[environment] 50 aspects of the coming water scarcity
When you're thirsty, what do you do? Reach for a can of coke, reach for a beer, pour a mineral water from a plastic bottle or go to the tap and pour yourself a glass? If you can even countenance doing the last one, then you're blessed, as you'll see from the rest of this article.
We’ve been concentrating on oil as the major source of immense political power but so far have skipped over another resource with the potential to be equally political – albeit further down the track, once oil dwindles - water. Becasue it's down the track, the tendency is to shelve it for now.
The diagram above may be too small to see clearly but red indicates physical scarcity, brown – economic scarcity, blue – little or no scarcity and white not estimated and is a projection, based on a number of studies on the situation vis a vis water by 2025.
This summary of 50 main water facts have been shorn of surrounding language and presented in point form :
1 By 2025, 1.8 billion people will live in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity.
2 By 2025, these countries will be joined by Pakistan, South Africa, and large parts of India and China. This means that they will not have sufficient water resources to maintain their current level of per capita food production from irrigated agriculture—even at high levels of irrigation efficiency—and also to meet reasonable water needs for domestic, industrial, and environmental purposes.
3 To sustain their needs, water will have to be transferred out of agriculture into other sectors, making these countries or regions increasingly dependent on imported food.
4 The remainder of the 118 countries included in the study theoretically have sufficient water resources to meet their needs. But many of them will have to develop their water supplies by 25 percent or more.
5 This will mean embarking on large and expensive water-development projects. For many countries, specifically in sub-Saharan Africa, it will be difficult to mobilize the necessary financial and other resources to achieve this goal.
6 PODIUM predictions show that, by 2025, 33%, or some 2 billion people, will live in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity.
7 All of these absolute water-scarce countries, except South Africa, will have to import a substantial portion of their cereal consumption.
8 Also by 2025, some 45% of the population of these countries—roughly 2.7 billion people _ will live in areas whose water resources must be developed by at least 25%.
9 The analysis also shows that overall, these 45 countries will have a 2% surplus of cereal production in 2025, after their food needs have been met.
10 Globally, IWMI predicts that, to meet the 2025 water needs, the world must develop 22% more primary water supply.
11 The irrigation sector—by far the largest water user today—will still account for 69% of the total primary water supply. To meet food needs, the primary water supply to irrigation must be increased by 17%.
12 IWMI's conclusion is that, while the world must continue investing in water development projects to meet future food demands, investments in research to improve crop water productivity could be a cost-effective means to limit the requirement for new dams.
13 Drought often conspires with man-made disasters. Macedonia Afghanistan with locusts
14 Unsustainable urbanization, desertification, exploding populations, and economic growth, especially of water-intensive industries, such as microprocessor, all are pressurizing the water supply.
15 Governments are reacting late, hesitantly, and haltingly.
16 Water conservation, desalination, water rights exchanges, water pacts, private-public partnerships, and privatization of utilities (e.g., in Argentina and the UK) - too little, too late.
17 According to the World Bank, close to $600 billion will be needed by 2010 just to augment existing reserves and to improve water grade levels.
18 The UNDP believes that half the population in Africa will be subject to wrenching water shortages in 25 years.
19 The environmental research institute, Worldwatch, quoted by the BBC, recommends food imports as a way to economize on water.
20 It takes 1000 tons of water to produce 1 ton of grain and agriculture consumes almost 70 percent of the world's water - though only less than 30 percent in OECD countries.
21 Some precipitation-poor countries even grow cotton and rice, both insatiable crops.
22 By 2020, says the World Water Council, we will be short 17 percent of the water that would be needed to feed the population.
23 The USA withdraws one fifth of its total resources annually - proportionately, one half of Belgium's drawdown.
24 According to the OECD, Americans used more than double the OECD's average in the 1990's.
25 Britain and Denmark reduced their utilization by 20 percent between 1980 and 1996 - probably due to sharp and ominous drops in their water tables.
26 May 14, 2002 - Mexico and the USA are in the throes of a conflict over Mexico's "failure to live up to its water supply commitments under a 1944 treaty", which allocates water from the Colorado, Rio Concho, and Rio Grande among the two signatories.
27 Mexico seems to have accumulated a daunting debt of 1.5 million acre-feet between 1994-2002 - the result of a decade long drought. Each acre-foot is c. 1.2 million liters. Mexico's reservoirs are less than 25 percent full.
