H₂^WO^es over Blue Gold

Whisky is for drinking; water is for fighting over. — (most often attributed to) Mark Twain

Water, like almost everything else of value, isn’t evenly distributed.  That’s where the trouble begins.  It isn’t that there’s not enough water, it’s that it’s often in the wrong places — and getting it relocated to where it’s needed can be a prohibitively costly endeavour.

Oceans are relatively shallow compared to the earth’s radius.  All water, fresh or salt, on or near the surface of the earth can, if aggregated, form a ball about 1,400 kilometres (860 miles) across.  How much of that water is fresh?  A sphere only about 272.8 kilometres (169.5 miles) across, of which 99% is groundwater, mostly inaccessible.  All accessible fresh water would make a sphere only 56.2 kilometres (34.9 miles) across.  And just about every living multi-celled creature on earth depends on that sphere.  (Jupiter’s moon Europa, on the other hand, contains more water than all of Earth — but so what?  We have no access.)

What are the problems with fresh water today?

Demand

The quantity of water demanded is predicted to be half again as much as the quantity of water able to be sustainably supplied by 2030.  According to the World Health Organisation, 1 of every 3 people today is affected by water scarcity (in fact, Wellington is currently prohibiting certain outdoor water use).  One in 6 people over the next 15 years will probably experience protracted insufficient access to safe drinking water.  By 2030 almost 1 in 2 people will experience water stress.  You may not be immune, so listen up.

How much water does a person need in a year?

Though the average African family can get by on only 5 gallons of water per day, each individual living in the US uses on average 100-200 gallons of water per day in the home.  Its 2,000 cubic metre (70,000 ft³) per person per year average causes the US to lead the world in per capita water consumption.  (Nevertheless, the US has decreased overall usage almost 20% when compared to 1980.)  Even Canadians use twice the amount of water per person as the French, three times as much as Germans, eight times the Danes.  Mexico City, on the other hand, wastes an estimated 40% of its water through ageing leaky pipes.  In water-poor Jordan, it’s estimated that leaking systems waste up to half the clean water transported through them.

When availability of water falls below 1,000 cubic metres, it’s considered a state of scarcity; anything below 500 cubic metres is considered serious.
 

Supply

Ideally, every person in the world should be guaranteed water for personal and domestic needs.  But fresh water use has tripled over the last 50 years.  A family of 4 four in a developed country has need of a daily amount of water equivalent to an Olympic-sized swimming pool just to produce their daily food.

• Economic scarcity refers to the fact that finding a reliable source of safe water is time-consuming and expensive.  (A 2002 UNICEF study of rural household in 23 sub-Saharan African countries found that ¼ of women spend 30 minutes to an hour each day collecting and carrying water; 19% spend an hour or more.  The walk for water averages 6 kilometres per day, half of which is spent carrying 18-20 kilograms of water back home.)
• Physical scarcity means there simply isn’t enough water to go around.

With the world population expected to grow from a little over 7 billion today to 8 billion by 2025, obviously more potable water will be needed.

With a complete lack of water, humans can live 3-5 days.  People out of water are soon so desperate that they turn to unsafe sources.  This contributes to the spread of waterborne diseases (malaria, typhoid, cholera, dysentery, diarrhoea, schistosomiasis, trachoma, and infestations of ascaris, guinea worm, and hookworm).  People with water scarcity hoard water in their homes, increasing contamination risk.  (Unclean enclosed containers of water grow bacteria quite easily — especially if it’s warm.)   In sub-Saharan Africa, treatment of diarrhoea due to water contamination uses 12% of the area’s health budget, leaving less to be spent on nutritious food that would produce a healthier workforce.  Insufficient water means wastewater is often used on crops.  Local food frequently contains chemicals and/or disease-causing organisms.

In China, 4-5% of all deaths are through diseases caused by water pollution.  Surface water and groundwater are both contaminated.  Almost no household waste and very little industrial waste is treated before entering the environment.  Most rivers flowing through Chinese cities are unsuitable for drinking or fishing and almost half of these are so polluted they aren’t suitable for agriculture or industry either.  Water scarcity means industrial wastewater often irrigates farmland.  In urban areas, most drinking water comes from groundwater, much of it contaminated.  However, China recognises the severity of this problem and has made notable progress in the past decade.

In the last 10 years, diarrhoea related to unsanitary water has killed more children than all people lost to armed conflict since WWII.  At any given time, half the world’s hospital beds are occupied with patients suffering waterborne diseases.

