About Drought Handbook: Outputs & Impacts

stakeholders, regulators and researchers, was a valuable
opportunity for Steve and a small group of Water
Scarcity Team colleagues to extend their contacts
around the UK as well as internationally, and find out
how water resources are managed in other countries.
Those included a key connection with Forestry
Commission research presented by Susan Davies of
the University of Edinburgh, discussing drought-resilient
tree species.
He says: “It was the first time we had heard that anyone
was looking at that for the Scottish Timber Industry, at
the same time we had also started to look at water
resources, policy and ecology plans for the different
sectors in Scotland and we have been able to feed
Susan’s research into those plans.”
Steve had also joined one of DRY’s very popular regional
community workshops, held in the Eden Catchment in
Fife. “It definitely shaped how we produce our reports
and ways to get the right message across, making people
aware that water scarcity is an issue in Scotland, which
helped us in the summer of 2018.
“It brought different people around the same table –
Scottish Water, Government, local farmers … groups
like that were really good for getting other people’s
points of view that we may not always see.”
Then in May 2019 About Drought held a workshop
for SEPA and Scottish Water in Edinburgh which
enabled a wider audience to discuss the programme’s
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outputs first-hand.
Steve explains: “That was great because it meant we
could get more people from SEPA to come along
and the focus was on Scottish issues – it is useful to
make use of experiences elsewhere and ensure we are
following consistent approaches with other agencies,
but there are also cases where a Scotland-specific
approach is required.”
As a result of that meeting, SEPA has identified where
it can feed improved data from its monitoring network
into the Drought Portal and, in turn, draw from it near
real-time data to better monitor and communicate
situational updates. In the future it is leading to a
collaboration, developing a forecast system providing
advanced, accurate warnings of when water scarcity is
developing.
“We are speaking to CEH about combining our
resources, data and effort to feed our live data into
the Drought Portal and we envisage being able to use
the tool with our own reporting which would be a
significant step forward,” says Steve.
SEPA are using About Drought’s communications
research to inform future messaging for different
audiences, like pre-warning private supply holders of
potential impacts of water scarcity and the need to
protect the environment.
SEPA were inspired by the innovative work by students
from Falmouth University’s School of Communication
Design on how to get water-saving messages across
to hard-to-reach Millennials by About Drought’s
social science co-ordinator, Dr Rebecca Pearce. With
humorous video clips, posters and social media posts
the students devised effective peer-to-peer campaigns.
Steve explains: “It was really interesting to see their
ideas, it’s a relatively new area to us. We really liked the
ideas they had.
“This wider and better understanding that we have from
About Drought means we can develop ways to get our
information out there and, importantly, to get a general
understanding that water scarcity is becoming more of
an issue in the future due to climate change.
“It is something everyone needs to think about and
everyone can have an impact.”
“THIS WIDER AND BETTER
UNDERSTANDING THAT WE HAVE
FROM ABOUT DROUGHT MEANS WE
CAN DEVELOP WAYS TO GET OUR
INFORMATION OUT THERE AND,
IMPORTANTLY, TO GET A GENERAL
CONSENSUS THAT WATER SCARCITY
IS BECOMING MORE OF AN ISSUE
IN THE FUTURE DUE TO CLIMATE
CHANGE.”
Interview by Sally Stevens