Water Crisis: 2020 Statement by Mikhail Gorbachev on 20th Anniversary of Green Cross

Water crisis – clear and present danger

We live in urgent times. The sum of the concurrent crises that have been engulfing everything from climate to energy, to the economy, is creating a spiral of need for change. But the water crisis sticks out of this list in terms of being an explicitly clear and present danger with deadly implications.

Mikhail Gorbachev

The mounting water crisis and its geography make it clear that without resolute counteraction, it will overstretch many societies’ adaptive capacities within the coming decades. This could result in massive migration, severe socio-economic stress, destabilization and violence, jeopardizing national and international security to a new degree.

By 2025, a predicted 1.8 billion people will live in regions suffering from absolute water scarcity. Two-thirds of the world population could be under hydric stress conditions. Demand for water will rise: water withdrawals in developing countries will increase by 50%, and 18% in developed countries by 2025.

Despite these demands, what state is the world’s water in? Despite the fact that we use slightly more than half the world’s (54%) accessible water, more than 50% of the 3.5 billion people living in urban circumstances around the world already do not have access to adequate water and sanitation.

But the really bad news is that the water use is growing even faster than the population: the 20th century water consumption grew twice as fast as the world population. As a result, a third of the world's population lives in water-stressed countries now. By 2025, this is expected to rise to two-thirds.

In addition to unsustainable water use we are polluting our lakes, rivers and streams to death. Most wastewater (about 80%) from residential and industrial sources enters the environment untreated.

The growing human need for water, to sustain life and wellbeing, plus the pressures on the resource itself, from mismanagement, pollution and a general lack of foresight, make for the most telling case for improved global water conservation and consumption.

But too little is being done on these fronts. We have been waiting since 1997 for just 35 countries to sign the UN Watercourses Convention, to promote the management and sharing of the world’s 276 cross-border rivers and connected underground water sources, and we are still a handful short.

The lack of a global framework to manage water sources that cross national borders endangers the world in many ways, not least of all in terms of the risk of conflict between countries over who controls the same river that runs through their respective frontiers.

Then there is the Right to Water and Sanitation, which Green Cross was a loud advocate of before it finally came into being in 2010. While this recognition itself, that access to safe drinking water and sanitation are basic human rights, is a success, what must be happening at breakneck speed now is the realization of this right. This means creation of national legislation enshrining the right (alongside education, health and others) and investing in the infrastructure needed to make safe water and sanitation services available to all.

Despite UN adoption of this vital principle, the deficit of fresh water is becoming increasingly severe and large-scale – whereas, unlike other resources, there is no substitute for water.

While the Millennium Development Goal for access to drinking water and sanitation was announced met in 2012, almost 800 million people still have no access to safe water today, and three times that number lack adequate sanitation. Thousands of children die daily in the developing world due to related waterborne diseases.

The scale and global nature of the water crisis demand stronger statesmanship, vision and international action. To master the water crisis, we must address its effects and causes. The economic, social, water and environmental aspects must be properly coordinated in any response.

A comprehensive “water goal” must be injected into the post-2015 development agenda, linking development and environment in analyses and in governance policies. Such a goal would address the three interdependent dimensions of water: water, sanitation and hygiene; water management; and wastewater management and water quality.

This goal must be based on principles of equity, solidarity, recognition of limits of planet and rights approach, coupled with effective means to check and demand the accountability of all stakeholders.

We live in volatile and transformative times, faced with the awe-inspiring global challenge of climate change, the devastation of civil wars, and the hope-crushing scourge of extreme poverty. But one thing is constant: our need for water. Whole regions are languishing in poverty and conflict, effectively held hostage by their hydrology: we must break this cycle and give people a chance for their future. Benjamin Franklin said that "when the well's dry, we know the worth of water." The alarm clock has been ringing on deaf ears for far too long, it is time to wake-up before it is too late, before the wells of the world have run dry. More

 

© 2014

We Still Need To Deal With Drought

This is the time of year when drought drops from the headlines in all but the warmest parts of North America. Crops aren't withering in the sun; few homeowners worry about lawn-watering restrictions. Until the weather heats up in the spring, the weather headlines will be mostly about winter storms. But that doesn't mean moisture deficits have been resolved. National drought maps reveal that persistent drought is plaguing California, the central Plains states, and, to a lesser extent, the East Coast.