28 What water there is, though, has been used to transform its borderland into a major producer of fresh vegetables for the American market - at the expense of Texas farmers.
29 Every year, according to the World Bank, the amount of water polluted equals the quantity of water consumed. In many parts of the world, notably in Africa, people walk for hours to obtain their contaminated daily water rations.
30 The water table beneath China's fertile northern plane is falling by 1.5 meters a year.
31 The Mekong River, which flows from China to Vietnam, is being obstructed by 7 Chinese dams under construction. Once completed, its flow will be reduced by half. Close to 200 million people in seven countries will be affected.
32 The diversion of Snowy River Australia inland led to massive salinization of the lands irrigated - Australia's bread basket. Many of the tributaries are now unfit for either irrigation or drinking.
33 In India, the holy river, Ganges, is depleted and impregnated with poisonous arsenic.
34 Egypt and the encroaching Sudan and Ethiopia are at loggerheads since the Nile Basin Initiative has been signed in 1993.
35 Turkey is constructing more than two dozen dams on the Tigris and Euphrates within the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP). Once completed, Turkey will have the option to deprive both Syria and Iraq of their main sources of water, though it vowed not to do so.
36 Iraq's rivers have decreased in volume by half.
37 Israel controls the Kinneret Sea of Galilee. It is the source of one third of its water consumption. The rest it pumps from rivers in the region, to the vocal dismay of Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.
38 Israelis consume 4-6 times the water consumption of their Palestinian and Arab neighbors.
39 "The Economist" claims that:
"The argument over Syria's water rights to the Sea of Galilee is now the only real stumbling-block to a peace treaty between Syria and Israel … the Sea of Galilee supplying more than 40% of its drinking water."
40 The Amu Darya and Syr Darya, feeding the Aral Sea, was diverted to grow cotton in the desert and is now a series of toxic patches on a wasteland of salt.
41 Zambezi River floods have devastated countries in its path, after Zimbabwe opened the gates of the Kariba dam on March 2000. The countries of West Africa, from Ghana to Mali are "one river states". Their fortunes rise and fall with the flow and ebb of waterways.
42 A single chemical spill in Romania on January 31, 2000 devastated the entire Tisa River which runs through Yugoslavia and Hungary. When this reached the Danube the West woke up.
43 Catalonia in Spain is contemplating diverting water from the river Rhone in France to Barcelona. A five years old government plan to redistribute water from rain-drenched regions to the arid 60 percent of Spain meets with stiff domestic resistance.
44 The Ogallala aquifer in the USA, its largest, has been depleted to near oblivion. The BBC estimates that it lost the equivalent of 18 Colorado rivers by 2000.
45 Cochabamba in Bolivia is now a dust bowl.
46 Singapore, decided in November 2001 to purchase water from private sector suppliers who will be required to build one or more desalination plants, capable of providing it with 10% of its annual consumption.
47 Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have control of the richer Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan by cutting them off from the rivers. This results in cheap supplies of gas, coal, and agricultural products.
48 Turkmenistan decided to divert water from the catchment basin of one of the rivers - the Amu Darya - to a $6 billion artificial lake. This inane project is comparable only to China's much-disputed Three Gorges Dam.
49 The Hague Ministerial Declaration led to the establishment of the 'World Water Assessment Program' and UNESCO's 'From Potential Conflict to Cooperation Potential' (PC to CP) which 'addresses more specifically the challenge of sharing water resources primarily from the point of view of governments, and develops decision-making and conflict prevention tools for the future'."
50 The International Water Management Institute says that most countries in the Middle East and North Africa can be classified as having absolute water scarcity already today.
Frederick Frey, of the University of Pennsylvania, says:
"Water has four primary characteristics of political importance: extreme importance, scarcity, mal-distribution, and being shared."
As water becomes more scarce, market solutions are bound to emerge. Water is heavily subsidized and, as a direct result, atrociously wasted. More realistic pricing would do wonders on the demand side. Water rights are already traded electronically in the USA. Private utilities and water markets are the next logical step.
Water recycling is another feasible alternative. Despite unmanageable financial problems and laughable prices, the municipality of Moscow maintains enormous treatment plants and re-uses most of its water.
Water scarcity causes dislocation, ethnic tension, impoverishment, social anomy, and a host of other ills. Whether it causes war is another question. Oil, famine and national interest also plays a part in the war equation.
