds from the cut off portions of the rice plants. Researchers measured the yield by counting and weighing the seeds. The second harvest of rice was done by hand and the yield was determined in the same way.

The total grain yield and the yields from the first and second crops were different depending on the harvest times and cutting heights. This wasn't too surprising, since the team already knew harvest time and height affected yield.

Rice plants harvested at the normal time for the first crop yielded more seed than the rice plants harvested earlier. "That's because the plants had more time to fill their spikelets with seed," explains Nakano.

"At both harvest times, rice harvested at the high cutting height had a higher yield than the low cutting height," says Nakano. That's because the plants cut at a higher height had access to more energy and nutrients stored in their leaves and stems.

"Our results suggest that combining the normal harvest time with the high cutting height is important for increasing yield in rice ratooning in southwestern Japan and similar climate regions," says Nakano. "This technology will likely increase rice grain yield in new environments that arise through global climate chan

Breeding new rice varieties will help farmers in Asia

More information: Hiroshi Nakano et al. Breaking rice yield barrier with the ratooning method under changing climatic conditions: A paradigm shift in rice‐cropping systems in southwestern Japan, Agronomy Journal (2020). DOI: 10.1002/agj2.20309

Journal information: Agronomy Journal

Provided by American Society of Agronomy

Warmer, acidifying ocean brings extinction for reef-building corals, renewal for relatives

by Smithsonian

Changes in ocean chemistry and temperature have had a dramatic effect on the diversity of corals and sea anemones, according to a team of scientists who have traced their evolution through deep time. A new study, published Aug. 31 in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, finds that reef-building corals emerged only when ocean conditions supported the construction of these creatures' stony skeletons, whereas diverse softer corals and sea anemones flourished at other times. Without a significant change to anthropogenic carbon emissions, the new findings present stark implications for the present and future of hard-bodied corals while suggesting a silver lining for the diversity of some of their softer-bodied relatives.

New genetic analyses show that corals, which together with sea anemones make up a class of animals known as anthozoans, have been on the planet for 770 million years. That is 250 million years before the earliest undisputed fossil evidence of their existence—and long enough to experience massive shifts in climate, fluctuations in ocean chemistry and several mass extinctions.

In the new study, a research team led by scientists from Harvey Mudd College, the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History examined how these past conditions affected anthozoan diversity. That was possible thanks to a new molecular approach developed by Andrea Quattrini, research zoologist and curator of corals at the National Museum of Natural History, Catherine McFadden, a biologist at Harvey Mudd College, and Estefanía Rodríguez, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History, which allowed the team to compare nearly 2,000 key regions of anthozoan genomes to discern the evolutionary relationships between species. The team analyzed hundreds of anthozoan specimens that were collected from around the world and are now stored in museum collections. When this molecular data was aligned with fossil evidence of anthozoan history, it revealed how these diverse animals evolved over geologic time.

Over the Earth's history, changes in acidity and ion concentrations have shifted the ocean's chemical composition between two states, known as aragonite and calcite seas. These changes, as well as changes in ocean water temperature, appear to have played an important role in determining what kinds of skeletons corals were able to produce and, thus, how anthozoans evolved.

Stony corals—the type that build massive reefs that support complex marine ecosystems—take up minerals from the water to construct hard skeletons from a form of calcium carbonate known as aragonite. Other corals, such as sea fans and black corals, build their softer skeletons from protein or calcite (a less soluble form of calcium carbonate), whereas sea anemones have no skeleton at all.

Working with an international team of researchers, including Gabriela Farfan, the National Museum of Natural History's Coralyn W. Whitney Curator of Gems and Minerals, Quattrini and colleagues found that stony corals did not arise until conditions favored the construction of their aragonite skeletons—periods of aragonite seas, when ocean temperatures were relatively cool. During periods of calcite seas, when carbon dioxide is more abundant in the atmosphere and oceans are more acidic, evolution favored anemones and corals that built their skeletons from protein or calcite.

Notably, it was these other anthozoans that fared best after reef crises—times when up to 90% of reef-building organisms died off as oceans warmed and became more acidic. "Our study showed that after these reef crises, we actually get an increased diversification of anthozoans in general, particularly those that can do well under these climate conditions—ones that aren't producing aragonite and aren't making big reefs," Quattrini said.