Water Harvesting

Looking more widely, the past eighteen months have seen a global outbreak of emergency water rationing in the face of sudden, extraordinary scarcity. In a diverse group of countries, including the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Australia, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, South Africa, India, Pakistan, China, Taiwan, Malaysia and the Philippines, a wide variety of rationing plans have had to be put into practice. Rationing has even become necessary in normally moist, green places, most prominently the United Kingdom, Ireland and New Zealand. In many situations, the causes of water shortages have been much more complex than routine drought or high population density. Thanks to greenhouse emissions, local climates are becoming increasingly fickle.

A whopping 86 percent of the world's total fresh water consumption is accounted for by production of food, fiber and other agricultural products, and 9 percent is attributable to industrial production. Farms dominate water use in the United States as well. But even though a scant 5 percent of the global footprint is residential water use, it is in the domestic supply where shortages are felt most immediately and most intensely by the majority of people.

When municipal or county water supplies are tightened, lucky residents with wells are able to supply themselves (at least until the well also goes dry). And increasingly, people in drought-prone areas are planning ahead and capturing rain for future use. A dozen states and the US Virgin Islands now have laws regulating, and for the most part encouraging, rainwater harvesting. In this, Texas leads the nation. In 2009, Colorado partially lifted a longstanding law that had banned homeownersfrom collecting rainwater off their own roofs. Utah repealed a similar ban in 2010. The state of Oregon publishes a guide to rainwater rainwater collection (PDF). (Hysteria a couple of years ago over the conviction of an Oregon man for water harvesting was unwarranted; he had built a vast system of reservoirs with a capacity of 13 million gallons—a bit more than is needed for personal use.)

Meanwhile, most of us are still stuck with paying for our residential water supply. And any economist can show you how the most efficient method of allocating water is "marginal cost pricing", under which the first gallon per week or month is the most valuable and expensive, with the cost falling as consumption rises. That, however, penalizes low-income households and rewards heavy consumption. Therefore, many municipalities across North America and the world have turned marginal cost pricing on its head. Under what are called increasing block tariff systems, each household has a monthly right to an initial "block" of that is free or very cheap, with the price escalating sharply for subsequent blocks.

But there will always be a wide gap between what it costs to provide municipal water and what many residents can afford to pay for it. Treating water as a market commodity almost inevitably leads to conflict, and water-privatization schemes have repeatedly failed.

Talk of looming worldwide conflict over water resources has been going on for years. But it is often conflict itself - state versus state, class versus class, neighbor versus neighbor and, increasingly, humanity versus nature - that triggers water scarcity in the first place. The only long-term solution is to resolve such conflicts, to ensure that every community has an adequate water supply. But even then, resources may not be bountiful, and rationing by some means other than willingness (and ability) to pay will be necessary.

If we cannot manage to conserve and share water fairly, there is little chance that we will manage share other resources fairly. Enforcing the right to water is, or at least should be, less complex and contentious than ensuring rights to, say, energy, food, or medical care. As Maude Barlow concluded in her 2007 book Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water, "If ever there was a time for a plan of conservation and water justice to deal with the twin water crises of scarcity and inequity, now is that time. The world does not lack the knowledge about how to build a water-secure future; it lacks the political will."

Meanwhile, you might as well get a couple of rain barrels going. More

Photo by Wikimedia Commons/Sustainable Sanitation Alliance

Stan Cox is a senior scientist at The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, and author most recently of Any Way You Slice It: The Past, Present, and Future of Rationing(The New Press, 2013).

 

New Report First to Quantify Damage Done by Gas Drilling

Washington, D.C. - Thursday, October 3, 2013 — As federal policy makers decide on rules for fracking on public lands, a new report calculates the toll of this dirty drilling on our environment, including 280 billion gallons of toxic wastewater generated by fracking in 2012.

The Environment America Research & Policy Center report, "Fracking by the Numbers," is the first to measure the damaging footprint of fracking to date.

“The numbers don't lie — fracking has taken a dirty and destructive toll on our environment. If this dirty drilling continues unchecked, these numbers will only get worse,” said John Rumpler, senior attorney for Environment America.

