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dam-l Global Water crisis/LS
Wednesday October 28, 7:04 AM
>>
>> Scientists warn of impending global water crisis
>>
>> BRUSSELS, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Two prize winning scientists warned on
>> Tuesday that world leaders would have to address highly sensitive
>> political issues in the coming 30 years to avoid bloody wars over scarce
>> water resources.
>>
>> Malin Falkenmark and David Schindler, who were awarded the 1998 Volvo
>> Environment Prize on Tuesday, warned of looming freshwater shortages as
>> population growth increased pressure on supplies that were dwindling
>> because of wastage and pollution.
>>
>> Falkenmark, professor at the Swedish Natural Science Research Council,
>> told a press conference the population of the world's cities was set to
>> rise by over 2.1 billion -- the current population of China and India
>> combined -- by 2025.
>>
>> These people would all need water but unless the factories and farms
>> created to provide them with incomes and food adopted environmentally
>> friendly practices, they would pollute the very water supplies on which
>> these people depended, she explained.
>>
>> "We can see examples of cities collapsing in the developing countries
>> because the water is no longer useable," she said.
>>
>> Schindler, professor at Canada's Alberta university, warned that
>> although the use of persistent organic pollutants like chlorine based
>> pesticides and mercury was decreasing, at least in the West, climate
>> change and depletion of the planet's protective ozone layer meant their
>> effects on water, the environment and health were actually increasing.
>>
>> Global warming, blamed on emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon
>> dioxide, was causing glaciers to melt, releasing the pollutant chemicals
>> that had built up within the ice during the 1960s and 1970s, he said.
>>
>> Falkenmark said that over the next 30 years the world needed to do
>> three things to stave off a global water crisis.
>>
>> Europe needed to be prepared to export six times more food to dry
>> developing countries with high birth rates, she said. She said her
>> research had shown that rainfall, already scarcer than in the rich
>> north, evaporated more quickly in these dry southern countries,
>> compounding their problems.
>>
>> Secondly, industry and agriculture had to stop polluting water to the
>> point that it became unuseable.
>>
>> And crucially, politicians needed to address the conflict between the
>> needs of populations living upstream of river basins and those dwelling
>> downstream. "We cannot just ignore the problem just because it is
>> politically sensitive," she said.
>>
>> Inefficient irrigation meant people living downstream of China's Yellow
>> River were deprived of water for 200 days a year, while new industries
>> set up to boost population in upstream regions were polluting what
>> resources remained.
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Lori Pottinger, Director, Southern Africa Program,
and Editor, World Rivers Review
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, California 94703, USA
Tel. (510) 848 1155 Fax (510) 848 1008
http://www.irn.org
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