Baseline
water stress: ratio of total annual water withdrawals to total
available annual renewable supply, accounting for upstream consumptive
use
Global physical and economic water scarcity
Water scarcity is the lack of fresh water resources to meet water demand. It affects every continent and was listed in 2019 by the World Economic Forum as one of the largest global risks in terms of potential impact over the next decade.
It is manifested by partial or no satisfaction of expressed demand,
economic competition for water quantity or quality, disputes between
users, irreversible depletion of groundwater, and negative impacts on the environment.
One-third of the global population (2 billion people) live under
conditions of severe water scarcity at least 1 month of the year. Half a billion people in the world face severe water scarcity all year round. Half of the world’s largest cities experience water scarcity.
A mere 0.014% of all water on Earth is both fresh and easily accessible.
Of the remaining water, 97% is saline and a little less than 3% is hard
to access. Technically, there is a sufficient amount of freshwater on a
global scale. However, due to unequal distribution (exacerbated by climate change)
resulting in some very wet and some very dry geographic locations, plus
a sharp rise in global freshwater demand in recent decades driven by
industry, humanity is facing a water crisis. Demand is expected to outstrip supply by 40% in 2030, if current trends continue.
The essence of global water scarcity is the geographic and temporal mismatch between freshwater demand and availability. The increasing world population, improving living standards, changing consumption patterns, and expansion of irrigated agriculture are the main driving forces for the rising global demand for water. Climate change, such as altered weather-patterns (including droughts or floods), deforestation, increased pollution, green house gases, and wasteful use of water can cause insufficient supply. At the global level and on an annual basis, enough freshwater is available to meet such demand, but spatial
and temporal variations of water demand and availability are large,
leading to (physical) water scarcity in several parts of the world
during specific times of the year. All causes of water scarcity are related to human interference with the water cycle. Scarcity varies over time as a result of natural hydrological
variability, but varies even more so as a function of prevailing
economic policy, planning and management approaches. Scarcity can be
expected to intensify with most forms of economic development, but, if correctly identified, many of its causes can be predicted, avoided or mitigated.
Some countries have already proven that decoupling water use from economic growth
is possible. For example, in Australia, water consumption declined by
40% between 2001 and 2009 while the economy grew by more than 30%. The International Resource Panel of the UN states that governments have tended to invest heavily in largely inefficient solutions: mega-projects like dams, canals, aqueducts, pipelines and water reservoirs, which are generally neither environmentally sustainable nor economically viable. The most cost-effective way of decoupling water use from economic growth, according to the scientific panel, is for governments to create holistic water management plans that take into account the entire water cycle: from source to distribution, economic use, treatment, recycling, reuse and return to the environment.
Supply & demand
Global use of freshwater, 2016 FAO data
Global water consumption 1900-2025, by region, in billions m3 per year
The total amount of easily accessible freshwater on Earth, in the form of surface water (rivers and lakes) or groundwater (in aquifers,
for example), is 14.000 cubic kilometres (nearly 3359 cubic miles). Of
this total amount, 'just' 5.000 cubic kilometres are being used and
reused by humanity. Hence, in theory, there is more than enough
freshwater available to meet the demands of the current world population
of more than 7 billion people, and even support population growth
to 9 billion or more. Due to the unequal geographical distribution and
especially the unequal consumption of water, however, it is a scarce
resource in some parts of the world and for some parts of the
population.
Scarcity as a result of consumption is caused primarily by the extensive use of water in agriculture/livestock breeding and industry. People in developed countries generally use about 10 times more water daily than those in developing countries. A large part of this is indirect use in water-intensive agricultural and industrial production processes of consumer goods,
such as fruit, oil seed crops and cotton. Because many of these
production chains have been globalised, a lot of water in developing
countries is being used and polluted in order to produce goods destined
for consumption in developed countries.
Physical & economic scarcity
Water scarcity can result from two mechanisms:
Physical water scarcity results from inadequate natural water
resources to supply a region's demand, and economic water scarcity
results from poor management of the sufficient available water
resources. According to the United Nations Development Programme,
the latter is found more often to be the cause of countries or regions
experiencing water scarcity, as most countries or regions have enough
water to meet household, industrial, agricultural, and environmental
needs, but lack the means to provide it in an accessible manner.
