Within the framework of the Coquimbo Region’s Water Transformation Program, an interesting international seminar was held last week to analyze water productivity between Chile and Australia.
The meeting, held online, was attended by more than 80 national and international participants and the following speakers: Claudio Reyes Hurtado, a specialist in integrated water resources management who is in charge of the Water Transformation Program of the Coquimbo Region; Guillermo Donoso, director of the Center for Water Law and Management at the PUC; Michelle Medina, business development manager at Rubicon Water LatAm; Pablo Aranda, researcher at the Sustainable Infrastructure Research Hub at The University of Queensland; and Doug Aitken, executive director of SMI ICE Chile.
Claudio Reyes Hurtado provided important figures and analysis of Chile and Australia in terms of water productivity:
According to data from the Planning Department of the Ministry of Public Works (DIRPLAN), and with the GDP of 2023, the estimated water consumption for 2025 would reach 19,500 hm3, giving Chile a productivity of 17.2 USD per m3 of water, while Australia’s is 105 USD/m3 of water.
“DIRPLAN itself projects water demand at 26,400 hm3/year for the year 2055, with a 35% increase in relation to consumption by 2025,” said Claudio Reyes Hurtado. “These places us in a scenario of increased water consumption, but with a decoupling of growth, which leads us to think of development models that consider the stabilization of water supply, the decisive increase in water efficiency, improving the relationship between water and energy, and ultimately generating added value.”
Doug Aitken’s presentation, which closed the seminar, focused on water efficiency in the mining industry and the benefits of moving towards a shared water supply infrastructure in mining areas.
The executive director of SMI ICE Chile referred to the complex global context facing the mining industry, because of climate change, drought and greater social and environmental conflicts. “This complexity goes hand in hand with the great challenge posed by the energy transition, with a projected 400% increase in demand for critical minerals over the next 15 years,” he said. “That is why, through SMI-ICE-Chile, we want to support very valuable initiatives such as the Water Transformation Program of the Coquimbo Region, which is being led by Claudio Reyes Hurtado with the support of Corfo.”
In his presentation, Doug Aitken mentioned several challenges facing mining in relation to the use of water resources: the reduction of the volume of water used, both continental and sea; the tendency towards more effective governance frameworks that support access to water for all users at reasonable costs; and the transition from competition for resources to cooperation and collaborative planning.
“Currently we see an increase in the number of desalination plants that directly supply each mining operation, but that water does not reach other sectors and users in the region,” he explained. “It is a very high infrastructure cost, and we are also losing opportunities to collaborate between water users.”
In this context, he mentioned that it is a challenge that the Center has been addressing for several years, and that materialized in the development of an integrated water supply systems tool for the Atacama Region, a project carried out in collaboration with MCI, the subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corporation.
“A similar development is currently being studied for the Antofagasta Region and we are evaluating doing it in other regions of Chile, such as Tarapacá and Coquimbo. It is a system that requires collaboration and coordination between users and authorities, but that allows for better planning of economic and environmental costs, leading to greater efficiency and fewer conflicts over water,” he explained.
Regarding Chile’s relationship with Australia in terms of water productivity, he raised several common lessons. “Both countries have an important mining industry and also suffer from water scarcity. We need to take advantage of these similar conditions and that is why we find this initiative that seeks to bring together the knowledge and experience of both countries in water matters very interesting.
“Future conditions are very difficult to predict with certainty,” he stressed. “However, it is crucial to prepare for extreme scenarios, such as floods and prolonged droughts, by learning from the experiences of both countries, from what has worked and what has not. There are interesting areas of common ground and exchange in terms of the development of large-scale hydrological and hydrogeological models, innovations in mining to reduce water use, and resilience to the impacts of climate change.”
