Essay research.

A Political Drought

During one of the meetings of the World Water Commission, which recently
submitted its report in The Hague to a bevy of water ministers, a member had
strongly emphasised the need for educating politicians about the importance of
water. I, however, found that argument incorrect because I have rarely met a
politician, especially in India, who will not emphasise the importance of water. The
real problem is that hardly any of them know how to solve the water problem.
Teaching them is difficult.

Remember Chandrashekhar and his Bharat Yatra. The most important thing on his
development agenda after he completed his marathon was water. Read Atal Behari
Vajpayee’s address to the parliament on NDA’s action plan for the nation.
Vajpayee says that if there is one thing he is going to do in five years of his rule is
to ensure that all villages will get drinking water. Rajiv Gandhi went beyond
rhetoric to actually set up a drinking water mission.

Many will term what is happening in Gujarat and Rajasthan a ‘natural disaster’.
But this is far from the truth. It is a ‘government-made’ disaster. Over the last one
hundred years or so, we have seen two paradigmatic shifts in water management.
One is that individuals and communities have steadily given over their role almost
completely to the state. The second is that the simple technology of using rainwater
has declined. Instead exploitation of rivers and groundwater through dams and
tubewells has become the key source of water. As water in rivers and aquifers is
only a small portion of the total rainwater availability, there is an inevitable
growing and, in many cases, unbearable stress on these sources.

This dependence on the state has meant cost recovery being poor the financial
sustainability of water schemes has run aground; and, repairs and maintenance is
abysmal. With people having no interest in using water carefully, the sustainability
of water resources has itself become a question mark. As a result, there are serious
problems with government drinking water supply schemes. Despite all the
government efforts, the number of ‘problem villages’ does not seem to go down.
As N C Saxena, former rural development secretary put it recently, “In our
mathematics, 200,000 problem villages minus 200,000 problem villages is still
200,000 problem villages.”
Community-based rainwater harvesting — the paradigm of the past — has in it as
much strength today as it ever did before. A survey conducted by the Centre for
Science and Environment (CSE) of several villages facing drought in Gujarat and
western Madhya Pradesh last December found that all those villages that had
undertaken rainwater harvesting or watershed development in earlier years had no
drinking water problem and even had some water to irrigate their crops. On the
other hand, neighbouring villages were desperate for water. This revealed that
rainwater harvesting can meet even the acid test of a bad drought

In late March 2001, we got further confirmation of our conviction. Going with
president K R Narayanan in a helicopter to the Arvari watershed where he was
scheduled to give the Down To Earth-Joseph C John Award to village Bhaonta-
Kolyala in late March, we could see nothing but barren fields all the way from
Delhi to Alwar. This area is suffering from a drought. But suddenly we came
across green and brown fields and realised that we had reached the oasis of the
Arvari watershed where several villages have over the last 5-10 years built
hundreds of rainwater harvesting structures. Nobody needed to emphasise the
importance of rainwater harvesting any more. While the Arvari river was more or
less dead, the wells were still full of water, fields were rich and productive.

What makes rainwater harvesting such a powerful technology? Just the simple
richness of rainwater availability that few of us realise because of the speed with
which water, the world’s most fluid substance, disappears. Imagine you had a
hectare of land in Barmer, one of India’s places, and you received 100-mm of
water in the year, common even for this area. That means that you received as
much as one million litres of water enough to meet drinking and cooking water
needs of 182 people at a liberal 15 litres per day. Even in the villages suffering
from drought this year, it is not as if there was no rain. Saurashtra villages, the
worst affected, also had 100-300 mm rainfall but they let the water go. It does not
matter how much rain you get if you don’t capture it. Cherrapunji, with 11,000mm
annual rainfall, also suffers from drinking water shortages.