Around one fifth of the world's population currently live in regions affected by Physical water scarcity,
where there is inadequate water resources to meet a country's or
regional demand, including the water needed to fulfill the demand of
ecosystems to function effectively.
Arid regions frequently suffer from physical water scarcity. It also
occurs where water seems abundant but where resources are
over-committed, such as when there is over development of hydraulic
infrastructure for irrigation. Symptoms of physical water scarcity
include environmental degradation and declining groundwater as well as
other forms of exploitation or overuse.
Economic water scarcity
is caused by a lack of investment in infrastructure or technology to
draw water from rivers, aquifers or other water sources, or insufficient
human capacity to satisfy the demand for water. One quarter of the
world's population is affected by economic water scarcity. Economic
water scarcity includes a lack of infrastructure, causing the people
without reliable access to water to have to travel long distances to
fetch water, that is often contaminated from rivers for domestic and
agricultural uses. Large parts of Africa suffer from economic water
scarcity; developing water infrastructure in those areas could therefore
help to reduce poverty. Critical conditions often arise for
economically poor and politically weak communities living in already dry
environment. Consumption increases with GDP per capita in most
developed countries the average amount is around 200–300 litres daily.
In underdeveloped countries (e.g. African countries such as Mozambique),
average daily water consumption per capita was below 10 L. This is
against the backdrop of international organisations, which recommend a
minimum of 20 L of water (not including the water needed for washing
clothes), available at most 1 km from the household. Increased water
consumption is correlated with increasing income, as measured by GDP per
capita. In countries suffering from water shortages water is the
subject of speculation.
Human right to water
In Meatu district, Simiyu Region,
Tanzania (Africa), water most often comes from open holes dug in the
sand of dry riverbeds, and it is invariably contaminated. Many children
are deprived of an education primarily due to this daily task.
The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights established a foundation of five core attributes for water security. They declare that the human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible, and affordable water for personal and domestic use.
Millennium Development Goals (MDG)
At the 2000 Millennium Summit,
the United Nations addressed the effects of economic water scarcity by
making increased access to safe drinking water an international
development goal. During this time, they drafted the Millennium
Development Goals and all 189 UN members agreed on eight goals. MDG 7
sets a target for reducing the proportion of the population without
sustainable safe drinking water access by half by 2015. This would mean
that more than 600 million people would gain access to a safe source of
drinking water. In 2016, the Sustainable Development Goals replaced the Millennium Development Goals.
Effects on environment
Water
scarcity has many negative impacts on the environment, including lakes,
rivers, wetlands and other fresh water resources. The resulting water
overuse that is related to water scarcity, often located in areas of
irrigation agriculture, harms the environment in several ways including
increased salinity, nutrient pollution, and the loss of floodplains and wetlands. Furthermore, water scarcity makes flow management in the rehabilitation of urban streams problematic.
Through the last hundred years, more than half of the Earth's wetlands have been destroyed and have disappeared.
These wetlands are important not only because they are the habitats of
numerous inhabitants such as mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, and invertebrates, but they support the growing of rice and other food crops as well as provide water filtration and protection from storms and flooding. Freshwater lakes such as the Aral Sea
in central Asia have also suffered. Once the fourth largest freshwater
lake, it has lost more than 58,000 square km of area and vastly
increased in salt concentration over the span of three decades.
Subsidence, or the gradual sinking of landforms, is another result of water scarcity. The U.S. Geological Survey
estimates that subsidence has affected more than 17,000 square miles in
45 U.S. states, 80 percent of it due to groundwater usage. In some
areas east of Houston, Texas the land has dropped by more than nine feet due to subsidence. Brownwood, a subdivision near Baytown, Texas, was abandoned due to frequent flooding caused by subsidence and has since become part of the Baytown Nature Center.
