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Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 11:10:37 -0700
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From: Lori Pottinger <lori@irn.org>
Subject: Water conflict in Time/LS
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Pretty good article, from Time (Europe).
"We must rethink water management," says Gleick. "We
no longer live in an
era, or a world, in which rivers can be endlessly
dammed, aquifers relentlessly
pumped, ecosystems degraded and impoverished ... We
have to focus on how
we use water. That's where new water will be 'found.' "
May 7, 2001 Vol. 157 No. 18
Dried Out:
Floods inundate some parts of the world, while others are parched. Managing our
water is a 21st century challenge
BY MARYANN BIRD
Water, not oil, is the most precious fluid in our
lives, the substance from
which all life on the earth has sprung and continues
to depend. If we run short
of oil and other fossil fuels, we can use alternative
energy sources. If we
have no clean, drinkable water, we are doomed. As the
6 billion passengers
aboard Spaceship Earth enter a complex new century,
few issues are as
fundamental as water. We are falling far short of the
most basic
humanitarian goals: sufficient and affordable clean
water, food and energy
for everyone. "I cannot bear to watch the nations
cry," wrote Derek Walcott,
the Caribbean-born Nobel laureate, whose poetry often
reflects his African
heritage. With regional disputes over water resources
increasing, and people
and ecosystems alike facing urgent, immense
challenges, business as usual is
not a viable option.
On a planet that is 71% water, less than 3% of it is
fresh. Most of that is
either in the form of ice and snow in Greenland and
Antarctica or in deep
groundwater aquifers. And less than 1% of that water
- .01% of all the
earth's water - is considered available for human
needs; even then, much of
it is far from large populations. At the dawn of the
21st century, more than
1 billion people do not have access to safe drinking
water. Some 2.4 billion -
40% of the world's population - lack adequate
sanitation, and 3.4 million die
each year from water-related diseases.
The global governmental neglect behind those numbers
is "the most critical
failure of the 20th century" and the major challenge
for the 21st, contends
Peter Gleick, one of the world's leading experts on
freshwater resources.
"Governments, ngos and local communities must address
this problem first -
as their top priority," says Gleick, director of the
California-based Pacific
Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and
Security. "There are
many tools for doing so, and the economic costs are
not high compared to
the costs of failing to meet these needs."
"We are facing a world water gap right now, this
minute," the World
Commission on Water has warned, "and the crisis will
only get worse. The
consequences of failing to bridge the gap will be
higher food prices and
expensive food imports for water-scarce countries
that are predominantly
poor." Hunger and thirst are also linked to political
instability and low rates of
economic growth.
Scientists, water professionals, environmental
campaigners and others have
warned for decades that a water crisis was building -
alarm bells that rang
on many a deaf governmental ear. The crisis is partly
due to natural cycles of
extreme weather and the expansion and contraction of
arid regions. But
human activity has been playing an ever-greater role
in creating water
scarcity and "water stress" - defined as the
indication that there is not
enough good-quality water to meet human and
environmental needs. Like so
much of the earth's bounty, water is unevenly
distributed. While people in
some parts of the world pile up sandbags to control
seasonal floods or
struggle to dry out after severe storms, others
either shrivel and die - like
their crops and their livestock before them - or move
on as environmental
refugees. In Canada - which has about the same amount
of water as China
but less than 2.5% of its population - the resource
has been labeled "blue
gold." In parched Botswana, dominated by the Kalahari
Desert, water is so
precious that the national currency is called pula -
"rain" in the Setswana
language.
The planet is not actually running out of water, of
course. But its people are
having an increasingly difficult time managing,
allocating and protecting the
water that exists. In some areas the hydrological
cycle - by which the fresh
water of rain and snow eventually evaporates,
condenses in clouds and falls
again - may be taking longer to complete as humans
use water faster than
nature can renew it. As governments, international
agencies and local
officials grapple with the situation, research
findings and conflicts over water
rights illustrate the immensity of the task. For example:
* The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization
estimates that 792 million
people in 98 developing nations still are not getting
sufficient food to lead
normal, healthy lives. Even in the industrialized
world and in post-Soviet
"countries in transition," 34 million people remain
undernourished. In the
Commonwealth of Independent States, the prevalence of
undernourishment is
greatest in Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and
Armenia, while in Central
Europe, Bulgaria is considered the worst case. In the
Middle East and North
Africa, Yemen, Morocco and Iraq are among the worst off.
* Asia and the Pacific have more chronically hungry
people than elsewhere,
says the FAO, but the "depth of hunger" - a
calculation based on what
energy they get from their food and the minimum
energy needed to maintain
body weight - is greatest in sub-Saharan Africa, home
to some of the
world's poorest countries. There, some 186 million
people - more than a
third of the population - are considered undernourished.
* In many sub-Saharan countries, according to a
report by the World Water
Council, the average per capita water-use rates are
10 to 20 liters a day,
which it calls "undesirably low." By contrast, per
capita residential use in
Europe runs as high as about 200 liters. Beset by
agricultural failure, fragile
ecosystems, erratic weather, war and other factors,
18 sub-Saharan
countries face the severest problems in feeding their
people, says the FAO.
