WORLD WATER WARS
WORLD WATER WARS
other than greenhouse news.
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Dec 30, 04: Excerpted from BBC News: A third of the world's population lives in water-stressed countries now. By 2025, this is expected to rise to two-thirds. There is more than enough water available, in total, for everyone's basic needs. The UN recommends that people need a minimum of 50 litres of water a day for drinking, washing, cooking and sanitation. In 1990, over a billion people did not have even that. Providing universal access to that minimum by 2015 would take less than 1% more than the water we use today. But we're a long way from achieving that.
. . Global water consumption rose sixfold between 1900 and 1995 --more than double the rate of population growth-- and goes on growing as farming, industry and domestic demand all increase.
. . As important as quantity is quality - with pollution increasing in some areas, the amount of useable water declines. More than five million people die from waterborne diseases each year --10 times the number killed in wars around the globe.
. . Even more will be needed if we are to feed the world's growing population --predicted to rise from about six billion today to 8.9 billion by 2050. And consumption will soar further as more people expect Western-style lifestyles and diets --one kilogram of grain-fed beef needs at least 15 cubic meters of water, while a kilo of cereals needs only up to three cubic meters.
. . But the very thing needed to raise funds to tackle water problems in poor countries --economic development-- requires yet more water to supply the agriculture and industries which drive it! . The UN-backed World Commission on Water estimated in 2000 that an additional $100bn a year would be needed to tackle water scarcity worldwide. Dams and other large-scale projects now affect 60% of the world's largest rivers and provide millions with water. But in many cases, the costs in population displacement and irreversible changes in the nearby ecosystems have been considerable.
. . Using underground supplies is another widely used solution, but it means living on capital accumulated over millennia, and depleting it faster than the interest can top it up. As groundwater is exploited, water tables in parts of China, India, West Asia, the former Soviet Union and the western United States are dropping --in India by as much as 3m a year (1999 data).
. . New technology can help by cleaning up pollution. Drought-resistant plants can also help. Drip irrigation drastically cuts the amount of water needed. Desalinisation makes sea water available, but takes huge quantities of energy and leaves vast amounts of brine.
. . Climate change will have an enormous impact. Some areas will probably benefit from increased rainfall, some will flood, and others are likely to suffer drought. Energy-needs will conflict with water-needs, in the use of dams and deep-well-pumps.
. . In any case, it is not just us who need water, but every other species that shares the planet with us - as well all the ecosystems on which we, and they, rely.
Rajasthan is India's desert state.
The 800-mile Ogallala aquifer stretches from Texas to South Dakota and provides an estimated third of all US irrigation water. In some areas, its level is dropping by .9 - 1.5 Meters (3 to 5') a year.
Mexico City is sinking because of the amount of water being pumped out from beneath its foundations. One of the largest and most populous cities in the world, it was once a lush land of lakes.
. . The city draws 80% of its water from aquifers below it, and has sunk an estimated nine meters into the soft, drained lake bed since the 1900s. 27% of the city's water is still wasted through leaks.
Lake Chad, once a huge lake straddling the borders of Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon, has shrunk by 95% since the mid 1960s. The region's climate has changed during that time, with the monsoon rains which previously replenished the lake now greatly reduced. Nine million farmers, fishermen, and herders in the region now face water shortages, crop failure, livestock deaths, collapsed fisheries, soil salinity and increasing poverty.
To Egypt in particular, the Nile is a matter of life and death, as the country has almost no other source of water. But upstream, Tanzania is building a pipeline to extract drinking water, and Ethiopia is planning to use the water for irrigation. Cairo has said that it was ready to use force to protect its access to the 7,000km-long river. Talks took place in 2004, but an agreement is yet to emerge.
The level of the Sea of Galilee has dropped in recent years, sparking fears that Israel's main reservoir will become salinated. The Palestinians --whose water supply is also controlled by Israel-- say supplies are intermittent and expensive, and that the underground aquifer which they share with Israel has become depleted and damaged through overuse. Israel has agreed to buy water from Turkey and is investigating building desalination plants.
Iraq: Drainage and irrigation schemes carried out by the government of Saddam Hussein in southern Iraq have led to the loss of an estimated 90% of one of the world's most significant wetlands. A vast network of canals has diverted water from the 20,000 square kilometers of marsh land between the Tigris and Euphrates, in places leaving nothing but salty, crusted earth behind. Turkish dams upstream are also thought to have reduced the water flow and contributed to the wetlands' fate. Most of the Marsh Arabs fled.
Turkey has spent billions of dollars in the past decades building dams to increase its water reserves and boost its hydroelectric capabilities. But just a few weeks after Turkey agreed to sell water to Israel, officials were warning of a water crisis.
. . Their new system of 22 dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, has provoked criticism from downstream neighbors Iraq and Syria.
The Aral Sea in Central Asia was once the world's fourth biggest inland sea, and one of the world's most fertile regions. But economic mismanagement has turned the area into a toxic desert. The two rivers feeding the sea, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, were diverted in a Soviet scheme to grow cotton. Between 1962 and 1994, the level of the Aral Sea fell by 16 meters. The surrounding region now has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world, and anaemia and cancers caused by chemicals blowing off the dried sea bed are common.
China is undertaking two huge projects to tackle flooding in the south and drought in the north. The Three Gorges Dam under construction on the Yangtze River aims to control flood waters and generate power. The dam will provide 10% of the country's electricity when finished. More than 600,000 have been moved to make way for a reservoir longer than Lake Michigan behind the $25bn dam.
. . In the north, all three rivers feeding China's Northern Plain are severely polluted, damaging health and limiting irrigation. The lower reaches of the Yellow River, which feeds China's most important farming region, run dry for at least 200 days every year. In the north China plain, 30 cubic kilometers more water is being pumped to the surface each year by farmers than is replaced by the rain. As groundwater is used to produce 40% of the country's grain, experts warn that water shortages could make the country dependent on grain imports. To counter this, work has begun on China's biggest ever construction project --a massive scheme to channel billions of cubic meters of water from the Yangtze to the replenish the dwindling Yellow River.
The most sacred Hindu river, the Ganges, is suffering from depletion, pollution and has been the source of a long-running dispute between India and Bangladesh.
. . The Gangorti glacier at the head of the River Ganges is retreating at a rate of 30 meters per year - experts blame climate change. Deforestation in the Himalayas has caused subsoil streams flowing into the river to dry up. Downstream, India controls the flow to Bangladesh with the Farakka Barrage, 10km on the Indian side of the border. Until the late 1990s, India used the barrage to divert the river to Calcutta to stop the city's port drying up during the dry season. This denied Bangladeshi farmers water and silt, and left the Sundarban wetlands and mangrove forests at the river's delta seriously threatened. The two countries have now signed an agreement to share the water more equally.
. . Water quality, however, remains a huge problem, with high levels of arsenic and untreated sewage in the river water.
Australia is the continent with the least rainfall, apart from Antarctica. Its two largest southern rivers, the Murray and the Darling, have been extensively dammed for power and irrigation, reducing flows to the sea by three-quarters --but providing three million people and 40% of Australia's farms with water.
. . Salt rose to the surface as the lower reaches of the Murray dried out, which destroyed prime agricultural land. Wetlands have shrunk, species numbers have dropped, and the Australian National Trust has declared the whole river an "endangered area".
. . In the east, the Snowy River was dammed and diverted to the Murray basin decades ago, to water the country's dry interior. But the ecological impact on the depleted river was so great that some flow was restored in 2002. Water extraction from the Murray river was capped in 1995 and programs to repair some of the destruction are now under way.
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