Climate change
Aquifer drawdown or overdrafting and the pumping of fossil water
increases the total amount of water within the hydrosphere subject to
transpiration and evaporation processes, thereby causing accretion in
water vapour and cloud cover, the primary absorbers of infrared
radiation in the earth's atmosphere. Adding water to the system has a
forcing effect on the whole earth system, an accurate estimate of which
hydrogeological fact is yet to be quantified.
Depletion of freshwater resources
An abandoned ship in the former Aral Sea, near Aral, Kazakhstan
Apart from the conventional surface water sources of freshwater such
as rivers and lakes, other resources of freshwater such as groundwater
and glaciers have become more developed sources of freshwater, becoming
the main source of clean water. Groundwater
is water that has pooled below the surface of the Earth and can provide
a usable quantity of water through springs or wells. These areas where
groundwater is collected are also known as aquifers. Glaciers provide freshwater in the form meltwater,
or freshwater melted from snow or ice, that supply streams or springs
as temperatures rise. More and more of these sources are being drawn
upon as conventional sources' usability decreases due to factors such as
pollution or disappearance due to climate changes. Human population
growth is a significant contributing factor in the increasing use of
these types of water resources.
Groundwater
Until
recent history, groundwater was not a highly utilized resource. In the
1960s, more and more groundwater aquifers developed. Changes in
knowledge, technology and funding have allowed for focused development
into abstracting water from groundwater resources away from surface
water resources. These changes allowed for progress in society such as
the "agricultural groundwater revolution", expanding the irrigation
sector allowing for increased food production and development in rural
areas. Groundwater supplies nearly half of all drinking water in the world. The large volumes of water stored underground in most aquifers have a considerable buffer capacity allowing for water to be withdrawn during periods of drought or little rainfall. This is crucial for people that live in regions that cannot depend on precipitation
or surface water as a supply alone, instead providing reliable access
to water all year round. As of 2010, the world's aggregated groundwater
abstraction is estimated at approximately 1,000 km3 per year, with 67% used for irrigation, 22% used for domestic purposes and 11% used for industrial purposes.
The top ten major consumers of abstracted water (India, China, United
States of America, Pakistan, Iran, Bangladesh, Mexico, Saudi Arabia,
Indonesia, and Italy) make up 72% of all abstracted water use worldwide.
Groundwater has become crucial for the livelihoods and food security of
1.2 to 1.5 billion rural households in the poorer regions of Africa and
Asia.
Although groundwater sources are quite prevalent, one major area
of concern is the renewal rate or recharge rate of some groundwater
sources. Extracting from groundwater sources that are non-renewable could lead to exhaustion if not properly monitored and managed.
Another concern of increased groundwater usage is the diminished water
quality of the source over time. Reduction of natural outflows,
decreasing stored volumes, declining water levels and water degradation
are commonly observed in groundwater systems.
Groundwater depletion may result in many negative effects such as
increased cost of groundwater pumping, induced salinity and other water
quality changes, land subsidence, degraded springs and reduced
baseflows. Human pollution is also harmful to this important resource.
To set up a big plant near a water abundant area, bottled water
companies need to extract groundwater from a source at a rate more than
the replenishment rate leading to the persistent decline in the
groundwater levels. The groundwater is taken out, bottled, and then
shipped all over the country or world and this water never goes back.
When the water table depletes beyond a critical limit, bottling
companies just move from that area leaving a grave water scarcity.
Groundwater depletion impacts everyone and everything in the area who
uses water: farmers, businesses, animals, ecosystems, tourism, and the
regular guy getting his water from a well. Millions of gallons of water
out of the ground leaves the water table depleted uniformly and not just
in that area because the water table is connected across the landmass.
Bottling Plants generate water scarcity and impact ecological balance.
They lead to water stressed areas which bring in droughts.
Glaciers
Glaciers are noted as a vital water source due to their contribution to stream flow.
Rising global temperatures have noticeable effects on the rate at which
glaciers melt, causing glaciers in general to shrink worldwide.
Although the meltwater from these glaciers are increasing the total
water supply for the present, the disappearance of glaciers in the long
term will diminish available water resources. Increased meltwater due to
rising global temperatures can also have negative effects such as
flooding of lakes and dams and catastrophic results.
