One billion city dwellers may face water shortages by 2050, study says

By 2050, more than 1 billion city dwellers may face water shortages if no new infrastructure is built or no new water conservation efforts are undertaken, according to a new study [1]. More than 3 billion may suffer similar water shortages at least one month of every year, says the study. The shortages are projected to hit megacities ranging from Beijing to Delhi, Mexico City, Lagos and Tehran.

The study looks only at water availability within a metropolitan region. Many more people lack access to clean water if problems of inadequate water quality or delivery within cities are taken into account.

To define “water shortage,” the study used a standard of 100 litres per person per day, which the World Health Organization says is the minimum a person needs for “optimum” long-term health and sanitation.

The researchers found that urban population growth will account for most of the big projected increases in water shortage. Climate change may add an additional 100 million more people to live without adequate supplies unless cities take measures on time.

Common infrastructural solutions to address water shortages such as transporting water longer distances, building dams and desalination are all expensive. Better ways to address shortages, says one of the study’s authors Rob McDonaldOne solution, are more efficient water use by agriculture and industry, payments to farmers to reduce areas of irrigated agriculture, and removal of non-native water-hungry vegetation such as eucalyptus.

“The thing I’m really worried about,” says McDonald, “is how the poorest cities are going to be able to afford to get water to their residents. Right now, many poor cities have trouble delivering clean water to their residents, and unless new capital is available for investment the situation will get worse.

“There’s a real shortfall in investment right now in solving this problem, and the developed countries in my opinion need to play a larger role in helping close that shortfall.”

[1] McDonald, R.I. … [et al.] (2011). Urban growth, climate change, and freshwater availability. PNAS, Published online before print 28 March 2011. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1011615108 [open access]

Source: Robert Lalasz, Cool Green Science, 28 Mar 2011

Urban catastrophes: the Wat/San dimension

A lack of clean water and sanitation in burgeoning slums could trigger a complex set of humanitarian crises says a new [forthcoming] paper, Urban Catastrophes: The Wat/San Dimension [1], by the Humanitarian Futures Programme (HFP) of King’s College London, which keeps an eye on possible crises that could emerge in the not too distant future.

Using plausible but fictitious scenarios set in the slums of Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, and the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, the paper shows how water scarcity brought on by climate change and large numbers of people in urban areas could lead to water stress, especially in slums, where shortages can stoke conflicts and an outbreak of a new and virulent influenza.

Simultaneously, the new biennial report by UN-HABITAT, the State of the World Cities 2010/2011: Bridging the Urban Divide, notes that around 3.49 billion people – more than half the world’s population – now live in urban areas, of which 827.6 million are slum-dwellers. The global slum population will probably grow by six million each year, pushing the total number to 889 million in another 10 years.

Urbanization can also provoke water-quality problems, leading to outbreaks of waterborne diseases like cholera. An outbreak that began in the slums of Luanda, the Angolan capital, killed over 2,800 people in 2006, when only 66 percent of Angola’s urban population has access to safe drinking water, according to the UN.

Water shortages in slums could open the door to corruption, conflict and an increased risk of disease, setting off a range of complex humanitarian crises. Many of these factors are already evident and operating in slums across the world, the authors of the HFP report note.

Corruption

“As with any valuable good, the provision of clean water and sanitation facilities in slums is an attractive target for corruption, greed, collusion and exploitation,” the HFP researchers pointed out.

In areas where there is a lack of accountability and political oversight, “resulting in collusion between government officials and private-sector water providers”, slum dwellers have to pay a very high price for water, and sanitation falls by the wayside.

The result is that the civil society is weakened and ability of slum dwellers and external players to change the system and help the residents out of poverty is curtailed, the HFP report commented.

Conflict

There is also evidence that water shortages threaten increased violence and conflict, especially in “high-density, multi-ethnic, politically unequal environments of concentrated poverty, as is often found in many slums,” the HFP report said, citing reports of water-related protests and conflicts in Bolivia, Pakistan and India.

Risk of disease

As larger numbers of people move into already crowded areas, they are often forced to live in unacceptably poor sanitary conditions, sometimes even at close quarters with animals, giving rise to opportunities for new disease vectors, noted the report. In slums located in tropical climates, the chances of new forms of diseases evolving are high.

What to do

Randolph Kent, who heads HFP, pointed out that the projections were for 20 to 30 years in the future, “but the idea is to provide enough time to countries to plan ahead”.