I have consistently argued that there is no village in India that cannot meet its basic
drinking and cooking needs through rainwater harvesting. Figures speak for
themselves. The average population of an Indian village today is about 1,200.
India’s average annual rainfall is about 1,100 mm. If even only half this water can
be captured, an average Indian village needs 1.2 hectares of land to capture 6.57
million litres of water it will use in a year for cooking and drinking. If there is a
drought and rainfall levels dip to half the normal, the land required would rise to a
mere 2.4 hectare. And, of course, any more water the villagers catch can go for
irrigation.

To provide lasting relief against drought the government will need to go beyond
promises. It should heed the president’s advice and prepare a concrete plan of
action to develop a mass movement for water harvesting.
The financial sustainability of water
schemes has run aground; and, repairs
 
and maintenance is abysmal
— Anil Agarwal

The amount of water in the world is limited. The

human race, and the other species which share the
planet, cannot expect an infinite supply.

Water covers about two-thirds

of the Earth's surface,
admittedly. But most is too
salty for use.

Only 2.5% of the world's

water is not salty, and two-
Population is rising, but
thirds of that is locked up in
water supplies are not
the icecaps and glaciers.

Of what is left, about 20% is in remote areas, and much of

the rest arrives at the wrong time and place, as monsoons
and floods.

Humans have available less than 0.08% of all the Earth's

water. Yet over the next two decades our use is estimated
to increase by about 40%.

Water shortages set to grow

In 1999 the United Nations Environment Programme

(UNEP) reported that 200 scientists in 50 countries had
identified water shortage as one of the two most worrying
problems for the new millennium (the other was global
warming).

We use about 70% of the water we have in agriculture.

But the World Water Council believes that by 2020 we
shall need 17% more water than is available if we are to
feed the world.
GETTING WORSE
So if we go on as we are, Growing populations
millions more will go to bed Inefficient irrigation
hungry and thirsty each night Pollution
than do so already.

Today, one person in five across the world has no access

to safe drinking water, and one in two lacks safe
sanitation.

Today, and every day, more than 30,000 children die

before reaching their fifth birthdays, killed either by
hunger or by easily-preventable diseases.

And adequate safe water is key to good health and a

proper diet. In China, for example, it takes 1,000 tonnes
of water to produce one tonne of wheat.

Inefficiency behind water crisis

There are several reasons for the water crisis. One is the
simple rise in population, and the desire for better living
standards.

Another is the inefficiency of In China it takes

the way we use much of our 1,000 tonnes of water to
water. Irrigation allows produce one tonne of
wastage on a prodigal scale, wheat
with the water trickling away
or simply evaporating before
it can do any good.

And pollution is making more of the water that is

available to us unfit for use. The Aral Sea in central Asia
is one of the starkest examples of what pollution can do,
to the land as well as the water.

Increasingly, governments are seeking to solve their water

problems by turning away from reliance on rainfall and
surface water, and using subterranean supplies of
groundwater instead.

But that is like making constant withdrawals from a bank

account without ever paying anything into it.

Looking for solutions

And using up irreplaceable groundwater does not simply

mean the depletion of a once-and-for-all resource.

Rivers, wetlands and lakes that depend on it can dry out.

Saline seawater can flow in to
Pumping
replace the fresh water that
groundwater is like
has been pumped out.
making constant
And the emptied underground withdrawals from a bank
aquifers can be compressed, account without ever
causing surface subsidence - a paying anything into
problem familiar in Bangkok, it
Mexico City and Venice.

There are some ways to begin to tackle the problem.

Irrigation systems which drip water directly onto plants
are one, precision sprinklers another.

There will be scope to plant less water-intensive crops,

and perhaps desalination may play a part - though it is
energy-hungry and leaves quantities of brine for disposal.

Climate change will probably bring more rain to some

regions and less to others, and its overall impact remains
uncertain.

But if we are to get through the water crisis, we should

heed the UNEP report's reminder that we have only one
interdependent planet to share.

It said: "The environment remains largely outside the

mainstream of everyday human consciousness, and is still
considered an add-on to the fabric of life."