But rising tension is something which cannot be dismissed and just how far this goes is in the realm of speculation.
Sources:
Sam Vaknin, The Emerging Water Wars
International Water Management Institute
The diagram above may be too small to see clearly but red indicates physical scarcity, brown – economic scarcity, blue – little or no scarcity and white not estimated and is a projection, based on a number of studies on the situation vis a vis water by 2025.
This summary of 50 main water facts have been shorn of surrounding language and presented in point form :
1 By 2025, 1.8 billion people will live in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity.
2 By 2025, these countries will be joined by Pakistan, South Africa, and large parts of India and China. This means that they will not have sufficient water resources to maintain their current level of per capita food production from irrigated agriculture—even at high levels of irrigation efficiency—and also to meet reasonable water needs for domestic, industrial, and environmental purposes.
3 To sustain their needs, water will have to be transferred out of agriculture into other sectors, making these countries or regions increasingly dependent on imported food.
4 The remainder of the 118 countries included in the study theoretically have sufficient water resources to meet their needs. But many of them will have to develop their water supplies by 25 percent or more.
5 This will mean embarking on large and expensive water-development projects. For many countries, specifically in sub-Saharan Africa, it will be difficult to mobilize the necessary financial and other resources to achieve this goal.
6 PODIUM predictions show that, by 2025, 33%, or some 2 billion people, will live in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity.
7 All of these absolute water-scarce countries, except South Africa, will have to import a substantial portion of their cereal consumption.
8 Also by 2025, some 45% of the population of these countries—roughly 2.7 billion people _ will live in areas whose water resources must be developed by at least 25%.
9 The analysis also shows that overall, these 45 countries will have a 2% surplus of cereal production in 2025, after their food needs have been met.
10 Globally, IWMI predicts that, to meet the 2025 water needs, the world must develop 22% more primary water supply.
11 The irrigation sector—by far the largest water user today—will still account for 69% of the total primary water supply. To meet food needs, the primary water supply to irrigation must be increased by 17%.
12 IWMI's conclusion is that, while the world must continue investing in water development projects to meet future food demands, investments in research to improve crop water productivity could be a cost-effective means to limit the requirement for new dams.
13 Drought often conspires with man-made disasters. Macedonia Afghanistan with locusts
14 Unsustainable urbanization, desertification, exploding populations, and economic growth, especially of water-intensive industries, such as microprocessor, all are pressurizing the water supply.
15 Governments are reacting late, hesitantly, and haltingly.
16 Water conservation, desalination, water rights exchanges, water pacts, private-public partnerships, and privatization of utilities (e.g., in Argentina and the UK) - too little, too late.
17 According to the World Bank, close to $600 billion will be needed by 2010 just to augment existing reserves and to improve water grade levels.
18 The UNDP believes that half the population in Africa will be subject to wrenching water shortages in 25 years.
19 The environmental research institute, Worldwatch, quoted by the BBC, recommends food imports as a way to economize on water.
20 It takes 1000 tons of water to produce 1 ton of grain and agriculture consumes almost 70 percent of the world's water - though only less than 30 percent in OECD countries.
21 Some precipitation-poor countries even grow cotton and rice, both insatiable crops.
22 By 2020, says the World Water Council, we will be short 17 percent of the water that would be needed to feed the population.
23 The USA withdraws one fifth of its total resources annually - proportionately, one half of Belgium's drawdown.
24 According to the OECD, Americans used more than double the OECD's average in the 1990's.
25 Britain and Denmark reduced their utilization by 20 percent between 1980 and 1996 - probably due to sharp and ominous drops in their water tables.
26 May 14, 2002 - Mexico and the USA are in the throes of a conflict over Mexico's "failure to live up to its water supply commitments under a 1944 treaty", which allocates water from the Colorado, Rio Concho, and Rio Grande among the two signatories.
27 Mexico seems to have accumulated a daunting debt of 1.5 million acre-feet between 1994-2002 - the result of a decade long drought. Each acre-foot is c. 1.2 million liters. Mexico's reservoirs are less than 25 percent full.
28 What water there is, though, has been used to transform its borderland into a major producer of fresh vegetables for the American market - at the expense of Texas farmers.
29 Every year, according to the World Bank, the amount of water polluted equals the quantity of water consumed. In many parts of the world, notably in Africa, people walk for hours to obtain their contaminated daily water rations.
