water water everywhere and not a drop to drink

Over the last 50 years, the Earth's population doubled and the global food system responded remarkably to the increase in food demand. This was done through just a modest increase in total cropland — not more than 12 percent. The achievement occurred mainly through intensification of agricultural production, i.e. an increase in yield and cropping intensity, which in turn would not have been possible without irrigation. Irrigated land has increased proportionally much faster than land under rainfed agriculture. In fact, while the world's cultivated area has grown only by 12% over the last fifty years, irrigated area has doubled over the same period, accounting for most of the net increase in cultivated land. Meanwhile, agricultural production has grown between 2.5 and 3 times, thanks to significant increase in the yield of major crops.

Globally, some 300 million hectares of farmland is irrigated, accounting for 70% of all freshwater appropriations. That is happening on only 20% of the world's cultivated land — yet at the same time, that irrigated land accounts for 40% of all agricultural production and 60% of cereal production.

Toward 2050, rising population and incomes are expected to require 70 percent more food production globally, and up to 100% more in developing countries. But some regions are coming very close to their potential to intensify food production, which is already leading to tension on access to natural resources, in particular water. East Asia and The Middle East are operating very close to their limits and will not be able to extend their agriculture much further, while substantial potential is still available in Latin America and in sub-Saharan Africa.

The production of 1 calorie of food requires 1 liter of water. With the world's average daily caloric requirement at about 2800 per person, the water needed to satisfy the daily food requirements of each individual on the planet is about 2 800 liters. Or to put it another way, to produce one hamburger it takes 2 400 liters of water. A glass of milk? 200 liters. One egg — 135 liters. A slice of bread takes 40 liters.

http://www.wateronline.com/article.mvc/Water-Is-Key-To-Food-Security-0001

The rapid growth of urban population - described as one of the world's major demographic trends - has triggered an explosion of "mega cities" in Asia, Latin America and Africa, causing a breakdown in basic services, including water supplies and sanitation facilities. In 2000, nearly one third of the world's urban dwellers lived in slums, By 2050, about 70 percent of the world's population will live in urban areas causing horrendous problems, predicts a new study released by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

The study focuses on six of the world's "exploding mega cities": Mexico City, Mexico, with a population of 21.1 million; Buenos Aires, Argentina, with a population of 12.8 million; Kolkata, India, with a population of 15.4 million; Karachi, Pakistan, with a population of 18 million; Nairobi, Kenya, with a population of 3.5 million; and Shanghai, China, with a population of 23 million.

In Karachi, Pakistan, around 30,000 people die due to the effects of contaminated drinking water.
In Kolkata there are both traces of faeces in drinking water and high concentrations of arsenic in ground water.
Shanghai is now facing water shortages and problems related to salination.
In Kenya, 60 percent of Nairobi's inhabitants live in informal settlements with inadequate access to quality water and are forced to buy their water at kiosks at a higher price.
In Mexico City, excessive overexploitation of groundwater has led to the sinking of the city over time by five to 10 centimetres and depends on pumping water from areas about 150 kilometres away.
The rivers of Buenos Aires are described as "public cesspits", there are high levels of dumped toxins making the Argentine river Matanza-Riachuelo "one of the world's most polluted waterways". And millions of people in the city lack safe access to drinking water and are not connected to sewer systems.

Anna Forslund, WWF's fresh water expert based in Sweden, said: "Rapid uncontrolled urbanisation is definitely a threat to the ecosystems we all depend on."

http://allafrica.com/stories/201108251454.html

Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, is the region’s most water insecure country. While the international poverty line is 1,000 cubic metres of water per person per year, it gets just 200. Of the country’s 21 main aquifers, 19 are no longer being replenished, according to its environmental protection agency. Its government may have to move the capital Sana’a and its two million people, because it is expected to have run dry within six years. Lack of water also causes food insecurity. Subsistence farmers can’t feed their families, meaning Yemen imports between 80 per cent and 90 per cent of its food. Unless subsidised, food prices are vulnerable to global market fluctuations and rising food prices lead to political unrest and instability.