He suggested setting up low-tech, cheap service delivery systems – for instance, to provide water, use segmented flexible rubber hoses that can be easily connected and disconnected. The hoses are produced by several independent companies, can be serviced and maintained by unskilled technicians, and offer plenty of design options.

For waste removal, the report suggested an improvement on the traditional chamber pot – use antibacterial plastic buckets that can be fitted with mechanically sealing covers, as on commercial compost bins. The bucket can be carried either by hand or taken by cart to a dumping point like a municipal sewer, then cleaned by hand or at a semi-automatic hot water and bleach station, and delivered to the family for re-use.

[1] The “Urban Catastrophes: The WatSan dimension” report is one of three outputs of a USAID-funded study of key future crisis drivers. The reports will shortly be made public on the HFP website.

Source: IRIN, 23 Mar 2010

Water-gulping companies’ risk disclosures run dry: report

Most publicly traded companies that depend on water do not adequately disclose their financial risks to droughts and future regulations, even as water scarcity problems mount, according to a report released on 11 February 2010.

The report produced by Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmentalists and Swiss Bank UBS, ranked 100 of the biggest publicly traded companies on the quality, depth and clarity of their water disclosure risks and opportunities.

“This report makes clear that companies are not providing investors with the kind of information they need to understand the risks and opportunities posed by water scarcity,” said Jack Ehnes, chief executive officer of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System.

The group, known as CalSTRS, is a member of Ceres.

Many kinds of companies depend on large and readily available water supplies to run their businesses. Energy, beverage, food and semiconductor companies are among the ones that face risks from dwindling water supplies, especially in developing countries where populations are rising and industries are growing.

Risks include food shortages and higher prices for commodities because of drought, a problem already evident in places such as Australia and the U.S. Southwest.

Some power companies use water to cool their plants. Others generate electricity at dams. Both face some of the biggest risks if they lose their water, the report said. In 2007 and 2008, several power plants in the U.S. Southeast nearly shut down because of drought, the report said.

“It is clear that any threat to water security could have a significant impact on the bottom line of such companies,” said Julie Hudson, global head of sustainability research at UBS Investment Bank.

Among power companies, Arizona Public Service, a unit of Pinnacle West Capital Corp, scored highest, in part because it uses treated sewage to cool power plants in Arizona, the report said.

Canada’s biggest natural gas producer Encana Corp had the lowest ranking in the oil and natural gas industry with a score of four. Oil company BP scored 35, the best in that industry.

Dr Pepper Snapple Group had the lowest rank in the beverage industry, while Diageo, the world’s biggest spirits group, scored highest.

In food, Bunge Ltd scored lowest, and Unilever scored highest.

Micron Technology Inc scored lowest in the semiconductor industry, while Toshiba Corp scored highest.

The companies with low scores were not immediately comment on the report.

More information is available at www.ceres.org/waterreport

Source: Timothy Gardner, Reuters, 11 Feb 2010

Water at core of climate change impacts-UN experts

The main impact of climate change will be on water supplies and the world needs to learn from past cooperation such as over the Indus or Mekong Rivers to help avert future conflicts, experts said on 7 February 2010.

Desertification, flash floods, melting glaciers, heatwaves, cyclones or water-borne diseases such as cholera are among the impacts of global warming inextricably tied to water. And competition for supplies might cause conflicts.

“The main manifestations of rising temperatures…are about water,” said Zafar Adeel, chair of UN-Water which coordinates work on water among 26 U.N. agencies.

“It has an impact on all parts of our life as a society, on natural systems, habitats,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview. Disruptions may threaten farming or fresh water supplies from Africa to the Middle East.

“Therein lies the potential for conflicts,” he said. Shortage of water, such as in Darfur in Sudan, has been a contributing factor to conflict.

But Adeel said that water had often proven a route for cooperation. India and Pakistan have worked to manage the Indus River despite border conflicts and Vietnam, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia have cooperated in the Mekong River Commission.

“Water is a very good medium (for cooperation). It’s typically an apolitical issue that can be dealt with,” said Adeel, who is also director of the U.N. University’s Canada-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-IWEH)

A Meeting of UN-Water Senior Programme Managers was held from 2-4 February 2010 at UNU-IWEH in Hamilton, Canada.