Measurement
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Hydrologists today typically assess water scarcity by looking at the
population-water equation. This is done by comparing the amount of total
available water resources per year to the population of a country or
region. A popular approach to measuring water scarcity has been to rank
countries according to the amount of annual water resources available
per person. For example, according to the Falkenmark Water Stress
Indicator,
a country or region is said to experience "water stress" when annual
water supplies drop below 1,700 cubic metres per person per year. At
levels between 1,700 and 1,000 cubic metres per person per year,
periodic or limited water shortages can be expected. When water supplies
drop below 1,000 cubic metres per person per year, the country faces
"water scarcity". The United Nations' FAO
states that by 2025, 1.9 billion people will live in countries or
regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world
population could be under stress conditions. The World Bank adds that climate change
could profoundly alter future patterns of both water availability and
use, thereby increasing levels of water stress and insecurity, both at
the global scale and in sectors that depend on water.
Other ways of measuring water scarcity include examining the
physical existence of water in nature, comparing nations with lower or
higher volumes of water available for use. This method often fails to
capture the accessibility of the water resource to the population that
may need it. Others have related water availability to population.
Another measurement, calculated as part of a wider assessment of water management in 2007,
aimed to relate water availability to how the resource was actually
used. It therefore divided water scarcity into 'physical' and
'economic'. Physical water scarcity
is where there is not enough water to meet all demands, including that
needed for ecosystems to function effectively. Arid regions frequently
suffer from physical water scarcity. It also occurs where water seems
abundant but where resources are over-committed, such as when there is
overdevelopment of hydraulic infrastructure for irrigation. Symptoms of
physical water scarcity include environmental degradation and declining
groundwater. Water stress harms living things because every organism
needs water to live.
Renewable freshwater resources
Renewable
freshwater supply is a metric often used in conjunction when evaluating
water scarcity. This metric is informative because it can describe the
total available water resource each country contains. By knowing the
total available water source, an idea can be gained about whether a
country is prone to experiencing physical water scarcity. This metric
has its faults in that it is an average; precipitation delivers water
unevenly across the planet each year and annual renewable water
resources vary from year to year. This metric also does not describe the
accessibility of water to individuals, households, industries, or the
government. Lastly, as this metric is a description of a whole country,
it does not accurately portray whether a country is experiencing water
scarcity. Canada and Brazil both have very high levels of available
water supply, but still experience various water related problems.
It can be observed that tropical countries in Asia and Africa have low availability of freshwater resources.
The following table displays the average annual renewable
freshwater supply by country including both surface-water and
groundwater supplies.
This table represents data from the UN FAO AQUASTAT, much of which are
produced by modeling or estimation as opposed to actual measurements.
Water stress
GEO-2000 estimate for 2025, 25 African countries are expected to suffer from water shortage or water stress.
The United Nations (UN) estimates that, of 1.4 billion cubic kilometers (1 quadrillion acre-feet) of water on Earth, just 200,000 cubic kilometers (162.1 billion acre-feet) represent fresh water available for human consumption.
More than one in every six people in the world is water stressed,
meaning that they do not have sufficient access to potable water.
Those that are water stressed make up 1.1 billion people in the world
and are living in developing countries. According to the Falkenmark
Water Stress Indicator,
a country or region is said to experience "water stress" when annual
water supplies drop below 1,700 cubic metres per person per year. At
levels between 1,700 and 1,000 cubic meters per person per year,
periodic or limited water shortages can be expected. When a country is
below 1,000 cubic meters per person per year, the country then faces
water scarcity . In 2006, about 700 million people in 43 countries were
living below the 1,700 cubic metres per person threshold.
Water stress is ever intensifying in regions such as China, India, and
Sub-Saharan Africa, which contains the largest number of water stressed
countries of any region with almost one fourth of the population living
in a water stressed country. The world's most water stressed region is the Middle East with averages of 1,200 cubic metres of water per person.
In China, more than 538 million people are living in a water-stressed
region. Much of the water stressed population currently live in river
basins where the usage of water resources greatly exceed the renewal of
the water source.
Changes in climate
Another popular opinion is that the amount of available freshwater is decreasing because of climate change.
