It is generally thought that, for immediate personal needs, each person on the planet requires at least five gallons of clean water per day. Not surprisingly, that’s not how it works out. Many poor people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America survive on just over one gallon of water per day—most of it contaminated—whereas those of us in the United States and much of Europe send 13 gallons down the drain daily flushing toilets.
Imagine, then, you turned on the tap. .. and nothing came out. It really is unthinkable, isn’t it? We take it as a given that when we turn on a faucet, clean drinkable water will come out—as much as you like. Will your children think that way? Maybe. Maybe not. Will your grandchildren? Definitely not.
Can this be true?
Water stress is defined as a nation providing for each individual, for all purposes, access to less than 449,150 gallons (1,700 cubic meters) per year.1 Water scarcity is less than 264,200 gallons (1,000 cubic meters) per person per year.1 It takes a lot of water to be an even marginally vital human.
Six years ago, in 2000, the scientific community that keeps track of the world’s water supplies began trumpeting alarm, predicting that one of three people in the world would have to factor water shortages into their lives by the year 2025.2 How wrong they were. It happened this year, according to a report presented in Stockholm during World Water Week last August, the result of work compiled by 700 scientists from the International Water Management Institute, the premier research institute studying water.1
In China, according to the country’s Ministry of Water Resources, almost two thirds of China’s 661 cities are facing water scarcity, and at least “100 are facing severe drought.”3 The deficit is seriously impeding development in those cities, particularly in the country’s central and west provinces, the report says.
In the Middle East, scarcity of water resources is expected to create serious environmental challenges for the region, according to Dr Zain Al Abden Al Sayed Rizk, Dean of the Institute of Environment, Energy and Water at Ajman University of Science and Technology.4
And, lest one feel smug about the US situation, the US annual population growth of nearly three million assures coming water shortages throughout the country, as many in the Southwest are already learning. Of particular concern throughout the world, including the United States, is the depletion of deep aquifers, what is known as fossil water. This water, locked deep in the earth, is functionally finite, since its replacement cycle is measured in hundreds, even thousands, of years. Once gone, it’s a lost asset, and in much of the country this is happening at a nonsustainable rate.
In Nebraska, for instance, results from an annual groundwater-monitoring program run by the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, show that parts of the state have experienced groundwater depletions of 30 feet, and some areas in the southwest have posted drops in excess of 50 feet.
“We certainly aren’t coming to the bottom of the well, so to speak, but the level of groundwater declines in many parts of Nebraska are indisputable and could even be viewed as alarming,” said Mark Burbach, assistant geoscientist in University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s School of Natural Resources.5 As a result, water restrictions have been imposed, including moratoria on new well drilling.
It is perhaps surprising that water scarcity almost inevitably produces a second-order crisis, the pollution of surface and deep aquifer water. I always find that it helps, when thinking of the “big picture,” to keep a sense of perspective by considering how that metaview impacts things in small ordinary concrete ways. So here are some facts that have struck me:
•Because of inadequate water supplies, and the infrastructure to deliver what is available, half the people in the world today lack the sanitation levels the Romans enjoyed.
•Half the hospital beds on earth are occupied by people with easily preventable diseases caused by impure water.
•In the past decade, more children have died from diarrhea caused by drinking such water than all the people killed in all the armed conflicts since World War II.
•Access to clean water would save two million lives a year.
In Mexico, only 9% of its streams and rivers are fit for drinking, and because of its poor sanitation infrastructure, its underground aquifers are almost as polluted as its rivers and streams. Corruption and poor maintenance have permitted such severe seepage that two fifths of the available surface water is lost, and half of the rest evaporates in open canals.6
Similarly, in China, water pollution is literally threatening the country’s quality of life. China produced 71.7 billion tons of sewage last year, and up to 70% was dumped into local rivers without being treated at all. The result: up to 90% of the country’s water resources are tainted to the point of being useless for healthful human consumption.2
But what we drink or use for sanitation is only the lesser part of the emerging water scarcity trend. Direct human usage is actually the minority share of the problem. Nearly 70% of water consumption is linked directly to agriculture, so let’s spend a moment with that to get a sense of proportion—remembering that by 2020 the world will be short 17% of the water needed to feed the global population:7
•It takes two million pounds of water to produce 2,000 pounds of grain.
•It takes 15 million pounds of water to grow 2,000 pounds of cow.
•It takes 10,400 pounds of water—1,300 gallons—to produce an eight-ounce hamburger.
The depletion of the water table in almost every country of the world is already affecting harvests. Farmers in the North China Plain are now forced to pump from depths as great as a 1,000 feet, and remember this is fossil water that will not be renewed for hundreds or thousands of years. That’s like spending principal from your 401(k) at age 45.