Global Water Shortage Looms In New Century

When most U.S. citizens think about water shortages — if they think about them at all — they
think about a local problem, possibly in their town or city, maybe their state or region. We don't
usually regard such problems as particularly worrisome, sharing confidence that the situation
will be readily handled by investment in infrastructure, conservation, or other management
strategies. Whatever water feuds arise, e.g., between Arizona and California, we expect to be
resolved through negotiations or in the courtroom.

But shift from a local to a global water perspective,

Book Says Irrigation Miracle
Ending
Sandra Postel's book, "Pillar of Sand:
Can the Irrigation Miracle Last?",
explores 8,000 years of irrigation
history and discusses whether irrigation
can feasiblely be used to feed the
world's population as it approaches
seven billion. The dramatic increase in
population is accompanied by depletion
of groundwater supplies, inadequacy of
surface water supplies, salination of
land, and conversion of agricultural land
to other uses. None of these
developments is conducive to irrigated
agriculture. Meanwhile growers
maintain the status quo because it is
uneconomical to invest in major new
water schemes. According to the author
the problem of food supply will not be
solved by increasing agriculture acreage
or productivity since water is the
limiting factor. The book includes many
charts and graphs that show increases in
irrigated acreage, changes in water
supplies, etc.
and the terms dramatically change. The World Bank
reports that 80 countries now have water shortages
that threaten health and economies while 40 percent of
the world — more than 2 billion people — have no
access to clean water or sanitation. In this context, we
cannot expect water conflicts to always be amenably
resolved.
Consider: More than a dozen nations receive most of
their water from rivers that cross borders of
neighboring countries viewed as hostile. These
include Botswana, Bulgaria, Cambodia, the Congo,
Gambia, the Sudan, and Syria, all of whom receive 75
percent or more of their fresh water from the river
flow of often hostile upstream neighbors.
In the Middle East, a region marked by hostility
between nations, obtaining adequate water supplies is
a high political priority. For example, water has been
a contentious issue in recent negotiations between
Israel and Syria. In recent years, Iraq, Syria and
Turkey have exchanged verbal threats over their use of shared rivers. (It should come as no
surprise to learn that the words "river" and "rival" share the same Latin root; a rival is "someone
who shares the same stream.")

More frequently water is being likened to another resource that quickened global tensions when
its supplies were threatened. A story in The Financial Times of London began: "Water, like
energy in the late 1970s, will probably become the most critical natural resource issue facing
most parts of the world by the start of the next century." This analogy is also reflected in the oft-
repeated observation that water will likely replace oil as a future cause of war between nations.

Global water problems are attracting increasing attention, not just at the international level, but
also within the United States, in its popular press, in natural resource journals and as the subject
of books. Former Sen. Paul Simon from Illinois recently authored Tapped Out: The Coming
World Crisis in Water and What We Can Do About it. A book for the general, non-specialized
audience, Simon's publication sounds an alarm about the approaching crisis. "Within a few years,
a water crisis of catastrophic proportions will explode upon us — unless aroused citizens ...
demand of their leadership actions reflecting vision, understanding and courage."

A prime cause of the global water concern is the ever-increasing world population. As
populations grow, industrial, agricultural and individual water demands escalate. According to
the World Bank, world-wide demand for water is doubling every 21 years, more in some regions.
Water supply cannot remotely keep pace with demand, as populations soar and cities explode.

Population growth alone does not account for increased water demand. Since 1900, there has
been a six-fold increase in water use for only a two-fold increase in population size. This reflects
greater water usage associated with rising standards of living (e.g., diets containing less grain
and more meat). It also reflects potentially unsustainable levels of irrigated agriculture. (See
sidebar.) World population has recently reached six billion and United Nation's projections
indicate nine billion by 2050. What water supplies will be available for this expanding
population?