That is consistent with observations from today's reefs, which are threatened by climate change and other human activities. "Current ecological studies have shown that when stony corals die off, these other anthozoans start to colonize dead coral and prosper," Quattrini said. "We actually see that in our evolutionary tree, too."

"Unfortunately, although these softer-bodied species may adapt better to climate change than stony corals, they don't form large reefs," McFadden said. "So, in the future, reefs may be replaced by different marine communities. This already appears to be happening in the Caribbean where stony corals are being replaced by 'forests' of sea fans."

Today, about 1,300 species of stony coral inhabit the ocean, favored by aragonite sea conditions. But rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are warming and acidifying the waters, making them less hospitable for these and other organisms whose shells and skeletons are made from aragonite. "Aragonite is expected to dissolve under ocean acidification," Quattrini said. "As our seas are becoming more acidic and warmer, it's likely that the skeletons of corals will dissolve or not be able to grow."

The new study suggests that as the climate changes, these ecosystems may also see increased diversification of anthozoans without aragonite skeletons. Nevertheless, loss of reef-building corals will have devastating consequences for communities who depend on reefs and the rich, complex ecosystems they support for fishing, shoreline protection and tourism. "Corals have suffered extinctions in the past when climate has posed challenges, and we'll likely see that in the future," Quattrini said. "The best way to protect them is to curb our carbon emissions."

"This study shows us how nature through evolution is able to adapt, survive and reinvent itself, so when hard corals are not able to survive, their soft-bodied relatives such as sea anemones will thrive instead," Rodríguez said. "The question is whether we will be able to adapt and reinvent ourselves once nature, as we currently know it, is not there anymore."

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Ocean acidification causing coral 'osteoporosis' on iconic reefs

More information: Palaeoclimate ocean conditions shaped the evolution of corals and their skeletons through deep time, Nature Ecology and Evolution (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41559-020-01291-1 , www.nature.com/articles/s41559-020-01291-1

Journal information: Nature Ecology & Evolution

Provided by Smithsonian

How power shaped the 'success story' of genetically modified cotton in Burkina Faso

by Jessie Luna, Brian Dowd-Uribe, The Conversation FARMING

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The West African nation of Burkina Faso was once the poster child for genetically modified (GM) crop advocates. Its 2008 adoption of GM cotton for smallholder farmers was hailed as an example of how these technologies could alleviate poverty and food insecurity by protecting crops from pests and increasing yields.

But this much celebrated success story came to an abrupt halt in 2016, when the Burkina Faso government and cotton companies decided to abandon GM cotton.

What happened?

Burkina Faso was the first African country where a GM crop was principally grown by smallholder farmers. The crop was an insect resistant cotton variety, developed through a partnership with the US-based agri-business company Monsanto (now Bayer Crop Science). At its height, nearly 150,000 Burkinabè households grew GM cotton.

Supporters quickly broadcast study findings demonstrating increased average yields and incomes. This developed into a prominent narrative of success.

Observers were shocked when only eight years later Burkina Faso abandoned genetically modified cotton. The reason: it had shorter-fiber lint and ginning machines extracted proportionally less lint from harvested cotton bolls. This led to US$76 million in losses for cotton companies.

Other problems also surfaced. New evidence showed that GM cotton yields were less than half of early projections. And there were significant variations among farmers. Many farmers lost money.

How could such a prominent success story turn so quickly to failure?

Our new research, which draws on over 250 interviews and in-depth research in Burkina Faso spanning over a decade, traces what happened. We found that rather than an abrupt turnaround, these problems were known by cotton sector officials as early as 2006—ten years before Burkina Faso abandoned GM cotton.

The puzzle we unravel is how a success narrative could be built when problems were readily apparent.

In short, the story has a lot to do with power.

Silences and omissions

Burkina Faso's cotton success narrative was built on a series of studies with significant methodological problems. Studies contained well-documented issues in data collection, failing to sufficiently control for differences between comparison groups. In most cases, they also failed to provide sufficient evidence to evaluate how data were collected.