The Gulf countries and much of North Africa rely heavily on desalination plants for their water needs: there are more than 1,500 situated beside the Gulf and the Mediterranean. They are energy-intensive and expensive and, although costs are falling, they also have an environmental price. Salt and impurities extracted from the water mostly end up back in the sea or in aquifers, affecting fish, coral and other marine life. Salt levels in the Arabian Gulf are eight times higher in some places than they should be.

“The German-led Desertec initiative is an innovative idea that needs to be explored further,” says Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan says, who was one of its founding members.“More than 90 per cent of the world’s population could be served by clean power from deserts thanks to high-voltage DC cables. My fear though is that we could see something like a solar conveyor belt from the Gulf or the North of Africa to Europe. It would benefit the users of the electricity and the solar industry but may ignore the marginalised communities from where the power is being transmitted. There simply has to be an emphasis at the local level on these communities. We should also ask if we developed a solar desalination and a solar power installation in Gaza, for example, would this begin to change the nature of the problems in such places? People need a clearly defined vision of their future in a participatory society with a participatory economy.”

In 2002, the UK and Italy backed Medrep, a programme to develop solar energy projects in 10 countries around the Mediterranean, but it too has struggled to get beyond the research and pilot project phases. It had a budget of just €4 million and its steering committees met twice a year. “These types of projects need a serious political and strategic framework. We need to appoint people who will do the work and not just talk. At the moment, we’re appointing the likes of ambassadors. They don’t do the work and just talk about politics. These plans can work if the people are serious and responsible. The people need real technical and financial means behind them. These initiatives need a critical mass to build up before they can really start to make progress” Dr Arab Hoballah, an economist with the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) technology, industry and economics divisionsays.

“If these funds can buy football teams, then they can be used in the Mediterranean region and other countries to help build peace." Hoballah argues. “But geopolitics is a real constraint. In this region, we do politics and war before we do development and peace. We find the money for war, but when it comes to building peace, we don’t have the money. Would a country like France want this type of investment in the Middle East or North Africa, rather than loan it to a country that will buy the arms it manufactures?”

The Sahara Forest Project: a combined solar energy, sustainable water and agriculture initiative led by Michael Pawlyn, the founder of Britain’s Eden Project and backed by the governments of Jordan, Norway and the Bellona Foundation, a Norwegian NGO. Essentially the Sahara Forest Project combines a number of existing technologies into an integrated system, using sunlight, deserts, carbon dioxide and seawater to produce food, water and energy.

Earlier this year an agreement was signed to build a demonstration centre on 20 hectares in Aqaba on the Jordanian coast next year, and the Sahara Forest Project team has signed a second agreement to develop a new trial project in Qatar. The Qatar project has secured new backing from a company based there called Qafco, the world’s largest producer of ammonia and urea-based fertiliser, and Yara International, a Norwegian fertiliser company. While already initiated in Aqaba, a comprehensive feasibility study is now under way in Qatar. Both companies will provide financial, technical, and research and development support to the Sahara Forest Project, with a view to finding ways of creating environmentally friendly fertiliser that can be used in desert areas.

By 2050, the founders of the project say that their greenhouses, built on 198,000 hectares (28 square miles – or about one and a quarter the size of Manhattan) could employ up to two million people. Different areas will support projects of different sizes, but solar power installations would take up another 73 sq km, with green vegetation outside the greenhouses taking up a total area of 15 sq km – that is equivalent to an area 16 times the size of Co Dublin. The output of the projects would include fruit and vegetables or biodiesel from microalgae, depending on the suitability at each location. Salt, freshwater and vapour from freshwater would also be produced. Solar-generated power would be exported to the grid to supply surrounding communities.