Meanwhile many countries suffer accelerating desertification. Water quality is deteriorating in

many areas of the developing world as population increases and salinity caused by industrial
farming and over-extraction rises. About 95 percent of the world's cities still dump raw sewage
into their waters.

Climate change represents a wild card in this developing scenario. If, in fact, climate change is
occurring — and most experts now concur that it is — what effect will it have on water
resources? Some experts claim climate change has the potential to worsen an already gloomy
situation. With higher temperatures and more rapid melting of winter snowpacks, less water
supplies will be available to farms and cities during summer months when demand is high..

A technological solution that some believe would provide ample supplies of additional water
resources is desalination. Some researchers fault the United States for not providing more
support for desalination research. Once the world leader in such research, this country has
abdicated its role, to Saudi Arabia, Israel and Japan. There are approximately 11,000 desalination
plants in 120 nations in the world, 60 percent of them in the Middle East.

Others argue that a market approach to water management would help resolve the situation by
putting matters on a businesslike footing. They say such an approach would help mitigate the
political and security tensions that exacerbate international affairs. For example, the Harvard
Middle East Water Project wants to assign a value to water, rather than treat rivers and streams
as some kind of free natural commodity, like air.

Other strategies to confront the growing global water problem include slowing population
growth, reducing pollution, better management of present supply and demand and, of course, not
to be overlooked, water conservation. As Sandra Postel writes in her book, Last Oasis, "Doing
more with less is the first and easiest step along the path toward water security."

Ultimately, however, an awareness of the global water crisis should serve to put our own water
concerns in perspective. Whether our current activity is evaluating Arizona's Ground Water
Management Act or, at a more personal level, deciding whether to plant water-conserving
vegetation, the wiser choice would likely be made, if guided by an awareness that water is a very
scarce and valuable natural resource.

  

Feature 1 - Feature 2 - Water Vapors - News Briefs - Announcements

Legislation & Law - Drip Exchange - Special Projects - Publications - Calendar

Water Center Home -- AWR Home -- Search

Solution to safe drinking water problem is a

challenge: Kalam
TNN, Dec 26, 2010, 10.36pm IST

PUNE: Former President APJ Abdul Kalam has called for efforts to create an open source
initiative for providing safe drinking water to people across the world. "Such an initiative ought
to involve scientists, technocrats, societal leadership and the community at large," he said at the
launch of the two-day Global Indian Scientists and Technocrats forum in the city on Sunday.
The forum, headed by former chairman of Atomic Energy Commission, Anil Kakodkar, aims to
involve scientists and technocrafts from among the 20 million strong Indian diaspora around the
world to work on key developmental problems like water, energy, health, agriculture and
biodiversity with focus on India.

Ads by Google

While the forum plans to hold global conventions, focused on one of the key developmental
problems at regular intervals, its launch on Sunday coincided with the theme of the main
convention-cum-exhibition: scientific and technological approaches for sustainable use of water
resources'.

Kalam described drinking water as a significant societal area that needs technological and
industrial partnerships. "Clean drinking water is a global requirement with about one billion
people lacking access to it," he said. "Every year more than 3.5 million deaths occur solely due
to diseases borne out of water, which means that unclean water is killing seven human beings
every minute around the world," he added.

"In India, the World Bank estimates that 21% of communicable diseases are related to unsafe
water. Diarrhoea alone causes more than 1,600 deaths every day. Hence clean water for all is a
very important societal mission where the scientific community and the industry have to find
synergies," he said. The problem can be solved by combining effort of technology, societal
leadership and the spirit of entrepreneurship, he added.

"My question is, can we create an open source initiative to find a solution for people to assess the
safe drinking water requirement, problem identification, gap identification, proposing the
solution, technology selection, implementation and its sustainability?" he said.

"Can the NGOs, industry, corporate social responsibility initiatives of corporates, academy and
the government contribute to this effort and bring the solution to the needy areas through an open
source service model, which will bring technological, financial and entrepreneurial solution to
solve the safe drinking water problem across the world ?" he asked.

