looming water crisis · finally, a new threat to global water supplies has emerged: terrorism....

Looming Water CrisisIS THE WORLD RUNNING OUT OF WATER?

In the past decade drought has marched across much of the globe, hitting China, the Mediterranean, south-

east Australia and the U.S. Sun Belt. The amount of water used by humans has tripled since 1950, and irri-

gated cropland has doubled. About one-fifth of the world’s population lacks sufficient water, a figure that

could reach 40 percent by 2025 by some estimates, in part because of growing world economies. In the

poorest societies more than a billion people lack access to clean water, and dirty water kills 5,000 children — enough

to fill 12 jumbo jets — every day. By century’s end drought is expected to spread across half the Earth’s land surface

due to climate change, causing hunger

and higher food prices. The United Nations

says it would cost an extra $10 billion or

more annually to provide clean water

and sanitation for all. Some recommend

privatizing water supplies, while others

suggest that charging more for water to

encourage conservation would help to

avoid future crises.

Children play in the dried up bed of the Jialing Rivernear the booming city of Chongqing in central China.

The country’s worst drought in a half-century promptedPrime Minister Wen Jiabao to warn that the crisis

threatens “the survival of the Chinese nation.”

FEBRUARY 2008 VOLUME 2, NUMBER 2 PAGES 27-56 WWW.GLOBALRESEARCHER.COM

PUBLISHED BY CQ PRESS, A DIVISION OF CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY INC. WWW.CQPRESS.COM

28 CQ Global Researcher

THE ISSUES

29 • Are we running out ofwater?• Should water be priva-tized?• Will water scarcity leadto conflicts?

BACKGROUND

38 Taming WaterThe 20th century was theheyday of dam building.

42 Regulating WaterAncient codes establishedwater-sharing rules.

43 Misusing WaterDirty water kills nearly 2 million children a year.

45 Ocean WatersDesalination is growingbut expensive.

CURRENT SITUATION

45 Melting SnowsShrinking snowpack indi-cates climate change mayalready affect scarcity.

48 Wasted WaterA water-conservation ethicis emerging.

OUTLOOK

48 Thirst and HungerAs water demand outstripssupply, both water andfood prices will rise.

SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS

30 Water Scarcity Projectedfor Many RegionsChina and the U.S. face bigchanges.

31 Water Consumption VariesAmericans use the most.

32 Sanitation and Water AccessImproves WorldwideBut access is still limited.

35 Irrigation Doubled in Developing NationsBut rate of increase is slowing.

37 Mountain Snowpack IsShrinkingMelting threatens crucial, replenishing water flows.

38 China Leads in Dam BuildingIt has three times as manydams as the U.S.

39 ChronologyKey events since 1848.

40 Empowering Women MayQuench Thirst‘Should girls be kept homefrom school to collect water?’

44 Water Schemes Rangefrom Monumental to ZanyMany are controversial.

47 At IssueShould water be privatized?

56 Voices From AbroadHeadlines and editorials fromaround the world.

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

53 For More InformationOrganizations to contact.

54 BibliographySelected sources used.

55 The Next StepAdditional articles.

55 Citing CQ Global ResearcherSample bibliography formats.

LOOMING WATER CRISIS

Cover : AP Photo/Color China Photo

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February 2008 29Available online: www.globalresearcher.com

Looming Water Crisis

THE ISSUESA s 2007 came to a close,

the steady drumbeatof headlines about

China’s worst drought in ahalf-century affirmed PrimeMinister Wen Jiabao’s earlierwarning that the crisis threat-ens “the survival of the Chi-nese nation.” 1

The alarming develop-ments included:

• The drying up of 133reservoirs in burgeoningGuangdong Province,leaving a quarter of amillion people facingwater shortages. 2

• The lowest levels since1866 on portions of theYangtze River, restrictingbarge and ship traffic andreducing hydroelectricoutput on China’s largestriver, even as pollutionfrom 9,000 industrialplants along its coursejeopardizes drinkingwater supplies. 3

• Near-record low levels in vastLake Poyang, restricting water sup-plies for 100,000 people. 4

“My house used to be by the sideof the lake,” villager Yu Wenchang toldthe Xinhua News Agency. “Now I haveto go over a dozen kilometers awayto get to the lake water.” 5

Similar woes are being reported acrossthe globe, as one of the worst decadesof drought on record afflicts rich andpoor nations alike. While scientists hedgetheir conclusions about whether long-term climate change is causing the dryspell, many warn that Earth’s gradualwarming trend unquestionably poses agrowing threat to water supplies andfood production in arid regions. Already,population growth and economic ex-pansion are straining water supplies in

many places, particularly in the poor-est nations. But despite an unendingseries of international water conferences— attended by thousands of experts— no consensus has emerged on howto make adequate clean water availableto all people in affordable, environ-mentally sustainable ways. 6

A fifth of the world’s population —1.2 billion people — live in areas ex-periencing “physical water scarcity,” orinsufficient supplies for everyone’s de-mands, according to a 2006 study bythe International Water ManagementInstitute that draws on the work of700 scientists and experts. Another 1billion face “economic scarcity,” inwhich “human capacity or financial re-sources” cannot provide adequate water,the report found. 7

While drought and ex-panding populations visiblyaffect the world’s lakes andrivers, a less-visible problemalso threatens water supplies.Accelerated pumping ofgroundwater for irrigation isdeplet ing undergroundaquifers faster than they canbe refreshed in densely pop-ulated areas of North China,India and Mexico. And landand water resources there andbeyond are being degradedthrough erosion, pollution,salination, nutrient depletionand seawater intrusion, ac-cording to the institute.

A United Nations task forceon water predicted that by2025, 3 billion people willface “water stress” conditions,lacking enough water to meetall human and environmen-tal needs. 8 By that time, therewill be 63 major river basinswith populations of at least10 million, of which 47 areeither already water-stressed,will become stressed or willexperience a significant de-

terioration in water supply, accordingto a separate study by the World Re-sources Institute incorporating theU.N. data. 9 (See map, p. 30.) *

As water depletion accelerates,drought is undermining nature’s ca-pacity to replenish this essential re-source, punishing the planet’s mid-section — from eastern Australia andnorthern China through the MiddleEast and sub-Saharan Africa to theU.S. Sun Belt, the Great Plains andnorthern Mexico.

BY PETER BEHR

AFP

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Kenyan children play in raw sewage in Kibera, Nairobi’s largestslum. Each year 1.8 million children — 5,000 a day —

die from waterborne illnesses due to a lack of access to sanitation and clean water.

* “Water stress” occurs when less than 1,700cubic meters (448,000 gallons) per person ofnew fresh water is available annually fromrainfall or aquifers for human use, makingpopulations vulnerable to frequent interrup-tions in water supply.


In the United States, chronicalarms over depleted water resourcesin the Southwestern states havespread to the Southeast. The waterlevel in giant Lake Sidney Lanieroutside Atlanta has dropped abouta dozen feet in this decade, caus-ing an intense struggle amongGeorgia and neighboring Alabamaand Florida over rights to the lake’sdiminished flows. 10

And drought conditions worldwideare likely to worsen as the effects of

climate change are felt, many scien-tists warn. 11 Climate change is ex-pected to expand and intensify droughtin traditionally dry regions and disruptwater flows from the world’s moun-tain snowcaps and glaciers.

Finally, a new threat to global watersupplies has emerged: terrorism. “Thechance that terrorists will strike at watersystems is real,” said Peter H. Gleick,president of the Pacific Institute forStudies in Development, Environmentand Security in Oakland, Calif. 12 Mod-

ern public water systems are designedto protect users from biological agentsand toxins, but deliberate contamina-tion by terrorists could kill or sickenthousands, he said. Since the Sept. 11,2001, terrorist attacks most major U.S.cities have sent the federal govern-ment confidential reports on the vul-nerability of local water supplies, andthe Environmental Protection Agency’s(EPA) Water Sentinel Initiative is de-signing a water-contamination warn-ing system. 13


Serious Shortages Projected for Many RegionsWater shortages are expected to afflict much of the Earth by 2025, as growing populations use vastly more water for daily life and farming. Areas likely to be hardest hit include China, Western Europe, the United States, Mexico and a wide swath of the globe’s midsection from India to North Africa. In the most severe cases, humans are expected to use up to 40 percent of the available water, compared with the current average withdrawal, or use, rate, of 10 percent.

* Based on data from 1996-2000

Source: World Meteorological Organisation, Global Environment Outlook, U.N. Environment Programme, Earthscan, www.unep.org/dewa/assessments/ecosystems/water/vitalwater/21.htm#21b

Projected Water-Use Rates, 2025 *

Water Withdrawal as Percentage of Total Available

More than 40%

20% to 40%

10% to 20%

Less than 10%


Perhaps the grimmest long-rangeprediction on water availability wasissued by the Met Office Hadley Cen-tre for Climate Prediction and Researchin London. Using supercomputer mod-eling, the center projected that if cur-rent trends continue, by this centu-ry’s end drought will have spreadacross half the Earth’s land surfacedue to climate change, threateningmillions of lives. Moreover, “extremedrought” — which makes traditionalagriculture virtually impossible — willaffect about a third of the planet, ac-cording to the group’s November2006 report.

“Even though (globally) total rain-fall will increase as the climate warms,the proportion of land in drought isprojected to rise throughout the 21stcentury,” the report said. 14

“There’s almost no aspect of life inthe developing countries that thesepredictions don’t undermine — theability to grow food, the ability to havea safe sanitation system, the availabil-ity of water,” said Andrew Simms, pol-icy director of the liberal London-basedNew Economics Foundation. 15 Theconsequences will be most dire forthe planet’s poorest inhabitants, headded. “For hundreds of millions ofpeople for whom getting through theday is already a struggle, this is goingto push them over the precipice.”

Access to safe, fresh water separatesthe well-off — who can treat water asif it were air — from the world’s poor-est, who hoard it like gold. In the Unit-ed States, the average consumer usesnearly 160 gallons of water per day,summoned by the twist of a faucet. Inmuch of Africa, women often trudgefor hours to and from wells, carryingthe two to five gallons per person usedby the typical person in sub-SaharanAfrica. (See graph, above.) 16

But the lack of clean water is notonly inconvenient. It can also be dead-ly. Each year 1.8 million children —5,000 per day — die from waterborneillnesses such as diarrhea, according

to the United Nations. “That’s equiv-alent to 12 full jumbo jets crashingevery day,” said U.N. water expertBrian Appleton. “If 12 full jumbo jetswere crashing every day, the worldwould want to do something about it— they would want to find out whyit was happening.” 17

Policymakers are trying various waysto solve the global water challenge,including contracting with private firmsto operate urban water and sanitarysystems, adopting new conservationtechnologies, enacting multination pactsto manage regional watersheds andincreasing funds for water projects inthe world’s poorest regions. Water ex-

perts advocate “environmental flow”policies — the release of enoughwater from dams to sustain the envi-ronment of rivers, wetlands and un-derground aquifers. 18

And their efforts seem to be payingoff — at least in some areas. Between1990 and 2002, more than 1 billion peo-ple in the developing world gained ac-cess to fresh water and basic sanitation.But because of population growth, thetotal number of people still lacking safewater remained more than a billion, andthere was no change in the numberlacking basic sanitation. 19

In 2003, the U.N. General Assemblydesignated the period from 2005 to2015 as the International Decade forAction on “Water for Life.” And theU.N.’s new Millennium DevelopmentGoals include a campaign to cut in halfby 2015 the proportion of people with-out sustainable access to safe drinkingwater and basic sanitation — at a costof more than $10 billion per year. 20

Currently, governments and internationalagencies like the U.N. and World Bankprovide only $4 billion a year in aidfor water and sanitation projects. 21

“We will see these issues play outsilently: dry rivers, dead deltas, de-stocked fisheries, depleted springs andwells,” wrote Margaret Carley-Carlson,chairwoman of the Global Water Part-nership in Stockholm, and M. S. Swami-nathan, president of the Pugwash Con-ferences on Science and World Affairsin Chennai, India. 22 “We will also seefamine; increased and sometimes vio-lent competition for water, especiallywithin states; more migration; and en-vironmental devastation with fires, dust,and new plagues and blights.”

Averting that future will require fun-damental changes in governmentalpolicies and human practices govern-ing the use, conservation and value ofwater, experts agree.

As water experts and policymakersdiscuss how to conserve and protectfuture water supplies, here are someof the questions they are debating:

World Water Consumption VariesThe average American uses nearly 160 gallons of water per day for drinking, cooking, bathing and sanitation — more than any other nationality and more than twice the amount used by many Europeans. People in sub-Saharan Africa use only about a quarter of the 13 gallons the United Nations sets as a minimum basic standard.

* Consumption among European countries ranges from 66-92 gallons

Source: World Water Council

AverageHouseholdWater Use

(Per capita per day)

0

50

100

150

200

U.S.Europe*U.N. Recom-mended

Minimum

Sub-SaharanAfrica

(gallons)

2.6-5.213.2

66-92

158.5


Are we running out of water?Amid the growing alarm about water

shortages, water expert Frank Rijsber-man offers a contrarian perspective.“The world is far from running out ofwater,” he says. “There is land andhuman resources and water enoughto grow food and provide drinkingwater for everyone.” 23

The issue is how efficiently water isused, says Rijsberman, former director

of the International Water ManagementInstitute in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Everyyear, about 110,000 cubic kilometers *of rain falls on Earth’s surface, of whichhumans withdraw just over 3 percent— about 3,700 cubic kilometers — fromrivers and groundwater to use in cities,industries and farming. About 40,000

cubic kilometers flows into rivers andis absorbed into groundwater, and therest evaporates.

