Scientists and hydrologists tell us that the world is running out of water. This is true from Arizona and Bangladesh to Vietnam and Zimbabwe, because even though every drop of water on the planet remains in some form or other, much of it has been redistributed via global warming or so polluted it is not fit to drink or grow crops.
Statistics show that almost 4000 children die around the world every day due to water shortages. This is the warning from the World Water Forum, whose March meeting in Istanbul saw 33,058 attendees from 192 countries all issuing the same caution: we are on the brink of water shortages the likes of which the world has not seen in the last 4,000 years.
The shortages are being driven by population increases and the demand for more crops, as well as climate change, and both are redistributing water at an alarming and completely unsustainable rate.
This is nowhere more true than in developing nations, where the link between poverty and water scarcity is demonstrated by African women and girls carrying buckets or barrels of water for miles to insure that water makes it to the home. This almost constant occupation in turn leaves older women without the time to engage in profitable occupation, and girls unable to attend school. Thus, poverty and the need for water drives further poverty, for without a job or an education it is impossible to rise above destitution.
A lack of potable water now affects four out of every 10 people around the world. This is a total of 1.2 billion people who lack ready access to drinking water, and the areas of greatest concern are the Middle East, Africa, Asia and India.
But the problem is not confined to the developing world. In Australia, where the worst drought in 117 years has deleted more than $20 billion from the economy (in the form of lost crops) since 2002, water experts are estimating that heat waves and ongoing lack of rainfall may create a situation where only “critical human needs” can be met.
And in California, where continuing drought has farmers’ backs to the proverbial wall, protection for the delta smelt means growers are ignoring their fruit and nut trees, or salvaging a meager few, while developers in the southern part of the state continue to build homes with lawns that require incessant watering. In spite of that, the state has so far failed to legislate against these examples of greed and opportunism, and new housing developments impacted by the recession are being bulldozed rather than offered as shelter to the homeless.
In Asia and Africa, the lack of water can be tied to melting glaciers in the Himalayas and on Mt. Kilimanjaro, as well as an increase in global warming that means harsher storms but less rain. In the Middle East, in nations like Syria, Jordan, Israel and Palestine, a two-year drought in what was already an arid climate threatens water shortages as Israel taps the Jordan River to maintain acres of crops under Plexiglas which will be sold to Europe and the West. Meanwhile, the Dead Sea shrinks by one meter per year.
In the United States, Europe and the developed world, lack of water can also be tied to an aging infrastructure of water mains that leak much of their precious cargo of potable water before reaching those in need. In Washington State, the small town of Chelan relies on wooden water mains, and the leakage, due to age and wood’s natural tendency to become porous, is enormous. Similar situations also exist in South Dakota, Alaska and Pennsylvania, with as much water leaking into the ground over a single mile as could supply an average family of four for a year, according to a local plumber.
Even where the mains are not made of wood, they are so old – some more than a century old – that regular leakage and bursting are non-events. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s study, there are upwards of 240,000 such breaks each and every year, with millions of gallons of water going into the soil instead of into homes or on cropland – a situation exacerbated in some states like Colorado, where homeowners don’t even own the rain that falls on their property, and can’t legally collect it in rain barrels.
In Europe, where mains are even older and where poor, conflicting or unmanageable water plans threaten water supplies to an even greater extent – and where countries like Spain, Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands are experiencing dryer conditions and even the loss of rivers fed by glaciers in the Alps (or redrawing their borders as glaciers retreat) – the situation approaches critical mass.
Are there solutions? Yes, but they’re tremendously expensive, a daunting prospect in the face of a worldwide recession that has affected everything from shipping to airlines, and promises to last until at least the end of this year.
Even though the current stimulus plan – the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA – provides millions of dollars in funding to upgrade aging U.S. water infrastructure (e.g., $430 million to the State of New York, $19.5 million to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, and $121.6 million to the Maryland Department of the Environment), these sums are literally a drop in the bucket compared to the dollar value of the work that needs to be done.
Asia, Africa and China have no stimulus funds. For them, the specter of global warming and populations constantly on the rise creates a bleak future. And, even though scientists say they have an improved tool for forecasting drought – developed from a model of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s – this climate modeling comes a little late and a little short of what will be needed to rescue the residents of Somalia, where some 3.2 million people face starvation – a situation mimicked in nearby Ethiopia (Eritrea) and Kenya.
This article was contributed to Celsias by Jeanne Roberts
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