“At health clinics, we’re seeing nearby residents experiencing nausea, headaches and other symptoms linked to fracking pollution,” said David Brown, a toxicologist who has reviewed health data from Pennsylvania. “With billions of gallons of toxic waste coming each year, we’re just seeing the ‘tip of the iceberg’ in terms of health risks.”

The “Fracking by the Numbers” report measured key indicators of fracking threats across the country, including:

• 280 billion gallons of toxic wastewater generated in 2012,
• 450,000 tons of air pollution produced in one year,
• 250 billion gallons of fresh water used since 2005,
• 360,000 acres of land degraded since 2005,
• 100 million metric tons of global warming pollution since 2005.

Fracking also inflicts other damage not quantified in the report — ranging from contamination of residential wells to ruined roads to earthquakes at disposal sites.
Reviewing the totality of this fracking damage, the report’s authors conclude:

Given the scale and severity of fracking’s myriad impacts, constructing a regulatory regime sufficient to protect the environment and public health from dirty drilling — much less enforcing such safeguards at more than 80,000 wells, plus processing and waste disposal sites across the country — seems implausible. In states where fracking is already underway, an immediate moratorium is in order. In all other states, banning fracking is the prudent and necessary course to protect the environment and public health.

At the federal level, the report’s data on land destroyed by fracking operations comes as the Obama administration considers a rule for fracking on public lands, and as the oil and gas industry is seeking to expand fracking to several places which help provide drinking water for millions of Americans — including the White River National Forest in Colorado and the Delaware River basin, which provides drinking water for more than 15 million Americans.

Along with the new numbers in today’s report, Environment America’s John Rumpler added one more: the more than 1 million public comments submitted this summer to the Obama administration rejecting its proposed rule for fracking on public lands as far too weak. Environment America is urging President Obama to follow the recommendation of his administration’s advisory panel on fracking to keep sensitive areas as off-limits to fracking.

“We need decisive action from Washington to protect our communities,” said John Fenton, a rancher from Pavillion, Wyoming who last week appealed to federal officials to re-open an investigation into contamination of drinking water there.

“The bottom line is this: The numbers on fracking add up to an environmental nightmare,” said Rumpler. “For our environment and for public health, we need to put a stop to fracking.”
Of particular concern are the billions of gallons of toxic waste created from fracking, which threaten the environment, public health and drinking water. Environment America is calling on federal officials to close the loophole that exempts this waste from our nation’s hazardous waste law. Rep. Matt Cartwright (PA-17) has introduced the CLEANER Act, H.R. 2825, to close that loophole.

“The data from today’s report shows that fracking is taking a dirty and destructive toll on our environment and health,” said Rumpler. “It’s time for our federal officials to step up; they can start by keeping fracking out of our forests and away from our parks, and closing the loophole exempting toxic fracking waste from our nation’s hazardous waste law.” More

Download Report

 

 

Climate Change Could Deprive Volta Basin of Water Needed to Boost Energy and Food Production

Specifically, the researchers with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and their partners concluded that the combined effects of higher temperatures and diminished rain could mean that by the year 2100, all of the current and planned hydroelectric projects in the basin would not even generate as much power as existing facilities do now. Meanwhile, there would only be enough water to meet about a third of irrigation demand.

IWMI and other centers involved with the CGIAR's Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) are drawing attention to the Volta study as leaders from across Africa gather in Ghana for Africa Agriculture Science Week 2013, under the theme "Africa Feeding Africa."

"An unreliable supply of water for irrigation will have serious consequences for a region where most people are farmers. Beyond that, there is an urgent need to shift more food production away from rain-fed systems that are subject to the vagaries of climate to irrigated agriculture. This study shows that this strategy is not as dependable as we once thought," said Matthew McCartney, PhD, a principal researcher and hydrologist at IWMI, which is part of CGIAR, an international consortium of agricultural research institutes. McCartney served as lead author for the study, The Water Resource Implications of Changing Climate in the Volta River Basin, along with colleagues from Ghana's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Climate models show temperatures in the Volta Basin rising by up to 3.6 degrees Celsius over the next century -- which the scientists warn could significantly increase water lost to evaporation. They also indicate average annual rainfall could drop by about 20 percent. McCartney and his colleagues calculated that water flows in the Volta region could fall by 24 percent through 2050 and by 45 percent by 2100, depriving the basin of water that countries are counting on to drive turbines and feed farms.