Will water soon be used as a weapon of war and potential tool for terrorism?  There have been threats, but no actions thus far.  Nevertheless, the World Economic Forum’s 2011 Global Risk Report includes water as one of the world’s top 5 risks.
 

Conflicts

Shared water problems cover such a broad spectrum, they’re difficult to address as a group.  Locale, local and international law, commercial interests, environmental concerns, and human rights questions make the disputes complicated — combine this with the number of potential parties and a single dispute can leave a large list of demands to be met by courts and lawmakers.  This costs everyone.

Are there water rights that should universally apply?  What are they?  On what humanitarian standard are they based?  Can you equate, say, 23 humans dying of thirst with 100 humans dying of starvation because crops failed from lack of that water hydrating those 23 people?  The issue of availability/affordability of medical care is in some ways akin to the availability of water — although dying of no medical care is on average slower than dying of thirst, both are concerned with the allocation of scarce resources.

Despite the rapidly growing importance of trans-boundary water in the world, international law regarding water management is quite weak — poorly developed, contradictory and unenforceable (most agreements contain no enforcement mechanism whatsoever).  Several principles of international law are applied to international river negotiations by riparian states in the absence of agreed-upon norms.

• Absolute Sovereignty (the Harmon Doctrine) argues that a state has absolute rights to water flowing through its territory.  This is invoked most often by upstream riparians.
• In contrast, the doctrine of Absolute Riverine Integrity states that every riparian is entitled to the natural flow of the river system that crosses its borders.  This is most often invoked by downstream riparians.
• A third doctrine seeks to strike a balance between those two: the doctrine of Limited Territorial Sovereignty.  This gives each riparian state the right to use waters within its own borders according to the terms of “reasonable and equitable use,” with the obligation to not cause “significant harm”.  Unfortunately, these terms remain undefined.
• The Restricted Sovereignty doctrine refers to the idea that each riparian state should be entitled to specific allocations of the total flow of river water each year, tied to such criteria as historical use, total population, or total arable land.
• Finally, the doctrine of Optimal Development (the “shared benefits” model) calls for development of the whole river basin without regard to national boundaries, such that maximum river flow is captured and redistributed to all riparian parties.   (Alternatively one party may compensate others for disproportionate use.)

UNESCO has mapped all known trans-boundary aquifers.

Sources

Rivers may flow through several countries, often serving as boundaries or demarcations between them.  Use of these rivers are of great consequence to survival, quality of life, and economic success.  Competition, especially if the resource is particularly limited, boosts conflict.  The fact that wars are seldom or never directly fought over water indicates a widespread willingness to compromise.

Sub-surface groundwater, though stored in the pore space of soil and rock, is best utilised as water flowing within aquifers below the water table.  (Artesian wells tap into this.)  Groundwater is renewable if it has a close association with surface water, or (effectively) non-renewable if it’s in an aquifer (a separate, usually deep, sub-surface water system which can be thought of as “fossil water”).  Shared aquifers are difficult to allocate in a way considered fair by all parties.  For example, the Guaraní Aquifer, located under the countries of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, is an important source of fresh potable water for all 4 countries.  As the aquifer depletes, these 4 countries will (hopefully) jointly agree to ration.

The lack of cost-effective water desalination techniques puts pressure on all water users, whether corporates, governments, or individuals.  Recent humanitarian catastrophes, such as the Rwandan Genocide or the war in Sudanese Darfur, were influenced by conflicts caused by insufficient water.  In the Middle East, 1% of the world’s fresh water suffices for 5% of the world’s population.  By 2025, it’s predicted that countries of the Arabian Peninsula will use more than double the water that’s naturally available to them.  Today, ⅔ of Arab countries have available < 1,000 cubic metres (35,000 ft³) of water per person per year.

• It worsened relationships among Iraq, Syria and Turkey when Turkey commenced the Southeastern Anatolia Project (also known as GAP) to dam sections of the Euphrates and Tigris north of the Syrian/Turkey border.  On losing control of their waterways, Syria and Iraq (ignoring their previous disputes) formed an alliance to protest the construction of the Atatürk Dam in Turkey and a further 22 Turkish dams projected for the Tigris and Euphrates.
• There’s a perennial Jordan River conflict among Israel, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestine Territories.
• In Central Asia there’s an Aral Sea conflict among Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

The UN indicates that, in the next 20 years, the quantity of water available to everyone could decrease by as much as 30%.  The UN Development Programme says, “One part of the world sustains a designer bottled-water market while another suffers acute public health risks from having to drink water of poor quality from drains, lakes, and rivers.”  (Nothing new here.)
 

