Egypt refuses Renaissance Dam storage capacity

Egypt rejected the current the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam’s (GERD) high storage capacity, as studies showed it will affect its national water security

Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam’

Egypt rejected the current the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam’s (GERD) high storage capacity, as studies showed it will affect its national water security, reported state-owned Middle East News Agency (MENA) Sunday.

The dam’s storage capacity reaches 74bn cubic meters. Calling such capacity “unjustified and technically unacceptable”, Egypt asked Ethiopia to reduce it to what was agreed before the start of negotiations over the years-of-filling and operation of the dam.

Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan, the three countries involved, are facing difficulties in technical negotiations, said Alaa Yassin, Advisor to the Egyptian Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation and spokesman for the GERD file, according to state news agency MENA.

Yassin hopes that all parties adhere to the August agreements that took place in Sudan“without procrastination and time-wasting”, while the three countries are trying to overcome these difficulties.

“Egypt’s share in the historic Nile River water red line cannot be crossed,” Yassin told MENA.

Ethiopia began constructing the dam in 2011, and since then Egypt and Ethiopia have been locked in a diplomatic dispute, which reached a peak in 2013. Egypt, which utilises more Nile water than any other country, fears the dispute will have a detrimental effect on its share of Nile water.

As per agreements signed in 1929 and 1959, Egypt annually receives 55.5bn cubic metres of the estimated total 84bn cubic metres of Nile water produced each year, with Sudan receiving 18.5bn cubic metres. More

 

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Water Resource Management- New Publication 2014

Department of Organic Food Quality and Food Culture, University of Kassel and Department of Archaeology and Heritage Management, Rajarata University, Sri Lanka are pleased to announce about the publication of their new research paper, titled "Water Resource Management in Dry Zonal Paddy Cultivation in Mahaweli River Basin, Sri Lanka: An Analysis of Spatial and Temporal Climate Change Impacts and Traditional Knowledge" in the Special Issue "Changes in precipitation and impacts on regional water resources", Climate Journal International.

The paper may be accessed at http://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/2/4/329

Abstract: Lack of attention to spatial and temporal cross-scale dynamics and effects could be understood as one of the lacunas in scholarship on river basin management. Within the water-climate-food-energy nexus, an integrated and inclusive approach that recognizes traditional knowledge about and experiences of climate change and water resource management can provide crucial assistance in confronting problems in megaprojects and multipurpose river basin management projects.

The Mahaweli Development Program (MDP), a megaproject and multipurpose river basin management project, is demonstrating substantial failures with regards to the spatial and temporal impacts of climate change and socioeconomic demands for water allocation and distribution for paddy cultivation in the dry zone area, which was one of the driving goals of the project at the initial stage. This interdisciplinary study explores how spatial and temporal climatic changes and uncertainty n weather conditions impact paddy cultivation in dry zonal areas with competing stakeholders' interest in the Mahaweli River Basin.

In the framework of embedded design in the mixed methods research approach, qualitative data is the primary source while quantitative analyses are used as supportive data. The key findings from the research analysis are as follows: close and in-depth consideration of spatial and temporal changes in climate systems and paddy farmers' socioeconomic demands altered by seasonal changes are important factors. These factors should be considered in the future modification of water allocation, application of distribution technologies, and decision-making with regards to water resource management in the dry zonal paddy cultivation of Sri Lanka. More

 

 

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The Unity of Water

MOSCOW – In May, Vietnam became the 35th and decisive signatory of the 1997 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses. As a result, 90 days later, on August 17, the convention will enter into force.

The fact that it took almost 50 years to draft and finally achieve the necessary ratification threshold demonstrates that something is very wrong with the modern system of multilateralism. Regardless of longstanding disagreements over how cross-border freshwater resources should be allocated and managed, and understandable preferences by governments and water professionals to rely on basin agreements rather than on international legal instruments, that half-century wait can be explained only by a lack of political leadership. So, though the world may celebrate the convention’s long-awaited adoption, we cannot rest on our laurels.

