In south west coastal Satkhira, Bangladesh as salinity has spread to freshwater sources, a private water seller fills his 20-litre cans with public water supply to sell in islands where poor families spend 300 Bangladesh Taka every month to buy drinking and cooking water alone. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
STOCKHOLM, Sep 11 2018 (IPS)

Growing economies are thirsty economies. And water scarcity has become “the new normal” in many parts of the world, according to Torgny Holmgren executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI).

As climate change converges with rapid economic and urban development and poor farming practices in the emerging economies of South Asia, water insecurity for marginalised people and farmers is already intensifying.

By 2030 for instance, India’s demand for water is estimated to become double the available water supply. Forests, wetlands lost, rivers and oceans will be degraded in the name of development. This need not be so. Development can be sustainable, it can be green.

Technology today is a key component in achieving water use sustainability – be it reduced water use in industries and agriculture, or in treating waste water, among others. Low and middle income economies need water and data technology support from developed countries not only to reach Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 on water, which relates to access to safe water and sanitation as well as the sound management of freshwater supplies, but several global goals in which water plays a critical role.

Speakers at SIWI’s 28th World Water Week held last month in Stockholm, Sweden, underpinned water scarcity as contributing to poverty, conflict, and the spread of waterborne diseases, as well as hindering access to education for women and girls.

Women are central to the collection and the safeguarding of water – they are responsible for more than 70 percent of water chores and management worldwide. But the issue goes far deeper than the chore of fetching water.  It is also about dignity, personal hygiene, safety, opportunity loss and reverting to gender stereotypes.

Women’s voices remain limited in water governance in South Asia, even though their participation in water governance can alleviate water crises through their traditional knowledge on small-scale solutions for agriculture, homestead gardening, and domestic water use. This can strengthen resilience to drought and improve family nutrition.

Holmgren, a former Swedish ambassador with extensive experience working in South Asia, among other regions, spoke to IPS about how South Asia can best address the serious gender imbalances in water access and the issue of sustainable water technology support from developed economies to developing countries. Excerpts of the interview follow:

Torgny Holmgren, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), says as water scarcity becomes the new normal, traditional knowledge must be combined with new technology to ensure water sustainability. Photo courtesy: SIWI

IPS: What major steps should South Asian economies adopt for sustainable water services from their natural ecosystems? 

TH: South Asia is experiencing now a scarcity of water as demand now grows, thanks to a growing economy and also growing population. For the region specifically, a fundamental aspect is how its countries govern their water accessibility. We at SIWI have seen water-scarce countries manage really efficiently while those with abundance mismanage this resource.

It boils down to how institutions, not just governments but communities, industries at large govern water – how water systems are organised and allocated. We have instances from Indian village parliaments that decide how to share, allocate and even treat common water resources together with neighbouring catchment area villages.

One good example of this is 2015 Stockholm Water Prize winner Rajendra Singh from India who has worked in arid rural areas with local and traditional water harvesting techniques to recharge river basins, revive and store rain water in traditional water bodies and bring life back to these regions. These techniques can also help to manage too much water from more frequent climate-induced floods.

Even though the largest [amount] water is presently still being consumed for food production, more and more water is being demanded by industries and electricity producers. As competition for the scarce resource accelerates, soon we have to restructure user categories differently in terms of tariffs and allocation because households and food production have to be provided adequate water.

Even farm irrigation reforms can regulate and save water as earlier award winning International Water Management Institute research has shown – that if governments lower subsidies on electricity for pumping, farmers were careful how much and for how long they extract groundwater, without affecting the crop yield. Farmers pumped less when energy tariffs were pegged higher.

IPS: What is SIWI’s stand on the issue of sustainable water technology support from developed economies to developing countries?

TH: Water has key advantages – it connects all SDGs and it is a truly global issue. If we look around we see similar situations in Cape Town, China and California. Water is not a North-South matter. Africa can learn from any country in any region. This is the opportunity the World Water Week offers.

It is true that new technology is developing fast, but a mix of this with traditional technology and local knowledge works well. We also need to adapt traditional technologies to modern water needs and situations. These can be basic, low cost and people friendly. And it could encourage more efficient storage and use of ‘green water’ (soil moisture used by plants).

Drip irrigation has begun to be used more in South Asia, India particularly. There is need to encourage this widely. Recycling and the way in which industries treat and re-use water should be more emphasised.

Technology transfer is and can be done in various ways. The private sector can develop both technologies and create markets for them. Governments too can provide enabling environments to promote technology development with commercial viability. A good example of this is mobile phone technology – one where uses today range from mobile banking to farmers’ access of weather data and farming advisory in remote regions.

Technology transfer from different countries can be donor or bank funded or through multi-lateral organisations like the international Green Climate Fund, but any technology always has to be adapted to local situations.

Training, education, knowledge and know-how sharing – are, to me, the best kinds of technology transfers. Students and researchers – be it through international educational exchanges or partnerships between overseas universities – get the know-how and can move back home to work on advancing technologies tailored to their national needs.

Is technology transfer happening adequately? There is a need to build up on new or local technology hardware. For this infrastructure finance is (increasingly) available but needs scaling up faster.

IPS: How can South Asia best address the serious gender imbalances in water access, bring more women into water governance in its patriarchal societies?

TH: It is important that those in power need encourage gender balance not in decision-making alone but in educational institutions. Making room for gender balance in an organisation’s decision-making structure is important. This can be possible if there is equal access to education. But we are seeing an encouraging trend – in youth seminars sometimes the majority attending are women.