The statistics that prove the need for innovative projects such as this are stark, according to the Sahara Forest Project team:

- Desertification and land loss across the globe represent lost income of $42 billion per year

- The barren lands lost every year could have provided 20m tonnes of grain

- Water use for crop irrigation must double by 2050 if it is to meet the Millennium Development Goals on hunger, according to UNEP figures

- As the global population approaches 9 billion by 2050, the demand for water and land-intensive meat and cereal is predicted to increase by at least 50 per cent

- By 2050, up to 4 billion people could be living in water-scarce areas

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/innovation/2011/0826/1224302795053.html

China is the source of cross-border river flows to the largest number of countries in the world – from Russia to India, Kazakhstan to the Indochina peninsula. Getting this pre-eminent riparian power to accept water-sharing arrangements or other co-operative institutional mechanisms has proved unsuccessful so far in any basin. Instead, the construction of upstream dams on international rivers such as the Mekong, Brahmaputra or Amur shows China is increasingly bent on unilateral actions, impervious to the concerns of downstream nations.

China already boasts both the world’s biggest dam (Three Gorges) and a greater total number of dams than the rest of the world combined. It has shifted its focus from internal to international rivers, and graduated from building large dams to building mega-dams. Among its newest dams on the Mekong is the 4,200 megawatt Xiaowan – taller than Paris’s Eiffel Tower. New dams approved for construction include one on the Brahmaputra at Metog (or Motuo in Chinese) that is to be twice the size of the 18,300MW Three Gorges – and sited almost on the disputed border with India.

The consequences of such frenetic construction are already clear.

First, China is in water disputes with almost all its neighbours, from Russia and India to weak client-states such as North Korea and Burma. Worse, although there are water treaties among states in south and south-east Asia, Beijing rejects the concept of a water-sharing arrangement. It is one of only three countries that voted against the 1997 UN convention laying down rules on the shared resources of international watercourses. Yet water is fast becoming a cause of competition and discord between countries in Asia, where per capita freshwater availability is less than half the global average. The growing water stress threatens Asia’s rapid economic growth and carries risks for investors potentially as damaging as non-performing loans, real estate bubbles and political corruption.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4f19a01e-d2f1-11e0-9aae-00144feab49a.html#axzz1WZWVIRIv

Second, its new focus on water mega-projects in the homelands of ethnic minorities has triggered tensions over displacement and submergence at a time when the Tibetan plateau, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia have all been wracked by protests against Chinese rule. Third, the projects threaten to replicate in international rivers the degradation haunting China’s internal rivers.

one to put in your diary

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 “If we don’t address this, we can expect major destabilisation, an increase in rioting and potentially significant problems with international migration, as people move out to avoid food and water shortages.”

Demand for food and energy will jump 50% by 2030 and for fresh water by 30%, as the population tops 8.3 billion . Climate change will exacerbate matters in unpredictable ways. 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.
Improving agricultural productivity globally was one way to tackle the problem .At present, 30-40% of all crops are lost due to pest and disease before they are harvested.

water wars

A report by the World Economic Forum, which runs the annual Davos meetings of the international business and financial elite, says that lack of water, will "soon tear into various parts of the global economic system" and "start to emerge as a headline geopolitical issue".

60 per cent of China's 669 cities are already short of water.

The World Water Development Report, compiled by 24 UN agencies under the auspices of Unesco, adds that shortages are already beginning to constrain economic growth in areas as diverse and California, China, Australia, India and Indonesia.

The report also expects water conflicts to break out in the Middle East, Haiti, Sri Lanka, Colombia and other countries.
"Conflicts about water can occur at all scales," it warns. "Hydrological shocks" brought about by climate change are likely to "increase the risk of major national and international security threats".

Water War

Previously reported here that water resources will be the focus of future wars i now read in the Independent that the world faces a future of "water wars", unless action is taken to prevent international water shortages and sanitation issues escalating into conflicts, according to Gareth Thomas, the International Development minister.

"If we do not act, the reality is that water supplies may become the subject of international conflict in the years ahead," said Mr Thomas.

