For years, there have been warnings of worsening crisis in the availability of potable water on planet Earth. The United Nations (UN) says that of the entire social and natural crisis we humans face, the water crisis is the one that lies at the heart of our survival and that of our planet Earth. According to the world body, over the next few decades, the average supply of water worldwide per person is expected to drop by third.
The signs are troubling. Rapid rates of population growth worldwide, rapidly growing income in many countries, and consequent rapid urbanization have led to highly stressed water systems. It has been estimated that 2.3 billion people live in areas where there is not enough water available to meet basic needs of drinking, sanitation, and hygiene and food production – defined as 1,700 cu.m (cubic metre) per person per year. Some 1.7 billion people live under true water scarcity where the supply is less than 1000 cu.m of water per person per year. Under conditions of scarcity, lack of water begins to hamper economic development as well as human health and general well-being. All of these troubling signs of the dismal state of the world’s water supply are magnified by possibility that we may be entering a period of rapid human-induced water crisis, with very uncertain implications for water-resource management in the future, a UN report says.
In the year 2000, the UN General Assembly had set a goal “to halve the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water by the year 2015 and in 2002, the UN World Summit on sustainable development approved a supplementary goal of halving “the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation”. The world body had declared 2003 the International year of Freshwater, thus giving the issue global prominence. The UN estimates that 1.1. billion people do not have adequate safe drinking water (defined as meeting minimal standards of bacterial and chemical quality) and that 2.4 billion people do not have adequate sanitation.
Independent observers and experts in the field are of the opinion that cutting the above mentioned numbers by 50 per cent – while at the same time increasing food production, reducing poverty, and sustaining the ecosystem – is an ambitious goal. They, however, agreed that world’s water crisis is real, and that the best response at this time would be to think clearly about the nature of the water crisis and to evaluate possible solutions. There is an urgent need on our part to look at the problem with more seriousness and make necessary progress towards the objectives of sustainable water management agreed upon at the 2002 sustainability conference in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Experts point out that human beings are emotionally attached to water, much more so than to any other resource like food or energy.
One manifestation of this emotional attachment is that water is provided free, or at highly subsidised prices, almost everywhere. Agriculture accounts for nearly 70 per cent of all global water use, yet not a single country charges farmers’ full operation and maintenance costs for irrigation water, let alone investment costs. Even for domestic water, people in very few cities pay the real cost. With sensible water pricing, utilities can be financially viable and people would use water efficiently. Indeed, the World Water Development report sees poor governance and lack of political will as the most important thread running through all aspects of the water crises.
According to experts, the most obvious path out of the water crisis would involve massive investments in infrastructure to store, transform and transport water – in other words, more storage reservoirs, dams, desalination plants, and groundwater exploitation. Recent developments in desalination techniques indicate that any urban area with access to saltwater can have a plentiful freshwater supply at reasonable cost. Another option is to expand the recycling of urban wastewater and industrial water. Yet another promising option might be to bring supplemental irrigation to areas of rain-fed agriculture. This scenario leads to the concept of ‘virtual’ water.
According to British hydrologist JA Allan, a country that imports food crops is essentially importing the water that was used to grow the crops in the exporting country. This virtual water can amount to as much as 1000 to 5000 tonnes of water per tonne of crop imported.
Poor water management over decades has created numerous structural problems. Many of the mighty rivers across the globe, have now become a trickle by the time they reach the sea. The World Commission on Water has noted that more than half of the world’s rivers are seriously depleted.
Rivers, lakes and other freshwater bodies in many countries, including India, are too polluted for the purpose of drinking in terms of biochemical oxygen demand and coliforms. Some of the water bodies are highly contaminated with pollutants like toxic chemicals and heavy metals, and as such are not suitable for bathing, let alone drinking. In some countries, the real costs of poor water management are approaching as much as nearly 5 per cent of GDP.
Millions of people are dying each year due to water-related illnesses. Droughts and floods are inflicting tens of billions of dollars in damages each year. The UN has estimated that droughts are the world’s costliest natural disasters, inflicting $6-8 billion annual losses. Every year floods contribute to major damages, including loss of lives. All these can be significantly reduced by better water management, experts insist.
(The writer is a freelance journalist)