* Disputes over water - including threats of "water
wars" - bubble in areas
where rainfall is sparse. Ignoring Israeli
opposition, Lebanon began pumping
water in late March from the Hasbani River, which
flows into the Jordan. The
village of Wazzani, which had been without water
during two decades of Israeli
occupation, views access to the river as a matter of
simple rights as well as
a symbol of sovereignty. Other current disputes
involve Turkey, Syria and
Iraq (the Euphrates); Israel and Syria (the Sea of
Galilee); Israel, Jordan and
the Palestinian Authority (the Jordan); Egypt, Sudan,
Ethiopia and others (the
Nile); Senegal and Mauritania (the Senegal); and Iran
and Afghanistan (the Helmand).
* In some places, water that is shared by nations has
been poisoned -
sometimes accidentally, as in last year's Romanian
cyanide spill in the Tisza
and Danube Rivers, and sometimes naturally, as in
arsenic poisoning of
groundwater in India and Bangladesh in recent years.
More than 200 river
basins are shared, and about half of them are in
Europe and Africa, according
to the Pacific Institute. Nineteen basins are shared
by more than five political
entities, led by the Danube with 17.
As a 21st century issue, freshwater scarcity was
ranked second only to
global warming in an International Council for
Science survey of environmental
experts in more than 50 countries. Next on the list
were the related topics of
desertification and deforestation. Desertification is
a feature of every
continent, and it seriously threatens the livelihoods
of more than 1.2 billion
people in more than 110 countries. Stemming from a
variety of factors -
including climactic variations, overgrazing of
livestock, tilling land unsuitable
for agriculture and chopping trees for firewood -
desertification has made
its greatest impact in Africa. The continent is
two-thirds desert or fragile
dryland, and nearly three-quarters of its extensive
agricultural drylands are
degraded to some degree.
"There is a great deal of natural rhythm in all of
these shifts," says Vaclav
Smil, professor of geography at Canada's University
of Manitoba and an
expert on environmental and energy matters. But he
says better farming
practices can help: "recycling crop residues,
planting leguminous cover crops
[plants with seeds in pods], planting trees
everywhere." Smil also believes
that even the poorest people should be charged for
their water - "as much
as they can bear" - to help ensure both efficient use
and quality systems.
"Otherwise they will waste as much as anybody else."
While much of the focus is on Africa, developed but
semiarid European
countries along the northern Mediterranean also are
suffering from
desertification and deforestation. Much of the soil
of Greece, Italy, Spain and
Portugal has become saline and sterile as a result of
fire, drought, floods,
overgrazing, overtilling and other factors. Such
degradation can be
irreversible. As industry, tourism and farming place
greater stress on
coastal areas in particular - and groundwater levels
decline - "water wars"
are becoming internal. Hundreds of thousands of
Spaniards recently took to
the streets of Madrid and Barcelona to protest
government plans to divert
the country's largest river, the Ebro, to supply
water to the southeast.
Marcelino Iglesias, president of the regional
government in northeastern
Arag?n, through which the Ebro flows, has denounced
the plan as "aiming at
an absolutely unsustainable model of development ...
while consolidating a
second-class Spain in the interior."
Indeed, dams and irrigation are two of the most
controversial aspects of the
global water debate and are being examined ever more
critically. The final
report of the World Commission on Dams concluded that
while dams have
delivered significant benefits, the price paid - in
cost, environmental impact
and displacement of people - has in many cases been
unacceptable and often
unnecessary. The report found "far greater scope" for
alternatives to dams
in meeting water, food and energy needs. "We excluded
only one development
option - inaction," says the commission chairman,
Kader Asmal, a former
South African Minister of Water Affairs.
"We must rethink water management," says Gleick. "We
no longer live in an
era, or a world, in which rivers can be endlessly
dammed, aquifers relentlessly
pumped, ecosystems degraded and impoverished ... We
have to focus on how
we use water. That's where new water will be 'found.' "
As the world begins to address the situation more
seriously, a range of
proposals, old and new, are coming to the fore. They
include: reducing waste
in irrigation (providing more drip to the drop);
desalinating (where energy
sources and funds permit, as in Saudi Arabia);
recycling; making appropriate
local choices of crops and grain-fed animals (growing
corn rather than wheat
in areas where water is not plentiful, raising
chickens rather than pigs);
employing low-cost chlorination and solar
disinfectant techniques; increasing
water "harvesting" - from sources like rain and fog -
for agricultural use,
particularly at village level; and transportation of
potable water in giant
polyurethane bags to dry areas (as has been done in
Cyprus and the Greek
islands for years).
Access to adequate, unpolluted water is increasingly
being viewed in
development circles as a basic human right, something
that governments
must ensure. As Mary Robinson, the U.N. High
Commissioner for Human
Rights, told the dam commission: "In an age of
globalization, greater efforts
can and must be made to reconcile the need for
economic growth with the
need to protect the dignity of individuals, the
cultural heritage of
communities and the health of the environment we all
share." For billions of
people, that - like water itself - is a matter of
life and death.
--
--
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
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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