His department warned that two-thirds of the world's population will live in water-stressed countries by 2025. Each year 443 million school days are lost globally to diarrhoea and 1.8 million children die unnecessarily from these diseases. A coalition of charities has appealed for a global effort to bring running water to the developing world and supply sanitation to a further 2.6 billion people. It said international action was needed to prevent competition for water destabilising communities and escalating into conflicts.

"Already well over 1 billion people suffer from water shortages and 30 countries get more than a third of their water from outside their borders. With climate change, those figures are likely to grow, increasing the possibility of disputes." said a British national security report

A senior climate adviser at Greenpeace said the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, most of south Asia and western South America were at risk of water shortages if global warming continues.
"There is no doubt that climate change is going to be potentially the biggest source of water stress. If average global temperatures go more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels you are looking at 2 to 3 billion people potentially suffering water shortages. It's a pretty serious business."

Thirsting for Water

On Tuesday, with Bibles and crucifixes held aloft, hundreds of church ministers, lawmakers, unemployed landscapers and office workers, swayed and linked arms in a special prayer service for rain outside the Georgia Capitol. Sonny Perdue, governor of Georgia publicly prayed for a downpour.

A drought tightens its grip across a wide region, which includes much of Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Florida. The government's "drought monitor" says that 32 per cent of the region is in "exceptional drought", its most severe designation. The first five months of this year were the driest in 118 years of record-keeping by the Tennessee Valley authority.The US drought is now so acute that, in some southern communities, the water supply is cut off for 21 hours a day

Atlanta is a teeming city of more than three million residents . Thanks to profligate water consumption and drought, they may have no drinking water at all by January as the city's only source of drinking water, Lake Lanier, is running critically low. The reservoir's water must be shared by three neighbouring states. Soon the level will be lower than when it was built in the 1950s. The state's leaders are also bickering, with Mr Perdue threatening to go to court to reduce the amount of water sent south from Lake Lanier to Florida. The amount of water flowing to Florida's Apalachicola river was cut by 16 per cent . Although scientists do not know how long it will take for the environmental damage to become irreversible in Apalachicola, Florida state officials recently warned against an agreement between Alabama, Georgia and Florida that would have reduced water to the area.

In spite of the drought, Georgia now wants to build a new coal-powered plant that will suck away another 25 million extra gallons of water . Southern Company, a huge electrical utility that wields huge influence all the way to the White House. More than any other company, Southern has been responsible for steering President George Bush away from action to halt global warming. It has done so by spreading largesse – $8m (£4m) on contributions to politicians in the past nine years, an amount far outweighing the political contributions of any other utility. Sonny Perdue has received large campaign contributions from Southern executives and even hired his chief of staff from its subsidiary, Georgia Power. Georgia's state assembly recently organised a climate change summit in which three of the four experts invited were global-warming sceptics.

Governor Perdue , bowed his head and beseeched to the Almighty "We have come together, very simply, for one reason and one reason only: To very reverently and respectfully pray up a storm. We ask God to shower our state, our region, our nation with the blessings of water "

But what's going to happen to Atlanta where millions of people are running out of water?
What are they going to do if the rains don't come?

It Must Be Coke

The Coca-Cola company has been charged with illegally seizing lands communally owned by small farmers and indiscriminately dumping sludge and other industrial hazardous waste onto the surrounding community. The San Francisco-based India Resource Center, an environmental health non-profit, further charged Coca-Cola with releasing untreated wastewater into surrounding agricultural fields and a canal that feeds into the Ganges River in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The charges are based on the results of a fact-finding mission led by the group to a Coca-Cola bottling plant in the region.

In 2003, in response to a growing campaign against Coca-Cola, the Central Pollution Control Board of India surveyed eight Coca-Cola bottling plants in the country and tested the sludge at all these facilities. The Board found all the sludge at all the Coca-Cola bottling plants it surveyed contained high levels of toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium, and chromium. At the time, it ordered the Coca-Cola company to treat its sludge as industrial hazardous waste.