Much of the water used by hu-mans is returned to watersheds aswastewater, farm runoff or dischargesfrom energy and industrial plants,with only a small fraction used fordrinking and cooking. 24 Irrigationclaims 70 percent of total water with-drawals, 22 percent is used by in-dustry and the rest goes for homes,personal and municipal uses. 25

Water isn’t running out everywhere,said Canadian journalist Marq de Villiers,author of Water: The Fate of Our MostPrecious Resource. “It’s only runningout in places where it’s needed most.It’s an allocation, supply and manage-ment problem.” 26

It’s also a demand problem: Over thepast half-century, millions of people havemigrated from colder, wetter, northernclimates to warmer, drier, southern lo-cales such as the American Southwestor southern France, putting new pres-sure on those expanding “Sun Belt” com-munities to build irrigation systems, tapinto groundwater supplies or rechannellarge amounts of river water.

Experts agree that the world shouldnot be facing an overall water-scarcitycrisis. But water supplies in much ofAfrica, parts of China, southern Europe,northern Mexico and the AmericanSouthwest and high plains aren’t meet-ing demand, and climate change maybe accelerating the problem, the ex-perts say. 27 The issues add up to whatthe World Commission on Water callsthe “gloomy arithmetic of water.” 28

In addition, man has transformedmost of the world’s great rivers. For ex-ample, the Danube — Central Europe’s“lifeline” — has been dredged, deep-ened, straightened, channelized and ob-structed by dams and fishing weirs. Itis now “a manufactured waterway,”says de Villiers, with more than a thirdof its volume withdrawn for humanuse, compared to an average of about10 percent for other rivers. 29


Poorest Lag Far Behind in AccessAlthough progress has been made since 1990, only 37 percent of the residents in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia had access to sanitation services in 2004. Sub-Saharan Africa lags behind the rest of the world in access to reliable sources of clean water. Meanwhile, more than 90 percent of those living in the industrialized countries, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean and the former Soviet republics had access to water in 2004.

* Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, made up of the worlds’ industrialized countries

Source: “Human Development Report 2006,” UNDP

Percentage of Population with Access to:(1990-2004)

Sanitation Water

0% 20 40 60 80 100

OECD*

Central, EasternEurope; formerSoviet republics

Average, least-developedcountries

Sub-SaharanAfrica

South Asia

Latin America,Caribbean

East Asia andthe Pacific

Arab states

0% 20 40 60 80 100

OECD*

Central, EasternEurope; formerSoviet republics

Average, least-developedcountries

Sub-SaharanAfrica

South Asia

Latin America,Caribbean

East Asia andthe Pacific

Arab states

1990

2004

61%71%

30%50%

67%78%

18%37%

32%37%

22%37%

n/an/a

94%96%

84%86%

72%79%

83%91%

72%85%

48%56%

51%59%

93%94%

97%99%

* 1 cubic kilometer would cover an area ofabout 810,000 acres with one foot of water.


Pollution is also reducing the world’ssupply of potable water. In Asia, manyrivers “are dead or dying,” according toRijsberman. The Musi River near India’sHyderabad technology center has become“a dwindling black wastewater stream,”he writes. “[Y]et the cows that producethe curd and the dairy products for Hy-derabad are bathing in that black andstinking water.” 30 In China, 265 billiongallons of raw sewage is dumped intothe Yangtze River every year. 31

The depletion and despoiling of theworld’s reservoirs, rivers and water-sheds also contribute to the problem.During the 20th century, more than halfthe wetlands in parts of Australia, Eu-rope, New Zealand and North Ameri-ca were destroyed by population growthand development. The loss of wetlandsincreases water runoff, which exacer-bates flooding, reduces the replenish-ment of aquifers and leaves rivers andlakes more vulnerable to pollution. 32

Aquifers — the immense storehous-es of water found beneath the Earth’ssurface — are the largest and fastest-growing source of irrigation water. De-pleting those underground rivers will havedeleterious effects on the 40 percent ofthe planet’s agricultural output that relieson irrigation from groundwater. 33 Ex-perts say some of that water — whichdates back to past ice ages — wouldtake eons to refresh but is being con-sumed in less than a century.

“Large areas of China, South Asiaand the Middle East are now main-taining irrigation through unsustain-able mining of groundwater or over-extraction from rivers,” said the U.N.“Human Development Report 2006.” 34

The problem is widespread in Mexico,India and Russia, as well, althoughprecise data are not available formany countries. 35

In his seminal 1986 book CadillacDesert, the late Marc Reisner warnedabout the long-term effects of waterpolicies in the Western United States,including the depletion of the giantOgallala Aquifer, which runs south-

ward from South Dakota to Texas. Ithas two distinctions, he wrote, “oneof being the largest discrete aquifer inthe world, the other of being the fastest-disappearing aquifer in the world.” 36

In the 1930s a farmer on the GreatPlains could raise a few gallons perminute from the Ogallala, using awindmill-driven pump. After the NewDeal brought electricity to the regionand oil and gas discoveries providedplenty of cheap fuel, electric pumpsraised 800 gallons per minute.

“All of a sudden, irrigation becamevery energy- and labor-efficient. Youturn on the switch and let it run,” saysRobert M. Hirsch, associate director forwater at the U.S. Geological Survey.

“There was an explosion of irrigatedagriculture, particularly on the highplains, and in California.”

In 1937, West Texas had 1,116 irri-gation wells. Thirty years later it had27,983. By 1977, Texas was withdraw-ing 11 billion gallons of groundwater aday to grow corn, cotton and other cropsin what once had been part of the GreatAmerican Desert, Reisner wrote. 37

Now, experts say the Ogallala — aresource that could have lasted hundredsof years — will be virtually depletedwithin the lifetimes of today’s farmers.

Yet during the optimism and op-portunism that characterized develop-ment of the modern American West,

Dead plants in a parched field attest to the ravages of the worldwide drought in Liujiang, acounty of southwest China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, in November 2006.

Nearly all of the region’s 84 counties were affected by the drought, which was caused byunseasonably warm temperatures, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

AP

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Continued on p. 35



Should all humans have guaranteed access to clean water,or is water an increasingly scarce commodity that shouldbe priced according to its value?

The question stands at the center of a global debate overthreats to the world’s water resources, as competition for waterincreases among industry, farming and households. It is alsocritical in efforts to protect the long-term environmental via-bility of rivers, lakes and aquifers.

The debate goes back at least to 1992, when an internationalcommission on water and the environment meeting in Irelandissued the “Dublin Principles,” which were later adopted by aU.N. panel. The commission concluded: “Water has an economicvalue . . . and should be recognized as an economic good.”Only by recognizing that economic value can water “be prop-erly conserved and allocated to its most important uses.” 1

But the principle also declared it a “basic right of all humanbeings to have access to clean water and sanitation at an af-fordable price.” Poor households cannot compete with indus-try for scarce water supplies. Nor could most farmers, who typ-ically receive subsidized prices for irrigation water.

The U.N. Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rightsdeclared in 2002 that all people are entitled to an essentialminimum amount of clean water. “Water is fundamental for lifeand health,” it said. “The human right to water is indispens-able for leading a healthy life in human dignity.” 2

Canadian activist Maude Barlow says, “You can’t really chargefor a human right; you can’t trade it or deny it to someonebecause they don’t have money.” Barlow is co-author of BlueGold: The Battle Against Corporate Theft of the World’s Water. 3

The other side in the debate argues that until water is pricedand valued as a scarce resource it will be wasted and billions ofdollars required annually to extend water service to the poor andfix leaking water systems will not be forthcoming. Two years be-fore the U.N. declared clean water a human right, the World WaterCouncil — which reflects the views of international lenders andthe water-supply industry — called for “full pricing” of water toreflect its “economic, social, environmental and cultural values.” 4

Farmers in dry regions throughout the world get water atpreferential rates — or at no charge at all — as a matter ofgovernment policy. But if farmers were required to pay thefull price for water, they could not compete with industry,which would be willing and able to pay market price.

In industrial countries, 60 percent of the water withdrawnfrom freshwater sources is used by industry, mainly to gener-ate electricity. The developing world is moving rapidly in thesame direction. China’s industrial water use, for example, is pro-jected to grow fivefold by 2030. 5

“As urban centers and industry increase their demand forwater, agriculture is losing out,” said the U.N. “Human Devel-opment Report 2006.” 6

And the world’s poor cannot compete with either farmersor business for water at market prices, said the report. Abouta third of those without access to clean water live on less than$1 a day. Twice that many live on less than $2 a day. “Thesefigures imply that 660 million people lacking access to [safe]water have, at best, a limited capacity to pay more than a smallamount for a connection to water service,” the report said.“People might lack water because they are poor, or they mightbe poor because they lack water.” The end result is the same:a limited ability to pay for water. 7

American water expert Peter H. Gleick calls for a truce in thewater rights dispute in favor of problem-solving. Workshops onprivatization standards and principles for implementing a humanright to water “would be far more likely to produce progress,”he writes. 8

1 “Dublin Statements and Principles,” Global Water Partnership; www.gw-pforum.org/servlet/PSP?iNodeID=1345.2 Meena Palaniappan, et al., “Environmental Justice and Water,” The World’sWater 2006-2007, p. 117.3 Jeff Fleischer, “Interview with Maude Barlow,” Mother Jones, Jan. 14, 2005,www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2005/01/maude_barlow.html.4 “Ministerial Declaration of The Hague,” World Water Forum, March 22, 2000.5 Palaniappan, op. cit., p. 125.6 See “Summary, Human Development Report 2006: Beyond scarcity: Power,poverty and the global water crisis,” United Nations Development Pro-gramme, p. 17, http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/hdr2006_english_summary.pdf.7 Ibid., pp. 49-52.8 Peter Gleick, “Time to Rethink Large International Water Meetings,” TheWorld’s Water 2006-2007, p. 182.

Is Access to Clean Water a Human Right?The question is at the heart of a global debate.

A man protesting the privatization of water in Cochabamba, Bolivia,waves a sign saying “what is ours is ours and it cannot be taken away.”

AP

Phot

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lie P

lase

ncia


worries about future water supplies evap-orated. “What are you going to do withall that water?” the late Felix Sparks, for-mer head of the Colorado Water Con-servation Board, asked in the mid-1980s.“When we use it up, we’ll just have toget water from somewhere else.” Buttoday, “somewhere else” is not ananswer, say authors Robin Clarke,editor of climate publications for theUnited Nations and World Meteorolo-gal Organization, and environmentalauthor Jannet King. The co-authors ofThe Water Atlas insist water must beconsidered a finite resource. 38

Should water be privatized?In 2000, street fighting broke out be-

tween government forces and politicalactivists, rural cocoa farmers and resi-dents of shantytowns on the hilly out-skirts of Cochabamba — Bolivia’s third-largest city. The dispute was overprivatization of the city’s water supplies.

The year before, Cochabamba hadturned its water and sanitation systemover to Aguas del Tunari, a coalitionof multinational and Bolivian water andengineering corporations whose biggeststakeholder was Bechtel Corp., basedin San Francisco. 39 This was the high-water mark of a global, pro-marketmovement toward deregulation and pri-vatization of state-owned monopoliesin water, electricity and other services.40 The World Bank and other interna-tional lenders had been supporting pri-vatization strategies in hopes that in-vestments and better management byprivate industry would help bring waterand sanitation to more than a billionpoor people whose governmentscouldn’t or wouldn’t do the job.

But Cochabamba’s privatization in-cluded a costly dam and pipeline toimport more water, which requiredsharp rate increases starting at 35 per-cent. Some customers’ water bills dou-bled. Farmers outside the city, whohad enjoyed free water, suddenly hadto pay. The city erupted in protest,

the water company’s officials fled andtheir contract was rescinded. 41 Thegovernment reclaimed the water op-erations, and Cochabamba became arallying cry against privatization andglobalization for the political left.

Elsewhere, however, corporate in-volvement in water and sanitation sys-tem operations has not ceased. Veo-lia Water, a subsidiary of the Frenchfirm Veolia Environment SA — theworld’s largest water-services firm —signed a $3.8 billion, 30-year, contractin 2007 to supply drinking water to3 million residents of the Chineseriver port city of Tianjin. Since 1997,Veolia has signed more than 20 waterand sanitation contracts in China, andsupplies more than 110 million peo-ple in 57 countries worldwide. 42

These projects, and smaller-scale ver-sions in poorer nations, suggest thatwhile the inflamed debate over waterprivatization continues, threats of waterscarcity and climate change may help

accelerate the search for private-sectorsupport.

The percentage of the world’s pop-ulation served at some level by pri-vate firms has grown from 5 percentin 1999 to 11 percent — or 707 mil-lion people — in 2007, according toPinsent Masons Water Yearbook, awidely consulted summary of private-sector water projects. 43

Opponents of privatization argue thatsafe drinking water and adequate san-itation are essential human rights, oblig-ating governments to provide them ataffordable rates or free if necessary. “Ifit’s a human need, it can be deliveredby the private sector on a for-profitbasis. If it’s a human right, that’s dif-ferent,” says Canadian anti-globalizationactivist Maude Barlow, co-author of BlueGold: The Battle Against Corporate Theftof the World’s Water. “You can’t reallycharge for a human right; you can’ttrade it or deny it to someone becausethey don’t have money.” 44

Continued from p. 33

Irrigation Doubled in Developing NationsThe amount of irrigated land more than doubled in developing countries in the past four decades, increasing faster than in the developed world. But the rate of increase for both has slowed in recent years because of heavy draws on groundwater aquifers and competition from industry for water.

