Becoming a 2024-25 Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow is already reshaping and expanding my professional perspectives. To be sincere, before being notified about my acceptance into this program, I had never thought about the chance of being funded to spend 10 months in the northern neighboring country to specifically focus on building networks with U.S. scholars, governmental agencies and organizations, in the areas of natural resources, environment and climate change.

Structuring Speech for Maximum Impact

In October, the UC Davis Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow cohort joined the list of 142 Humphrey Fellows from 92 countries at the Global Leadership Forum (GLF) in Washington, D.C. Just the opportunity to fly all the way to the East Coast was the cherry on top of the cake.

Fifteen days before the event, I was selected as a speaker for the “Humphreys Perspectives Panel: Ensuring Sustainable Environments,” for which I decided to speak about the role that groundwater plays in our global freshwater sources. 

The panel gathered three current Humphrey Fellows representatives from Pakistan (hosted at MIT), Central Africa (hosted at Cornell University) and Mexico (me, hosted at UC Davis). My speech attempted to catch the audience’s attention with fascinating and interesting data and its relation to known global issues to finally turn to my main point of interest: the increased vulnerability of the subterranean aquatic environments in my region, the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. 

One accurate picture of underwater caves describes them as windows to our hidden underground water systems. Simple as it sounds, the image does not express the implied difficulties of building education about the values of our subterranean environments.

I had seven minutes to talk about caves and cenotes (a natural pit or sinkhole resulting when a collapse of limestone bedrock exposes groundwater) as environments of public interest in my region and to emphasize the importance of their inclusion in the discussions of two major issues of global interest: 

• Freshwater source security in the context of climate change 
• The urgent need for co-creating better-informed solutions for development and ecosystem management 

I also used my time to summarize the challenges of preserving environments that are not visible and even less understood (exemplary victims of "out of sight, out of mind") and to open opportunities for collaboration and dialogue with other Hubert H. Humphrey Fellows.

What the Data Tells Us About Groundwater

With almost 2.5 billion people worldwide depending solely on groundwater to satisfy their basic daily water needs–the numbers grow when taking into account drinking water and water for irrigation, where groundwater accounts for almost 50% of the global needs (United Nations, 2022). 

At first sight, it might not be clearly evident, but groundwater sustains below and above-ground ecology, which is intimately tied to our human survival. The so-called groundwater-dependant ecosystems (GDEs) include springs, blue holes and caves but also other surface environments such as rivers, lakes and wetlands, and even, in a third grade of connectivity, forests and woodlands (Eamus et. al., 2006). 

The concept of GDEs has certainly helped to clarify this connection between groundwater and the surface space on Earth. But calling to preserve the ecological integrity of groundwater environments remains a challenge when it touches broader human interests like for example, the overexploitation of groundwater sources for agriculture, mining, and other large-scale industries. 

Today, Asia and North America, for example, demand the use of about 3.5 times the actual volume of aquifers to sustain their human population and GDE services (Gleeson et. al., 2012).

A recent review paper of 66 authors (Saccò, M., et. al. 2023) pinpointed the fact that groundwater environments have been constantly overlooked in global conservation discussions and climate change agendas. 

It is true that the underground space has been highlighted for its cultural, scientific and aesthetic values. For a long time, its well preserved natural archives have been useful to study the human past and the Earth's paleo-environmental conditions. Also known is that subterranean voids host key unique ecosystems for the survival of endemic taxons. But to really move into the realm of conservation in practice, there is still much to do beyond the sole recognition of its existence. 

Sánchez-Férnadez et. al. (2022), have stated that in the current lack of true knowledge about how much of Earth is covered by subterranean biomes, a good estimate from their study is that it can correspond to 19% of the terrestrial surface. But the most shocking number in terms of how far we are from ensuring a future for these environments, is that less than 7% of the world’s subterranean ecosystems are under an official designation of protected areas. 

I have brought up these numbers to make my point about how important it was to speak for the subterranean environments in an international forum and have the opportunity to express my willingness to engage in international collaboration networks. 

 

 

 

 

There is so much work needed in developing better management practices and protocols for these frequently disregarded environments, and a good start would be to include them in the agendas of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation, SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, SDG 13: Climate Action and SDG 15: Life on Land.

For more information regarding the multiple values of the subterranean environments and their relationship with the UN SDGs, a good resource to start is The International Union of Speleology (IUS). The IUS, in cooperation with the Slovenian National Commission for UNESCO, is actively promoting the establishment of the International Day of Caves and Karst (September 13).

Preparing for Success

It was an honor to represent my country in this international event full of conferences, workshops, panels and sessions led by U.S. governmental agencies, NGOs, research entities, the 2024-25 cohort of Humphrey Fellows and Humphrey Alumni.

I will always remember with enormous gratitude all the people who supported my preparation as a speaker. 

With a seven-minute time limit, you can imagine how important it was to commit to long hours of practice, to receive and accept suggestions from different listeners, and to choose the right words for emphasis. 

A big thanks goes to my highly esteemed program partners, host family, communication experts and faculty members at UC Davis, all of whom made me feel confident, prepared and excited to speak to an international group of professionals gathered just two blocks from the White House. 

The experience of a very supportive process, more than the output, will always remain in my memory as the best part of my GLF experience and of my first-ever visit to the capital of the United States of America.

References

Eamus, D., Froend, R., Loomes, R., Hose, G. & Murray, B. (2006). A functional methodology for determining the groundwater regime needed to maintain the health of groundwater-dependent vegetation. Australian Journal of Botany, 54(2), 97–114.

Gleeson, T., Wada, Y., Bierkens, M. F., & Van Beek, L. P. (2012). Water balance of global aquifers revealed by groundwater footprint. Nature, 488(7410), 197–200. 

Saccò, M., Mammola, S., Altermatt, F., Alther, R., Bolpagni, R., Brancelj, A., Brankovits, D., Fišer, C., Gerovasileiou, V., Griebler, C., Guareschi, S., Hose, G. C., Korbel, K., Lictevout, E., Malard, F., Martínez, A., Niemiller, M. L., Robertson, A., Tanalgo, K. C., Bichuette, M. E., … Reinecke, R. (2023). Groundwater is a hidden global keystone ecosystem. Global change biology, 30(1), e17066. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.17066

Sánchez-Fernández, D., Galassi, D. M., Wynne, J. J., Cardoso, P., & Mammola, S. (2021). Don't forget subterranean ecosystems in climate change agendas. Nature Climate Change, 11(6), 458–459.

United Nations. (2022). The United Nations World Water Development Report 2022: groundwater: Making the invisible visible. UNESCO.