"The smart development of water resources is a crucial part of Africa feeding Africa, and we need to understand how climate change might alter water availability in vulnerable regions like the Volta Basin," said Robert Zougmoré, who leads CCAFS research in West Africa. "This study highlights the need for more innovation and cooperation in the Volta to make sure farmers in the region can adapt to these very challenging conditions caused by global warming." CCAFS funded the study along with Germany's Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The Volta River Basin encompasses 402,000 square kilometers. Most of this area is in Ghana and Burkina Faso, with the remainder in Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali and Togo. The basin's population is expected to reach 34 million people by 2015, up from 19 million in 2000. Agriculture accounts for 40 percent of the basin's economic activity. As rains become less and less reliable in a changing climate, researchers and policy-makers have been exploring a shift to groundwater or other types of irrigation. Meanwhile, hydroelectric power plants are seen as crucial to sustaining industrial development and expanding economic opportunities.

The Volta Basin is already home to the massive Akosombo Dam, which created Lake Volta, the world's largest human-made lake by surface area, and fourth largest reservoir by volume. Also coming on-line is the controversial Bui Dam project, which is expected to add 400 megawatts of power to Ghana's strained power grid, along with 30,000 hectares of irrigated farmland. But the study predicts these projects and many others planned for the basin could fall far short of their potential due to climate change.

For example, it finds that by 2050, there would only be enough water for hydroelectric facilities to perform at about 50 percent of capacity. By the end of the century, there would be only enough to sustain about 25 percent. Irrigation projects would fare better, at least initially. The study finds that if all planned projects are completed, they could double water available for irrigation through 2050. But by 2100, as water losses accumulate, the system would be delivering only slightly more water than irrigation projects provide now, and not nearly enough to meet demand.

The study shows the loss of water in the basin would be especially challenging for poor farmers in rural areas, where agriculture is the primary provider of food and income. In addition to problems for large-scale irrigation projects, the small-scale irrigation that is common throughout the region would also be affected. The IWMI study warns that groundwater could become harder to utilize, "especially the shallow groundwater" typically used in rural communities.

McCartney cautioned that the predictions for water resources in the Volta are not absolute. But he said there are enough warning signs in the data that decision-makers need to be thinking of a more resilient mix of options for energy and agriculture to stand up to the climate challenge. For example, the study suggests considering a broader mix of renewable energy sources, including wind and solar. Water storage options should not be confined to projects that employ large dams, the researchers said. Equal consideration should be given to alternative water storage systems.

For farmers, McCartney said the solutions could include improving groundwater supplies available to rural areas by "recharging" local aquifers with water taken from rivers or reservoirs. This is a practice that is becoming increasingly popular in the water-stressed regions of the world. The study also calls for pursuing relatively simple, small-scale approaches to water storage, such as building small ponds on rural farms and using water tanks with roofs that reduce evaporation. More

 

18 FEBRUARY 2013 Food Security in the Age of “Water Grabbing”

Water grabbing or the large-scale, rapid privatization of water is happening worldwide, affecting global food security because local farmers are losing access to both land and water resources.

Gaining control of water is often a motive behind land grabs, and according to a 2013 report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, up to 57 million hectares of land and 454 billion cubic meters of water are grabbed each year. Africa accounts for 47 percent of global grabbed land while Asia accounts for and 33 percent. Both of these continents are home to some of the world’s hungriest people.

According to Citigroup’s chief economist, Willem Buiter, “Water as an asset class will, in my view, become eventually the single most important physical-commodity based asset class, dwarfing oil, copper, agricultural commodities and precious metals.”Companies such as General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Dow Chemical, Talisman Energy, and Coca-Cola have already acquired many land and water resources and are all members of Aqueduct Alliance, a water mapping project that helps investors identify and assess water risks. While this technology can help companies use water resources responsibly, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy notes that it can also contribute to more water grabbing because companies will have greater knowledge of water resources.