Climate change has caused receding glaciers, reduced stream and river
flow, and shrinking lakes and ponds. Many aquifers have been over-pumped
and are not recharging quickly. Although the total fresh water supply
is not used up, much has become polluted, salted, unsuitable or
otherwise unavailable for drinking, industry and agriculture. To avoid a
global water crisis, farmers will have to strive to increase
productivity to meet growing demands for food, while industry and cities
find ways to use water more efficiently.
A New York Times article, "Southeast Drought Study Ties Water Shortage to Population, Not Global Warming",
summarizes the findings of Columbia University researcher on the
subject of the droughts in the American Southeast between 2005 and 2007.
The findings published in the Journal of Climate say that the
water shortages resulted from population size more than rainfall. Census
figures show that Georgia’s population rose from 6.48 to 9.54 million
between 1990 and 2007.
After studying data from weather instruments, computer models, and tree
ring measurements, they found that the droughts were not unprecedented
and result from normal climate patterns and random weather events.
"Similar droughts unfolded over the last thousand years", the
researchers wrote, "Regardless of climate change, they added, similar weather patterns can be expected regularly in the future, with similar results." As the temperature increases, rainfall in the Southeast will increase but because of evaporation
the area may get even drier. The researchers concluded with a statement
saying that any rainfall comes from complicated internal processes in
the atmosphere and are very hard to predict because of the large amount
of variables.
Water crisis
When there is not enough potable water for a given population, the threat of a water crisis is realized.
The United Nations and other world organizations consider a variety of regions to have water crises of global concern. Other organizations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, argue that there are no water crises in such places, but steps must still be taken to avoid one.
Effects of water crisis
There are several principal manifestations of the water crisis.
- Food security in the Middle East and North Africa Region "Water scarcity alleviation through water footprint reduction in agriculture: The effect of soil mulching and drip irrigation". Retrieved 25 February 2019.
- Inadequate access to safe drinking water for about 885 million people
- Inadequate access to sanitation for 2.5 billion people, which often leads to water pollution
- Groundwater overdrafting (excessive use) leading to diminished agricultural yields
- Overuse and pollution of water resources harming biodiversity
- Regional conflicts over scarce water resources sometimes resulting in warfare.
Waterborne diseases caused by lack of sanitation and hygiene
are one of the leading causes of death worldwide. For children under
age five, waterborne diseases are a leading cause of death. According to
the World Bank, 88 percent of all waterborne diseases are caused by unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.
Water is the underlying tenuous balance of safe water supply, but
controllable factors such as the management and distribution of the
water supply itself contribute to further scarcity.
A 2006 United Nations report focuses on issues of governance as
the core of the water crisis, saying "There is enough water for
everyone" and "Water insufficiency is often due to mismanagement,
corruption, lack of appropriate institutions, bureaucratic inertia and a
shortage of investment in both human capacity and physical
infrastructure". Official data also shows a clear correlation between access to safe water and GDP per capita.
It has also been claimed, primarily by economists, that the water situation has occurred because of a lack of property rights,
government regulations and subsidies in the water sector, causing
prices to be too low and consumption too high, making a point for water privatization.
Vegetation and wildlife are fundamentally dependent upon adequate freshwater resources. Marshes, bogs and riparian zones
are more obviously dependent upon sustainable water supply, but forests
and other upland ecosystems are equally at risk of significant
productivity changes as water availability is diminished. In the case of
wetlands, considerable area has been simply taken from wildlife use to
feed and house the expanding human population. But other areas have
suffered reduced productivity from gradual diminishing of freshwater
inflow, as upstream sources are diverted for human use. In seven states
of the U.S. over 80 percent of all historic wetlands were filled by the 1980s, when Congress acted to create a "no net loss" of wetlands.
In Europe extensive loss of wetlands has also occurred with resulting loss of biodiversity. For example, many bogs in Scotland have been developed or diminished through human population expansion. One example is the Portlethen Moss in Aberdeenshire.
Deforestation of the Madagascar Highland Plateau has led to extensive siltation and unstable flows of western rivers.