China’s grain production, which in 1998 (less than a decade ago) was estimated to be 392 million tons, was only estimated at 358 million tons in 2005. The result: in 2004, China had no choice but to begin importing grain—seven million tons that year alone.
In the other emerging superpower India, things superficially might look better, but this may be an illusion, for reasons I will make clear in a moment.
In less developed countries like Pakistan, Iran, Algeria, Egypt, and Mexico the crisis is both greater and closer. Because of the evil twins pollution and corruption, three of these countries—Algeria, Egypt, and Mexico—must already go outside their borders for much of the grain needed to feed their populations. Taken together, the tier of Islamic countries that runs from North Africa to Iran already constitutes the fastest growing bloc of grain importers. And with their population growth rate, it is obvious that this will go up exponentially as the personal needs of their people collide with the water needs of their farmers.
What goes largely unrecognized is that this importation is actually trade in water—remember, 1,000 tons of water is needed to grow a ton of grain. To get a sense of scale, it may help to realize that the imports into that tier of countries, if one converts the grain to the water required in a year to grow those crops, equals the total throughput of the Nile River at Aswan for that same year.
But, once again, it’s not that simple. As it becomes increasingly clear that the world must wean itself from its petroleum addiction—and ethanol looks to some to be the methadone that will make this possible—reality holds another nasty surprise. Remember, the water-to-grain equation. And sugar cane is not going to be the answer either.
“Sugar is one of the thirstiest crops in the world,” said Fred Pearce, editor of Britain’s New Scientist magazine in a keynote speech last October to the two-day Sugaronline conference in Geneva. He said it is estimated that 1.2 million to 1.6 million pounds of water is needed to grow one 2,000 pounds of cane.8 The daily world consumption of petroleum is 82.59 million barrels a day.9 It is even higher today, to be sure, and that’s 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year. The implications don’t require an advanced degree to understand. There just isn’t going to be enough water for this solution to work worldwide. And that’s not the only energy problem related to water.
Which brings us finally, if briefly, to the 600-pound Golem we have created: Global Warming.
The World Wildlife Fund Canada reviewed the likely impacts of the two-degree rise in average global temperatures, expected between 2026 to 2060, on Canada’s two water systems—the Great Lakes and the Athabasca River, which are central to that nation’s agriculture and energy development. It is not a pretty picture.
To start, this small temperature increase will result in much greater evaporation of surface water, whether flowing or still; major alterations in rainfall patterns; greatly increased glacial melting; and a significant decrease in the water level of streams, rivers, and lakes.10
“We think of our water resources as endless, but they’re not only finite, they’re diminishing with global warming,” said Julia Langer, a spokesperson for the environmental group. “All of the data indicates that these are diminishing water resources.”9
The agriculture implications I think you can deduce. But far less well known is the impact that this diminishment of water resources is going to have on energy production. The oil sands extraction process requires 2 to 4.5 barrels (42-189 gallons) of water to obtain from the gooey oil sands one barrel (42 gallons) of oil.
The Canadian report projects a loss of 10% of available water from the Athabasca, which comes on top of the 20% that has already occurred since 1958.9
The World Wildlife Fund Canada report projects that, as a result, water available in the Athabasca “will be insufficient to satisfy the needs of oil sands production, as well as other industrial, commercial, agricultural, municipal and environmental users.”9
As if that were not bad enough, that same temperature increase will drop water levels in the Great Lakes “up to 1.2 meters” which will lead to “a drop of up to 17 per cent in hydro-electricity production at power plants that depend on the water body.”9 And that’s just the problems on the Canadian side of the border.
Meanwhile, during that same period, the vast Himalayan glaciers will be melting; they already are to a degree that has Asian water scientists extremely alarmed. Forty percent of the lives of the human species depend on the water from those glacier-fed lakes, streams, and rivers. Studies by several groups report that approximately 67% of the nearly 12,124 square miles of Himalayan glaciers are receding, and as the ice melts, glacial runoffs will first increase, causing vast flooding in summer, and then will dry up like a gambler’s bank account, resulting in severe water shortages that will affect almost 2.5 billion people throughout India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan—and most worrying of all for world stability—China. The Gangotri Glacier, the source of the Ganga, India’s holiest river, is retreating 75 feet a year. A World Wide Fund report published last March said a quarter of the glaciers could disappear by 2050 and half by 2100.
“If the current scenario continues, there will be very little water left in the Ganga and its tributaries,” says Prakash Rao, climate change and energy program coordinator with the World Wide Fund in India.3 “The situation here is more critical because here they depend on glaciers for drinking water while in other areas there are other sources of drinking water, not just glacial.”
Those thirsty billions will not just quietly lie down and die. They will seek survival, if not prosperity, elsewhere and move across the face of every continent on the globe, in what would be the largest migration of peoples in history. And that will lead, inevitably, to violence and war. The increasingly crowded space ship we are on has but one life support system. Water is destiny.
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