Ads by Google

In 25 Years, Half the World Will Be Short of Water

www.allAfrica.com   
March 21, 2001 
Posted to the web March 22, 2001 
Baba Galleh Jallow 
Washington DC 

The World Resources Institute in Washington DC has warned that the world's
freshwater systems are in peril. It predicts that "by 2025, at least 3.5 billion people or
nearly 50 percent of the world's population will face water scarcity." 

This is just one of the dire predictions being made public by several organisations to
mark World Water Day. There is widespread and acute concern about the impending
global water crisis. 

A report by the Global Environment Outlook (GEO) indicates that Africa will be
particularly hard hit. 

The GEO says that while Africa has abundant freshwater resources in large rivers
and lakes such as the Congo, Nile and Zambezi rivers, and the Great Lakes, "there
are great disparities in water availability and use within and between African
countries" because of the uneven distribution of the continent's water resources. 

The GEO predicts that by the year 2025, "25 African countries will be subject to
water scarcity or water stress" and points out that already, "14 countries in Africa are
subject to water stress or water scarcity, with those in Northern Africa facing the
worst prospects." 

Over 300 million people in Africa lack reasonable access to safe water and adequate
sanitation and in sub-Saharan Africa, only about 51 percent of the population have
access to safe water, and 45 percent to sanitation. 

Recent floods in Mozambique, Malawi and other areas of Southern Africa have
rendered sanitary conditions in that area even more precarious. 

GEO estimates indicate that by 2025, "up to 16 percent of Africa's population, (230
million people) will be living in countries facing water scarcity, and 32 percent
(another 460 million) in water-stressed countries." 

In a similar report, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) also says
there is already a massive water problem in the world. According to UNEP, polluted
water affects the health of over one billion people worldwide every year; water-
borne diseases - such as the cholera and dysentery currently rampant in southern
Africa - kill an estimated three million people every year. 

UNEP warns that without better management of the world's water resources, many
more human lives could be threatened in the very near future. 

The World Resources Institute report corroborates UNEP's finding that water-borne
diseases are currently a major cause of death, particularly in poor areas of the world.
 The report ascribes much of the degradation of the world's freshwater systems to
"habitat destruction, the construction of dams and canals, introduction of non-native
(fish) species, pollution and over-exploitation" of water resources. 

According to the WRI, "analysis of existing freshwater studies reveals that more
than 20 percent of the world's 10,000 freshwater fish species have either become
extinct, been threatened, or endangered in recent decades." 

In a message to mark World Water Day, Khalid Mohtadullah, Executive Secretary

of the Global Water Partnership, said: "1.4 billion people live without clean drinking
water, 2.3 billion people lack adequate sanitation, 7 million die yearly from water-
related diseases and half the world's rivers and lakes are seriously polluted." 

He called on governments worldwide to establish better water policies, laws and

regulatory frameworks, put in place proper institutional structures for managing
river basins and aquifers, facilitate the realignment of economic and financial
practices with appropriate mechanisms to protect the poor, and establish
mechanisms for strengthening river basin management. 

He revealed that his organisation has established a network of "regional

partnerships" in South America, Central America, Southern Africa, West Africa, the
Mediterranean, Central and Eastern Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia and China
"to promote cross-sectoral dialogue on common water problems and to develop
action plans to resolve these problems." 

Meanwhile, Libya's Muammar Qadafi, who is currently spearheading a campaign for

African Union, has called on Arab businesses to invest in Africa's water resources
and the tapping of the continent's "vast water reserves, lakes and rivers such as the
Nile, Senegal and Congo rivers." 

“www.worldwatercouncil.org/index.php?id=25 - Cached - Similar” citation for water crisis

“news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/.../world/.../world_water.../default.stm - Cached - Similar”

ag.arizona.edu/AZWATER/awr/dec99/Feature2.htm - Cached - Similar “for global water”