Padma PeguWater has no substitute. And this makes it the single most precious resource on Earth. So, when terms like ‘water supply’, ‘water scarcity’, and ‘water management’ start being tossed about with more frequency and urgency, there is a sense of dread. And incredulity, too, since we always held water to be a limitless resource.
As population increases and development calls for increased allocations of groundwater and surface water for the domestic, agriculture and industrial sectors, the pressure on water resources intensifies, leading to tensions, conflicts among users, and excessive pressure on the environment. The increasing stress on freshwater resources brought about by ever-rising demand and profligate use, as well as by growing pollution worldwide, is of very serious concern.
Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century, and, although there is no global water scarcity as such, an increasing number of regions are chronically short of water. The situation will be exacerbated as rapidly growing urban areas place heavy pressure on neighbouring water resources. Understandably, it is in the arid and semiarid regions affected by droughts and wide climate variability, combined with population growth and economic development, that the problems of water scarcity are most acute.
Garbage on the banks of the Ganges
Imbalances between availability and demand, the degradation of groundwater and surface water quality, inter-sectoral competition, inter-regional and international conflicts, all bring water issues to the fore. Most countries in the Near East and North Africa suffer from acute water scarcity, as do countries such as Mexico, Pakistan, South Africa, and large parts of China and India. According to a World Bank study, of the 27 Asian cities with population of over 10 lakh, Chennai and Delhi in India are ranked as the worst performing metropolitan cities in terms of water availability per day, while Mumbai is ranked as second worst performer and Kolkata fourth.
Irrigated agriculture, which represents the bulk of the demand for water in these countries, is also usually the first sector affected by water shortage and increased scarcity, resulting in a decreased capacity to maintain per-capita food production while meeting water needs for domestic, industrial, and environmental purposes. In order to sustain their needs, these countries need to focus on the efficient use of all water sources (groundwater, surface water, and rainfall) and on water allocation strategies that maximize the economic and social returns to limited water resources, and at the same time enhance the water productivity of all sectors.
In many regions, massive use of groundwater has been practised for some time for irrigation. Groundwater mining and the lack of adequate planning, legal frameworks, and governance have put a big question mark on the sustainability of the intensive use of groundwater resources. Freshwater bodies have a limited capacity to process the pollutant charges of the effluents from urban, industrial, and agricultural uses. Water quality degradation can be a major cause of water scarcity.
Today, agriculture accounts for 70 per cent of all water use globally, up to 95 per cent in several developing countries. It is estimated that 14 per cent more freshwater will need to be withdrawn for agricultural purposes in the next 30 years. Increasing the efficiency of water use and enhancing agricultural water productivity at all levels in the production chains are a priority.
According to Population Action International, based upon the UN Medium Population Projections of 1998, more than 2.8 billion people in 48 countries will face water stress, or scarcity conditions, by 2025. Of these countries, 40 are in West Asia, North Africa, or sub-Saharan Africa. By 2050, the number of countries facing water stress or scarcity could rise to 54, with a combined population of four billion people – about 40 per cent of the projected global population of 9.4 billion (Gardner-Outlaw and Engleman 1997; UNFPA 1997).
In drawing its map for ‘Projected Water Scarce or Water Stressed Countries’ in the year 2035, Population Action International has utilized the indicator of per-capita population pressure on the natural supply of freshwater, which is a measure of physical water scarcity. According to widely used measures established by hydrologist Malin Falkenmark, a country is considered ‘water scarce’ if there are less than 1,000 cubic metres of renewable freshwater available per person per year and ‘water stressed’ if there are less than 1,667 cubic metres of renewable freshwater available per person per year. Total renewable freshwater includes the amount of both internal and external renewable water available to a country. This value is then divided by 2035 medium-fertility variant population projection provided by the United Nations Population Division to produce a per-capita rate.
Many African countries, with a population of nearly 200 million people, are facing serious water shortages. By the year 2025, it is estimated that nearly 230 million Africans will be facing water scarcity, and 460 million will live in water-stressed countries (Falkenmark 1989).
Today, 31 countries, accounting for less than 8 per cent of the world’s population, face chronic freshwater shortages. Among the countries likely to run short of water in the next 25 years are Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Nigeria, and Peru. Parts of other large countries (e.g. China) already face chronic water problems (Hinrichsen et al. 1998; Tibbetts 2000).
Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have resorted to the desalinization of seawater from the Gulf. Bahrain has virtually no freshwater (Riviere 1989), while three-quarters of Saudi Arabia’s freshwater comes from fossil groundwater (Postel 1997).
Warning from Darfur
In 1995, then World Bank vice president (for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development) Ismail Serageldin made a much-quoted prediction for the new millennium: ‘If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water.’ Three years into the 21st century, the global water wars did, indeed, seem to be upon us.
The bloody conflict in Darfur, Sudan’s arid western province, that began in 2003 and killed as many as 400,000 Africans, started, in part, over access to a diminishing water supply (source: The Guardian). The relief camps
scattered around the Chad-Sudan border sheltered around two million Darfurians who were ethnically cleansed from their homes by Arab militia, the Janjaweed.