Scarcity

The causes of water scarcity can be explained by global problems that defy national borders and even international institutions. These include:

• population growth
• climate change
• pollution
• industrial expansion
• urbanisation
• ageing infrastructure, and even
• changing diets due to economic growth (it takes 2,000 litres of water to grow one kilo of vegetables, but 15,000 litres to produce a kilo of beef).

Each year ⅓ of industrial wastewater and ⅔ of household sewage return to water resources untreated.  Aquifers are drying up.  Leaks (most often from ageing pipes) need repair.  One home with one leak dripping 20 drops per minute wastes 694 gallons per year.  One leaking toilet can waste 25,000 gallons per month or more.)  Imagine how much leakage occurs when a buried water main cracks.  In many parts of the world, sinkholes result.

In China’s karst region, water quality is particularly bad.  The region is rain-rich — during the wet season water falls in sheets.  But monsoon rains there do more than fill rooftop cisterns: they unfortunately also scrub soil from rock, draining fertilisers and farm chemicals from fields, drawing up human and animal waste.  This filth pours into innumerable crevices and holes in the earth, where it all vanishes.  It is this groundwater from whence area drinking water comes.  Natural filtration doesn’t apply to this underground polluted water and it’s difficult to impossible to clean.  The karst belt stretches through 8 provinces, encompassing nearly 200,000 square miles (larger than California) and is home to 80-100 million people.

In fact, karst covers 15% of the earth’s land mass and is home to as many as 1.5 billion people.  [Try Google Maps to view the sinkholes in Avon Park, Florida (+27° 35’ 52.48”, -81° 29’ 48.78”).  Just paste in those co-ordinates and zoom out a little.]
 

Examples — USA

The US has 1.6 million kilometres (1 million miles) of water mains.  The financial crisis and recession cut revenues for many utilities, resulting in delayed maintenance.  It’s estimated that 240,000 water main breaks occur each year and nearly 14,000 dams — or one out of every 7 — is rated as “high hazard.”  Last year the American Water Works Association estimated that $US 1 trillion is needed over the next 25 years to replace just the pipes in the system.  This doesn’t include money for treatment plants or reservoirs.

Phoenix, 13th-largest metropolitan area in the US, is home to 4.3 million people.  Located in a low bowl in a hot desert, it is also home to heat waves and windstorms.  Water comes from the distant (and dwindling) Colorado River.  The 336-mile-long Central Arizona Project (CAP) delivers water from the Colorado River through a canal system into central Arizona, through Phoenix, and then south of Tucson — to about 80% of Arizona’s population (Maricopa, Pinal, and Pima counties).  Central Arizona agriculture uses about half the CAP water.  One estimate suggests that 30% of the farms in central Arizona would be forced out of business by increased water costs.

The Sacramento Delta, an inland network of streams and rivers (many contained by dikes and levees), forms the hub of California’s water infrastructure.  Californians hate rain but love water, so ¾ of them live in the arid south, spurning the wet north where ¾ of the rain falls; they expect water to come to them by pipe, canal or aquifer (preferably courtesy of the taxpayer).  The Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and their tributaries carry rain from the north and melting snowpack from the Sierra Nevada in the east.  These meet in the delta and flow out through San Francisco’s Golden Gate.  The trick is to intercept the fresh water in the delta before it gets salty, and send it south toward the Los Angeles area and also west toward the San Francisco area.

Those in the south get their water through two networks.  The federal Central Valley Project, dating from 1937, uses 20 upstream reservoirs and two pumps to take water to the southern Central Valley largely for farmers.  The State Water Project, begun in 1960, uses another 22 upstream dams and reservoirs and its own pumping plant to send water into the other aqueduct, largely for urban use.  The delta, point of control for both systems, sits atop seismic faults.  One large earthquake could disrupt California’s water supply.

In the southwest US, the Colorado River is shared by many states before its dregs trickle into Mexico.  All along the river, water is diverted for irrigation and urban use, with Arizona and California the biggest users.  Because Mexico uses the dribble of water that reaches it for irrigation, virtually nothing gets to its once-fertile — now parched and polluted — delta on the Sea of Cortez.  Little water means little delta silt, so fertiliser application is now necessary for local farmers.  And though the Colorado River’s water is completely allocated, the population in the Southwest continues to grow.  According to one estimate, 5 of the 10 fastest-growing US states are in the river’s drainage.  The water that newcomers drink will reduce the amount that farmers receive because newcomers are willing to pay more for it than farmers are.  (Of course food prices in the region may rise.)
 