Source: Peter H. Gleick, et al., "The World's Water: 2006-2007," Pacific Institute, 2006

Amount of Irrigated Land

Developed Countries Developing Countries

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

2003200019951990198519801975197019651961

(millions of acres)


Bringing in private firms to runwater and sewer operations does notmake the services more efficient oraffordable, opponents also argue, butforces the poor to pay for corporateprofits, shareholder dividends and highexecutive salaries. “The efficienciesdon’t happen,” asserts WenonahHauter, executive director of Foodand Water Watch, a Washington anti-globalization group. “The companiessimply lay off staff members until theydon’t have enough people to takecare of the infrastructure. And theyraise rates. We’ve seen this all overthe world.” Last year Hauter’s orga-nization issued a study claiming pri-vatized water operations in California,Illinois, Wisconsin and New York

charged more for water than compa-rable publicly owned systems. 45

Privatization advocates disputeHauter’s claims, and facts to settle theissue are illusive. A 2005 survey by theAEI-Brookings Center for RegulatoryStudies found “no systematic empiricalevidence comparing public and privatewater systems in the United States.” 46

A study by the Inter-American De-velopment Bank of water rates inColombia said prices charged by pri-vatized systems were not significantlydifferent from those charged by pub-lic systems. 47 And privatization ap-

pears to have improved water quali-ty in urban areas but not in rural com-munities, said the study. After privati-zation began, water bills for the poorrose about 10 percent but declined forthe wealthy, reflecting a scaling backin government subsidies to poorer con-sumers. Similar shifts occurred in bothprivatized and non-privatized cities. 48

In central cities, water-rate subsi-dies tend to favor the wealthy andmiddle classes, who are usually con-nected to municipal water systems,while the poor often are not, saysAmerican journalist Diane Raines Ward,author of Water Wars: Drought, Flood,Folly, and the Politics of Thirst. Andby keeping water rates artificially low,utilities typically collect only about a

third of their actual costs, so they don’traise enough money to expandpipelines to unserved poor neighbor-hoods, she says. 49

The rural poor or those living in urbanslums often must haul water home frompublic wells or buy it from independentmerchants — delivered by truck or burro— at much higher prices. In Cairo, Egypt,for instance, the poor pay 40 times thereal cost of delivery; in Karachi, Pakistan,the figure is 83 times; and in parts ofHaiti, 100 times, Ward says.

In the years since Cochabamba gal-vanized the left against privatizing water,

privatization has declined in Latin Amer-ica and sub-Saharan Africa but in-creased in Europe and Asia, accord-ing to the Water Yearbook. 50 Theaverage contract size also has dimin-ished since the 1990s, it said, due toa trend away from mega-contractswith multinational water companies infavor of “local and possibly less con-tentious contracts.” 51

A U.N.-sponsored analysis cites Chileand parts of Colombia among the suc-cessful examples of collaborativewater and sanitation services. In Carta-gena, Colombia’s fifth-largest city, thelocal government retains control of thepipes and facilities and raises invest-ment capital, but a private firm runsthe service. Today, nearly all the city’sresidents have water in their homes,up from only one-quarter in 1995. 52

Chile’s water program offers subsidiesto the poorest households, guarantee-ing an essential minimum of supplyof up to 4,000 gallons per month. De-liveries are monitored to limit cheat-ing, and every household must havea water meter to verify usage. 53

Experts say the political problemsof water privatization cannot be man-aged without effective government reg-ulation and consumer involvement atall levels. Both elements were miss-ing in Cochabamba but are present inChile, the U.N. report says. 54

Will water scarcity lead to con-flicts?

In 1995 Ismail Serageldin, a WorldBank vice president, predicted that“the wars of the next century will beover water.” 55

The reality has been different thusfar. “Water resources are rarely the solesource of conflict, and indeed, water isfrequently a source of cooperation,”writes Gleick, of the Pacific Institute forStudies in Development, Environmentand Security, in the new edition of TheWorld’s Water 2006-2007. 56 The sur-vey of reported conflicts over water inthe past 50 years, compiled by Oregon


The outlook is bleak for rancher Andrew Higham’s parched land in Gunnedah, in northwesternNew South Wales, Australia, in October 2006. Scarce winter rains caused drought across much of the continent last fall and led to severely reduced wheat and barley harvests.

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State University researchers, found 37cases of violence between nations, allbut seven in the Middle East. 57

In 1964, Israel opened its massiveNational Water Carrier canal to carrywater from the Sea of Galilee andthe Jordan River to its farms andcities. Syria retaliated to maintain itsaccess to the Jordan by starting twocanals to divert Jordan flows for itsuses. Skirmishes by military units andraids by the newly established al-Fatah forces escalated until Israeli airstrikes halted the diversion projects.By then, Israel and the Arab Leaguewere on the road to the Six-Day Warof 1967. 58

“The attacks by Syria, Egypt, and Jor-dan that eventually followed had manycauses, but water remained a priorityfor both sides,” says author Ward. 59

Still, more than 200 water treatieshave been negotiated peacefully overthe past half-century. The Partition ofIndia in 1947, for instance, could haveled to war between India and newlycreated Pakistan over control of themighty Indus River basin. Instead, thetwo nations were brought togetherwith World Bank support over a per-ilous decade of negotiations, signingthe Indus Water Treaty in 1960. Threerivers were given to Pakistan, andthree to India, with a stream of in-ternational financial support for damsand canals in both countries. Evenwhen war raged between the two na-tions in later years, they never at-tacked water infrastructure. 60

“Most peoples and even nations arehesitant to deny life’s most basic ne-cessity to others,” Ward wrote. Twomodern exceptions occurred duringthe Bosnian War (1992-1996), whenSerbs “lay waiting to shoot men, womenand children arriving at riverbanks ortaps around Sarajevo carrying bucketsor bottles,” and during Saddam Hus-sein’s regime in Iraq, when he divertedthe lower waters of the Tigris and Eu-phrates rivers to destroy the homesand livelihood of the Marsh Arabs. 61

Except for such instances, coop-eration over water resources is com-mon today, even if sometimesgrudging and incomplete, says Un-dala Alam, a professor and special-ist in water diplomacy at Britain’sCranfield University. “Turkey was re-leasing water for Syria and Iraq; theNile countries are preparing projectsjointly to develop the river; the Nigercountries have a shared vision forthe basin’s development, and theZambezi countries are working with-in the Southern African Develop-ment Community,” she notes. 62

But analysts warn that growing stresson water supplies, coupled with theimpact of climate change, will createcombustible conditions in the comingyears that will undermine collabora-tion over water.

There is plenty of precedence forthe concern, notes Gleick, who de-scribes the history of violence over freshwater as “long and distressing.” 63 Thelatest volume of The World’s Water lists22 pages of historical water conflicts —

beginning in about 1700 B.C. with theSumerians’ efforts to dam the Tigris Riverto block retreating rebels.

In the future, climate change isexpected to extend and intensifydrought in Earth’s driest regions anddisrupt normal water flows frommountain snowcaps in Europe, NorthAmerica and Central Asia. “Climatechange has the potential to exacer-bate tensions over water as precipi-tation patterns change, declining byas much as 60 percent in someareas,” warned a recent report by apanel of retired U.S. generals and ad-mirals convened by CNA, a thinktank with longstanding ties to themilitary. “The potential for escalatingtensions, economic disruption andarmed conflict is great,” said the re-port, “National Security and the Threatof Climate Change.” 64

On the simplest level, the reportsaid, climate change “has the poten-tial to create sustained natural and hu-manitarian disasters on a scale far be-yond those we see today.” Already, it

Mountain Snowpack Is ShrinkingThe amount of snow covering the globe’s highest mountains has been shrinking over the past half-century, upsetting crucial seasonal water flows that restock rivers, lakes, reservoirs and aquifers. Scientists think short-term climate conditions like El Niño and long-term warming caused by climate change are to blame. By century’s end, only 16 percent of New Zealand’s current snowpack will remain.

Source: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, http://picturethis.pnl.gov/picturet.nsf/by+id/ AMER-6PWV.V?opendocument.

Snowpack Now and Projected in 2100

Scandinavia

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Current Snowpack

Percentage Remaining in 2100

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Western USANew Zealand


said, Darfur, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia,Angola, Nigeria, Cameroon and West-ern Sahara have all been hit hard bytensions that can be traced in part toenvironmental causes. 65 If the droughtcontinues, the report said, more peoplewill leave their homelands, increasingmigration pressures within Africa andinto Europe. 66

The impact will be especially acutein the Middle East, where about two-thirds of the inhabitants depend onwater sources outside their borders.Water remains a potential flashpointbetween the Israelis and Palestinians,who lack established rights to the Jor-dan River and receive only about 10percent of the water used by Israel’sWest Bank settlers. 67 “Only Egypt, Iranand Turkey have abundant fresh waterresources,” the CNA report said.

The military advisers urged the Unit-ed States to take a stronger nationaland international role in stabilizing cli-mate change and to create global part-nerships to help less-developed nationsconfront climate impacts. 68

Currently, there is only a weak in-ternational foundation for water col-laboration, according to the U.N.Human Development report. While a1997 U.N. convention lays out princi-ples for cooperation, only 14 nationshave signed it, and it has no work-able enforcement mechanism. In 55years, the International Court of Jus-tice has decided only one case in-volving international rivers. 69

It is possible, however, that as theawareness of climate impacts on watersupplies deepens, so will the urgencyfor governments to respond. “Unlike thechallenges that we are used to dealingwith, these will come upon us extremelyslowly, but come they will, and theywill be grinding and inexorable,” saidformer Vice Adm. Richard H. Truly, aformer astronaut who headed the U.S.National Aeronautics and Space Ad-ministration (NASA) and served as aCNA consultant. 70 “They will affect everynation, and all simultaneously.”

BACKGROUNDTaming Water

The ruins of irrigation canals 8,000years old have been found in

Mesopotamia. 71 Remains of water-stor-age dams 5,000 years old survive inEgypt and Jordan. Humans have beenusing waterwheels for milling andthreshing since the 1st century B.C., andby 1291 China had completed its GrandCanal running nearly 1,800 kilometersbetween Beijing and Hangzhou. 72 Waterpower drove mining, metal drilling, tex-tile and milling industries at the dawnof the Industrial Age. 73 In the United

States, the opening of the Niagara Fallshydroelectric power station in 1896 —built by American entrepreneur and in-ventor George Westinghouse andbacked by financier J. P. Morgan andothers — inaugurated water’s use to gen-erate electric power. 74

But these early accomplishmentswere dwarfed in the 20th century bynearly 100 years of massive dam pro-jects that have transformed most ofthe world’s major rivers. Between 1950and 2000, the number of dams high-er than 50 feet increased sevenfold —to more than 41,000 structures im-pounding 14 percent of the world’saverage river runoff. 75 By 2000, largedams were supplying nearly a fifth ofall electrical power worldwide.

Dams also have been critical in therapid expansion of irrigated farming.“Half of the world’s large dams arebuilt exclusively for irrigation, sup-porting about 12 to 16 percent ofworld food production, according tothe World Commission on Dams.” 76

About 12 percent of large damswere constructed specifically to pro-vide drinking water and sanitation (anda similar percentage were built to con-trol flooding), and many have multi-ple uses. Whether used for energy,community water, flood control or agri-culture, dams have been a key toolof economic growth, according to thecommission. Typically, however, thefull consequences of such giant pro-jects were not taken into considera-tion, the commission said. In the pastcentury, the world built, on average,one large dam per day without ask-ing whether it was getting a fair re-turn from the $2 trillion investment,said South African Minister of Educa-tion Kader Asmal, who chaired thecommission. 77

The dam-building blitz was enabledby political bias in favor of dams.From the Aswan High Dam in Egyptto the Hoover Dam on the ColoradoRiver, big dams have stood as pre-


Continued on p. 40

China Leads World in Dam BuildingChina has three times as many dams as the United States and more than all the next 11 countries combined. Dams typically generate electricity, control flooding and provide water for irrigation.

Source: Peter H. Gleick, et al., “The World's Water: 2002-2003,” Pacific Institute, 2002

Countries with the Most Dams

1. China 22,0002. United States 6,5753. India 4,2914. Japan 2,6755. Spain 1,1966. Canada 7937. South Korea 7658. Turkey 6259. Brazil 594

10. France 56911. South Africa 53912. Mexico 537


Chronology19th CenturyThe industrial age and urban-ization create critical need formunicipal water treatment andsanitation services.

1848The Public Health Act, followed in1852 by the Metropolitan Water Act,lead to investments in water treat-ment and sanitation that dramaticallyreduce waterborne illnesses inBritain by the end of the century.

1876Berlin city planner James Hobrechtstarts work on drainage systemand waterworks that channelssewage to fields as fertilizer. Hedesigns similar systems forMoscow, Cairo and Tokyo.

•

1900-1980Governments around the globelaunch major dam construction.

1902The Aswan Dam on the Nile Riverin Egypt is completed to controlflooding and regulate water flowfor agriculture.

1910Chlorination begins in the UnitedStates. Typhoid fever from polluteddrinking water falls from 25 deathsper 100,000 people to almost zero.

1936Hoover Dam on the Colorado Riveris opened, fulfilling an agreementamong Southwestern states andcities to share the river’s flow.

1945Large-scale groundwater irrigationbegins expanding in the WesternUnited States, aided by rural electrifi-

cation and innovations in pumpingand irrigating technology.

1986Major dam construction has largelystopped in the U.S. but continuesin Asia.

•

1980s Britain’s publicutilities are sold to private firmsin the late 1980s, triggering awave of water-system privatiza-tion worldwide.

1994Construction begins on the ThreeGorges Dam on China’s YangtzeRiver, designed to be the largestin the world. More than 1 millionpeople will have to be relocatedas the river rises.

•

2000s Drought spreadsworldwide, heightening concernabout climate change’s impact onwater scarcity. Privatizationstrategies shift.

2000Violent public protests againsthigher water rates force cancella-tion of a water-privatization planin Cochabamba, Bolivia. But priva-tization continues in China, Indiaand other parts of the world. . . .U.N. adopts the Millennium Devel-opment Goals calling for halvingthe number of people without ac-cess to safe water and adequatesanitation by 2015.

2002China approves massive South-to-North Water Diversion Project,which will eventually link the

country’s four major rivers tobring water from the south to thearid north.

2005Group of Eight industrialized na-tions pledge to double their aidfor water, sanitation and other de-velopment projects in poorer na-tions by 2010.

2006Waterborne-disease epidemics strikeKarachi, Lahore and other Pakistanicities, caused by the leakage ofsewage and industrial wastes intodamaged water-distributionpipelines. . . . U.N. Human Devel-opment Report warns that withouta major increase in investment, im-provements in water and sanitationservices will fall far short of theMillennium Development Goals.