Roughly 60% of all freshwater runs within cross-border basins; only an estimated 40% of those basins, however, are governed by some sort of basin agreement. In an increasingly water-stressed world, shared water resources are becoming an instrument of power, fostering competition within and between countries. The struggle for water is heightening political tensions and exacerbating impacts on ecosystems.

But the really bad news is that water consumption is growing faster than population – indeed, in the twentieth century it grew at twice the rate. As a result, several UN agencies forecast that, by 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in regions stricken with absolute water scarcity, implying a lack of access to adequate quantities for human and environmental uses. Moreover, two-thirds of the world’s population will face water-stress conditions, meaning a scarcity of renewable freshwater.

Without resolute counter-measures, demand for water will overstretch many societies’ adaptive capacities. This could result in massive migration, economic stagnation, destabilization, and violence, posing a new threat to national and international security.

The UN Watercourses Convention must not become just another ignored international agreement, filed away in a drawer. The stakes are too high. In today’s context of climate change, rising demand, population growth, increasing pollution, and overexploited resources, everything must be done to consolidate the legal framework for managing the world’s watersheds. Our environmental security, economic development, and political stability directly depend on it.

The convention will soon apply to all of the cross-border rivers of its signatories’ territories, not just the biggest basins. It will complement the gaps and shortcomings of existing agreements and provide legal coverage to the numerous cross-border rivers that are under increasing pressure.

Worldwide, there are 276 cross-border freshwater basins and about as many cross-border aquifers. Backed by adequate financing, political will, and the engagement of stakeholders, the convention can help address the water challenges that we are all facing. But will it?

An ambitious agenda should be adopted now, at a time when the international community is negotiating the contents of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the successor to the UN Millennium Development Goals, which will expire in 2015. We at Green Cross hope that the new goals, which are to be achieved by 2030, will include a stand-alone target that addresses water-resources management.

Moreover, the international community will soon have to agree on a climate-change framework to replace the Kyoto Protocol. Climate change directly affects the hydrological cycle, which means that all of the efforts that are undertaken to contain greenhouse-gas emissions will help to stabilize rainfall patterns and mitigate the extreme water events that so many regions are already experiencing.

But the UN Watercourses Convention’s entry into force raises as many new questions as existed in the period before its ratification. What will its implementation mean in practice? How will countries apply its mandates within their borders and in relation to riparian neighbors? How will the American and Asian countries that have largely ignored ratification respond?

Furthermore, how will the convention relate to the Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes, which is already in force in most European and Central Asian countries and, since February 2013, has aimed to open its membership to the rest of the world? Similarly, how will the convention’s implementation affect existing regional and local cross-border freshwater agreements?

The countries that ratified the UN Watercourses Convention are expected to engage in its implementation and to go further in their efforts to protect and sustainably use their cross-border waters. What instruments, including financial, will the convention provide to them?

Several legal instruments can be implemented jointly and synergistically: the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, to name just a few. The UN Watercourses Convention’s long-delayed enactment should be viewed as an opportunity for signatory states to encourage those that are not yet party to cooperative agreements to work seriously on these issues.

Clearly, politicians and diplomats alone cannot respond effectively to the challenges that the world faces. What the world needs is the engagement of political, business, and civil-society leaders; effective implementation of the UN Watercourses Convention is impossible without it.

This is too often overlooked, but it constitutes the key to the long-term success of cooperation that generates benefits for all. Inclusive participation by stakeholders (including the affected communities), and the development of the capacity to identify, value, and share the benefits of cross-border water resources, should be an integral part of any strategy to achieve effective multilateral collaboration. More

 

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Is the UN turning its back on the human right to water?

One of the biggest threats to economic and social development is that the world's freshwater supplies are rapidly becoming scarce and polluted. A new set of actors are now engaging in the global development arena to define and write the rules ofaccess to water to ensure people's needs are protected.

It is alarming to see that the human right to water and sanitation continues to be marginalised in UN policy discussions. The exclusion of this right to water in the most recent draft of the sustainable development goals reveals policy more conducive to promoting water security for economic growth than ensuring the preservation of watersheds and the equitable distribution of scarce water supplies.