Examples — World

Some analysts believe Israel continues to occupy the Golan Heights, seized from Syria in 1967, to control the Jordan River, while others think the occupation is about maintaining the high ground in case water conflicts arise in the future.

Crown Prince General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan stated at last month’s International Water Summit: “For the United Arab Emirates, water is now more important than oil.”

In Africa, the main countries with water problems are Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan, Guinea, Mali, Nigeria, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Ghana.  Africa’s susceptibility to water-induced conflict can be separated into 4 regions: the Nile, Niger, Zambezi, and Volta basins.

• Running through Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan, the water of the Nile often sparks conflict and unrest.
• In the Niger region, the river basin extends from Guinea through Mali and down to Nigeria.  Especially for Mali — one of the world’s poorest countries — the river is vital for food, water and transportation.  Its overuse contributes to its increasing pollution.
• In southern Africa, the Zambezi river basin, one of the world’s most overused systems, has Zambia and Zimbabwe competing fiercely over it.  Additionally, in 2000, Zimbabwe caused the region to experience the worst flooding in recent history when it opened the Kariba Dam gates because the reservoir was too full.  More than 700 people from Mozambique died in the flood; 500,000 were made homeless.
• Finally, within the Volta river basin, Ghana is dependent on its hydroelectric output, but plagued by regular droughts.  This affects the production of electricity, limiting Ghana’s ability to sustain economic growth and contributing to regional instability.  (And there are no alternatives?)

China builds the most and largest dams and water transfer projects in the world.  The government is currently engaged in an astonishingly ambitious plan to transfer water from the Yangtze River in the south to the northern Yellow River through an elaborate series of canals.  (Well, it seems to have worked rather well for California.)
 

Shortages

Water shortage is the most important challenge to China right now, their biggest problem for future growth.  China’s total water resource, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, has dropped since the start of the century.  More specifically, China’s water supply is 350 billion m³ (93 trillion gallons) less than it was 13 years ago.  That’s as much water lost to China each year as flows through the mouth of the Mississippi River in 9 months.  Chinese climatologists and hydrologists attribute the drop to climate change, which has disrupted patterns of snowfall and rain.

Climate shift helped destroy China’s Tang dynasty in the past.  Prolonged droughts and poor summer rains caused crop failures and stoked peasant uprisings.  Eventually, rebellions led to the collapse of the dynasty in 907.  This shift in precipitation happened on both sides of the tropical Pacific, not just in coastal East Asia.  The same migration of the rain band occurred in Central America, dooming the classic period of Mayan civilisation at almost exactly the same time.  Comparison of records from a lake in Guangdong province and from a basin in Venezuela show striking similarities — suggesting a general shift towards a drier climate at around 750.

What will global climate fluctuations do to the supply of fresh water?  If oceans warm, sea levels rise, bringing more evaporation, precipitation, and storms.  While local effects can’t be predicted, warming will affect the hydrology of every major river basin in the world, especially in Asia.  The Ganges, Indus, and Yellow are all dependent on mountain snowpack for flow.  (Snowpack is a natural reservoir that melts in spring and summer, just when water is needed downstream.)  As temperatures warm, more precipitation falls as rain; snow melts sooner; peak runoff occurs earlier.  The Ganges, Indus and Yellow already tap out in the dry season.  This problem will likely affect rivers fed by the Andes, Rockies, and Alps.  Rather than damming still another river, a better plan may be to improve efficiency in water catchment and to find ways to encourage using less.
 

Solutions

Solutions include (but are not limited to):

• well-digging
• devising better rain catchment systems
• distributing de-worming pills, hand pumps, and cost-effective, relatively maintenance-free toilets
• conserving (in part by ensuring that all participants understand the long-term problems)
• recycling more wastewater
• improving irrigation methods
• implementing user-pay schemes
• regulating
• managing the ecosystem better
• distributing water more equitably
• reducing corporate use
• cooperating with others
• reducing pollution
• mitigating climate fluctuation, and
• controlling population growth.

Innovations such as separate lines for potable and non-potable water in new construction may help reduce treatment cost in developing areas.  But rationing and technology alone are insufficient.

THE key step in moving toward rational water management is to charge the end-user a price reflecting water’s value and scarcity (like gasoline).  Although pricing water reasonably can generate a multitude of problems in the short run, it should lead to critically-needed efficiencies in the longer run, easing drains on government budgets.  Higher prices cause everyone to use water more efficiently.  Free (subsidised) water is often wasted, according to most experts.  Why bother fixing a leaky faucet if it’ll cost you more to repair it than it will save you overall?  Why buy better irrigation technology if it won’t save you money?  No reason.  And that’s why many suggest that water users must pay the price.  But this is easier said than done.  Most water in developing countries, especially for agriculture, isn’t metered.  Rationing, or better technology, may be required to encourage efficient use in those cases.