2007Multi-year drought afflicts China,the Horn of Africa, Turkey, Aus-tralia, Spain and the U.S. Sun Belt.. . . A director of the Three GorgesProject warns that rising watersbehind the dam could cause“water pollution, landslides andother geological disasters,” butother officials later say environ-mental problems will be amelio-rated. . . . The IntergovernmentalPanel on Climate Change predictsthat freshwater resources will de-crease in large river basins over thenext decade due to drought. . . .Drought prompts several Australiancities to commission new desalina-tion plants. Algeria also has amajor plant in construction.

2008The scarcity of water in key agricul-tural areas has contributed to soaringworld prices for wheat, soybeans,corn, rice and poultry, and the trendis likely to continue this year, sayagricultural forecasters.


eminent symbols of governments’ en-gineering prowess and the use ofstate power to control devastatingfloodwaters and feed economic ex-pansion. “Colossal engineering worksbestow big contracts and big bene-fits, divide up waters, hold them fast,channel them away from some andgive them to others,” says author Ward.“It has always been politics that startthe bulldozers moving.” 78

While dams helped expand sup-plies of drinking water, hydropower

and irrigation water, they also attractpopulation expansion that eventuallystrains the new resources. And untilrecently, the commission said, policy-makers have not fairly considered thedamaging impact dams have ondownstream rivers and aquifers andthe populations that are forced to moveto make room for reservoirs.

Resistance to major new dam pro-jects emerged with the rise of the en-vironmental movement in the 1970s,particularly in Europe and the UnitedStates, as advocates pointed to the

harm caused by dam construction. Inthe industrial world, “it is now morelikely that a dam will be torn downthan a new one will go up,” says Ward.

But in China, South Asia and SouthAmerica, dams are “multiplying likemushrooms,” she writes. 79 If China’snew Three Gorges Dam — the world’slargest hydroelectric project — had beenbuilt midway through the past century,it might have been considered one ofthe world’s great engineering feats. Themain wall of the massive, 60-story struc-ture spanning the Yangtze River was



For millennia, the nomadic Tuareg people have lived byherding, migrating across vast rangelands south of theSahara Desert to water and graze their animals. But

decades of drought are destroying the traditional Tuareg wayof life — killing herds, drying up grazing lands and forcingmany to settle in villages.

“We used to saddle the camel and put all the nice thingson its back and put on our nice clothes and go,” Tuareg chiefMohamed Ag Mata told a reporter last year. “We were afraidof nothing.” 1

But the changes, paradoxically, offer hope for a better ex-istence to women and children in the male-dominated Tuaregculture — giving them access to the employment, educationand social rights that will give them a greater say in commu-nity water policy.

Increasingly, educating and empowering women is seen asan effective way to expand access to clean water across thedeveloping world. Virtually every major international organi-zation dealing with water scarcity is calling for change inwomen’s decision-making roles, including The World Bank,the U.N. Human Development Programme, the World HealthOrganization, the World Water Forum, the World Commissionon Dams and the Stockholm-based Global Water Partnership.

In the developing world, the job of hauling water rests, lit-erally, almost entirely on women’s shoulders. A UNICEF studyin 23 sub-Saharan countries found that a quarter of womenspent 30 minutes to an hour each day collecting and carryingwater, and 19 percent spent an hour or more. In Mile Gully,an impoverished rural area of Jamaica, hauling the family’swater can take a woman two to five hours a day. 2

The high incidence of waterborne disease caused by thelack of clean water further burdens women in poor, rural com-munities, because they are the primary caregivers for the sick.

“Should a woman care for a sick child or spend two hourscollecting water?” asks the latest U.N. human development re-port. “Should girls be kept home from school to collect water,freeing time for mothers to grow food or generate income? Orshould they be sent to school to gain the skills and assets toescape poverty?” 3

But despite having to bear the greatest burden caused by alack of water, women “play no role in the decision making fortheir communities,” said Margaret Mwangi, a specialist in forestryand environmental issues who has worked for UNESCO. 4

Women’s lack of property rights prevents them from havinga say in how water is distributed in their provinces. Womenown less than 15 percent of the world’s land and in many coun-tries cannot legally own property separately from their husbands.“Lacking rights to land, millions of women in South Asia andsub-Saharan Africa are denied formal membership rights to par-ticipate in water-user association meetings,” according to the U.N.“Human Development Report 2006.” 5 And even those who arewelcomed at irrigation-association meetings often cannot find thetime. “Meetings are on Friday nights. At that time, after cook-ing for my husband and the kids, I still have a lot of work todo around the house,” said a woman in Ecuador. “Even if I goto the meeting, it’s only to hear what the men have to say. Menare the ones who talk and discuss.” 6

Unless both water and gender policies are reformed, waterscarcity threatens to worsen women’s plight, says the Sri Lanka-based International Water Management Institute. 7 Studies rec-ommend a wide range of strategies to strengthen women’s rolesin gaining access to water and sanitation services, includingmicro-credit and micro-insurance programs that target women;training programs in rural irrigation and sanitation processes;creating rural women’s councils and broadcasting radio pro-grams on women’s issues. 8

Empowering Women May Quench Thirst‘Should girls be kept home from school to collect water?’


completed in 2006, and by the end of2008 it is expected to deliver up to 18million kilowatts per hour — nearly atenth of the electricity needs of China’ssurging economy. 80 But in today’s per-spective, the monumental structure sym-bolizes the threat of environmental de-struction caused by major damconstruction.

The gargantuan project’s human andenvironmental costs have alarmed op-ponents. According to the Chinese gov-ernment, more than a million river-side residents were forced to move as

the water rose behind the dam. Therising water levels have triggered somemassive landslides on the riverbanks,and a senior government official warnedlast September that if such ecologicaland environmental dangers are notdealt with, “the project could lead toa catastrophe.” 81 But more recently,Chinese officials have insisted the pro-ject will be operated safely. 82

Some water experts still advocate new,smaller dams in developing countries tocontrol flooding, store irrigation waterand generate electricity. For instance,

most of India’s rainfall occurs in about100 hours during the monsoon season.While reservoirs capture some of thesetorrents, most escape to the sea. 83

The 4th World Water Forum in Mex-ico City in 2006 cited Norway as arole model for the value of dams. “Elec-tricity from hydropower was the keyfactor in transforming Norway fromone of the poorest countries in Eu-rope a century ago to the industrial-ized and wealthy nation of today,” saidAnita Utseth, Norway’s deputy minis-ter for petroleum and energy. 84

But gender traditions can prove hard to change. Along theBay of Bengal coast, decision-making and financial control overirrigation systems in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, hasbeen decentralized, giving more authority to local communities.Nevertheless, only 4 to 5 percent of the women surveyed intwo districts believed they could influence decisions in villagemeetings. “Women, and particularly poor women, rarely par-ticipate,” the human development report concluded. 9

Experts say progress for women requires a push from thebottom and pressure from the top. Legislation in Uganda, forinstance, requires that all agencies — from national to villagelevels — include at least 30 percent female representation.

“Affirmative action may not remove cultural barriers,” theU.N. report said, “but it does challenge their legitimacy.” 10

That may even be happening among the Tuaregs, says Hadi-jatou, describing her new life in a village near Timbuktu inMali. “Before, everything was given to us by the men. Whenyou are given what you need by other people, you are de-pendent on them. But when you are producing what you need,you depend on nobody. So life is far better now.” 11

1 Richard Harris, “Drought Forces Desert Nomads to Settle Down,” NationalPublic Radio, July 2, 2007.2 Polioptro Martinez Austria and Paul van Hofwegen, “Synthesis of the4th World Water Forum,” Mexico City, 2006 p. 4, www.worldwaterfo-rum4.org.mx/files/report/SynthesisoftheForum.pdf.3 “Human Development Report 2006 — Beyond Scarcity: Power, Povertyand the Global Water Crisis,” U.N. Development Programme, 2006, p. 87;http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2006/.4 Margaret Mwangi, “Gender and Drought Hazards in the Rangelands ofthe Great Horn of Africa,” Women & Environments International Magazine,Spring 2007, p. 21.5 “Human Development Report,” op. cit., p. 194.6 Ibid.7 David Molden, ed., “Summary,” Water for Food, Water for Life: A Compre-hensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture, International WaterManagement Institute, p. 10, www.iwmi.cgiar.org/assessment/files_new/syn-thesis/Summary_SynthesisBook.pdf.

8 Austria and Hofwegen, op. cit., pp. 43, 63, 96.9 “Human Development Report,” op. cit., p 193.10 Ibid., p. 194.11 Harris, op. cit.

Women and girls in poor countries, like these in Pakistan,bear the greatest burden from a lack of potable water.

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As Ward notes, “In some places, ifno reservoirs are built, poor peoplewill be denied the means to improvetheir lives.” 85

Regulating Water

Who owns water? What rights dowater users have? How should

conflicts be resolved?The globe’s oldest recorded societies

were formed not only for defense butalso to try to control the flow of waterin rivers that were crucial to farming.

Under Roman law, water resources werethe property of the state, which wasresponsible for their development andprotection. Islamic water law in theparched Middle East followed a simi-lar path — irrigation canals and ditch-es had to be adequately planned andspaced to prevent infringement on oth-ers’ water sources. 86

But ancient codes also recognizedthat landowners did not have to sharewell water in times of scarcity, andpeople living closest to rivers and lakeshad first claim on their waters. “Thecistern nearest to a water channel is

filled first, in the interests of peace,”said the 12th-century Jewish theologianand philosopher Maimonides. 87

Eventually, the doctrine of “ripari-an” rights — giving those living clos-est to water the first claim on its use— became merged with a “publictrust” doctrine, holding that water wasa common resource to be managedby the state for the common benefit.One person’s use of water could notinfringe on a neighbor’s reasonableneeds. The doctrine was embraced bymany countries in Europe — includ-ing Britain, France and Spain — whichthen exported the principle to theircolonies abroad. 88

But in the Western United States,Chile and Mexico, private water rightswere recognized, particularly after the1848 gold rush in the United States. Aminer finding a gold seam would claimwater from the nearest creek to washdirt away from precious nuggets. Hisclaim established a “first-in-time, first-in-use” priority allowing him to take asmuch as he needed. 89 This “prior ap-propriation” doctrine was a starter’s gunfor unchecked diversion and exploita-tion of water resources to create farmsand cities in the arid West. 90

Of course, in most legal debatesabout water, individual rights are sub-merged by political elites, rulers and dom-inant factions. For instance, Senegaleselaw provides for a democratic distribu-tion of irrigated lands. But in practice,tribal nobles’ descendants still claim thelion’s share of the land and allocate rightsto powerful outsiders, including militaryleaders, politicians and judges. 91

In Central Asia during Soviet rule,for instance, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan andUzbekistan — which abut the Syr Daryaand Amu Darya river basins — sharedthe reservoir and hydropower outputfrom Kyrgyzstan’s largest reservoir.Now, as separate states, their cooper-ation has virtually ended, according toa U.N. report. Kyrgyzstan is holdingon to more of its reservoir volume inorder to increase its hydropower ex-


China’s 60-story Three Gorges Dam — the world’s largest hydroelectric project — isexpected to deliver up to 18 million kilowatts per hour by the end of 2008, nearly a tenth of

China’s electricity needs. Critics say the Yangtze River structure symbolizes environmentaldestruction that can be caused by major dam construction. More than a million

riverside residents were forced to move as the water rose behind the dam.

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ports, severely reducing irrigation flowsin the other two countries. A con-structive dialogue “has been conspic-uously absent,” according to the U.N.Human Development Report. 92

Two international treaties — theHelsinki Rules of 1966, adopted bythe International Law Association, andarticles adopted by the U.N. Interna-tional Law Commission — specifyhow cross-border water disputes shouldbe resolved. Rivers that divide nations,according to the treaties — must beconsidered common resources, notunder any one nation’s control. Theyalso advocate a policy of “no harm”— each riparian nation has the rightto “equitable utilization” of a sharedwater supply, and a nation’s water useshould not damage its neighbors’water needs. Prior appropriation claimsare not allowed, and countries arecalled on to share accurate informa-tion on water resources. 93

Before fair water-use policies canbe expected, governments must con-sider the needs of the poor and po-litically weak, whose water needs areusually greatest, says water expert San-dra Postel, director of the Global WaterPolicy Project in Massachusetts. Thatmeans “adding seats around the table,”she says. 94 For example, Ghana suc-cessfully expanded its water and san-itation services in recent years afterwater policy was decentralized, andvillage and district water councils wereformed. The result: improved planningand more reasonable priorities for waterfunding, according to the U.N. 95

Misusing Water

In Mumbai’s Dharavi slum, which liesbetween the international airport and

the city’s financial center, an estimat-ed 1 million Indians live in huts andshanties. With only one toilet for every1,440 people, gutters overflow withwaste in the rainy season, turning thestreets into open sewers. 96

Such unsanitary conditions in devel-oping countries contribute to a plague ofdiarrhea that not only kills an estimated1.8 million children across the globe eachyear but also repeatedly sickens manytimes that number, leaving them mal-nourished and vulnerable to other dis-eases and keeping them from school. 97

Trachoma, spread by a fly that breedsin human feces, afflicts nearly 6 mil-lion people worldwide, causing wide-spread blindness. The disease “is apassport to poverty,” says the U.N.’s“Human Development Report,” becauseit prevents victims from working. 98

“At the start of the 21st century onein five people living in the developingworld — some 1.1 billion people in all— lack access to clean water,” andnearly half the developing world hasno access to adequate sanitation. 99

Some of the same conditions ex-isted in Europe and the United Statesduring most of the 19th century, asfarm families migrated to vast urbanslums. During the summer in 1858,the stench of untreated sewage in theThames River (called the “Great Stink”by the London Times) forced the Par-liament to close temporarily. 100 In the

A Masai herdsman in Kenya’s Rift Valley tends to a dying sheep in January 2006.Today 850million people live in areas where adequate food supplies are at risk because of drought —

two-thirds of them in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where the impact of climate change on food production is expected to be worst.

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1890s Britain’s infant mortality rate wasabout the same as Nigeria’s today.