30 The water table beneath China's fertile northern plane is falling by 1.5 meters a year.
31 The Mekong River, which flows from China to Vietnam, is being obstructed by 7 Chinese dams under construction. Once completed, its flow will be reduced by half. Close to 200 million people in seven countries will be affected.
32 The diversion of Snowy River Australia inland led to massive salinization of the lands irrigated - Australia's bread basket. Many of the tributaries are now unfit for either irrigation or drinking.
33 In India, the holy river, Ganges, is depleted and impregnated with poisonous arsenic.
34 Egypt and the encroaching Sudan and Ethiopia are at loggerheads since the Nile Basin Initiative has been signed in 1993.
35 Turkey is constructing more than two dozen dams on the Tigris and Euphrates within the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP). Once completed, Turkey will have the option to deprive both Syria and Iraq of their main sources of water, though it vowed not to do so.
36 Iraq's rivers have decreased in volume by half.
37 Israel controls the Kinneret Sea of Galilee. It is the source of one third of its water consumption. The rest it pumps from rivers in the region, to the vocal dismay of Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.
38 Israelis consume 4-6 times the water consumption of their Palestinian and Arab neighbors.
39 "The Economist" claims that:
"The argument over Syria's water rights to the Sea of Galilee is now the only real stumbling-block to a peace treaty between Syria and Israel … the Sea of Galilee supplying more than 40% of its drinking water."
40 The Amu Darya and Syr Darya, feeding the Aral Sea, was diverted to grow cotton in the desert and is now a series of toxic patches on a wasteland of salt.
41 Zambezi River floods have devastated countries in its path, after Zimbabwe opened the gates of the Kariba dam on March 2000. The countries of West Africa, from Ghana to Mali are "one river states". Their fortunes rise and fall with the flow and ebb of waterways.
42 A single chemical spill in Romania on January 31, 2000 devastated the entire Tisa River which runs through Yugoslavia and Hungary. When this reached the Danube the West woke up.
43 Catalonia in Spain is contemplating diverting water from the river Rhone in France to Barcelona. A five years old government plan to redistribute water from rain-drenched regions to the arid 60 percent of Spain meets with stiff domestic resistance.
44 The Ogallala aquifer in the USA, its largest, has been depleted to near oblivion. The BBC estimates that it lost the equivalent of 18 Colorado rivers by 2000.
45 Cochabamba in Bolivia is now a dust bowl.
46 Singapore, decided in November 2001 to purchase water from private sector suppliers who will be required to build one or more desalination plants, capable of providing it with 10% of its annual consumption.
47 Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have control of the richer Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan by cutting them off from the rivers. This results in cheap supplies of gas, coal, and agricultural products.
48 Turkmenistan decided to divert water from the catchment basin of one of the rivers - the Amu Darya - to a $6 billion artificial lake. This inane project is comparable only to China's much-disputed Three Gorges Dam.
49 The Hague Ministerial Declaration led to the establishment of the 'World Water Assessment Program' and UNESCO's 'From Potential Conflict to Cooperation Potential' (PC to CP) which 'addresses more specifically the challenge of sharing water resources primarily from the point of view of governments, and develops decision-making and conflict prevention tools for the future'."
50 The International Water Management Institute says that most countries in the Middle East and North Africa can be classified as having absolute water scarcity already today.
Frederick Frey, of the University of Pennsylvania, says:
"Water has four primary characteristics of political importance: extreme importance, scarcity, mal-distribution, and being shared."
As water becomes more scarce, market solutions are bound to emerge. Water is heavily subsidized and, as a direct result, atrociously wasted. More realistic pricing would do wonders on the demand side. Water rights are already traded electronically in the USA. Private utilities and water markets are the next logical step.
Water recycling is another feasible alternative. Despite unmanageable financial problems and laughable prices, the municipality of Moscow maintains enormous treatment plants and re-uses most of its water.
Water scarcity causes dislocation, ethnic tension, impoverishment, social anomy, and a host of other ills. Whether it causes war is another question. Oil, famine and national interest also plays a part in the war equation.
But rising tension is something which cannot be dismissed and just how far this goes is in the realm of speculation.
Sources:
Sam Vaknin, The Emerging Water Wars
International Water Management Institute
posted by James Higham @ 07:27
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