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Sunday, January 6, 2002 Water shortages causing conflicts? By Joan Lowy
It’s a picture that appears increasingly possible in the coming decades. By 2015, nearly 3 billion people — 40 percent of the projected world population — are expected to live in countries that find it difficult or impossible to mobilize enough fresh water to satisfy the food, industrial and personal needs of their citizens. Some of the globe’s most water-stressed nations are straight out of today’s headlines: Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, China, Iran, Israel, Jordan and Syria. The next war in the Middle East is just as likely to be about water as oil or religion. “If we don’t do something about it, it means an unstable world,” said former U.S. Sen. Paul Simon, D-Ill., who discussed water issues with officials in Jordan and Syria in July on behalf of the U.S. State Department. In Amman, Jordan, “you turn the tap on one day a week,” Simon said. “You either get by with things you have in your pots and pans the rest of the week or you can pay for little vans that deliver tanks and things of water to your house. Of course, poor people can’t afford that.” Earlier this year, a report by the British relief and development charity Tearfund warned that millions of people may be forced in the future to leave their homes to seek clean water supplies, creating a new phenomenon — water refugees. There were water riots by farmers in the Sindh province of Pakistan earlier this year after an upstream province withheld water on the Indus River. Last year, thousands of farmers in the Yellow River basin of China clashed with police over a government plan to divert water to cities and industry. International bickering over water hits close to home in Texas. This year, Texas and U.S. officials criticized Mexico for not releasing the amount of water in the Rio Grande that a 1944 U.S.-Mexico treaty requires. South Texas farmers say the lack of a release is threatening the area’s agricultural industry. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs said Mexico owes the United States 1.35 million acre-feet of water and has violated a pledge to repay the debt. An acre-foot of water equals 325,651 gallons. Mexican officials are investigating the releases, but they say their nation has been stymied by a drought as well. Growing priority According to the World Commission on Water, human water needs will grow 40 percent over the next two decades. Environmentalists are lobbying for a 10 percent cut in water use to protect ecosystems. Agricultural scientists say farm water use, especially irrigation, should be boosted by as much as 20 percent over 25 years to secure food supplies. The CIA considers global water scarcity “a significant issue in security,” said John Gannon, a former CIA assistant director and former chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Water shortages “encourage refugee movements, which, if they spill over into other countries, can very much engage us,” Gannon said. “When we moved into Afghanistan, we moved into a country that already had a very serious refugee problem. If people don’t have water, they can’t live. They are going to move or they are going to die.” None of the proposed solutions to the water crisis — importing water, water conservation, expanded use of desalination of seawater or developing genetically modified crops that use less water — will be “sufficient to substantially change the outlook for water shortages in 2015,” according to Global Trends 2015, a report by the intelligence council. The Middle East is “the most worrisome” region because “other issues are working against the ability of countries or groups to negotiate with one another,” Gannon said. Over the next 20 years, Israel is projected to have a 33 percent decline in per capita water availability. Jordan is expected to have a 70 percent decline. The competition for water is already being felt in world grain markets. Because it takes about 1,000 tons of water to produce 1 ton of grain, the most efficient way for water-short countries to save water is to import grain. The fastest-growing grain import market in the world is North Africa and the Middle East, the region with the most serious water shortages, according to the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. With supplies limited, countries satisfy the growing demand for water in cities and industry by taking it away from agriculture. In recent years, grain imports into Iran have eclipsed those of Japan, long the world’s leading wheat importer. Last year, Egypt also moved ahead of Japan. Both Iran and Egypt import more than 40 percent of the grain they consume, according to the institute. Competition for grain is expected to increase, particularly if water scarcity forces such countries as China and India to become net importers of food. That could raise prices and increase stress on poorer nations. “One of the myriad lessons Sept. 11 taught us is that all these issues are intertwined — poverty issues, stability issues, access to resources, religion and violence,” said Oregon State University professor Aaron Wolf, an expert on international water conflicts. “There is a recognition that the world is a more intricate place where solving the world’s water problems becomes a lot higher on everybody’s agenda for a lot of subtle reasons.” Reporter-News resources writer Samuel Segrist contributed to this report.
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It
is a frightening scenario: Millions of refugees streaming across
borders in search of water, hostile nations pushed over the edge
into open warfare by conflicts over scarce water.
E.W. Scripps Publications|
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