Water-treatment legislation in mid-19th-century Britain mandated creationof municipal water companies, followed

by an expansion of sanitation servicesafter 1880. By 1910, the country’s rateof infant mortality had fallen by near-ly 40 percent. The critical factor forchange, according to some experts,

was an extension of voting rights inBritain beyond property-owning class-es to those who lacked clean waterand sanitation, creating a political con-stituency for reforms. 101


After wildfires devastated parts of Southern California anddry winds parched the Southwest last summer, NewMexico’s Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democratic candidate

for president, made a startling proposal.“States like Wisconsin are awash in water,” Richardson told

the Las Vegas Sun, proposing that water from the Great Lakesbe piped to his state. With nearly 20 percent of the world’s freshwater, the five vast lakes are an irresistible target to promoters,politicians — and potentially — corporate water suppliers.

“You’re going to see increasing pressure to gain access to thissupply,” said Aaron Packman, a professor of civil and environ-mental engineering at Northwestern University. “Clearly, it’s a caseof different regional interests competing for this water.” 1

In 1985, Quebec provincial officials floated a plan to sell Cana-dian river water to the high plains states. The Great Replenish-ment and Northern Development Canal (GRAND) envisionedpumping river water from Quebec into a reservoir in Ontario.From there the water could travel by aqueduct to the Great Lakesand then by canal to the American plains. Nothing came of it.

Even grander was the North American Water and Power Alliancein the 1960s, which proposed to dam dozens of north-flowing riversin Canada’s western provinces, channeling their waters into a newreservoir 500 miles long — about the distance from Pittsburgh toChicago — to irrigate the high plains and refill the Colorado River’sflows to California. But the half-trillion-dollar price tag sank theproposal. And its environmental cost would have been “ungras-pable,” says Canadian journalist Marq de Villiers, author of Water:The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource. 2

The idea still seems to stir anxieties in Canada. An off-hand re-mark by President George W. Bush in 2001 about the benefits ofCanadian water exports to the United States caused a brief uproar,and last year Canada’s Liberal Party Leader Stephane Dion accusedthe government in Ottawa of trying to put the matter back on theU.S.-Canada agenda — a claim both governments denied. 3

Mega-project dreams still survive in China, however, whichis planning a series of canals to carry Yangtze River water thou-sands of miles to the Yellow River and on to the huge citiesof Beijing and Tianjin. 4

And in 2004, Israel agreed to purchase the equivalent of 35million gallons of freshwater per day from Turkey’s ManavgatRiver, to be shipped aboard tankers. Turkish water exports toCyprus and other water-short destinations were also under con-sideration. The agreement was put on hold in 2006 after high-

er oil prices made tanker transportation uneconomical, ac-cording to both countries. 5

And then there are the slightly zany ideas, such as Calgaryentrepreneur James Cran’s plan to move water by sea insidefloating 5,000-ton plastic bags, or towing Arctic icebergs to dis-tant metropolises. 6

Most monumental water-moving schemes, however, triggerintense opposition. Gov. Richardson’s proposal, for instance, isopposed by eight Great Lakes-area states and two Canadianprovinces, and drew a terse, unequivocal “No” from Michigan’sDemocratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm. 7

1 Tim Jones, “Great Lakes key front in water wars,” The Chicago Tribune, Oct.28, 2007, www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-water_bdoct28,1,5145249.story.2 Marq de Villiers, Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource (1999),p. 260.3 Launce Rake, “Canadians fearful of U.S. water grab,” Las Vegas Sun, May28, 2006. See also Bruce Campion-Smith and Susan Delacourt, “Secret talksunderway, Dion claims,” The Toronto Star, Aug. 18, 2007, p. 18.4 Diane Raines Ward, Water Wars: Drought, Flood, Folly and the Politics ofThirst (2002), p. 171.5 Josef Federman, “Israel, Turkey put landmark water agreement into deepfreeze,” The Associated Press, April 5, 20066 de Villiers, op. cit., p. 277.7 Jones, op. cit.

Water Schemes Range From Monumental to ZanyMany are costly and controversial.

The monumental California Aqueduct brings vitally needed water444 miles from to Southern California farmers and residents.

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But the cost of expanding sanita-tion services in the developing worldtoday would be immense. A study ledby former International MonetaryFund President Michael Camdessus es-timates that closing the sanitation ser-vices gap could cost $87 billion overthe next two decades. 102

Experts today debate which mustcome first in the developing world:good governance or solutions to waterand sanitation needs. In The World’sWater 2006-2007, the authors concludethat “eradicating corruption and politi-cal interference and ensuring the par-ticipation of all stakeholders will be crit-ical to the successful governance ofwater.” 103 The 1,320-km (820 miles)Rhine River — long called “the sewerof Europe” — was cleaned up after a1986 industrial fire in Basel, Switzer-land, allowed more than 30 tons ofpesticides, dyes, mercury and otherpoisons to spill into the river. Millionsof fish were killed, and major citieshad to close their municipal water in-takes. German Chancellor AngelaMerkel, a former environmental minis-ter, has called the “rebirth of the Rhine. . . one of the great environmentalsuccess stories of the century.” 104

But to the east, the blighted Danubetestifies to the damage caused by self-ish, beggar-thy-neighbor policies bythe nations along its 1,770-mile course.Efforts to reengineer the river beganin the 16th century with projects tosteer its annual floods into canals ortrap them behind huge dams. Histor-ically, vast amounts of untreated humanwastes and toxic industrial effluentswere also dumped into the river, asituation that worsened during theCold War. Soviet-era bosses had noscruples about flushing wastes intorivers, and Moscow pushed Hungarianand Czech governments to divert theDanube into man-made waterways inorder to speed Russian barge traffic.Parts of the project were begun, butbefore it went very far, the SovietUnion collapsed.

In the 1990s, a third of the Danube’sflow was being taken for human use —an extraction rate that researchers warnedwould be unsustainable if the vast regionserved by the river faced continued growthand a prolonged drought. 105

Today the Danube nations areworking toward the river’s recovery,and the European Union has pledged$3.3 billion to help. 106

Ocean Waters

As a last resort, some wealthy na-tions and cities facing serious

shortages of freshwater — includingthe Persian Gulf states, Israel, Singa-pore and a handful of cities in Cali-fornia, Florida and Australia — haveturned to desalination of the oceans’limitless resources.

More than 10,000 desalting plantswere in operation or contracted forconstruction in January 2005, with atotal capacity of 9.6 billion gallons perday. At present, however, desalinationplants have the capability to providejust three one-thousandths of dailyglobal freshwater consumption. 107

Governments usually subsidize upto a third of the consumer cost fordesalinated water because it costs manytimes more than typical urban waterservice. 108 Improved technology andengineering dropped average desali-nation costs from $1.60 per 264 gal-lons in 1990 to about 60 cents innewer plants by 2002. But construc-tion costs have risen recently due tohigher steel prices, and operating costshave climbed sharply as energy priceshave risen. (Energy costs account forone-third to more than one-half ofthe expense of desalinating water.)The safe disposal of the brine residuefrom desalination remains an envi-ronmental issue that is still not wellresearched, according to “The World’sWater” report. 109

Some experts believe desalinationwill begin to grow at double-digit rates

as water becomes scarce and pricesfor conventional water rise. 110 For ex-ample, California had 20 desalinationplants in the construction pipeline in2006, which could increase California’sdesalination capacity 100-fold, provid-ing about 7 percent of the freshwaterthe state used in 2000.

CURRENTSITUATION

Melting Snows

The deep snowpack covering theworld’s mountains in winter is a

renewable gift of nature — melting inspring to restock rivers, lakes, reser-voirs, aquifers and eventually flowingback into the ocean. Then evaporatingocean water turns into snowfall in themountains, repeating the cycle. Butthe snowpacks have been shrinking— and melting earlier — over the pasthalf-century, upsetting crucial seasonalwater flows. 111

In parts of the Western United States,for example, the snowpack is down to40 percent of normal. While short-termclimate conditions like El Niño are part-ly to blame, Earth’s predicted warmingtrend is expected to cause dramaticchanges in the future. The U.S. De-partment of Energy’s Pacific NorthwestNational Laboratory has forecast, for in-stance, that by century’s end SouthAmerica’s Andes Mountains will havelost half of their winter snow cover,and ranges in Europe and the U.S. Westnearly half. 112 (See figure, p. 37.)

“Our main reservoir is snow, and it’sgoing away,” says Phillip Mote, a pro-fessor of atmospheric sciences at theUniversity of Washington in Seattle. 113

The early melting is seen as an in-dication that climate change is already



affecting water scarcity. “Some of what’shappening with the early snow meltscould be due to variations based onocean circulation,” said Gregg Garfin,project manager of the University ofArizona’s Institute for the Study of Plan-et Earth. “But there’s a pretty largefraction that can’t be explained thatway, and we think that’s due to in-creasing temperatures.” 114

The amount of snow melting intothe Colorado River Basin has declinedby 10 to 30 percent over the last 30years, according to Brad Udall, directorof the University of Colorado’s WesternWater Assessment. 115

Earlier melting has caused unsea-sonal spring flooding in parts of theWest, 116 while a decade of droughthas left forests more vulnerable tofires and beetle infestations, said TomSwetnam, director of the University ofArizona’s Laboratory of Tree-Ring Re-search. “Lots of people think climatechange and the ecological responses

are 50 to 100 years away,” he said.“But it’s not. It’s happening now.” 117

In the American Southwest — asin other arid regions of the world —drought is the biggest, most persistentenemy, but scientists are divided overhow much of the current drought isdue to long-term climate change.

A report by scientists at the MetOffice Hadley Centre for Climate Pre-

diction and Research — Britain’sweather office — cites evidence thatrising emissions of greenhouse gaseshave exacerbated drought conditionsduring the past half-century. Green-house gases — the carbon dioxide,methane, nitrous oxide and ozoneproduced from burning fossil fuels —are causing the Earth’s temperatureto rise by helping to trap the sun’sheat, creating a greenhouse effect, ac-cording to the Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change.

“Further research is required,”said the Hadley Centre report, not-

ing “the potential seriousness of fu-ture climate change impacts if CO2emissions continue to increase sub-stantially.” 118

These judgments are still hedged.“It is quite possible that . . . climatechange may be having an impact ondroughts, not only in the U.S. butaround the world,” says Michael J.Hayes, director of the National DroughtMitigation Center at the University ofNebraska, Lincoln. But that’s not clearyet. “I don’t think we can use whatis happening today as an argumentfor climate change. It should open oureyes to the potential impacts thatmight occur.”

Looking further ahead into the cen-tury, scientists warn that drought is like-ly to persist over longer periods, hittinghardest at the world’s most-vulnerablearid regions. 119

A trend toward extreme weatherevents, ranging from drought and hightemperature to violent storms and flood-ing, is already evident, according tothe National Center for AtmosphericResearch. 120 Global warming is like-ly to fuel even more extreme weath-er, center researchers said. “There’s atwo-third’s chance there will be a dis-aster,” says Nobel laureate Steven Chu,director of the Lawrence Berkeley Na-tional Laboratory, “and that’s in thebest scenario.” 121

The Southwestern United Statesand other regions appear headed, bymid-century, to a condition of per-manent drought caused by globalwarming, concluded Columbia Uni-versity’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Obser-vatory, after surveying recent studies.“[G]lobal warming not only causeswater shortage through early snowmelt, which leads to significant watershortage in the summer over the South-west, but it also aggregates the prob-lem by reducing precipitation,” saidMingfang Ting, senior research scien-tist at Lamont-Doherty and co-authorof the survey. 122

Continued on p. 48

Wildfires destroyed hundreds of homes in Malibu, Calif., last October during a severe drought, reigniting the perennial national debate about the

folly of building homes in water-scarce areas.

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At Issue:Should water be privatized?Yes

yesTERRY L. ANDERSONEXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PERC, SENIORFELLOW, HOOVER INSTITUTION

WRITTEN FOR CQ GLOBAL RESEARCHERFEBRUARY, 2008

no one washes a rental car” is a truism that suggests thatownership is crucial to stewardship. We also might say,“No one conserves water” for the same reason — too

often it’s not clear who benefits from conserving water becauseit’s unclear who owns the water. As long as water’s cheap, whyfix the leaky faucet or switch to an efficient irrigation system?

Making the ownership link is relatively easy, because wateris already claimed by someone — either a municipality, indi-vidual farmers or a government agency.

In practice, however, claims compete with one another, es-pecially when water is scarce. Miners and farmers on theWestern frontier in the 19th century devised the prior-appro-priation system, whereby water owners were allowed to re-solve conflicts by moving water to higher-valued uses, andtrades between farmers have gone on for a century.

The recent drought in the Southeast has raised a red flagabout scarcity. The best mechanism for allocating water isto clarify ownership among municipal, agricultural, industrialand environmental users and allow trades. If Atlanta mustbuy water from lower-valued agricultural users, farmers willhave an incentive to save water and sell it, and municipalconsumers will face a higher price and thus an incentive toconserve.

Some worry that water markets will put undue burden onthe poor while the rich continue enjoying their country clublawns. But the poor could be issued water stamps, akin tofood stamps, for buying water. Or suppliers could charge lessfor minimum amounts of water needed for necessities and in-crease the price of water for luxuries.

When water rights are allocated through political processes,the poor usually do not get many of the initial rights, forcingthem to purchase water if they are to get any. And data fromthe Chilean water markets suggest that the poor don’t faremuch better when water is traded on the open market. Per-haps there should be some guaranteed survival quantity ofwater that is a basic human right.

The problem is not a failure of water markets, but a failureof political allocation, which will not be rectified by prevent-ing water markets from delivering water at a profit to all, re-gardless of income.

As water scarcity increases in the 21st century, water bu-reaucracies will bring more conflict, while water markets willfoster more cooperation. With this choice, it will be impossibleto keep a good water market down.No

WENONAH HAUTEREXECUTIVE DIRECTORFOOD & WATER WATCH

WRITTEN FOR CQ GLOBAL RESEARCHERFEBRUARY, 2008

in the early 1990s, multinational corporations began to viewwater services as an important, new profit center — especial-ly in the United States, where 85 percent of water utilities are

public. With 1.2 billion people in the developing world lacking ac-cess to safe drinking water, the corporations lobbied the WorldBank to condition its loans for water services on privatization.