When the UN general assembly passed a resolution in 2010 affirming water and sanitation as a human right, it was celebrated as a victory for communities dealing with the health impacts of polluted water, the indignity of not having access to clean drinking water and sanitation or the inability to produce food owing to water shortages. Social movements saw the human right to water and sanitation as a tool in the fight against a global water crisis produced by inequality, social exclusion and abuse of the water commons.

The global water crisis is also a big concern for industries seeking secure access to water supplies to sustain and expand operations in a never-ending quest for economic growth. The extractive industries, large drinks companies, big banks investing in water stocks, and companies involved in providing water and sanitation services have positioned themselves as stakeholders within global water policy discussions and as being able to provide solutions to the crisis.

The latest trend in global and national water policy is for corporations to participate in decision-making bodies and promote corporate-driven solutions through public-private partnerships. Over the past decade or so, the efforts of corporations such as Nestlé and Unilever to engage in global water policy discussions has shifted the debate from one of injustice and inequality to a depoliticised discussion of scarcity solved by technological fixes. These are offered by multinational corporations and market mechanisms that further deregulate water resource allocation.

When global policymakers – including the working group on sustainable development goals (SDGs) – focus simply on improving "water efficiency" for these ever-expanding industries without anchoring discussions of access to water as a right, they are ignoring communities that are challenging the very presence of the industries that are destroying watersheds.

The human right to water and sanitation holds promise for these communities. It has been invoked in Plachimada, in south India, to challenge Coca Cola's accessto aquifers; by anti-mining activists throughout Latin America; and, more recently, by the Kalahari Bushmen in a struggle to access traditional water sources on land coveted by industries such as tourism, diamond mining and fracking.

It has also been used to democratise water and sanitation services. In Uruguay, recognition of the human right to water led to the ban of private water services. When a recent ruling by a top Greek court blocked the privatisation of the country's largest water utility, in Athens, it was a victory for activists across Europe who had condemned forced privatisation through loan conditions in bailout packages for Greece, Portugal and Italy.

So it is deeply troubling that the human right to water continues to be contested at the UN. For those living without access to adequate drinking water and sanitation, the SDG on water focuses on universal access. As special rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, Catarina de Albuquerque arguesthat an emphasis on universality alone fails to eliminate inequality.

At the very minimum, the human right to water calls for the elimination of discrimination and the adoption of special measures for marginalised communities. Social movements pursuing public control over water supplies, and democratic and participatory governance models, are also drawn to the elements of public participation in decision-making, accountability and access to justice underscored by the human right to water.

While this right is hardly the silver bullet for all global water woes, it goes a long way towards balancing unequal power relationships. More

 

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World’s largest hydropower project planned for Tibetan Plateau

This is part of a special report produced by on the future of the Brahmaputra river – one of the world’s great transboundary rivers – which starts on the Tibetan Plateau before passing through India and Bangladesh.

Also read:
- It’s time for a new era of cooperation on the Brahmaputra
- Why India and China should leave the Brahmaputra alone
- Brahmaputra river is a living ecosytem, not just a source of hydropower

The Tibetan Plateau, the world’s third pole, gives birth to many of Asia’s major rivers. As the key for maintaining the continent’s ecology, and one of the world’s most important ecosystems in its own right, it is of huge strategic significance.

The Yarlung Tsangpo (known as the Brahamputra in India), which runs alongside the majesty of the Himalayas, is the world’s highest river. It runs west to east along the rift created by the impact of the Eurasian Plate, cutting through the Tibetan Plateau until it meets the point where the Himalayas, the Nyenchen Tanglha and Hengduan mountains join. Here it forces its way between the Gyala Peri and Namcha Barwa peaks to form the world’s deepest gorge, then makes its way to South Asia where it joins the Ganga and flows to the Indian Ocean.

The Yarlung Tsangpo rises at a high altitude, in a geologically complex area. The river’s powerful flow, long course and large drop in altitude give it great potential for hydropower development. But the scale of dam building planned by China and India could have disastrous ecological consequences.

China’s plans date back to the early 1990s, when it carried out a series of hydropower development surveys of the river, with the Yarlung Tsangpo Gorge the focus of interest.