These faulty evaluation studies reported yield and income results in averages, which advocates quickly circulated as evidence of success. These same studies often showed large variability in yields and profits for farmers, but didn't highlight these findings.

Significant conflicts of interest shaped the collection and reporting of findings. Monsanto provided funding for the evaluation studies in a contract with the Burkina Faso Institute for Environment and Agricultural Research. This meant that Monsanto had ultimate control over research findings—and a strong interest in projecting success.

The institute depended on Monsanto funding that accompanied the adoption of GM cotton. Highly skilled Burkinabè researchers also jockeyed for limited jobs with Monsanto.

In our interviews, which included Monsanto representatives, participants said it was difficult to challenge the success narrative. Concerns they raised were often silenced or left unexamined. At times, their expertise was dismissed.

Ignoring local dynamics

Evaluation studies had additional problems, particularly with regard to the differential impacts of GM cotton. Previous research in Burkina Faso has detailed how local dynamics can determine the extent to which a farmer profits from cotton production. These dynamics weren't included in the evaluation studies that built the success narrative.

Our research, which paid close attention to local-level dynamics, revealed that these missing pieces were critical factors shaping farmers' experiences with GM cotton.

Poorer farmers faced additional challenges: they used less fertilizer, which compounded yield issues in GM cotton, and they were often burdened by having to pay for replacement seeds in cases when their first planting didn't germinate. This additional seed cost resulted from complex relationships between farmers and cotton company employees who often belittled small-scale farmers. These dynamics and additional costs were invisible to overly narrow evaluation studies.

As a result, the success narrative gave a false impression that even farmers with few resources were achieving "average" yield gains.

Profiting from an exaggerated success narrative

The power to shape a narrative—based on faulty studies that overlooked important realities—turned out to be good for Monsanto's bottom line. The final royalty contract signed by Monsanto and Burkinabè partners ostensibly gave 28% of the "added value" of GM cotton to Monsanto, and the rest for farmers and cotton companies. But Monsanto received far more than this.

The royalty contract used an inflated yield estimate (30%) to establish the amount of added value from GM cotton. Even in the best years, actual cotton yields didn't approach this estimate.

Monsanto also received this inflated payment irrespective of the actual performance of the technology, since it was paid according to the number of hectares planted. Monsanto profited more than was agreed to in the contract, and assumed none of the risk shouldered by cotton companies and farmers.

Monsanto also benefited from a reliable GM crop success story. This narrative is still used to advance other ventures in Africa.

Looking ahead

Anthropologist Glenn Stone has argued:

"We are naïve in swallowing empirical claims without a careful consideration of how vested interests affect the creation of facts."

As this case shows, vested interests played a significant role in shaping a success narrative despite apparent problems.

Moving forward, it will be important to learn from the Burkinabè case, not just about what happened, but about how knowledge was produced. An examination of vested interests is one such take away. This is particularly important now as multiple African nations consider a wide array of GM crops for commercialisation.

Many GM crops under consideration in Africa are not the domain of a big agri-business company like Monsanto. This does not mean, however, that vested interests will not still shape how knowledge about these crops gets produced.

Evaluation studies will need to be independent, transparent, rigorous, and methodologically diverse, to accurately reflect the realities of these crops. Studies must anticipate challenges and shortcomings. This is particularly true to understand whether and how genetically modified crops aid resource-poor, women, and marginalized farmers.

For too long agricultural technologies like GM crops have been evaluated as if they exist in a social and political vacuum. Understanding how GM crops perform for farmers needs close attention to local-level dynamics and context. The role that power plays in that context must be a part of how we understand GM crops moving forward

Top African producer bans GM cotton

Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Why Kenya's urban poor are exploited by informal water markets

by Anindita Sarkar, The Conversation

LIKE THE POOR IN FLINT, MICHIGAN

Informal urban water markets—as opposed to piped water—have long supported many of Kenya's urban areas. Those that use them are either unserved, or inadequately served, by public utilities.

A large number of people depend on them as only about 20% of the Nairobi residents who live in low income areas have piped water. The rest depend on uncovered wells, rivers, open springs and informal water markets.