Since then, numerous failed ventures have proven that thecost of privatizing water is too high. It was certainly too highfor Tanzania, which terminated a 10-year contract with Biwaterafter two years of poor management left the government short$3.25 million and the poorest citizens of Dar es Salaam with-out water. Likewise, massive rate hikes and poor managementled Bolivia to end a 40-year contract with Bechtel after onlya few months. Similar ventures in Argentina, the Philippines,Indonesia, South Africa and the United Kingdom also haveproven unworkable.

In the United States, many municipalities have consideredprivatization to upgrade their aging systems, but the ventureshave been plagued by corruption, high rates, poor service andpublic outrage. Atlanta terminated a 20-year contract with Unit-ed Water 16 years early due to bungled emergency responses,boil-water alerts, discolored water and billing difficulties. In2002, a coalition of citizens’ organizations in New Orleans de-feated what would have been the largest water-privatization ini-tiative in the United States. Meanwhile, residents of Stockton,Calif., sued the city for failing to perform a proper environmen-tal review of the city’s water-privatization contract.

Given this abysmal track record, new solutions are neces-sary to meet water needs. For example, some U.S. cities havecut costs by improving internal management. Phoenix saved$77 million by working with a labor management team to op-timize staffing, organize self-directed work teams and utilizenew technology. Similarly, San Diego saved $37 million bydeveloping a more cost-conscious management system.

Safeguarding our water systems is a vital public responsibil-ity. Yet, shockingly, the Environmental Protection Agency esti-mates that each year we fall $22 billion short of our water in-frastructure spending needs. To address this funding gap, wemust ensure that public utilities can upgrade and maintaintheir systems without turning to privatization.

At Food & Water Watch, we support a Clean Water TrustFund to help ensure that the future of America’s water lies inpublicly accountable management and secure, clean, affordablewater for all.



Wasted Water

Although Atlantans worry that fallinglevels in Lake Lanier are jeopardiz-

ing their drinking water, they might besurprised to learn that up to 18 percentof the city’s water is being lost throughleaky pipes and wastefulness. 123 In Lon-don, the mayor asked the Thames Watercompany to stanch the 238 million gal-lons per day being lost through old,leaky water pipes rather than build acostly desalination plant to purifyThames River water. Regulators have

since approved the project because ofthe urgency of the shortages. 124

U.S. water systems lose an esti-mated 15 percent to 25 percent oftheir water through leakage, and olderor poorly maintained networks aroundthe world lose more than 40 percent.However, notes American water con-servation consultant Amy L. Vickers,water leakage is “chronically underes-timated, ignored, or treated as a tired‘Unsolved Mystery,’ ” by utilities. 125

In coastal cities, vast amounts ofrainwater and melting snow are “ba-sically lost,” flowing into storm drainsthat flow out to sea, says the U.S. Ge-ological Survey’s Hirsch. “The urban

design is to get rid of it as fast as youcan: get it off the roof, off the street,into the storm sewers and rush it offinto the ocean, never used by any-body.” Extravagant water consumptioncontinues in wealthy residential areasand in farming regions where ineffi-cient surface and sprinkler irrigationsystems waste up to 25 percent of thewater they use. 126 Efficient “drip” ir-rigation systems — which deliverwater directly onto the crops, reduc-ing evaporation to only 5 percent —are used on less than 1 percent of ir-rigated lands worldwide, largely be-cause of higher equipment costs. 127

But according to Vickers and otherexperts, a conservation ethic is be-ginning to emerge, particularly wherewater supplies are threatened bydrought. For example, aggressive con-servation strategies in Boston and Al-buquerque, N.M., are reducing sys-temwide demand by 25 and 18 percent,respectively. “A few other systems, suchas New York City, have also realizedsubstantial water savings and waste-water volume reductions that have al-lowed them to avert major infrastruc-ture expansions,” Vickers notes. 128

In the United States, some stateshave begun requiring cities to use re-claimed wastewater (“graywater”) to

irrigate parks and golf courses. Illi-nois, Florida, California, Arizona andOhio reported the largest increases.The U.S. Geological Survey estimatedthat the amount of graywater usedmore than doubled between the1970s and 1995. 129

Water conservation also is ex-panding in the construction field. Inthe United States, Canada, Brazil,India and three-dozen other nations,water-saving green architecture forcommercial and government build-ings is growing in popularity, but thelarge-scale use of water-conservationpractices by water utilities is still “veryrare,” says Vickers. 130

Hirsch says policymakers must rec-ognize that rivers and lakes need sus-tained flows of water to maintain theirlong-term environmental viability —and their full range of usefulness. Al-though this movement is “still in itsinfancy,” at least 70 nations have begunprograms to conserve or restore waterflows in rivers. 131 For example, a $10billion project in Florida aims to re-store the natural flow of the Kissim-mee River, and programs in Australia,Israel, Finland, Thailand, South Africaand Zambia would release flood wa-ters from dams to move sedimentsdownstream and expand plant and an-imal habitats.

“When given a chance, rivers oftenheal,” write the Global Water PolicyProject’s Postel and Brian Richter, astaff director at the Nature Conservancy,in Rivers for Life. 132

OUTLOOKThirst and Hunger

The world’s population, now about6 billion, is likely to jump by more

than a third by 2050, reaching nearly


“If 12 jumbo jets [full of children] were crashing

every day, the world would want to do something

about it. They would want to find out

why it was happening.”

— U.N. water expert Brian Appleton,commenting on the deaths each day of 5,000 children

due to lack of access to clean water.


9 billion, according to the U.N. 133

Such a large increase will cause notonly thirst but also hunger, says theInternational Water Management Inst-tute. The average European uses about13 gallons of water a day for drink-ing, cooking and sanitation. But thefood an individual consumes in a typ-ical day requires 800 to 900 gallonsto grow. 134

“The world needs roughly 70 timesmore water to produce food than itneeds for cities,” says Rijsberman, for-mer director of the International WaterManagement Institute in Sri Lanka. 135

Since 1950, water withdrawals forhuman use have tripled and irrigat-ed cropland doubled. Today, despiteimportant increases in farming pro-ductivity, 850 million people live inareas where adequate food suppliesare at risk — two-thirds of them inSouth Asia and sub-Saharan Africa,where the impact of climate changeon food production is expected tobe worst. 136

The productivity of irrigated crop-land has increased dramatically in thepast half-century, according to theWorld Bank. The production of riceand wheat, for instance, increased 100percent and 160 percent in that pe-riod, respectively, with no increase inwater use per bushel. “However, inmany (river) basins, water productiv-ity remains startlingly low,” the bankreports. Without greater agriculturalproductivity or major shifts in farm-ing locations, the amount of waterneeded for farming will jump 70 to90 percent by 2050, according to theassessment. 137

As food requirements continue torise, the increase in irrigation hasslowed as underground water levelshave begun to recede. Farmers alsoface growing competition for water fromindustry. 138

Rijsberman predicts the average priceof water used in agriculture world-wide could increase by two to threetimes in the coming decades, inflating

global food prices. In addition, in-dustries and power producers can out-bid farmers for scarce water. If irri-gated harvests are cut back through alack of water or because water is di-verted to industrial use, world grainprices will rise even more. 139

Policymakers still must resolve amajor question about water pricing:

Should it be priced competitively,according to its value, like wheat,rice and other food commoditiesgrown with water? A handful of gov-ernments have done just that: Chileallows landowners with water on orunder their property to trade waterrights to the highest bidders. Mexi-co, several Australian states and Cal-

Spraying vs. DrippingDue to evaporation, irrigation systems like this one in Lakefield Township, Mich.(top), waste up to 25 percent of the water they distribute. More expensive dripirrigation systems, like this one in Israel (bottom), lose only about 5 percent toevaporation but are used on less than 1 percent of irrigated lands worldwide.

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ifornia also have water-trading pro-grams. 140 In Texas, the flamboyantoil trader T. Boone Pickens has createda company, Mesa Water, to buywater from landowners above theOgallala aquifer, to sell to water-short Texas cities. 141

But many experts think trading wateras a commodity is a non-starter formost governments. “There is no move-ment in the real world, with electedofficials,” says U.S. water-law expertRobert Glennon. “Water pricing is thethird rail of water politics.”

Another option, supported by theWorld Bank and others, is trading“virtual” water. That occurs when acountry with scarce water or pooragricultural land concentrates on de-veloping export goods to earn themoney needed to import food fromwater-rich nations with productive,low-cost food producers. Suchtrades, which would require a low-ering of agricultural trade barriers,could bring down food productioncosts in water-poor countries and helpreduce global water consumption,according to a World Bank report.Wheat grown in India, for example,consumes four times more waterthan wheat grown in France. By im-porting maize rather than growing it,Egypt reduces its national water con-sumption by 5 percent. 142

But importing “virtual” water alsohas a downside. “In Morocco, for ex-ample, one study showed that whilethe nation as a whole would benefitfrom agricultural trade liberalization,those benefits would be concentratedon the urban population; farmers —particularly poor farmers — stood tolose,” said a World Bank report. 143

For that reason, critics of expandedinternational trade oppose the “virtual”approach.

Other advocates call for greaterreliance on rain-fed farming. Just overhalf of the world’s food, by value,

is produced using rainfall, but thissector — dominated by poor ruralfarmers — has traditionally been ig-nored by food producers and gov-ernments in favor of major irrigationstrategies.

“Upgrading rain-fed areas has highpotential both for food productionand for poverty alleviation,” says theInternational Water Management In-stitute. Increasing small-scale rain-water storage with supplemental ir-rigation and better land managementcould produce quick output gains inthese areas. 144

If farmers continue to depend onirrigation for 40 percent of theirwater, producing an acceptable dietfor 2.4 billion more people in thenext 30 years would require another20 Nile Rivers or 97 Colorado Rivers,says water expert Postel. “It is not atall clear where this water is to comefrom.” 145

Notes

1 Charles C. Mann, “The Rise of Big Water,”Vanity Fair, May 2007; Reuters, “China droughtthreatens water supply for millions,” March28, 2007.2 Xinhua News Agency, “Drought leaves near-ly 250,000 short of drinking water in Guang-dong,” People’s Daily Online, Dec. 13, 2007;http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/6320617.html.3 Jonathan Watts, “Dry, Polluted, Plagued byRats: The Crisis in China’s Greatest YangtzeRiver,” The Guardian (Britain), Jan. 17, 2008;http://chinaview.wordpress.com/category/en-vironment/drought/.4 Xinhua News Agency, “Climate changeblamed as drought hits 100,000 at China’slargest freshwater lake,” People’s Daily On-line, Dec. 14, 2007; http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/6321329.html.5 Chris O’Brien, “Global Warming Hits China,”Forbes.com, Jan. 6, 2008; www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/01/04/poyang-lake-china-oped-cx_cob_0106poyang.html.

6 Peter H. Gleick, “Time to Rethink Large In-ternational Water Meetings,” The World’s Water2006-2007, Island Press, p. 182; www.world-water.org/.7 David Molden, ed.; “Summary,” Water forFood, Water for Life: A Comprehensive Assess-ment of Water Management in Agriculture, In-ternational Water Management Institute, p. 10;www.iwmi.cgiar.org/assessment/files_new/syn-thesis/Summary_SynthesisBook.pdf.8 See “Summary, Human Development Re-port 2006: Beyond scarcity: Power, povertyand the global water crisis,” United NationsDevelopment Programme, p. 26, http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/hdr2006_english_sum-mary.pdf.9 Carmen Revenga, et al., “Executive Sum-mary, Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems:Freshwater Systems,” World Resources Insti-tute, 2000, pp. 4, 26; www.wri.org/publica-tion/pilot-analysis-global-ecosystems-freshwater-systems.10 Stacy Shelton, “Lake Lanier hits lowestpoint since its construction,” The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Nov. 19, 2007; www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2007/11/19/lanierlowweb_1120.html?cxntlid=home-page_tab_newstab. For background, seeMary H. Cooper, “Water Shortages,” CQ Re-searcher, Aug. 1, 2003, pp. 649-672.11 M. Falkenmark, et al., “On the Verge of aNew Water Scarcity: A call for good gover-nance and human ingenuity,” Stockholm In-ternational Water Institute (SIWI) Policy Brief,2007, p. 17. For background, see ColinWoodard, “Curbing Climate Change,” CQ Glob-al Researcher, February 2007, pp. 27-50.12 “Water and Terrorism,” The World’s Water2006-2007, op. cit., p. 1.13 Environmental Protection Agency, “WaterSentinel Initiative,” www.epa.gov/watersecu-rity/pubs/water_sentinel_factsheet.pdf.14 Met Office Hadley Centre, “Effects of cli-mate change in developing countries,” No-vember 2006, pp. 2-3, www.metoffice.gov.uk/re-search/hadleycentre/pubs/brochures/COP12.pdf;Michael McCarthy, “The Century of Drought,”The Independent (London), Oct. 4, 2006, p. 1.15 McCarthy, ibid., p. 1.16 World Water Council.17 Quoted in “Billions without clean water,”March 14, 2000, BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/676064.stm.18 David Katz, “Going with the Flow,” TheWorld’s Water 2006-2007, op. cit., pp. 30-39.