As narrated in a 2007 report by The Guardian, the transition from a state of peaceful coexistence in which the dividing line between Arab and African was meaningless, to one where people picked sides and hardened their
new sense of identity into ethnic hatred, happened in the past two decades. What changed fundamentally, the evidence suggests, was the climate. A severe drought and famine in the mid-1980s killed more than a million people, laid waste livestock herds, and led to clashes between pastoralists and farmers. The diminishing resources of land and water bred a sense of desperation that rendered cohabitation a fantastical dream.
To quote The
Guardian: ‘There is endless potential for more climate-driven conflicts all across the broad Sahel region that
stretches from Sudan to Senegal, where the competition between herder and farmer is often reinforced by more entrenched tribal differences, as well as the fault line between Muslim and Christian. In decades to come, Darfur may be seen as one of the first true climate-change wars, and those wars to come may be every bit as vicious because the adversaries will be fighting for their lives in a suddenly unfamiliar world.’
In other regions, water may also strain relations among local communities and between neighbouring countries because sharing a limited and essential resource is extremely difficult. Water is spread across geographic boundaries and, hence, it is not a simple matter to determine ownership. Because nations may share a common water supply, differences can grow over access to it, especially where it is perceived by one group that another is demanding more from the supply.
Bangladesh, which depends heavily on rivers that originate in India (they share 54 rivers), is in an unfavourable situation because India has diverted and dammed many of its water sources. The sharing of Ganga water has been one of the most disputed areas between the two countries. In Africa, relations between Botswana and Namibia are strained by Namibian plans to construct a 250-mile pipeline to divert water from the shared Okavango River, primarily to tackle droughts. Ethiopia plans to take more water from the Nile, although Egypt is heavily dependent on the river for irrigation and power. Turkish plans to build dams on the Euphrates almost led to a war with Syria in 1998. The latter accused Turkey of deliberately meddling with their water supply as the country lies downstream.
The lack of adequate legal instruments exacerbates already difficult conditions. In India, severe water shortage has already led to a growing number of conflicts across India, with 90 per cent of the country’s territory drained by inter-state rivers. The row over the Cauvery between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, the Godavari between Maharashtra and Karnataka, and the Narmada between Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat are prominent.
The lack of clear allocation rules and uncertainty about what water each state has a right to, translates into high economic and environmental costs. Other federal countries that face water scarcity have clearly defined water rights and systems of water entitlements. These include Chile, Mexico, Australia, and South Africa.
There should be a greater focus on the peaceful sharing and management of water at both international and local levels. In short, water scarcity is also about equity and rights, and cultural and ethical issues warrant due consideration.
Lest we forget, human life and animal life depend on a delicate balance of the soil, water and flora that support it, and disruption of any one of these vital elements creates havoc. Factors such as climatic change, land exhaustion through over-use or misuse, population growth or displacement, warfare, and export of resources cause lasting damage.
Let’s go back to the reason, and reason
The Green Revolution was supposed to wipe out the world’s hunger problem by introducing high-yield seeds to developing nations, especially India and China. Alongside, though, it created an ongoing irrigation crisis by replacing drought-resistant indigenous crops with water-guzzling varieties. Deep wells became the norm, pulling precious groundwater out of already water-scarce areas.
Then, developers began trying to solve the irrigation problem by building big dams. These were meant to supply hydroelectric power, irrigation, and public water, and to control floods”all good intentions. The problem was, no one really understood the full range of ecological consequences that would unfold.
As every river is unique in terms of its flow patterns, the landscapes it flows through, and the species it supports, so the effects the dam has on the river and its associated ecosystems are different. Some of the environmental effects of a dam may not be understood for hundreds of years after construction. The most significant consequence is that dams tend to fragment the riverine ecosystem, isolating populations of species living upstream and downstream of the dam, and cutting off migrations and other species movements. The permanent inundation of forests, wetlands, and wildlife is another obvious ecological effect of a dam. Yet, it is not only the amount of land lost which is important, but also its quality: river and floodplain habitats are some of the world’s most diverse ecosystems. Moreover, in many cases, farmers displaced by a reservoir have had to clear forests further up the sides of the valley to grow their crops and build new homes. This form of expansion only serves to accelerate deforestation.
While what has been written about so far may seem to belong to a different world altogether and far removed from the haunting last drips of a drying tap in an urban slum, it will help to remember that the ecosystem fundamentals are interconnected in ways that we too easily fail to see.
The cutting away of trees and clearing of paths – whether for agricultural purposes or for new factories, manufacturing plants, and other industrial facilities, or for purposes of urbanization – affect water supply. Many industrial plants use water as a cooling agent or an ingredient for various manufacturing processes and procedures, as well as for cleaning. Water stress can result if these uses occur in conjunction with other factors.
Pollution in its several forms affects the quality of the water supply. The military is already most likely the number one producer of wastes in the world, and the leftover chemical and weapons used in times of war can have an effect on water supplies. Wastes from industries and agriculture can contaminate groundwater resources if not disposed of properly. This lack of water quality can cause a conflict to arise regarding the distribution of water. Not having water evenly distributed among people and countries creates an imbalance among those who share supplies, particularly in developing countries (Haftendorn, Helga Water and International Conflict).
Each reason, however minor it may seem in isolation, is a dot that connects with the other dots. If only we remember this life principle at all times and if only we stop pretending that we are but specks and too insignificant to matter in the vast scheme of things that make this miraculous planet function, will the tide start turning. Very slowly, but turn it will.