On Madagascar's
highland plateau, a massive transformation occurred that eliminated
virtually all the heavily forested vegetation in the period 1970 to
2000. The slash and burn
agriculture eliminated about ten percent of the total country's native
biomass and converted it to a barren wasteland. These effects were from overpopulation
and the necessity to feed poor indigenous peoples, but the adverse
effects included widespread gully erosion that in turn produced heavily
silted rivers that "run red" decades after the deforestation.
This eliminated a large amount of usable fresh water and also destroyed
much of the riverine ecosystems of several large west-flowing rivers.
Several fish species have been driven to the edge of extinction and
some, such as the disturbed Tokios coral reef formations in the Indian Ocean,
are effectively lost.
In October 2008, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman and former chief
executive of Nestlé, warned that the production of biofuels will further
deplete the world's water supply.
Overview of regions suffering crisis impacts
There are many other countries of the world that are severely impacted with regard to human health
and inadequate drinking water. The following is a partial list of some
of the countries with significant populations (numerical population of
affected population listed) whose only consumption is of contaminated
water:
- Sudan (12.3 million)
- Venezuela (5.0 million)
- Ethiopia (2.7 million)
- Tunisia (2.1 million)
- Cuba (1.3 million)
Several world maps showing various aspects of the problem can be found in this graph article.
Water deficits, which are already spurring heavy grain imports in
numerous smaller countries, may soon do the same in larger countries,
such as China and India.
The water tables are falling in scores of countries (including Northern
China, the US, and India) due to widespread overpumping using powerful
diesel and electric pumps. Other countries affected include Pakistan, Iran, and Mexico. This will eventually lead to water scarcity and cutbacks in grain harvest. Even with the overpumping of its aquifers,
China is developing a grain deficit. When this happens, it will almost
certainly drive grain prices upward. Most of the 3 billion people
projected to be added worldwide by mid-century will be born in countries
already experiencing water shortages. Unless population growth can be
slowed quickly, it is feared that there may not be a practical
non-violent or humane solution to the emerging world water shortage.
After China and India, there is a second tier of smaller countries with large water deficits — Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Mexico, and Pakistan.
According to a UN climate report, the Himalayan glaciers that are the sources of Asia's biggest rivers – Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween and Yellow – could disappear by 2035 as temperatures rise. It was later revealed that the source used by the UN climate report actually stated 2350, not 2035. Approximately 2.4 billion people live in the drainage basin of the Himalayan rivers. India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar
could experience floods followed by droughts in coming decades. In
India alone, the Ganges provides water for drinking and farming for more
than 500 million people. The west coast of North America, which gets much of its water from glaciers in mountain ranges such as the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada, also would be affected.
By far the largest part of Australia is desert or semi-arid lands commonly known as the outback.
In June 2008 it became known that an expert panel had warned of long
term, possibly irreversible, severe ecological damage for the whole Murray-Darling basin if it does not receive sufficient water by October. Water restrictions are currently in place in many regions and cities of Australia in response to chronic shortages resulting from drought. The Australian of the year 2007, environmentalist Tim Flannery, predicted that unless it made drastic changes, Perth in Western Australia could become the world’s first ghost metropolis, an abandoned city with no more water to sustain its population. However, Western Australia's dams reached 50% capacity for the first time since 2000 as of September 2009. As a result, heavy rains brought forth positive results for the region. Nonetheless, the following year, 2010, Perth suffered its second-driest winter on record and the water corporation tightened water restrictions for spring.
Another city facing a water crisis is Cape Town, South Africa.
The government and scientists in the area were preparing for "day zero",
meaning that the area was almost completely out of water.The government
was hopeful that voluntary conservation efforts and environmental
factors would increase the water supply in the reservoirs, but these
things did not happen which increased the likelihood of the city running
out of potable water. Scientists at the University of Cape Town are
concerned because without a water source they are not able to conduct
valuable medical research or clinical studies. Day Zero was avoided and restrictions were lifted for residents, but
conservation efforts are still in place with uncertainty in rainfall
amounts.
Outlook
Wind and solar power such as this installation in a village in northwest Madagascar can make a difference in safe water supply.