In the late 20th century, this gorge was recognised as the world’s deepest. In the 400 kilometres from the top of the gorge, the river twists around the mountain of Namcha Barwa (known as the Great Bend) and loses more than 2,000 metres in altitude, forming several waterfalls and giving up huge energy potential as it goes. Hydropower experts say a tunnel that cuts the river’s natural loop could carry 2,000 cubic metres of water a second, with a drop in altitude of 2,800 metres – enough to power a 50-gigawatt hydropower station that could provide 300 billion kilowatt hours of electricity a year. It would be the largest hydropower project in human history – about three times the size of the Three Gorges Dam.

The world’s largest dam

Eleven hydropower stations are planned on the river, three along the middle reaches from Sangri to Gyaca, and nine on the gorge up to the Great Bend, with total generating capacity of 60 gigawatts.

Work started on the Zangmu Dam – one of the three planned on the Sangri-Gyaca section – in 2010 and this is expected to be generating electricity this year. There are also plans for about 65 gigawatts of hydropower development on the major tributaries of the Yarlung Tsangpo.

India has also been planning hydropower development along the Yarlung Tsangpo and its tributaries on a huge scale; public and private companies have proposed 168 massive dams, to produce 57 gigawatts of hydropower in the country’s north-east.

Floods, landslides and extinction

The Yarlung Tsangpo Gorge is a young and still active geological formation, any interference could have disastrous knock-on effects, from which the ecosystem may not be able to recover.

There are powerful geological stresses here, and seismic activity and landslides are common. The gorge is still taking shape, and I have found more than 100 active landslips or mudslides which any future earthquakes could worsen.

In the early 1950s, an earthquake of magnitude 8 on the Richter scale caused many secondary landslides, which resulted in sustained flooding downstream. In April 2000, I personally witnessed a huge landslide at Yi’ong, which created a four billion cubic metre barrier lake. Sixty days later the barrier failed. The resulting floods affected millions of people and paralysed transportation. Natural disasters of this type are common here.

We still don’t know what the long-term impact of climate change will be on the Tibetan Plateau, but the glaciers and snowlines of the Himalayas are retreating, depriving the rivers of a source of water. If this continues, the plateau’s waterways will be cut off, or even dry up and the land will become a desert.

Today, the ecosystem of the gorge region is already in decline. The primary forests made up of tall trees are now over-mature and swathes of forest over 2,500 metres in altitude are dying. Secondary growth is mono-cultural – the forests are failing to regenerate. Meanwhile, the Monpa and Luopa people who live deep in the gorge continue slash-and-burn methods of farming – the forests on many steep slopes have been torched to provide farmland, resulting in the rapid spread of soil erosion and landslides.

Much of the area’s wildlife – it is one of the most biodiverse regions of the world – is also facing extinction. The ecosystem of the gorge and surrounding areas have become fragmented, meaning animals have smaller areas in which to roam. This leads to imbalances in the food chain, while the mono-cultural secondary forests prevent populations growing and surviving.

The importance of the Tibetan Plateau’s environment to the health of the Yarlung Tsangpo and other rivers should not be ignored. Its worsening environment is a major factor in the degradation of the ecologies of the Yarlung Tsangpo and other rivers; interference from human development and hydropower projects will only add insult to injury. More

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Nile Delta disappearing beneath the sea

El Rashid, Egypt - It only takes a light covering of seawater to render land infertile, so Mohamed Saeed keeps a close watch on the sea as it advances, year after year, towards his two-hectare plot of land. The young farmer, whose clover field lies just 400 metres from Egypt's northern coast, reckons he has less than a decade before his field - and livelihood - submerges beneath the sea.

Nile Delta

But even before that, his crops will wither and die as seawater infiltrates the local aquifer. The process has already begun, he says, clutching a handful of white-caked soil.

"The land has become sick," says Saeed. "The soil is saline, the irrigation water is saline, and we have to use a lot of fertilisers to grow anything on it."

Spread over 25,000 square kilometres, the densely populated Nile Delta is the breadbasket of Egypt, accounting for two-thirds of the country's agricultural production, and home to 40 million people. Its northern flank, running 240 kilometres from Alexandria to Port Said, is one of the most vulnerable coastlines in the world, facing the triple threat of coastal erosion, saltwater infiltration, and rising sea levels.

