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DAM-L World water predictions paint bleak picture for poor/LS (fwd)
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Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2001 10:22:49 -0700
To: irn-safrica@netvista.net
From: Lori Pottinger <lori@irn.org>
Subject: World water predictions paint bleak picture for poor/LS
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Business Report 20/8/01
World water predictions paint a bleak picture for rural and urban poor
August 19 2001 at 09:36AM
A worldwide water shortage is set to worsen significantly over the next 25
years with billions of people affected by an unprecedented global crisis
affecting the earth's most precious natural resource.
As agriculturalists and environmentalists from around the world gather at
the Stockholm Water Symposium this week, the latest predictions on fresh
water availability portray a bleak future for the children of today.
Already about 450 million people in 29 countries face serious water
shortages affecting both the wealthiest and poorest nations whose expanding
economies and populations are chasing fewer sources of fresh water.
"If current trends continue, the shortage of water will extend well beyond
the semi-arid and arid regions," says Frank Rijsberman, the director-general
of the International Water Management Institute, which helped to organise
the Stockholm summit.
"The expanding demand for water will drain some of the world's major rivers,
leaving them dry throughout most of the year.
"Urban centres will experience severe water shortages. But the rural poor
will suffer the most serious consequences. Many already lack access to
potable water and to the quantity and quality of water needed to grow food
and generate income," he says.
The Stockholm meeting is one of several planned before the World Water Forum
in Kyoto in 2003. The aim is to produce a consensus between the leading
international bodies on food, agriculture and the environment.
The growing water crisis has become steadily worse over recent decades as
more land is swallowed up for farming and irrigation and growing populations
produce more water-borne pollution.
Agricultural scientists say that irrigated farmland has to expand by up to
20 percent over the next 25 years to feed a rising population.
However, environmental scientists have warned that water consumption has to
fall by at least 10 percent on current levels in order to protect rivers,
lakes and wetlands.
The crisis will be made worse because what little fresh water there is, it
is becoming polluted with industrial effluent and a rise in waterborne
diseases caused by raw sewage.
The International Water Management Institute predicts that by 2025 about 2,7
billion people, a third of the world's population, will live in regions
faced by regular and severe water scarcity. Asia and sub-Saharan Africa will
be the most affected.
But already vast areas of the world face shortages of varying severity,
including the entire Mediterranean region, Pakistan, parts of India and
China, most of southern Africa, and major regions in North and South
America.
A report published earlier this year by the American Association for the
Advancement of Science found that fresh water sources are dwindling or
becoming contaminated at an unsustainable rate. The report says: "Water
with-drawals from rivers and under- ground reserves have grown by 2,5
percent to 3 percent annually since 1940, significantly ahead of population
growth.
"Water tables are falling on every continent. Shortages are having an
increasing effect on global grain markets, as arid countries that rely on
irrigation for crop production are switching to food imports.
"Irrigation causes a build-up of salts in the soil which eventually leads to
salinity levels rising to a point where crops can no longer be grown.
Farmers, if they can, then move on to pollute other land with further
irrigation schemes."
William Cosgrove, the vice-president of the World Water Council, says: "It
is clear to both sides of the debate that more irrigation cannot be the only
solution.
"In developing countries, irrigation today accounts for over 80 percent of
the water consumed, so that the debate among agriculturalists and
environmentalists on how to manage water for agriculture is of paramount
importance to the very poor."
Half the irrigated land of Asia is used to grow rice, a thirsty crop where 2
000 tons of water are needed to grow just one ton of grain. Yet by 2025,
more than half of the world's population will depend on rice as its staple
food.
Mangrove swamps in Tanzania are being cut down to make way for rice
production. But after five years the soil becomes infertile and new
mangroves have to be cut down to maintain yields.
The International Water Management Institute says: "Irrigation projects
often do not generate the benefits they promise. Irrigation schemes in the
Senegal River (Mauritania) and Waza River (Cameroon) have not met their
targets for agricultural production.
"In Mauritania, an area once teeming with bird life, researchers counted
exactly two birds in 1994. In both Mauritania and Cameroon, the local
communities, fishermen and nomadic herders bore the costs: no fish or
grazing grounds were to be found, and communities were forced to emigrate
from the flood-plain."
In parts of southeast Asia, the stories are the same. In Vietnam alone, the
area of land that is now irrigated had doubled over the past 20 years, most
of it for rice paddies.
Nearly a third of this land, however, has deteriorated to a point where
yields are diminishing.
But it is not just rice: cereal crops are also causing problems.
Ground-water levels in parts of Spain have fallen by up to five metres as a
result of farmers irrigating wheat, maize and vegetable crops. The
under-ground aquifer of La Mancha is being used at between two and three
times the rate at which it is recharged.
Cosgrove says: "We are falling increasingly behind on pollution control. In
poorer countries the money is simply not there. It can cost up to three
times as much to clean up water than it costs to find a new fresh water
source."
The result is that the imbalance between the water rich and the water poor
will only get worse. Already, the average Canadian has access to 30 times as
much fresh water as the average Chinese.
http://www.busrep.co.za/general/busrep/br_newsview.php?click_id=345&art_id=i
ol998206144432W362&set_id=60
--
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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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