19 Data Table 5, Access to Water Supply andSanitation by Region, The World’s Water2006-2007, op. cit., p. 258.20 “Synthesis of the 4th World WaterForum,” August 2006, p. 23-24, www.world-waterforum4.org.mx/files/report/SynthesisoftheForum.pdf. For background on MillenniumDevelopment Goals, see www.un.org/millenni-umgoals and “U.N. Fact Sheet on Water andSanitation,” 2006, www.un.org/waterfor-lifedecade/factsheet.html.21 “Human Development Report 2006,” op.cit., p. 8; http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/glob-al/hdr2006/.22 Australian Broadcasting Corp., “Issues inScience and Technology,” transcript, Sept. 22,2007.23 Frank Rijsberman, Charlotte Fraiture andDavid Molden, “Water scarcity: the food fac-tor,” Issues in Science and Technology, June22, 2007.24 Ibid.25 Sharon P. Nappier, Robert S. Lawrence,Kellogg J. Schwab, “Dangerous Waters,” Nat-ural History, November 2007, p. 48.26 Marq de Villiers, Water: The Fate of OurMost Precious Resource (1999), p. 267.27 “World hit by water shortage,” Birming-ham Post, Aug. 21, 2006, p. 10; http://icbirm-ingham.icnetwork.co.uk/birminghampost/news/tm_method=full%26objectid=17597105%26siteid=50002-name_page.html.28 “Water Resources Sector Strategy, StrategicDirections for World Bank Engagement,” WorldBank, 2004, p. 5, www-wds.worldbank.org/ex-ternal/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2004/06/01/000090341_20040601150257/Rendered/PDF/28114.pdf.29 de Villiers, op. cit., pp. 176-177.30 Frank R. Rijsberman, “1st Asia-PacificWater Summit,” MaximsNews Network, Oct.8, 2007; ww.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2006/s1716766.htm.31 Diane Raines Ward, Water Wars: Drought,Flood, Folly and the Politics of Thirst (2002),p. 171.32 Nappier, et al., op. cit.33 “Human Development Report,” op. cit., p.176. Also see Meena Palaniappan, Emily Leeand Andrea Samulon, “Environmental Justiceand Water,” The World’s Water 2006-2007,op. cit., p. 125.34 “Human Development Report,” ibid.35 Palaniappan, et al., op. cit.

36 Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert, the Ameri-can West and its Disappearing Water (1986),p. 10.37 Ibid., p. 437.38 Ibid., pp. 10-11; also see Robin Clarke andJannet King, The Water Atlas (2004).39 “Approaches to Private Participation inWater Services,” World Bank, 2006, p. 213.40 Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, Com-manding Heights: The Battle for the WorldEconomy (2004).41 Juan Forero, “Multinational Is Ousted, butLocal Ills Persist,” The New York Times, Dec.15, 2005, p. 1; also, Public Citizen, “WaterPrivatization Case Study: Cochabamba, Bo-livia,” pp. 1-2, www.tradewatch.org/docu-ments/Bolivia_(PDF).PDF; and Bechtel Corp.statement, “Cochabamba and the Aquas delTunari Consortium,” www.bechtel.com/as-sets/files/PDF/Cochabambafacts0305.pdf.42 “European environment giant Veolia toincrease investment in China to $2.5 billionby 2013,” Xinhua News Agency, Nov. 1,2007.43 Pinsent Masons Water Yearbook 2007-08,p. xii, www.pinsentmasons.com/media/1976627452.pdf.44 Quoted in Jeff Fleischer, “Blue Gold: AnInterview with Maude Barlow,” Mother Jones,Jan. 14, 2005, www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2005/01/maude_barlow.html.45 “Economic Failures of Private Water Sys-tems,” Food & Water Watch, Dec. 2007,www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/waterpri-vatization/usa/Public_vs_Private.pdf.46 Scott Wallsten and Katrina Kosec, “Publicor Private Drinking Water?” AEI-BrookingsJoint Center for Regulatory Studies, March2005, pp. 2, 7; www.reg-markets.org/publi-cations/abstract.php?pid=919.47 Felipe Barrera-Osorio and Mauricio Oliv-era, “Does Society Win or Lose as a Resultof Privatization?” Inter-American DevelopmentBank, Research Network Working Paper #R-525, March 2007, p. 19.48 Ibid., p. 21.49 Ward, op. cit., pp. 206-207.50 Pinsent Masons Water Yearbook, op. cit.,p. 3.51 Ibid., p. 5.52 Paul Constance, “The Day that Water RanUphill,” IDB America, Inter-American Devel-opment Bank, Dec. 9, 2007, www.iadb.org/id-bamerica/index.cfm?thisid=3909&lanid=1.

53 “Human Development Report,” op. cit., p.92.54 Ibid., p. 179; Ward, op. cit., p. 210.55 Malcolm Scully, “The Politics of RunningOut of Water,” The Chronicle of Higher Ed-ucation, Nov. 17, 2000.56 Peter H. Gleick, “Environment and Security,”The World’s Water 2006-2007, op. cit., p. 189.57 “Human Development Report,” op. cit., p. 221.58 Benny Morris, Righteous Victims (2001),pp. 303-304.59 Ward, op. cit., p. 174.60 Ibid., p. 85.61 Ibid., p. 192.62 Undala Alam, letter to the Financial Times,April 1, 2006, p. 6. Also see www.trans-boundarywaters.orst.edu/publications/related_research/Alam1998.pdf.63 Gleick, “Environment and Security,” op. cit.,p. 189.64 Security and the Threat of Climate Change(2007), CNA Corp., p. 3; http://securityand-climate.cna.org/.65 Ibid., p. 20.66 Ibid., p. 22.67 “Human Development Report,” op. cit., p.216; Clarke and King, op. cit., p. 79.68 Ibid., p. 47.69 “Human Development Report,” op. cit., p.218.70 CNA, op. cit., p. 14.71 “Dams and Development: A New Frame-work for Decision Making,” World Commis-sion on Dams, Nov. 16, 2000, p. 8;www.dams.org/report/wcd_overview.htm.72 Xinhua News Agency, “China’s Grand CanalQueues for World Heritage Status,” July 6, 2004,www.china.org.cn/english/culture/100401.htm.73 Terry S. Reynolds, Stronger Than a Hun-dred Men: A History of the Vertical Water Wheel(1932), pp. 32, 142.74 Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla,Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify theWorld (2004).75 Revenga, et al., op. cit., p. 12.76 World Commission on Dams, op. cit.,p. 9.77 Ibid., p. ii.78 Ward, op. cit., p. 51.79 Ibid., p. 46.80 Lin Yang, “China’s Three Gorges’ DamUnder Fire,” Time, Oct. 12, 2007, www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1671000,00.html.Also see Bruce Kennedy, “China’s Three


Gorges Dam,” CNN.com, 2001, www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1999/china.50/asian.superpower/three.gorges/.81 Jonathan Watts, “Three Georges Dam riskto environment, says China,” The Guardian,Sept. 27, 2007.82 Xinhua Financial News, “Chinese Govern-ment Fights Back in Defense of Three GorgesDam,” Nov. 27, 2007; Jim Yardley, “Chinavigorously defends the Three Gorges Damproject,” The International Herald Tribune,Nov. 28, 2007, p. 3.83 Revenga, et al., op. cit., p. 28.84 “Synthesis of the 4th World Water Forum,”op. cit.85 Ward, op. cit., p. 47.86 Ibid., p. 187.87 de Villiers, op. cit., p. 59. Also see “Is-lamic Water Management and the DublinStatement,” The International DevelopmentResearch Center, Canada, www.idrc.ca/en/ev-93949-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html.88 Katz, op. cit., p. 37.89 Robert Glennon, Water Follies: Ground-water Pumping and the Fate of America’sFresh Waters (2002), p. 16.90 Ibid., p. 14.91 “Human Development Report,” op. cit., p.185.92 Ibid., p. 214.93 Ward, op. cit., p. 188.94 Sandra Postel and Brian Richter, Rivers forLife, Managing Water for People and Nature(2003), p. 168.95 “Human Development Report,” op. cit.,p. 103.96 Ibid., p. 37.97 Ibid., p. 42.98 Ibid., pp. 45-46.99 Ibid., p. 33.100 Ibid., p. 29.

101 Ibid., p. 30, citing Frances Bell and RobertMillward, “Public Health Expenditures andMortality in England and Wales, 1870-1914,”pp. 221-249.102 Palaniappan, et al., op. cit., p. 131, citingthe World Water Council, “Financing Waterfor All,” Global Water Partnership, March2004.103 Ibid., p. 139.104 de Villiers, op. cit., p 171.105 Ibid., pp. 172-177.106 Ibid., p. 174; “Human Development Report,”op. cit., p. 219; “Future Danube Flood ActionsDepend On International Cooperation,” Com-mission for the Protection of the Danube, April21 , 2006; www.icpdr .org/ icpdr-pages/pr20060421_danube_flood.htm. For back-ground, see Brian Beary, “The New Europe,”CQ Global Researcher, August, 2007.107 Peter H. Gleick, Heather Cooley, GaryWolff, “With a Grain of Salt: An Update onSeawater Desalination,” The World’s Water2006-2007, op. cit., p. 55.108 Ibid., pp. 68-70.109 Ibid., pp. 78-79.110 Ibid., p. 161. General Electric Co. pro-jects an annual growth rate of 9 to 14 per-cent, growing from $4.3 billion in annualdesalination expenditures in 2005 to $14 bil-lion in 2014.111 P. W. Mote, et al., “Declining MountainSnowpack in Western North America,” Bulletinof the American Meteorological Society 86,January 2005, pp. 49-48.112 “New Century of Thirst for World’s Moun-tains,” Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, May18, 2006, www.pnl.gov/news/release.asp?id=158.113 Eric Bontrager, “West will need to revisitwater, land management in light of global warm-ing, experts say,” Land Letter, Sept. 28. 2006;www.eenews.net/ll/ (subscription required).

114 Shaun McKinnon, “Southwest Could Be-come Dust Bowl, Study Warns,” The ArizonaRepublic, April 6, 2007, p. 1; www.azcen-tral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0406cli-mate-report0406.html.115 Bontrager, op. cit.116 Ibid.117 Shaun McKinnon, “Snow runoff: What’sat Stake,” The Arizona Republic, Nov. 25,2007, p. 8; and Stephen Saunders and Mau-reen Maxwell, “Less Snow, Less Water: Cli-mate Disruption in the West,” The RockyMountain Climate Organization, September2005, pp. 2, 9, 19, www.rockymountaincli-mate.org/website%20pictures/Less%20Snow%20Less%20Water.pdf.118 “UK Government: Global drought in the21st century,” M2 Presswire, Oct. 26, 2006;www.continuitycentral.com/news02870.htm.119 “Fourth Assessment Report — Climate Change2007: Synthesis Report, Summary for Policy-makers,” Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange, Nov. 17, 2007, p. 8; www.ipcc.ch/pdf/as-sessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf.120 Claudie Tebaldi, Katharine Hayhoe, Julie M.Arblaster and Gerald A. Meehle, “Going to Ex-tremes,” Institute for the Study of Society andEnvironment, National Center for AtmosphericResearch, 2006, p. 22; www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/pub-lications/tebaldi_extremes.pdf.121 Jon Gertner, “The Future is Drying Up,” NewYork Times Magazine, Oct. 21, 2007; www.ny-times.com/2007/10/21/magazine/21water-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin.122 “New Study Shows Climate Change Likelyto Lead to Periods of Extreme Drought in South-west North America,” Lamont-Doherty EarthObservatory, April 6, 2007, www.ldeo.colum-bia.edu/news-events/new-study-shows-climate-change-likely-lead-periods-extreme-drought-southwest-north-ameri.123 “A Review of Water Conservation Plan-ning for the Atlanta, Georgia Region, August2006, prepared for the Florida Departmentof Environmental Protection,” Pacific Institute,p. 23, www.pacinst.org/reports/atlanta/at-lanta_analysis.pdf.124 “Report to the Secretaries of State for Com-munities and Local Government and Food andRural Affairs,” The Planning Inspectorate, Sept.29, 2006, p. 7-8, www.communities.gov.uk/doc-uments/planningandbuilding/pdf/319931, andwww.thameswater.co.uk/UK/region/en_gb/


About the AuthorWashington freelancer writer Peter Behr worked for morethan 25 years at The Washington Post, where he reportedon energy issues and served as business editor. A formerNieman Fellow at Harvard University, Behr worked at theWoodrow Wilson Center for Scholars and is now writinga book about the U.S. electric power grid. His report on“Energy Nationalism” appeared in the July 2007 issue.


content/News/News_001394.jsp?SECT=Section_Homepage_000431.125 Amy L. Vickers, “The Future of Water Con-servation: Challenges Ahead,” The UniversitiesCouncil on Water Resources (UCOWR), p. 52,www.ucowr.siu.edu/updates/pdf/V114_A8.pdf.Also see Marcia Clemmitt, “Aging Infrastructure,”CQ Researcher, Sept. 28, 2007, pp. 793-816.126 Clarke and King, op. cit., p. 87.127 “Re-engaging in Agricultural Water Man-agement — Challenges and Options,” TheInternational Bank for Reconstruction andDevelopment/The World Bank, 2006, p. 3,web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOP-ICS/EXTARD/0,,contentMDK:20858509~pagePK:210058~piPK:210062~theSitePK:336682,00.html.128 Vickers, op. cit., p. 52.129 Harriet Emerson and Mohamed Lahlou,“Conservation: It’s the Future of Water,” Na-tional Drinking Water Clearinghouse,www.nesc.wvu.edu/ndwc/ndwc_conservarti-clesetc.htm/harrietarticle.html.130 “Fact Sheet,” U.S. Green Building Council,www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=222.131 Katz, op. cit., p. 32.132 Postel and Richter, op. cit., p. 201.133 “World Population Prospects,” U.N. De-partment of Economic and Social Affairs, 2006,http://esa.un.org/unpp/.134 Molden, op. cit., p. 1; Birmingham Post,op. cit., p. 10.135 Quoted in Kerry O’Brien, “Water scarcity‘due to agriculture,’ ” Australian Broadcast-ing Corp. Transcripts, Aug. 16, 2006; www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2006/s1716766.htm.136 Molden, op. cit., pp. 7-8.137 Ibid., p. 14.138 “Re-engaging in Agricultural Water Manage-ment,” op. cit., p. 38.139 Rijsberman, op. cit.140 Postel and Richter, op. cit., pp. 112-117.141 Jim Getz, “Kaufman County won’t vote onPickens’ freshwater district: But Roberts Countycalls election on Pickens’ pitch for freshwaterdistrict,” The Dallas Morning News, Sept. 5, 2007.142 “Re-engaging in Agricultural Water Manage-ment,” op. cit., p. 102.143 Ibid., p 103.144 International Water Management Institute,op. cit., p. 10.145 de Villiers, op. cit., p 24.

