by Piyaporn Hawiset
6 March 2003
Thailand was rated poorly in a United Nations survey of water quality and the ability and commitment to manage water-supply resources. According to a UN report released in late february 2003, the global water crisis will reach unprecedented levels in years to come if inertia at the political-leadership level continues. The World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP), made up of 23 UN partners headed by UNESCO and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, launched a comprehensive, up-to-date report on the situation for water as a global resource--Water for People, Water for Life.
The report said that despite widely available evidence pointing to a growing crisis, political commitment to reverse dangerous resource management trends had been lacking.
A string of international conferences over the previous 25 years focused on a great variety of related issues, including ways to provide basic water-supply and sanitation in the years ahead. Several targets had been set to improve water management, but "hardly any have been met," said the report. Many countries and territories were already in a state of crisis.
The worst-case scenario for the middle of this century predicted that as many as seven billion people in 60 countries would face a water shortage. The best-case scenario forecasts supply problems for two billion people in 48 countries, depending on factors such as population growth and national policies.
The UN report ranked 122 countries according to quality of water and ability and commitment to improve the situation. Thailand was placed 100th. The lowest-ranking nation was Belgium, which suffered from heavy industrial pollution and poor treatment of waste water, exacerbating the low quantity and quality of Belgium's groundwater.
The report also suggested that the poor would continue to be the worst affected, with 50 percent of the population in developing countries exposed to polluted water sources. Asian rivers were the most polluted in the world, the report stated, carrying three times the level of bacteria from human waste as the global average, and Asian rivers had also been shown to carry 20 times more lead than rivers in industrialised countries. Asian people were the most dirty in terms their relations with water in their countries.
Per-capital water supplies also decreased by a third between 1970 and 1990. Water availability per person per year in Thailand was 6,527 m3. The country with the highest water availability is Greenland, 10,767,857 m3 per capita per year, and the lowest Kuwait with 10 m3 per capita per year.