Construction of wastewater treatment
plants and reduction of groundwater overdrafting appear to be obvious
solutions to the worldwide problem; however, a deeper look reveals more
fundamental issues in play. Wastewater treatment is highly capital intensive,
restricting access to this technology in some regions; furthermore the
rapid increase in population of many countries makes this a race that is
difficult to win. As if those factors are not daunting enough, one must
consider the enormous costs and skill sets involved to maintain
wastewater treatment plants even if they are successfully developed.
Reducing groundwater overdrafting is usually politically
unpopular, and can have major economic impacts on farmers. Moreover,
this strategy necessarily reduces crop output, something the world can
ill-afford given the current population.
At more realistic levels, developing countries can strive to achieve primary wastewater treatment or secure septic systems,
and carefully analyse wastewater outfall design to minimize impacts to
drinking water and to ecosystems. Developed countries can not only share
technology better, including cost-effective wastewater and water
treatment systems but also in hydrological transport modeling.
At the individual level, people in developed countries can look inward
and reduce over consumption, which further strains worldwide water
consumption. Both developed and developing countries can increase
protection of ecosystems, especially wetlands and riparian zones. There
measures will not only conserve biota, but also render more effective the natural water cycle flushing and transport that make water systems more healthy for humans.
A range of local, low-tech solutions are being pursued by a
number of companies. These efforts center around the use of solar power
to distill water at temperatures slightly beneath that at which water
boils. By developing the capability to purify any available water
source, local business models could be built around the new
technologies, accelerating their uptake. For example, Bedouins from the
town of Dahab
in Egypt have installed Aqua Danial's Water Stellar, which uses a solar
thermal collector measuring two square meters to distill from 40 to 60
liters per day from any local water source. This is five times more
efficient than conventional stills and eliminates the need for polluting
plastic PET bottles or transportation of water supply.
Global experiences in managing water crisis
It is alleged that the likelihood of conflict rises if the rate of change within the basin exceeds the capacity of institution to absorb that change.
Although water crisis is closely related to regional tensions, history
showed that acute conflicts over water are far less than the record of
cooperation.
The key lies in strong institutions and cooperation. The Indus River Commission and the Indus Water Treaty
survived two wars between India and Pakistan despite their hostility,
proving to be a successful mechanism in resolving conflicts by providing
a framework for consultation inspection and exchange of data. The Mekong Committee has also functioned since 1957 and survived the Vietnam War.
In contrast, regional instability results when there is an absence of
institutions to co-operate in regional collaboration, like Egypt's plan
for a high dam on the Nile.
However, there is currently no global institution in place for the
management and management of trans-boundary water sources, and
international co-operation has happened through ad hoc collaborations
between agencies, like the Mekong Committee which was formed due to an
alliance between UNICEF and the US Bureau of Reclamation.
Formation of strong international institutions seems to be a way
forward – they fuel early intervention and management, preventing the
costly dispute resolution process.
One common feature of almost all resolved disputes is that the
negotiations had a "need-based" instead of a "right–based" paradigm.
Irrigable lands, population, technicalities of projects define "needs".
The success of a need-based paradigm is reflected in the only water
agreement ever negotiated in the Jordan River Basin, which focuses in
needs not on rights of riparians. In the Indian subcontinent, irrigation
requirements of Bangladesh determine water allocations of the Ganges
River. A need-based, regional approach focuses on satisfying individuals
with their need of water, ensuring that minimum quantitative needs are
being met. It removes the conflict that arises when countries view the
treaty from a national interest point of view, move away from the
zero-sum approach to a positive sum, integrative approach that equitably
allocated the water and its benefits.
The Blue Peace framework developed by Strategic Foresight Group
in partnership with the Governments of Switzerland and Sweden offers a
unique policy structure which promotes sustainable management of water
resources combined with cooperation for peace. By making the most of
shared water resources through cooperation rather than mere allocation
between countries, the chances for peace can be increased. The Blue Peace approach has proven to be effective in cases like the Middle East and the Nile basin. NGOs like Water.org, There Is No Limit Foundation, and Charity: Water are leading the way in providing access to clean water.
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