FOR MORE INFORMATIONThe CNA Corp., 4825 Mark Center Drive, Alexandria, VA 22311; (703) 824-2000;www.cna.org. A nonprofit research organization that operates the Center for NavalAnalyses and the Institute for Public Research, concentrating on security, defenseand other government-policy issues.

Food and Water Watch, 1616 P St., N.W., Suite 300, Washington, DC 20036; (202)683-2500; www.foodandwaterwatch.org. A liberal research and advocacy organizationfocused on water resources, food security, sanitation and globalization issues.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, C/O World Meteorological Or-ganization, 7bis Avenue de la Paix, C.P. 2300, CH-1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland;41-22-730-8208/84; www.ipcc.ch. Intergovernmental research body.

International Water Management Institute, 127, Sunil Mawatha, Pelawatte,Battaramulla, Colombo, Sri Lanka; 94-11 2880000, 2784080; www.iwmi.cgiar.org.Research group supported by 60 governments, private foundations and interna-tional organizations.

The Met Office Hadley Centre, Met Office, FitzRoy Road, Exeter, Devon, EX13PB, United Kingdom; 44 (0)1392 885680; www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadley-centre. Britain’s official center for climate-change research.

Pacific Institute, 654 13th St., Preservation Park, Oakland, CA 94612; (510) 251-1600;www.pacinst.org. A nonpartisan think tank studying development, environment andsecurity issues.

Property and Environment Research Center, 2048 Analysis Dr., Suite A, Bozeman,MT 59718; (406) 587-9591; www.perc.org. A pro-market research and advocacy group.

Public Citizen, 1600 20th St., N.W., Washington, DC 20009; (202) 588-1000;www.citizen.org. A liberal consumer-advocacy group.

Stockholm International Water Institute, Drottninggatan 33, SE — 111 51Stockholm, Sweden; 46 8 522 139 60; www.siwi.org. A research organizationaffiliated with the Swedish government.

U.N. Human Development Office, 304 E. 45th St., 12th Floor, New York, NY10017; (212) 906-3661; hdr.undp.org/en/humandev. Publishes an annual reporton health, economic and other social conditions.

U.S. Geological Survey, 12201 Sunrise Valley Dr., Reston, VA 20192; (888) 275-8747; www.usgs.gov. The government’s mapping agency and research center onwater resources, geology, natural hazards and other physical sciences.

World Bank, 1818 H St., N.W., Washington, DC 20433; (202) 473-1000; www.world-bank.org. Provides technical and financial assistance to developing countries.

World Water Council, Espace Gaymard, 2-4 place d’Arvieux, 13002 Marseille,France; 33 491 994100; www.worldwatercouncil.org. An international research andadvocacy group of government and international agency officials, academics andcorporate executives; sponsors World Water Forum every three years.

FOR MORE INFORMATION


Books

Clarke, Robin, and Jannet King, The Water Atlas, TheNew Press, 2004.Editors at the World Meteorological Organization present a

visual primer on water scarcity, sanitation shortfalls and climateimpact on water resources.

de Villiers, Marq, Water: The Fate of Our Most PreciousResource, Stoddard Publishing Co., 1999.A Canadian journalist provides a global overview of challenges

confronting the world’s water supplies.

Glennon, Robert, Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping andthe Fate of America’s Fresh Waters, Island Press, 2002.An attorney and water-policy expert advocates new policies

to preserve Western U.S. aquifers.

Olivera, Oscar, Cochabamba! Water Rebellion in Bolivia,South End Press, 2004.The leader of the Bolivian protest against water privatization

gives his side of the conflict.

Postel, Sandra, and Brian Richter, Rivers for Life, Man-aging Water for People and Nature, Island Press, 2003.Experts at the Global Water Policy Project in Massachusetts

(Postel) and The Nature Conservancy (Richter) chronicle the cam-paign to restore environmental conditions in threatened rivers.

Reisner, Marc, Cadillac Desert, the American West andIts Disappearing Water, Penguin Books, 1986.This award-winning classic by a former Natural Resources

Defense Council expert critiques federal land and irrigationpolicies and their impact on water use in the West.

Ward, Diane Raines, Water Wars: Drought, Flood, Follyand the Politics of Thirst, Riverhead Books, 2002.An environmental writer reviews controversial global policies

affecting dams, water treaties and other water-resource issues.

Articles

Mann, Charles C., “The Rise of Big Water,” Vanity Fair,May 2007.A correspondent for Science and The Atlantic Monthly ex-

plores the controversy over privatization programs for waterand sanitation worldwide.

Reports and Studies

“Approaches to Private Participation in Water Services: ATool Kit,” The World Bank, 2006, http://publications.world-

bank.org/ecommerce/catalog/product?item_id=4085442.The world’s major foreign-aid lender provides lessons learned

from water-privatization efforts.

“Beyond scarcity: Power, poverty and the global watercrisis,” United Nations Development Programme, U.N.Human Development Report 2006, http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2006.This detailed review of worldwide water and sanitation

challenges includes case studies of successes and failures.

“Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management inAgriculture: Water for Food, Water for Life,” InternationalWater Management Institute, 2006, www.fao.org/nr/water/docs/Summary_SynthesisBook.pdf.A consulting group based in Sri Lanka reports on the impact

of water scarcity on global irrigation and food production.

“Dams and Development: A New Framework for DecisionMaking,” World Commission on Dams, 2000, www.dams.org/report.Water experts, educators and government officials assess

issues surrounding major dam construction and operations.

“IPCC Fourth Assessment Report,” IntergovernmentalPanel on Climate Change, 2007, www.ipcc.ch/ipccre-ports/ar4-syr.htm.A scientific panel sponsored by the World Meteorological

Organization and the United Nations Environment Programmeissues its most recent outlook on climate change threats.

“National Security and the Threat of Climate Change,” CNACorp., December 2007, http://securityandclimate.cna.org/re-port/.A panel of retired U.S. generals and admirals forecasts security

issues that will emerge as a result of climate change.

“Synthesis of the 4th World Water Forum, Mexico City,”World Water Council, 2006, www.worldwatercouncil.org/index.php?id=1386.An international committee presents a summary of its fourth

conference on water-resources issues.

Gleick, Peter H., et al., “The World’s Water 2006-2007, TheBiennial Report on Freshwater Resources,” The Pacific In-stitute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Secu-rity, 2006, www.pacinst.org/publications/worlds_water/2006-2007/index.htm.The institute’s latest review of global water-resource issues

includes chronologies of water conflicts and analyses ofstrategies for sustainable freshwater resource management.

Selected Sources

Bibliography


Conflicts

“Climate Change Will Cause New Wars — UN,” CanberraTimes, June 22, 2007.Changing patterns of rainfall and fights over food produc-

tion could lead to potential conflicts in Africa’s Sahel regionand in East Asia, according to U.N. Environment ProgrammeExecutive Director Achim Steiner.

“Managing the Water Wars of the Future,” Indian Express,May 12, 2007.Overcoming the environmental and political difficulties of water

scarcity will help manage the conflicts stemming from a lackof access to clean and safe water.

“Water is Running Out: How Inevitable Are InternationalConflicts?” Integrated Regional Information Networks(United Nations), Oct. 23, 2006.Water resources are decreasing amid a growing world pop-

ulation and increasing water consumption, making water-related conflicts inevitable.

Baldauf, Scott, “Climate Change Escalates Darfur Crisis,”The Christian Science Monitor, July 27, 2007, p. 1.Competition for water in Sudan’s Darfur region has long

sparked conflict in the area, and is one of the main causesof the current fighting.

Moving Water

“Bangladesh, India to Hold Talks on Sharing River Water,”PTI News Agency (India), July 20, 2007.India and Bangladesh are expected to discuss water-sharing

and diversion issues involving eight major trans-boundary rivers.

“China, Spain Vow to Strengthen Water Resources Utiliza-tion Cooperation,” Xinhua News Agency (China), Oct. 14,2007.Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu has promised to strengthen

bilateral cooperation with Spain over water resources.

Jones, Tim, “Great Lakes Key Front in Water Wars,”Chicago Tribune, Oct. 28, 2007, p. A1.Eight Great Lakes-area states and two Canadian provinces

have proposed a regional water compact that would preventwater diversions from the immediate region.

Privatization

Mitra, Barun, “Water Scarcity in Plenty,” Business Day(South Africa), March 23, 2006.Government intervention has contributed significantly to

water scarcity, while private initiatives have sustained localmarkets and improved access for millions.

Sasa, Mabasa, “Privatisation of Water Not the Answer,”The Herald (Zimbabwe), Dec. 29, 2007.Privatizing water supplies will mean corporations report to

the World Bank rather than to state governments.

Seno, Alexandra A., “Very Liquid Assets,” Newsweek,Aug. 20, 2007.Savvy asset-management companies have turned concerns over

water shortage into burgeoning investment-fund businesses.

Wallach, Jason, “Privatizing Water and the Criminalizationof Protest,” NACLA News (New York), July 24, 2007.Despite corruption in El Salvador’s government, citizens want the

water system to be under state control rather than in private hands.

Water Supply

Doyle, Alister, “Increasing Agricultural Use a Drain on WorldWater Supply,” The Washington Post, Aug. 21, 2006, p. A2.Rising demand for irrigation in the production of food and

biofuels will likely aggravate water scarcity.

Fan, Grace, “Abundant Water Makes Brazil Last AgricultureFrontier, as Scarcity Looms in Rest of World,” The As-sociated Press, Aug. 24, 2006.Abundant freshwater will help Brazil dominate global food

supplies for the next several decades while water scarcitythreatens the economies of other countries.

Girma, Biruk, “Poverty, Not Scarcity, to Blame for Lackof Water, Poor Sanitation — Report,” Daily Monitor(Ethiopia), Nov. 14, 2006.Millions of people lack access to safe water and sanitation

due to inequality and poverty, according to the U.N.

The Next Step:Additional Articles from Current Periodicals

CITING CQ GLOBAL RESEARCHER

Sample formats for citing these reports in a bibliography

include the ones listed below. Preferred styles and formats

vary, so please check with your instructor or professor.

MLA STYLEFlamini, Roland. “Nuclear Proliferation.” CQ Global Re-

searcher 1 Apr. 2007: 1-24.

APA STYLE

Flamini, R. (2007, April 1). Nuclear proliferation. CQ Global

Researcher, 1, 1-24.

CHICAGO STYLE

Flamini, Roland. “Nuclear Proliferation.” CQ Global Re-

searcher, April 1, 2007, 1-24.

Voices From Abroad:

LOIC FAUCHONPresident,

World Water Council

Privatization con-tributes to exodus

“A lot of poor people areleaving their countries to goto rich countries. Isn’t it prefer-able, isn’t it cheaper, to payso that these people havewater, sewage [treatment] andenergy . . . [so they can] stayin their own countries?”

The Associated Press, March2006

FADEL KAWASHHead, Palestinian Water Authority

Justice provides waterto all

“In the Middle East, wateris a political issue. Israel’soccupation of the West Bank. . . presents a major obsta-cle to development projectsespecially in the water sec-tor. There is enough waterin the West Bank if there isjustice and sharing.”

Agence France-Presse, March2006

BAN KI-MOONSecretary General,

United Nations

Water is crucial to allproblems

“Safe drinking water andadequate sanitation are cru-cial for poverty reduction, cru-cial for sustainable develop-ment, and crucial for achievingany and every one of the Mil-lennium Development Goals.”

Speech at opening of U.N. waterexhibit, New York, October 2007

KRISTA HANSONProgram Director, Com-mittee in Solidarity withthe People of El Salvador

Privatization increasesrates

“If we take the electrici-ty sector and telecommuni-cations as guides, privatiza-tion has meant higher rates,lower quality, less access andless sovereign control overpublic services.”

NACLA News (New York), July2007

ABEL MAMANIMinister of Water, Bolivia

Water: an inalienableright

“Access to fresh drinkingwater for everyone, in all ourcountries, is a fundamentalright. For us, water is life. Es-tablishing a right to water,therefore is another way ofrecognising the right to lifealready enshrined by theUnited Nations. Recognisewater as a human right!”

World Water Assembly, Brussels,March 2007

CAROLINE SAINT-MLEUXHead, Care International,

Iriba, Chad

Water can help Darfur“You have to have the war-

ring parties talk about a com-mon need, and after that youmight have them talk aboutsomething else that wouldstart giving other solutions tothe conflict.”

The Christian Science Monitor,July 2007

MUHAMMAD SAEEDAL-KINDI

Minister of Environmentand Water, United Arab

Emirates

Droughts are shiftingthe focus

“The concern has recentlytaken a greater importance withthe increased frequency andprolonged periods of droughtbeing experienced worldwide.Consequently, this century willsee a greater emphasis beingplaced on desalinated waterand the re-use of treatedwater, and the extent to whichthese important resources willcontribute to the overall sup-ply of water globally.”

Agence France-Presse, April 2007

PRINCE WILLEM-ALEXANDER OF THE

NETHERLANDSChairman, U.N. Advisory

Board on Water and Sanitation

Proper sanitation im-proves dignity

“Clean water and sanita-

tion are not only about hy-giene and disease, they’reabout dignity, too. Reliev-ing yourself in hazardousplaces means risking every-thing from urological dis-ease to harassment andrape. Many examples showthat self-esteem begins withhaving a safe and propertoilet facility.”

Speech at U.N. InternationalYear of Sanitation globallaunch, November 2007

FRANK RIJSBERMANDirector General,

International Water Management Institute

Old models won’t work“The last 50 years of water

management practices areno model for the futurewhen it comes to dealingwith water scarcity. Weneed radical change in theinstitutions and organizationsresponsible for managing ourearth’s water supplies and avastly different way ofthinking about water man-agement.”

The Associated Press, August2006

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looming water crisis · finally, a new threat to global water supplies has emerged: terrorism....

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