On Tuesday, the soft drink giant announced at the annual meeting of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Beijing its own environmental plan, pledging to spend $20 million to conserve seven of the world's most critical river basins. Coke's announcement did not mention any measures to conserve water basins in India,

"We call this 'greenwashing,'" said Srivastava of the India Resource Center. "An attempt by the Coca-Cola company to manufacture a green image of itself that it clearly is not, as their practice in India shows."

"...it as largely a tactic to divert attention from other areas," Patti Lynn of the watchdog group Corporate Accountability said , adding ,"Coke is just trying to get some public relations points. They're using this as a diversionary tactic,"

Coca-Cola distributes three bottled water brands: Dasani, Dannon, and Evian. Consumers spend about $100 billion on bottled water each year. By comparison, experts estimate that just $15 billion per year, above and beyond what is already spent, could bring reliable and lasting access to safe drinking water to half a billion people worldwide -- fully half of those who lack it.

The annual volume of bottled water purchased and sold in the United States has increased by over 7,000 percent. Yet the bottled water industry operates with little or no regulation.
"Tap water is better regulated, and often safer," said Lynn, quoting a 1999 study by the National Resources Defense Council on bottled water sold in the United States, which found traces of arsenic, chloroform, and other impurities; chemicals that would be illegal if found in tap water and also adding adding that bottled water costs 3,000 percent more to produce than safe tap water .

Social needs will always take second place to the need for capitalism to accumulate profits .

The Water Wars

The bottom line of the socialist case against war is that it is about ownership and contrrol of natural resources , and that religion or race are just the pretext for this competition .

Many came to their own conclusion when they ignored the politicians propaganda and recognised that the Iraq War was not about WMDs or bringing democracy but was a war for the oil .

Less would accept that the Middle East conflict between Israel and its neighbours was about the struggle to acquire natural sources . Yet this article from the BBC confirms much of the socialist argument .

The Six-Day War in 1967 arguably had its origins in a water dispute - moves to divert the River Jordan, Israel's main source of drinking water.Years of skirmishes and sabre rattling culminated in all-out war, with Israel quadrupling the territory it controlled and gaining complete control of double the resources of fresh water. A country needs water to survive and develop. In Israel's history, it has needed water to make feasible the influx of huge numbers of Jewish immigrants. In addition to their sheer numbers, citizens of the new state were intent on conducting water-intensive commercial agricultural such as growing bananas and citrus fruits.

As far back as 1919, the Zionist delegation at the Paris Peace Conference said the Golan Heights, Jordan valley, what is now the West Bank, as well as Lebanon's river Litani were "essential for the necessary economic foundation of the country. Palestine must have... the control of its rivers and their headwaters".

Those resources - the West Bank's mountain aquifer and the Sea of Galilee - give Israel about 60% of its fresh water, a million cubic metres per year. Israel, and Israeli settlements, take about 80% of the aquifer's flow, leaving the Palestinians with 20%. But the Palestinians say they are prevented from using their own water resources by a belligerent military power, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to buy water from their occupiers at inflated prices. Moreover, Israel allocates its citizens, including those living in settlements in the West Bank deemed illegal under international law, with between three and five times more water than the Palestinians.

Stalled negotiations on Syria's dispute with Israel over the Golan Heights - occupied by Israel in 1967 and annexed in 1980 - also foundered on water-related issues. Syria wants an Israeli withdrawal to 5 June 1967 borders, allowing Syria access to the Jordan and Yarmouk rivers. Israel wants to use boundaries dating back to 1923 and the British Mandate, which give the areas to Israel.

Former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said in the 1990s that the next war in the Middle East would not be about water not politics . In 2000 former UN general secretary , Kofi Annan warned that national rivaries over water could harbour the "seeds of violent conflict" and there were those who linked the recent attempted invasion of Lebanon by Israel on the water issue to gain access to the Litani .


Nor is the potential for future wars confined to the Israeli-Arab situation but involves all the Middle Eastern countries and water scarcity is indeed a world-wide problem .

Yet another urgent reason to discard Capitalism which has now out-lived its usefulness and only blocks any further progress of humanity .