250 Million

Regions likely to become drier because of climate change include Central Asia and northern Africa. Up to 250 million people in Africa could suffer extra stress on water supplies by 2020, according to the U.N. panel of climate experts.

“There are many more examples of successful transboundary cooperation than conflict over water,” said Nikhil Chandavarkar, of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs and Secretary of UN-Water.

“We are trying to take the examples of good cooperation — the Mekong, the Indus are examples. Even where there were hostilities in the surrounding countries the agreements did function,” he told Reuters.

Adeel said that water should have a more central role in debates on food security, peace, climate change and recovery from the financial crisis. “Water is central to each of these debates but typically isn’t seen as such,” he said.

And efforts to combat global warming will themselves put more strains on water because of rival economic demands — such as for irrigation, biofuels or hydropower. Adeel noted efforts to manage water supplies by counting how much water goes into products — from beef to coffee.

One study showed that it took 15,000 litres to produce a pair of blue jeans, he said. Making industries aware of water use could help shift to conservation. He said the world might reach a “millennium goal” of halving the proportion of people without access to safe water by 2015 but was failing in a related target of improving sanitation. About 2.8 billion people lack access to basic sanitation.

Source: Alister Doyle, Reuters, 07 Feb 2010

Water Tops Climate Change as Global Priority

International survey finds fresh water pollution, scarcity drive public concern.

Valentin Pérez Hernandez, a young gardener from Mexico City, moves daily between the two water realities of the nation’s capital: though the immense city is roiled by fierce water shortages, fecal contamination, industrial pollution, and old infrastructure that too often fails, the posh Jardines del Pedregal section where he works is a green and colorful oasis supplied with unusual water abundance. Photo: Circle of Blue

A comprehensive Circle of Blue | GlobeScan international public opinion survey on attitudes about fresh water sustainability, management and conservation finds that people around the world view water issues as the planet’s top environmental problem, greater than air pollution, depletion of natural resources, loss of habitat and even climate change.

The poll, funded by the Molson Coors Brewing Company, surveyed 1,000 people in each of 15 countries, and probed 500 in each of the following countries on specific questions: Canada, China, India, Mexico, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The survey was made public in Stockholm, Sweden, on 18 August 2009 during World Water Week.

The fierce impediments to clean water and sanitation, and the millions of premature deaths from water-related disease are seen as having a greater influence on quality of life and the planet than air pollution, species extinction, depletion of natural resources, loss of habitat and climate change.

More than 90 percent of those polled expressed a conviction that access to clean, fresh water is fundamental, not only for themselves but for all people. Across the globe, respondents to the survey also said education was essential to help people understand the dimensions and the urgency of the crisis.

In response to the survey data, Circle of Blue commissioned some of the world’s best photojournalists to document in pictures and words various facets of the conclusions in seven countries.

A close look at the survey results found considerable consistency, as well as significant variability, in how people view the global fresh water crisis. Among the other consequential findings:

• People around the world view water pollution as the most important facet of the fresh water crisis; shortages of fresh water are very close behind. Concern about both issues tended to be higher in developing countries than in developed nations.
• People in Mexico and India, which are growing rapidly and rely heavily on agriculture for jobs and economic development, expressed the highest level of concern about water shortages in the farm sector.
• In all seven countries, respondents consistently said that governments were the most responsible for ensuring clean water.
• The respondents said that large companies were nearly as responsible as governments for ensuring clean water; nearly eight of 10 respondents from the seven nations said that solving drinking water problems “will require significant help from companies.”
• In an expression of the results of $1 trillion dollars invested in regulations and water delivery and treatment infrastructure in the last two decades, Americans said they were less worried about safe drinking water and pollution than people in most of the other countries, though more than half still expressed concerns.
• Except for India, where 60 percent of respondents said they were “very concerned,” well under half of the respondents in the six other nations surveyed said they were not terribly worried about the “high cost” of water.

Download the complete GlobeScan/Circle of Blue Report [pdf]

Visit the Water Views page with graphics, a feature story, country profiles, photo stories and videos.

Virtual water: food products should carry ‘water footprint’ information, says UK report

Food and drink products [in the UK] should carry a new label to give consumers more information about their “water footprint” – the hidden amount of water used in the manufacturing process – [say] two health and food lobby groups. More transparency is needed about the huge volumes of water used to produce food, which most consumers are unaware of, said the joint report by the Food Ethics Council (FEC) and the health and food group Sustain.

