How will water shape the 21st century?

Increasing demand

The demand for water has doubled in the last 50 years. (1)

How is it used?

Worldwide, irrigation currently accounts for 70% of all water withdrawals. (1) In Europe, water use is 40% agricultural, 40% industrial and 20% domestic. (2)

Who takes care of their water?

At the bottom of the global listing (1) of 122 countries is Belgium, where raw sewage pours untreated into rivers where it mixes with manure from intensive livestock farms. Water quality should improve once a new sewage treatment plant for Brussels is completed in 2005. Finland tops the list and UK, Norway, Sweden and France are included in the first 10. Some of the countries of Central and Eastern European and Central Asia are rated below some African countries. For example, Macedonia and Belarus score worse than Tanzania, one of the poorest countries in Africa. (3)

Increasing scarcity

Over the next 20 years, the average supply of water worldwide per person is expected to drop by a third. Part of the reason is that waste increases as agriculture becomes more intensive and as industry and population grow. Waste management is not keeping pace.

Another factor is climate change. It will be responsible for an estimated 20% of the increase in water scarcity occurring up to the year 2050. (1) Even in parts of Europe, desertification is a valid concern.

In some countries, water scarcity for domestic use is exacerbated by cash-crop vegetables and flowers grown for export. Tourism is another major user of water, including the quantities needed to keep golf courses lush in hot countries.

Companies producing bottled water contribute to scarcity. In rural communities all over the world, corporate interests buy up farmlands, indigenous lands, wilderness tracts and whole water systems and then move on when sources are depleted. (4)

Unmet need

An estimated 1.2 billion people lack access to safe water and 2.4 billion lack sanitation facilities. (5) out of a total global population of 6.2 billion. In the poorest, least developed countries, no improvement in the proportion of people with access to water was made during the past decade, according to the UN the World Water Assessment Programme. (1)

Many Europeans live without piped water to their homes. For example, only 16% of Romania’s rural population is using improved drinking water sources, according to UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children 2003.

Health effects

Worldwide, more children have died from diarrhoeal diseases in the past ten years than all the people lost to armed conflict since World War II. Although faecal contamination in water is still the pollutant that most seriously affects health, the increasing seriousness of other contaminants has become evident in recent years. Arsenic, fluoride and nitrates top the list of emerging threats to the quality of water for domestic consumption. (5)

In Europe, diarrhoeal diseases resulting from a lack of adequate water and sanitation services continue to kill children. In addition, rising climatic temperatures means water-related vector diseases, such as malaria, are making a comeback in Europe.

What is going wrong?

Globally, mismanagement of water resources lies at the heart of the problem. "Inertia at leadership level, and a world population not fully aware of the scale of the problem means we fail to take the needed timely corrective actions," according to the World Water Assessment Programme. (1)

Policy

At the European level, although a Water Protocol (setting targets on the control of water-related disease) and an EU Water Framework Directive (tackling chemical pollution and over-use of water) exist, they are being implemented too slowly.

Encouraging global market competition in supplying the commercial sector could lead to less water being available for public uses like public drinking water and wildlife protection. This is already a major problem due to agribusiness and industrial uses of water. The impact on the cost of water is also a concern. If big commercial users get water from private sources, public water supplies will have to carry more of the public infrastructure costs, leading to higher rates. (6)

Water has become big business. The annual profits of the water industry now amount to 40% of those of the oil sector and are already substantially higher than the pharmaceutical sector, now close to US$1,000 million. (3) Talks underway at the World Trade Organization could extend GATS to include water and thus increase pressure for privatisation.

Private companies are less concerned about the impact of water on human health and environmental concerns, such as the over-use and scarcity. Even leaving aside immediate health concerns, what will happen to food production and global food security as water becomes increasingly scarce? Projections suggest that if current water policies continue so will high levels of food insecurity, environmental degradation and water-related ill health. (7) If policies do not change, we may lose the ability to feed ourselves.

References:

(1) "World Water Development Report: Water for People, Water for Life", UN World Water Assessment Programme (http://www.unesco.org/water/wwap/wwdr/index.shtml) and abridged report in "World faces unprecedented water crisis", EuropaWorld, 7 March 2003.

(2) FAO Aquastat, 20 September 2002.

(3) Sewage-laden Belgian water worst in the world, New Scientist, 5 March 2003.

(4) "Who owns water?", by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, article in Nation magazin(http://www.polarisinstitute.org).

(5) WEHAB, A Framework for Action on Water and Sanitation, WSSD, Johannesburg 2002.

(6) GATS Water Alert, Alliance for Democracy website.

(7) World water and food to 2025: Dealing with scarcity, jointly published by the International Food Policy Research Institute and the International Water Management Institute, http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/books/water2025book.htm.