According to Khaled Ouda, a geologist at Assiut University, a 30-centimetre rise in sea level would inundate 6,000 square kilometres of the Nile Delta. The flooding would create islands out of an additional 2,000 square kilometres of elevated land - isolating towns, roads, fields, and industrial facilities.

"The total [area of the Delta] expected to be impacted by a rising of the sea level by one metre during this century will be 8,033 square kilometres, which is nearly 33 percent of the total area of the Nile Delta," says Ouda.

You can build all the walls you want, but it won't stop the seawater from advancing underground. - Osman El-Rayis, chemistry professor at Alexandria University

In a report released in September 2013, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts a sea level rise of 28 to 98 centimetres by 2100, more than twice its 2007 projections. Even by the most conservative estimate, this would destroy 12.5 percent of Egypt's cultivated areas and displace about eight million people, or nearly 10 percent of the population.

But it is not just rising sea levels that threaten Egypt's northern coast: The delta itself is sinking.

Prior to the building of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s, more than 120 million tonnes of silt washed down the Nile each year and accumulated in its delta. Without this annual silt flow to replenish it, the Nile Delta is shrinking - in some places the coastline is receding by as much as 175 metres a year.

The Egyptian government has attempted to slow the sea's advance by building a series of breakwaters and earthen dykes along the northern coast and its waterways. Piles of concrete blocks help reduce coastal erosion, but without new sedimentation, the delta land has compacted and thousands of hectares now lie at sea level.

"You can build all the walls you want, but it won't stop the seawater from advancing underground," says Osman el-Rayis, a chemistry professor at Alexandria University. "The saltwater rots fields from below, killing plant roots and leaving behind salts [as it evaporates] that render the soil infertile."

El-Rayis warns that as the delta substratum becomes more porous, seawater has begun to infiltrate the Nile Delta aquifer, a vital source of underground water spread over 2.5 million hectares.

Saltwater has always been a threat to coastal agricultural land, but salinity was traditionally kept in check by a steady flow of freshwater covering the soil and flushing out the salt. As Egypt's population has expanded, upstream demand on water has increased, reducing the amount of Nile water that reaches the Delta. What does trickle in these days is choked with sewage and industrial toxins.

Faced with rising water levels and increased salinity, many farmers have abandoned their land or switched to fish farming. Others have resorted to adding sand or soil to their fields to keep them above the brackish water.

The sand is drawn from the dunes that line much of Egypt's northern coast and act as natural barriers against the advancing sea. The plundering of these dunes for construction materials and fill has made the Nile Delta yet more vulnerable to a rise in sea level.

Scientists have proposed measures to protect the Delta lowlands from the sea's incursion. They say the priority is to slow beach erosion by preserving natural coastal defences such as sand dunes, while building seawalls along the 240-kilometre coast that are strong enough to hold back the Mediterranean.

"These walls would be built facing the sea in places where low-lying gaps occur along the beach," says Ouda.

He explains that, in order to be effective, the barriers must include an impermeable substructure extending from three to 13 metres below sea level that prevents seawater from infiltrating freshwater aquifers.

The size is as formidable as the expected cost. One proposal submitted by Egyptian engineer Mamdouh Hamza put the price tag at $3bn. The plan envisions building a concrete wall along the Delta's entire coastline and skirting it with a plastic diaphragm to prevent saltwater seepage.

Ouda says the mega-project would be cost-effective in that it would save the Nile Delta lands, but it is unlikely to attract the necessary capital. He doubts Egypt's cash-strapped government could cover the costs, while the international community appears unwilling to offer a lifeline.

"The project to establish the coastal walls is a service project… without economic gain and, thus, you will not find a financier for this project from companies or foreign governments," Ouda says.

Yet some have argued that as Western nations are most responsible for climate change, their governments should foot the bill on behalf of the developing nations most impacted by its consequences. More

 

China's largest freshwater lake dries up

For visitors expecting to see China's largest freshwater lake, Poyang is a desolate spectacle. Under normal circumstances it covers 3,500 sq km, but last month only 200 sq km were underwater.