There are different types of informal water markets. Some sell water legally, some illegally. There are also different ways in which people buy water. If they have water storage facilities, and live in an area accessible to water vendors, water can be bought in bulk from vendors who source it from private boreholes.

But most people won't have storage facilities and will usually buy water from water vendors and carry it home. These water vendors get their supplies from a variety of sources including; rivers, wells, households with connections, communal standpipes and water ATMs. Water ATMs, installed by NGOs, provide users with cheap, clean water on demand. They swipe a smart-card and collect.

Water vendors also sometimes get water illegally by cutting through municipal piped networks.

In a recent study I looked at how informal water markets operate and how they serve the urban poor. My research focused on Mathare, a large informal settlement in Nairobi. About 206,000 people live there.

I found that—despite high water prices (in comparison to water sold in standpipes and water ATMs), poor quality and inconvenience—the urban poor continued to buy water from private vendors because it's still their best option. The other options were either too unreliable or hard to reach.

Nairobi's county government is taking steps to formalize informal water vendors as a way of providing more people with water. Though urban informal water markets have the potential to deliver water to the unserved poor, they can also trap the poor in highly unjust water delivery arrangements. More must be done to prevent this from happening.

Last, better option

Mathare is characterized by unsafe and overcrowded housing. Most people live in shacks made of corrugated iron and lack access to essential services, such as sanitation and electricity. Around 90% of residents do not have piped water.

I conducted interviews, surveys and focus group discussions with 258 households and 20 water vendors in Mathare in 2016 and 2017. I also interviewed six key government officials.

More than half of the residents from my survey accessed water from informal water vendors. And about 36% households depended exclusively on them.

But the quality of water was inconsistent. Residents I interviewed said they sometimes found debris in the water, or that it sometimes tasted bad. This could be because when vendors illegally cut municipality pipes, the water becomes contaminated.

High prices

The water vendors' prices also fluctuated. They ranged from Ksh2 (US$0.02) to Ksh50 (US$0.50) per 20 liters depending on where the clients lived and the availability of alternative sources of water. During periods of drought, when their water supplies might run dry, vendors would recoup costs by driving up prices.

In some cases, high prices were artificially created. Water vendors sometimes cut municipal pipes to create artificial shortages or colluded with cartels who controlled community yard taps.

The vendors also had erratic schedules. People would sometimes be late for work or miss work and forgo their daily wages to buy water.

While some clients reported having strong bonds with their vendors, the majority said they were rude and inconsiderate.

Differential treatment among different clients belonging to a particular tribe or of a particular economic status was another major bone of contention. Nevertheless, the customers were fearful about questioning the vendors.

Last option

There were several reasons why, despite these issues, people opted to use water vendors.

Water ATMs, though cheapest (about US$0.50 for 20 liters of water), were very few in number and located around the main road of the slum. It's very difficult to carry heavy water over the undulating slum terrain. The ATM tanks were also often empty, making them an unpredictable and unreliable supply source. As for the standpipes, they operated only twice or three times a week but with no fixed timing or price.

And, even if in-house municipality connections are available, many poor households cannot afford the initial set-up cost. A new connection fee can vary between Ksh2500 (about US$25) and Ksh15000 (about US$150). The average household income in Mathare is less than US$3 a day.

Water vendors are a last option but residents depend on them. They're more easily accessible and give people more control over their daily costs. For instance, people may use Mathare river to wash clothes or flush toilets, and buy water just for drinking and cooking.

Policy implications

The main reason for the growth of the informal water market is government failure to deliver adequate public services. To address the deficit, private vendors are gradually being regulated. Kenyan municipalities have asked authorized private water providers to make supply arrangements in informal settlements a compulsory prerequisite for license renewals.

But more must be done to prevent corruption and the creation of cartels.Vendors must also develop their strength through association and business training to help them lobby and defend their rights. Creating a union will also create rules for water transactions and prices.

Finally, when providing licenses, the government should demarcate the areas where vendors operate to reduce conflict between vendors. This will also make it easier for utility officers to monitor their prices and modes of water transactions.

Researchers find what makes 'black market' water vendors work more reliably and fairlyProvided by The Conversation

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