As the world’s water becomes scarcer, will it become the oil of the 21st century?

Friday, 20 June 2008

Surely not! Isn’t the world awash with water?

It is, but what we can use is still scarce, so much so that it is beginning to be called “blue gold”. All the world’s terrestrial life has to share only about 0.007 per cent of the planet’s supplies, equivalent to a thimbleful in a bathtub. Only about 3 per cent is fresh (the rest making up the seas) and four fifths of that is frozen at the poles and in glaciers. And more than 95 per cent of the remainder is buried deep underground. Yet even so, there would be more than enough, if it were evenly distributed. Every year 113,000 billion cubic metres of it falls on the land as rain and snow, enough to submerge the continents nearly two and a half feet deep.

What’s the problem?

Well – like oil – it’s not spread out evenly: the rain often fails to fall where the people are. Iceland, for example, gets enough to provide each of its 300,000 inhabitants with a massive 562,000 cubic metres of water every year; Kuwait, with eight times as many people, receives hardly a drop. And over the last 100 years our use of water has risen sixfold. Now 500 million people live in countries where it is in short supply, and a staggering 2.4 billion more live in nations where it is under stress. As populations grow and the climate changes, its going to get much, much worse.

What does water scarcity mean ‘on the ground’?

Hell on earth. Worldwide some 1.1 billion people do not have access to safe water supplies. Women all over the developing world have to trudge for hours to get it – often from polluted ponds and streams – and then walk back carrying pots weighing about 20kg, the equivalent of a suitcase checked in on a plane. Worse, the pollution – usually from human waste, due to a lack of sanitation – causes disease. Over two million people, mainly children, die of diarrhoea every year: the equivalent of 20 jumbo jets crashing each day. In truth, though, this is more down to lack of funding by governments of both rich and poor countries than to absolute scarcity.

Is anything being done about it?

Yes, quite a bit, but not enough. In 2000, the governments of the world adopted the Millennium Development Goals, which include reducing the number of people without safe water worldwide by half by 2015. Asia and Latin America are on track to meet this target, but Africa is not – though South Africa has now managed to provide it to nearly all its people. And the equally important target of halving the 2.6 million people without sanitation looks like being missed.

And you say water is going to get scarcer?

By 2050, it is feared, the number of people living in countries with a chronic shortage will multiply eightfold, to a staggering four billion, many times faster than population. Climate change will play a big part. The glaciers of the world’s great mountain ranges, such as the Himalayas and the Andes – which supply a billion people with water – are melting. Droughts will also increase as the world gets warmer; the Met Office’s Hadley Centre concludes that they will affect half the Earth’s land by the end of the century. For good measure, floods will increase too.

How so?

While dry places will get drier in a warmer world, wet ones will get wetter. And the rain will fall in bigger storms. To make things worse, more than half the world’s wetlands, which play a vital role in regulating flooding, have been destroyed over the last century. This destruction has helped bring about a 50 per cent decline in WWF’s Fresh Water Species Population Index in less than four decades.

What can be done?

It is everyone’s responsibility to step up their efforts to ensure that all the world’s people get safe water supplies and decent sanitation. Consumers – from industries to farmers and households – must make sure they don’t waste water: there is a huge potential, almost everywhere, for making it go further. All must do much more to tackle climate change by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and the world’s remaining wetlands must be preserved.

Are businesses doing anything much to help?

Yes, there are many examples of businesses taking action. Water Aid – a charity started by the British water industry – works effectively in 17 countries, using low cost techniques to provide vital supplies and facilities to some of the world’s poorest people. And heads of major companies are working with the UN as part of the CEO Water Mandate, where they pledge to conserve water.

And if we fail?

Increasingly security experts are warning that water scarcity will lead to war. Little wonder Andrew Liveris, the chairman of Dow Chemicals, said earlier this year: “Water is the oil of this century”.