A dried-out plain stretches as far as the eye can see, leaving a pagoda perched on top of a hillock that is usually a little island. Wrapped in the mist characteristic of the lower reaches of the Yangtze river, the barges are moored close to the quayside beside a pitiful trickle of water. There is no work for the fisheries.

According to the state news agency Xinhua, the drought – the worst for 60 years – is due to the lack of rainfall in the area round Poyang and its tributaries. Poor weather conditions this year are partly responsible. But putting the blame on them overlooks the role played by the colossal Three Gorges reservoir, 500km upstream. The cause and effect is still not officially recognised, even if the government did admit last May that the planet's biggest dam had given rise to "problems that need to be solved very urgently".

"Every year, when the Three Gorges reservoir stores water – to power the dam's turbines during the winter – the flow rate in the Yangtze drops. This in turn increases the rate at which the level of Poyang lake falls, and the period of low water comes sooner," said Ye Xuchun, a researcher at China's Southwest University. In partnership with scientists at the Lake Science and Environment laboratory at Nanking University, he has published a comparative analysis of water levels in the Three Gorges basin and at the lake's northern extremity, near the city of Hukou, where the outflow from Poyang joins the Yangtze.

The authors conclude that the artificial regulation of the reservoir, which must be kept full to optimise electricity output, reduces the water level in the lower reaches of the Yangtze. This means that the big river no longer "plugs" the lake's northern outlet, so the other rivers feeding into Poyang simply pass through the dwindling lake and run on downstream. This was the case in 2006, a very dry year that coincided with the period when the Three Gorges reservoir was filling up. "When the depth of the reservoir was increased by 15 metres, to reach 155 metres in October, the lake dropped very low at Hukou," the scientists said.

The beginning of 2012 has proved even worse. The region's environmental balance was "seriously affected", said Dai Nianhua, deputy head of the Lake Poyang Research Centre in Nanchang, the provincial capital. When the water level is too low there are no fish, so there is no food for the migrating birds that usually break their journey at Poyang. The government has decided to drop fish and shellfish into the lake from helicopters.

The economic impact is just as disastrous. "Freighters can only cross the lake empty," said a worker at the shipyard in Xingzi, whereas usually the lake is a hive of activity in rural Jiangxi province. Some people are now suggesting that a dam should be built where the lake joins the Yangtze, but no one knows what side-effects that might have.

As for the fisheries, they have upturned their boats on the shore or abandoned them on the dried-out bed of Poyang. Guo Jintao, a resident of Yumincun, a village with about 100 fishers, has not been out on the water for over a year. He started fishing when he was 13 and in 50 years he has not seen the lake this dry. He and his wife have switched to casual labouring in the building trade.

"Next year we'll see. If there's enough water, we'll go fishing again, otherwise we'll carry on with our new work," Guo said. His wife, Zhang Jingzen, 55, finds stacking bricks hard work. "I prefer fishing. Our family's been fishing for four generations," she said.

The family used to earn $1,600 to $3,200 a year, but last year's earnings only amounted to $800. The local authorities offered them around $600 in compensation. Another fisherman, intrigued by our conversation, butted in to say that he only got $80 from the municipal council, whereas the province had allocated $160 for each member of the fishing community.

"The incomes in fishing villages are dropping as fast as the water in the lake. Some residents will have move on to other trades," said Xu Bin, the author of a thesis on the socio-economic consequences of the lake's environmental disorders. He warns: "The soil of China is dry, so the Yangtze is vital. Poyang is one of the key elements and its current predicament is a warning for the future." More

 

Amazon forest loss risks water security across South America

The continued destruction of the Amazon to exploit its resources for mining, agriculture and hydro-power is threatening the future of the South American continent, according to a report by campaigning groups using the latest scientific data.

Five countries - Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru - share the Amazon, and for all of them the forest area occupies more than 40% of their territory. All face threats to their water supply, energy production, food and health.

Declining rainfall

In addition, the report says, because of the over-exploitation of the region rainfall will fall by 20% over a heavily-populated area far to the south of Amazonia known as the La Plata basin, covering parts of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Last month it was reported that deforestation in Amazonia had increased by almost a third in the past year, with an area equal to 50 football pitches destroyed every minute since 2000.

