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Water woes around the world
Kaleem Omar
Former South African president Nelson Mandela took the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, the so-called 'Earth Summit II,' by the scruff of the neck on Wednesday, urging politicians to make access to clean water a basic human right and to put water and sanitation much higher up the political, economic and social agenda.
The first Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, pledged universal access to clean water. But at least 1.1 billion people lack clean water. No progress has been reported since Rio on the UN goal of reducing by half the 2.4 billion people without access to proper sanitation by 2015. European Union officials in Johannesburg said they couldn't understand US opposition to the goal. US officials said they support the goal but don't think new deadlines are needed.
Fresh water demand is doubling worldwide every 21 years, and agriculture represents nearly 70 per cent of this consumption, according to UN estimates. By 2025, half the world's projected 8 billion population is expected to be thirsty. By 2015, the United Nations wants to reduce by half the number of people lacking clean water.
According to the 1998 UN Human Development Report, three-fifths of the 4.4 billion people in the developing world lack access to basic sanitation and almost a third have no access to clean water. By some estimates, preventable water-related diseases kill 10,000 to 20,000 children every day in the developing world.
The World Bank says that to meet the UN's goal, around 300,000 people per day will have to be connected to water systems over the next 10 years. The estimated price tag: $ 25 billion a year. But where is this money going to come from? The total amount given by rich countries in development aid in 2001 was only $ 54 billion, less than one-sixth of the $ 350 billion they paid to their own farmers in subsidies.
According to the United Nations, the world's population tripled in the 20th century, from 2 billion in 1900 to 6 billion in 2000, leading to a six-fold increase in the use of water resources. The three largest water users in global terms are: agriculture: 67 per cent; industry: 19 per cent; and municipal/residential: 9 per cent.
Freshwater ecosystems cover less than one per cent of the Earth's surface. Ice ? mostly in the form of glaciers ? comprises 69 per cent of the world's freshwater supplies and groundwater comprises 30 per cent. Wetlands, which include marshes and swamps, comprise 0.3 per cent, lakes 0.3 per cent, and rivers 0.6 per cent.
However, many experts argue that wells are not about to run dry. They say that on a global level we have enough water but must use it more wisely and attempt to address uneven distribution around the globe, which is related partly to different rainfall patterns.
The problems affecting the world's freshwater supplies include pollution and poor infrastructure. According to the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, 30 to 50 per cent of water diverted for irrigation purposes is lost through leaking pipes and channels.
The World Bank says inefficiencies in infrastructure mean that water that does not reach customers is not only wasted but ultimately not paid for. This can lead to infrastructure decay because of a lack of funding for maintenance and improvement. Tariffs are also often kept low by politicians seeking to woo voters, the World Bank says.
But that is only one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is that farmers in developing countries cannot afford to pay high tariffs for water. Indeed, many of them cannot afford to pay for it at all, given the fact that their farms operate at a bare subsistence level as it is. So a balance has to be struck between finding the money to construct and maintain water infrastructures, on the one hand, and the water needs of poor farmers on the other. That may be a pretty tall order, but a solution has to be found. One possible solution could be the creation of a worldwide water fund by rich countries to subsidise water systems in developing countries.
Dams have brought huge benefits to 140 countries, but the social and environmental costs of big dams have often been high. Perhaps 40 million to 80 million people have been displaced globally by dam projects, including several hundred thousand in Pakistan. Dams have damaged aquatic habitats and blocked migration routes for spawning fish species such as salmon.
According to a 2000 report by the World Commission on Dams, China and India have half of the world's 45,000 dams. Dams account for 19 per cent of electricity generated worldwide, and 24 countries generate more than 90 per cent of their power from dams.
In Pakistan, Wapda generates about 40 per cent of its power from dams, with the rest coming from thermal power stations run on imported furnace oil or domestic gas. Most of the 13 IPP power stations in Pakistan also run on imported furnace oil, though the government has recently directed them to switch to gas as soon as possible. Compliance with this directive, however, has been patchy to date, with most of the IPPs balking at putting in the additional investment needed to build conversion facilities.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, of the 10,000 species of freshwater fish that have been described, 20 per cent are threatened or endangered because of pollution, habitat destruction, damming, overfishing and the introduction or invasion of alien species.
In addition to fish, the WWF says that four of the five species of river dolphin (including the Indus dolphin) are at risk. Other species at risk include two of the three manatee species, about 40 species of freshwater turtles and more than 400 types of freshwater crustaceans. The land-locked Aral Sea, which straddles the former Soviet Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, is actually salt, but its tragedy highlights the potentially disastrous consequences of poor freshwater use.
In the 1960s, Soviet planners built a network of canals to divert the waters of the rivers ? the Amur Darya and the Syr Darya ? that fed the sea to irrigate cotton fields in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. As a result the sea's life-source was reduced to a trickle, and it is now shrinking and dying. Once the world's fourth largest inland sea, the Aral Sea has shrunk to one-third of its former size and has now split into two separate bodies of water ? the northern or Little Aral Sea and a larger southern body. Aralsk, once a thriving port town, is now 60 miles from the coast.
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