ENVIRONMENT: Water Scarcity a Major Threat in 21st Century

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 17 1999 (IPS) - Nearly one-third of the world’s population – about 2.7 billion people – will experience severe water shortages within the next 25 years, according to a new study by a leading global water organisation.

“Water scarcity is now the single greatest threat to human health, the environment, and the global food supply,” says David Seckler, director-general of the Washington-based International Water Management Institute. “It also threatens global peace as countries in Asia and the Middle East seek to cope with shortages.”

In a study titled “Water Scarcity in the 21st Century,” the Institute said Wednesday that water scarcity already is a major destabilising force within countries because different sectors of the economy are vying for scarce water resources.

“Within the next 25 years,” Seckler warns,” there is great potential for more water conflict not just within countries but between them.”

Historically, Egypt has threatened to go to war to protect its water supplies and, just last week, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi warned that “the next Middle East war would be over dwindling water supplies.”

Hazem El-Biblawi, Executive Secretary of the Beirut-based UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, admits that water would replace oil as one of the major political and economic issues of the Middle East next century.

Water shortages already have become acute in the region, with the exception of countries where there are major rivers, he says. The Nile, the Eurphrates, the Tigris, the Orontes and the Litani provide adequately for the water requirements of Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

But most Middle Eastern countries, with no access to rivers, increasingly are concerned about the issue of rising water demand brought about by population pressures, lack of adequate water management practices, and the need to increase food production and combat pollution in order to preserve the fragile, semi-arid environment.

The Water Institute, a research centre of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research in Washington, has examined water scarcity on a country-by-country basis and projects supply and demand for some 118 countries over the 1990-2025 period.

The study, released jointly with a non-governmental organisation called Future Harvest, divides the countries into four categories.

The first category includes those countries that are most water scarce, and in 2025 will not have enough water to maintain 1990 levels of per capita food production from irrigated agriculture and also meet industry, household and environmental needs.

The 17 countries facing “absolute water scarcity” are Afghanistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Israel, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Singapore, South Africa, Oman, Libya and parts of India and China.

The second category includes countries that have sufficient potential water resources but will have to more than double their efforts to extract water. The 24 countries in this category, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, include Angola, Benin, Burundi, Ghana, Niger, Lesotho, Ethiopia, Gabon, Haiti and Uganda.

The remaining countries of the world are in categories three and four, and include North America and Europe. These countries will have substantially less pressure on water supplies with moderate needs to increase water development efforts.

The study notes that those who will suffer most will be people in the world’s poorest nations. Already, women and children walk great distances to retrieve water for cooking, drinking and other household needs. “The single greatest impact of water supply will be on the food supplies of the poor.”

Seckler says that many countries, including China, India, Pakistan, Mexico and nearly all of the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, literally have enoyed “a free ride” over the past two or three decades by rapidly depleting their groundwater resources. “This could have catastrophic results in terms of limiting their ability to produce enough food to feed their populations.”

Meanwhile a 1997-1998 UN survey of economic and social developments in the Middle East says that water scarcity – combined with increasing water cosumption caused by high population growth and development activities – has presented a major challenge to planners and decision makers in that region.

The survey, released last December, points out that non- conventional water resources (desalinated sea water, treated waste water and irrigation drainage water) have been used to supplement natural sources in the domestic, industrial and agricultural sectors.

Brackish and sea water desalination has become a viable alternative to meet water requirements in the Middle East. Desalination has become a major water supply component of the six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

The Middle East, by necessity, has become the world leader in desalination of sea water and brackish water, mainly from facilities in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, according to the UN study.