The report, the Amazonia Security Agenda, authored by the Global Canopy Programme and CIAT, the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture, says the prosperity of the region is based on the abundance of water.

"Amazonia's abundant natural resources underpin water, food, energy, and health security for the economy and people of the region and far beyond", the report states.

"At the heart of this nexus of securities is water. So abundant in the region, but now under increasing threat as industrial pollution increases, and unprecedented droughts reveal a once unthinkable water vulnerability."

The forest maintains its own rainfall

Key to the problem is the role of the forest in recycling water deep into the interior of the South American continent, as rainfall onto the forest is transpired by trees back into the atmosphere, regenerating atmospheric humidity and clouds, and creating powerful thermal updraughts:

"The loss of ecosystem services through deforestation undermines the securities and particularly water security that is so pivotal. The forest recycles 20-25% of the rainfall it receives, and air travelling over
extensive forest cover may generate twice as much rainfall as air over deforested land."

As forest is cut down this process is disrupted - leaving both people and ecosystems at increasing risk.

Pollution - a growing problem

Another problem that comes with Amazonia's increasing industrialisation is pollution of both air and water, with toxic contaminants including mercury from gold-mining.

"Large-scale deforestation is predicted to reduce rainfall by up to 21% by 2050, although the science is still uncertain. Furthermore, deforestation is likely to affect water quality through increasing soil erosion and leaching of nutrients and heavy metals including mercury."

And most people depend on the rainforest and the rain it brings to keep their water clean: "Water purification ecosystem services are important for the provision of clean drinking water. However, limited access to a proper water supply, treatment and basic sanitation infrastructure across Amazonia, particularly in rural areas, makes water security of Amazonian populations extremely vulnerable to pollution.

"This has knock on effects on food security (fisheries) and health security. In Ecuador 30,000 Amazonian citizens are seeking compensation through the courts at the billion US dollar scale over claims of toxic pollution by oil companies in the region."

Profits siphoned off

The huge wealth being generated from the forests comes with large-scale environmental and social costs. Local people do not benefit, and the profits from minerals, mining and agriculture are siphoned out of the region.

The large-scale economic development of the region causes deforestation. That in turn is threatening not only the wellbeing of the local people but the economic stability of the industries themselves.

Climate change is adding to both the uncertainty and the instability. Increasing temperatures, as much as 3.5°C in the near future, changing rainfall patterns and more intense and frequent extreme weather events will have further impacts on the health and well-being of the population.

Hydroelectricity at risk

Energy supply from hydro-electric dams will also decline, according to the report:"Hydropower generation, especially for run of river dams, will be more vulnerable in the dry season, challenging future energy security across the region, especially given plans to invest heavily in new Amazonian hydropower."

The biggest such example is the highly controversial Belo Monte dam in the Brazilian Amazon, which is projected to supply 40% of Brazil's additional electricity needs by 2019.

Belo Monte "will have a significantly lower power output than expected due to regional deforestation - up to 13% lower than under a fully-forested scenario, and up to 36% lower by 2050 if current deforestation rates continue."

Big bill coming

Among those welcoming the report is Manuel Pulgar, Peru's environment minister. He will play a leading part when the country's capital, Lima, hosts the 20th summit of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in December 2014.

He said: "Climate change is a global problem, but one that will multiply local and regional problems in unforeseeable ways. In Latin America, we have taken Amazonia and its seemingly limitless water and forests as a given. But recent unprecedented droughts have shown us just what happens when that water security falters ..."

According to the report, the impacts of environmental degradation that have so far been felt in other parts of the world are now likely to be felt in Amazonia, threatening economic development and security.

Governments in the region, it says, need to recognize that development cannot continue without recognising the damage caused to the water supply and the climate both globally and locally. Policy makers need scientists to monitor changes to conditions and the economic risks they pose.

Trillions of tons of water

These findings must be shared between academic institutions and governments so that they can decide how to remedy the problem. Annual reviews of dangerous hotspots are also needed, and cross-border groups of experts who could help both national and regional development plans to be worked out. More