| World Water Crisis: The Oil Shortage Was A Breeze By Comparison |
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| Written by Len Sherman | |
| Wednesday, 18 June 2008 | |
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In case anybody’s worried only the American southwest faces the end of life as we know it, fret not: The entire world is about to be plunged into a variety of water crises that could lead to war, poverty and the actual downfall of nations.
As Britain’s Telegraph sums up in pithy fashion: A catastrophic water shortage could prove an even bigger threat to mankind this century than soaring food prices and the relentless exhaustion of energy reserves, according to a panel of global experts at the Goldman Sachs "Top Five Risks" conference. The threats come in many forms and places. Let’s start in Asia, where a few hundred square miles of Himalayan glaciers constitute the source for all the continent’s major rivers – the Ganges, the Yellow, the Yangtze – sustaining 3 billion people. Unfortunately, as reports Lord Nicholas Stern, the former chief economist for the World Bank and author of the British government’s Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, the glaciers are melting: "The glaciers on the Himalayas are retreating, and they are the sponge that holds the water back in the rainy season. We're facing the risk of extreme run-off, with water running straight into the Bay of Bengal and taking a lot of topsoil with it," he said. Just to put the cherry on top, underground aquifers could be running dry at the same time. Farming makes up fully 70% of the world water demand, and when water is pulled out of the ground for irrigation, it is never returned to underground basins. Thus, the aquifers, which were formed over millions of years, can never be replenished. And that wasn’t all that Lord Stern to say: …governments had been slow to accept the awful truth that usable water is running out. Fresh rainfall is not enough to refill the underground water tables. "Water is not a renewable resource. People have been mining it without restraint because it has not been priced properly," he said. In the meanwhile demand for water is escalating at “unsustainable” rates. By 2025, it is estimated that one-third of the world’s population will not have access to adequate drinking water. China’s water might be growing at exponential rates, but its water supply is not. With 21% of the planet’s people, it only controls 7% of the available water. The water basin in parts of northern China, for instance, is falling by 1 meter a year due to overpumping. Potential disputes loom in Europe, South America, Africa, the Middle East. And did I mention there’s a problem in the American southwest? |
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| Last Updated ( Sunday, 20 July 2008 ) |
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