When companies grab land and water resources, local farmers have to find ways to still grow enough food to feed themselves and earn a living. Small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa have recently increased their use of affordable, sustainable irrigation techniques to overcome challenges created by water scarcity, but water grabbing may damage this progress. According to a National Geographic article, “the best opportunity in decades for societal advancement in the region will be squandered” if African governments and foreign investors fail to support local farmers’ initiatives in favor of large-scale water deals that mainly benefit corporations. More

Droughts Are Pushing Trees to the Limit

ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2012) — Droughts in the Southwest made more severe by warming temperatures are putting plants in stressful growing conditions, a new study has found, identifying an increasingly water-thirsty atmosphere as a key force that sucks moisture from plants, leading to potentially higher stress -- especially in mid and low elevations.

As temperatures rise and droughts become more severe in the Southwest, trees are increasingly up against extremely stressful growing conditions, especially in low to middle elevations, University of Arizona researchers report in a study soon to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences.

Lead author Jeremy Weiss, a senior research specialist in the UA department of geosciences, said: "We know the climate in the Southwest is getting warmer, but we wanted to investigate how the higher temperatures might interact with the highly variable precipitation typical of the region."

Weiss' team used a growing season index computed from weather data to examine limits to plant growth during times of drought.

"The approach we took allows us to model and map potential plant responses to droughts under past, present and future conditions across the whole region," explained Julio Betancourt, a senior scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey who co-authored the study along with Jonathan Overpeck, co-director of the UA Institute of the Environment. Betancourt holds adjunct appointments in the UA department of geosciences, the UA School of Geography and Development, the UA School of Natural Resources and the Environment and the UA Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. More

 

Basic water, sanitation and hygiene essential for food security

At this year’s Stockholm World Water Week, much of the talk has been about the need to improve both food security and water management to meet the rapidly growing and increasingly diverse demand for resources.

Current estimates suggest the global population will reach nine billion by 2050. This will lead to a 70 percent increase in demand for food, with shifts towards a more complex diet placing yet more pressures on water supplies.

At WaterAid, we recognise that not only water but also sanitation and hygiene are intrinsically linked to food security. It is vital that we provide these services for basic human needs if we are to address large scale water and food security. This is laid out in the new water security framework we are launching at the global water event.

Clean water, sanitation and improved hygiene have a significant impact on livelihoods, the environment and agriculture. As a result, there is little hope of achieving food security and overall well-being without ensuring water security at a local level.

Dirty water and poor sanitation have serious implications on health, affecting people’s ability to farm and work, with a knock-on effect on both the availability of food and the ability to buy it.

Improved water sources close to the home can be used to water household kitchen gardens, providing additional nutrition in times of food shortages, while the bi-products of ecological sanitation can greatly enhance soil fertility and crop yields.

Water, sanitation and hygiene services generally focus on the use of groundwater, which is naturally more resilient to drought conditions. It is therefore more likely to be available for household food production and cattle watering, as well as for drinking, washing and cooking, when other surface sources dry up.

 

Is the Natural Gas Fracking Industry Paying Off Scientists?

Last week the University of Texas provost announced he would re-examine a report by a UT professor that said fracking was safe for groundwater after the revelation that the professor pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Texas natural gas developer. It’s the latest fusillade in the ongoing battle over the basic facts of fracking in America.

Texans aren’t the only ones having their fracking conversations shaped by industry-funded research. Ohioans got their first taste last week of the latest public-relations campaign by the energy policy wing of the US Chamber of Commerce. It’s called “Shale Works for US,” and it aims to spend millions on advertising and public events to sell Ohioans on the idea that fracking is a surefire way to yank the state out of recession.


The campaign is loaded with rosy employment statistics, which trace to an April report authored by professors at three major Ohio universities and funded by, you guessed it, the natural gas industry. The report paints a bright future for fracking in Ohio as a job-creator.

One co-author of the study, Robert Chase, is poised at such a high-traffic crossroads of that state’s natural gas universe that his case was recently taken up by the Ohio Ethics Commission, whose chairman called him “more than a passing participant in the operations of the Ohio oil and gas industry,” and questioned his potential conflicts of interest. As landowners in a suite of natural gas-rich states like Texas and Ohio struggle to to decipher conflicting reports about the safety of fracking, Chase is a piece in what environmental and academic watchdogs call a growing puzzle of industry-funded fracking research with poor disclosure and dubious objectivity.

“It’s hard to find someone who’s truly independant and doesn’t have at least one iron in the fire,” said Ohio oil and gas lease attorney Mark F. Okey. “It’s a good ol’ boys network and they like to take care of their own.” More