It is calling for the proposed new label to reflect good practice, by taking into account the extent to which some companies and manufacturers are already working to use water in ways that are fair and environmentally sustainable.

Water scarcity is now a fast-growing sustainability problem across the world, the report says, with the amount used to produce an item far greater than the water contained within it. For example, one cup of fresh coffee needs 140 litres of water to produce while the production of one kilogram of beef requires 16,000 litres of water. In order to understand how to reduce our use of water, we need to measure this “embedded” or “virtual” water, the report says.

The report’s co-author Tom MacMillan said: “Public awareness of water scarcity remains low. In the UK, citizens are rarely exposed to the direct effects of severe water shortage and cannot readily see the links between their purchases and water shortage in other countries. Water use is not reflected in the price of the final product.”

MacMillan said the labels would not involve “litres per kilo” stickers, but should reflect the practise of good water stewardship – whether companies are working hard to use water in ways that conserve it, use it efficiently and are environmentally sustainable. The information could be incorporated into a wider sustainability label that covered fair-trade and the carbon labelling scheme pioneered by the Carbon Trust, he said.

[...] The FEC/Sustain report acknowledges the government’s concern about the issue, and notes that: “Defra is concerned by the high level of UK water dependency both for future UK food security and because of the pressure caused by UK imports on the water resources of other countries.”

Source: Rebecca Smithers, Guardian, 20 Jul 2009

Arjen Hoekstra, a professor of water management at University of Twente in the Netherlands, coined the Water Footprint concept in 2002. He was one of initiators of the Water Footprint Network, a coalition of scientists, companies and development agencies, launched in December 2008. The Wall Street Journal published an article in February 2009, about the growing interest of businesses in calculating water footprints, especially those that are vulnerable to future water shortages.

At the World World Forum in Istanbul, March 2009, the launch of the Alliance for Water Stewardship was announced. One of the aims is to launch a new product logo: a label which says the water used to make a product came from a sustainable source. The Alliance aims to “establish water stewardship standards, oversee certification, and administer a branding and marketing system that recognizes and rewards successful water stewards around the world”. Founding partners are: The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, Pacific Institute, Water Stewardship Initiative, Water Witness, and the Water Environment Federation.

Clean Water Should Be Recognized as a Human Right, PLoS editorial

The editors of the open access journal PLoS Medicine have added their voice to  those who are demanding that access to water should be framed as a human right. Their editorial elaborates on three main reasons for demanding such a right:

• ensuring access to clean water could substantially reduce the global burden of disease
• the privatization of water—which exploits the view that water is a commodity rather than a public good—does not result in equitable access
• the world is changing in ways that will both exacerbate water scarcity and threaten the quality of the current water supply.

The editors conclude that “a human rights framework offers what the water situation needs—international recognition from which concerted action and targeted funding could flow; guaranteed standards against which the protected legal right to water could be monitored; and accountability mechanisms that could empower communities to advocate and lobby their governments to ensure that water is safe, affordable, and accessible to everyone”.

Citation: The PLoS Medicine Editors (2009) Clean Water Should Be Recognized as a Human Right. PLoS Med 6(6): e1000102. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000102

At the forthcoming Stockholm World Water Week in August 2009, there will be two side events on the right to water:

• Water and Sanitation as Human Rights – Are we on Track? – 18 August
• A Human Rights Based Approach to Water and Sanitation: Translating Theory into Practice – 19 August

“The prime obstacle to guaranteeing a human right to water in international law has been the U.S. federal government”, writes Peter Asmus in AlterNet. “It is this somewhat surprising political dynamic that makes AB 1242 by California Assemblymen Ira Ruskin, D-Los Altos, so significant. The legislation, which establishes the right of every Californian to have clean water for basic human needs, passed a key state Senate committee in early July [2009] and may just be heading toward Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desk this fall.”

“The California legislation was introduced in response to conditions in the Central Valley that are much more common in the developing world. Here, where undocumented Latino farmworkers make up a large share of the population, safe, affordable and clean water is hardly a given. In these communities, more than 90 percent of drinking water is sucked from contaminated groundwater.”

“In Delano in Kern County, the water is undrinkable altogether, yet poor residents pay between $20 and $45 per month for it. All told, more than 150,000 California residents lack safe water for drinking, bathing and washing dishes; even more have water service disconnected because they cannot afford to pay their water bills.”

