The global crisis of water scarcity

Martin Khor

In recent years, climate change seems to have elbowed out other environmental issues to become the number one global problem. But the alarming world-wide water scarcity is an equally important issue, and an even more immediate threat.

A decade ago, it was predicted that a third of the world’s population would be facing water scarcity by 2025. But this threshold has already been reached. Two billion people live in countries that are water-stressed. And by 2025, two-thirds of the world population may suffer water stress, unless current trends alter.

It is now frequently said that water will be in this century what oil was in the last. Even more dramatic, wars will be fought over water this century, just as wars were and are still being fought over control of oil these past decades.

There is a rapidly growing demand for freshwater, but its supply is limited and decreasing.

Water supply is affected by the loss of watersheds due to deforestation and soil erosion in hills and mountains. There is also a severe depletion of valuable groundwater resources as water is taken up for agriculture and industry, and is being dug from deeper and deeper sources.

Mining of groundwater has caused the water-table to drop in parts of many countries, including India and China, West Asia, Russia and the United States. Agriculture uses 70 percent of water, because industrial agriculture requires large amounts of water. It takes 3 cubic metres of water to produce a kilo of cereals, and 15 cubic metres of water to produce a kilo of beef because of the grain fed to the cows.

A lot of surface water is also polluted, and thus not available for human use, or if it is used the polluted water causes health problems. Five million people die from water-borne diseases annually. Water supplies are also being affected by climate change. Global warming is causing an accelerated melting of the glaciers, and there will be fewer glaciers in future. For example, the Himalayan glaciers feed many of the great rivers in India, China and Southeast Asia. “The full-scale glacier shrinkage in the plateau regions will eventually lead to an ecological catastrophe,” according to Yao Tandong of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Water scarcity has also become a reason for conflict. This is especially when a source of water such as a major river serves more than one country.

The country or countries that have the upper reaches of the river can affect the volume of water flowing into the countries at the lower parts of the river.

Another issue is the fight over the systems for owning and distributing the scarce water resources. In her book, Maudhe Barlow describes the recent policies to privatise water, which until recently was under the direct control of government authorities. Privatisation was first carried out in Western countries and then spread to developing countries through World Bank loans and projects.

This has led to adverse effects on people’s access to water, according to Barlow, who also documents the fight by citizen groups in many countries to make water a public good, and to make access to water a human right. All the above issues should be taken with the same seriousness as climate change, because water is about the most important item needed by everyone, and its scarcity affects both human health and geo-politics.

Thus, water must be recognised as a crisis issue and solutions to the crisis should be at the top of the global and national agendas.

- Third World Network Features