Subsidies are most dramatic in irrigation, which accounts for about 70% of worldwide fresh water use.  Farmers may pay 10-15% of the real cost of their water, or they may get the water for free.  Water subsidies are a fact of life in the western US, amounting to about $500 per acre.  Charging for water has dramatic effects, causing usage to decline by a third or more.

Water where I live in Wellington isn’t metered.  If our record-breaking drought continues much longer, we may be asked to go from restrictions outdoors to restrictions indoors — on the honour system, of course.  The very idea of metering water causes many Kiwis to become angry.  But New Zealand generally has plenty of water — why not have the idea that free unlimited water is everyone’s god-given right?  Because there may not always be enough unless there’s a motivation to conserve.
 

In Conclusion

As new technological innovations reduce the capital cost of desalination, more countries are building plants as a way to begin addressing their water crises.  Israel and Singapore have already begun desalination; China and India aren’t far behind.  Neither are Pakistan and Bermuda.  All Australian capital cities except Darwin and Hobart are either in the process of building desalination plants, or are already using them.  The largest desalination plant in the US is in Tampa Bay, Florida, pumping 25 million gallons (95,000 m³) of water per day.  California, Arizona, and Texas use desalination for a small part of their water supply.  After being desalinised at Jubail, Saudi Arabia, water is pumped 200 miles (320 kilometres) inland though a pipeline to the capital city of Riyadh.  Worldwide, 13,080 desalination plants produce more than 12 billion gallons of water a day.  The world’s largest plant is the United Arab Emirates — a dual-purpose facility using multi-stage flash distillation capable of producing 300 million m³ per year.  A typical aircraft carrier in the US military uses nuclear power to desalinate 400,000 US gallons (1,500,000 litres) of water per day.  But given the energy-intensive nature of desalination and its associated economic and environmental costs, it’s still generally considered a last resort after conservation.  (As well as after instituting equitable pricing?)  Nevertheless, its use is expected to triple in the near future.

“You don’t miss your water,” an old blues sage wisely said, “'til your well runs dry.”  Price water fairly.  That should make that old well last a bit longer.

Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all. — Nelson Mandela
 

Why is New Zealand better than Australia? (I can hear you asking yourself that.)

• Kiwis are friendlier (everyone says so).
• Australia is as beautiful as New Zealand but you have to travel thousands of kilometres between sights.  NZ is more compact.
• Kiwi houses are cheaper (especially cheaper than ones in Sydney).
• Big-city Australians are wound as tight as watch springs.  Kiwis are more laid-back.
• Kiwis are more entrepreneurial — a small, educated, enthusiastic population of early adopters.  And because there’s only 4.5 million people, it’s easier to get your voice heard.
• Fewer things can hurt or kill you in NZ.  Australia is home to 10 species of poisonous snakes, spiders the size of your hand and scorpions.
• NZ has better weather.  Australia’s either too hot, too cold, or too wet.  Thanks to climate change, Sydney alternates between floods and bush fires.  Queensland suffers increasingly volatile storms.  The Outback and Western Australia fry.  NZ has a temperate climate with plenty of sunshine and rain.

• Re-name New Zealand “Aotearoa”.  This will be listed immediately ahead of Australia in every international travel guide plus the name recognises a unique cultural heritage.
• Have a nationwide competition for a new national flag design to be instituted without delay.  It would be the only official New Zealand flag allowed to be flown.
• Legislate that everyone born in New Zealand or adopting New Zealand nationality is equal in law; abolish all laws and regulations which differentiate by race.
• End all treaty settlements (as currently promised) by 2014.
• Introduce a new policy that everyone who is able and desires to work, can register to have a job in their local area working for their local council maintaining and beautifying the surroundings; wages to be paid by central government at the legislated minimum hourly rate.

• Halve social payments to those able to work who refuse a job offer, but use council social services to identify and assist affected children who may be at risk.
• Redefine New Zealand’s railways as a national service, just as roads are, to be maintained as a social necessity.
• Introduce a property tax on all residential properties sold within 3 years of purchase, equivalent to the Australian stamp duty.  This duty would progressively reduce from 5% to 1% of the registered valuation over the following 4 years.
• Ensure all children have a basic education in math and English plus one other language of their parents’ choice.
• All persons convicted of a crime, if they are deemed not harmful to others or dangerous to society, are to be sentenced to home detention instead of prison.  Remove victimless crimes from statutes.