Read more: Peter Asmus, AlterNet, 30 Jul 2009

For background information on AB 1242, visit the web site of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee Action Network, California, one of the co-sponsors of the bill.

Water shortages: a growing problem, but not for the reasons most people think

THE overthrow of Madagascar’s president in mid-March was partly caused by water problems-in South Korea. Worried by the difficulties of increasing food supplies in its water-stressed homeland, Daewoo, a South Korean conglomerate, signed a deal to lease no less than half Madagascar’s arable land to grow grain for South Koreans. Widespread anger at the terms of the deal (the island’s people would have received practically nothing) contributed to the president’s unpopularity. One of the new leader’s first acts was to scrap the agreement.

[...] Local water shortages are multiplying. Australia has suffered a decade-long drought. Brazil and South Africa, which depend on hydroelectric power, have suffered repeated brownouts because there is not enough water to drive the turbines properly. So much has been pumped out of the rivers that feed the Aral Sea in Central Asia that it collapsed in the 1980s and has barely begun to recover.

[...] Two global trends have added to the pressure on water. Both are likely to accelerate over coming decades. The first is demography [and] the other long-term trend affecting water is climate change.

[...] Not surprisingly, investment in water has been patchy and neglected. Aid to developing countries for water was flat in real terms between 1990 and 2005. Within that period, there was a big shift from irrigation to drinking water and sanitation-understandable no doubt, but this meant less aid was going to the main users of water, farmers in poor countries. Aid for irrigation projects in 2002-05 was less than half what it had been in 1978-81. Angel Gurría, the head of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, talks of “a crisis in water financing”.

As is often the way, business is ahead of governments in getting to grips with waste. Big drinks companies such as Coca Cola have set themselves targets to reduce the amount of water they use in making their products (in Coke’s case, by 20% by 2012). The Nature Conservancy, an ecologically-minded NGO, is working on a certification plan which aims to give companies and businesses seals of approval (a bit like the Fairtrade symbol) according to how efficiently they use water. The plan is supposed to get going in 2010. That sort of thing is a good start, but just one step in a long process that has barely begun.

Read more: Economist, 09 Apr 2009

Global crisis ‘to strike by 2030′

Growing world population will cause a “perfect storm” of food, energy and water shortages by 2030, the UK government chief scientist has warned. By 2030 the demand for resources will create a crisis with dire consequences, Prof John Beddington said.

Demand for food and energy will jump 50% by 2030 and for fresh water by 30%, as the population tops 8.3 billion, he told [the Sustainable Development UK 09] conference in London. Climate change will exacerbate matters in unpredictable ways, he added. “It’s a perfect storm,” Prof Beddington told the conference.

Prof Beddington said the looming crisis would match the current one in the banking sector. “My main concern is what will happen internationally, there will be food and water shortages,” he said.

[...] The United Nations Environment Programme predicts widespread water shortages across Africa, Europe and Asia by 2025. The amount of fresh water available per head of the population is expected to decline sharply in that time.

[...] Better water storage and cleaner energy supplies are also essential, he added.

Source: By Christine McGourty, BBC News, 19 Mar 2009

World Heads for ‘Water Bankruptcy’ warns World Economic Forum report

Many places in the world are on the verge of “water bankruptcy” following a series of regional water “bubbles” over the past 50 years that fuelled economic growth, says a new report by the World Economic Forum (WEF). This leads to a structural problem in the way water is managed across the global economy.

Some of the highlights of the forecast include:

• The majority of the glaciers of the Himalayas and Tibet, which are a source of water for more than 2 billion people, will will disappear by 2100 under current trends. Further, 70 major rivers around the world are close to being totally drained in order to supply water for irrigation systems and reservoirs.
• Within two decades, water will become a mainstream theme for investors; for many, water is already a better “pick” than oil. With good regulation, this will enable much more financing to be mobilized to invest in water infrastructure and technology. With poor regulation, innovative investment funds in water could expand.

Read the full report here.

For more information about the WEF Water Initiative go here.

The Forum included a special session on “The Politics of Water” chaired by Margaret Catley-Carlson. “By far the most controversial issue was the need to recognize water as a scarce commodity. All participants agreed that pricing is as economically necessary as it is politically risky”, the session summary report stated. Read the full summary here and view the webcast here.

Source: WEF, 29 Jan 2009