Finding women champions from water organisations can also encourage other women to take up strong initiatives for water equity.

When planning and implementing projects there is a need to focus on what impacts, decisions under specific issues, are having on men and women separately. And projects need be accordingly gender budgeted.

IPS: How can the global south – under pressure to grow their GDP, needing more land, more industries to bring billions out of poverty – successfully balance their green and grey water infrastructure? What role can local communities play in maintaining green infrastructure? 

TH: When a water-scarce South Asian village parliament decides they will replant forests, attract rain back to the region, and when rain comes, collect it – this is a very local, community-centred green infrastructure initiative. Done on a large scale, it can bring tremendous change to people, livelihoods and societies at large.

We have long acted under the assumption that grey infrastructure – dams, levees, pipes and canals – purpose-built by humans, is superior to what nature itself can bring us in the form of mangroves, wetlands, rivers and lakes.

Grey infrastructure is very efficient at transporting and holding water for power production. But paving over the saw-grass prairie around Houston reduced the city’s ability to absorb the water that hurricane Harvey brought in August 2017.

It isn’t a question of either/or. We need both green and grey, and we need to be wise in choosing what serves our current and potential future set of purposes best.

Be it industrialised or developing countries, today we have to make more sophisticated use of green water infrastructures. Especially in South Asia’s growing urban sprawls, we must capture the flooding rainwater, store it in green water infrastructure for reuse; because grey cannot do it alone.

Excerpt:

While Cape Town may be in the spotlight, more and more urban centres, especially in Africa, are facing or on the brink of a similar crisis. Credit: Bigstock

By Mxolisi Ncube
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 20 2018 (IPS)

April 12 is expected to be the infamous “Day Zero” in South Africa’s second largest city of Cape Town, a tourist hub which attracts millions of visitors every year.

Just last year, the city reported a record-breaking increase in its tourist arrivals, with a slew of attractions that include Table Mountain Cableway, Robben Island and Cape Point — overall, about 28 percent more visitors than the previous year. Tourism provides more than 300,000 jobs in South Africa’s Western Cape Province, but they could soon be under threat as a water crisis threatens to put paid the city’s booming service industry.“In some places there is too little water, in some there is too much, and almost everywhere the water is dirtier than we would want. " --Jens Berggren of SIWI

Among a slew of new rules as taps began to close, residents are now being forced to limit their water use to as little as 50 liters a day — in other words, bathe for a few seconds and flush the toilets once a day — or face stiff penalties

Patricia de Lille, the mayor of South Africa’s troubled “Mother City”, recently warned that the time to beg residents to save water had elapsed, meaning the city would now force residents to comply. Businesses, including hotels, are also not being spared the stringent water rationing measures.

Sisa Ntshona, head of South Africa’s tourism marketing arm, recently told the press that although tourists were still welcome in Cape Town, they were expected to save water “like locals” due to the fast-drying of the city’s water sources, which stood at 19 percent of their total capacity last week, following months of droughts.

City experts warn that without a substantive amount of rain within the next few months, Cape Town could run out of water by July 9.

That would grossly affect South Africa’s economic prospects. Tourism contributes more than 3 billion dollars to the Western Cape’s coffers every year, according to the Tourism Business Council of South Africa.

Population growth, drought and climate change are among the key causes of the water crisis, according to a report from Groundup, a joint project of Community Media Trust and the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Social Science Research, who state that since 1995 the city’s population has grown 79 percent, from about 2.4 million to an expected 4.3 million in 2018. Over the same period dam storage has increased by only 15 percent.

The Berg River Dam, which began storing water in 2007, has been Cape Town’s only significant addition to water storage infrastructure since 1995. Its 130,000 megalitre capacity is over 14 percent of the 898,000 megalitres that can be held in Cape Town’s large dams. Had it not been for good water consumption management by the City, the current crisis could have hit much earlier, adds the organisation.

Cape Town is in the middle of a drought, with decreased rainfall during the past two years for Theewaterskloof, the dam supplying more than half our water, adds the report.

While Cape Town may be in the global spotlight at the moment, the water crisis is not limited to the South African city, as more and more urban centres, especially in Africa, are facing or on the brink of a similar crisis.

The African non-governmental organization, the Water Project, estimates that at any given time, half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from diseases associated with lack of access to clean water. The number rises to about 80 percent in developing countries.

Beyond natural causes and consumption levels, experts say that water waste, poor water conservation policies and lack of political goodwill are some of the main reasons behind the water crisis afflicting most major cities.

South Africa, for example, is losing 37 percent of its water supply through leaks across its many cities, according to a 2017 GreenCape market intelligence report.

“The main cause of water crises in urban centres, and in almost every place, is poor water management,” Steven Downey, Global Water Partnership Head of Communications, told IPS.

“Sure, droughts are bad, but they are not impossible to deal with. It takes a combination of planning, prevention, and mitigation, not waiting until the crisis actually happens. Global Water Partnership calls for action in three areas: participation (involve stakeholders in decision-making), integration (taking into account all sectors), and finance (provide money for infrastructure and for good governance of the resource),” he said.

Jens Berggren, the Director of Communications for the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), notes that there are several different types of water crises in urban centres across the world and in Africa.

“In some places there is too little water, in some there is too much and almost everywhere the water is dirtier than we would want. With so many different types of water challenges it is impossible pinpoint the main cause,” says Berggren, who also notes that mismanagement is one of the causes.

“On a very general level, the cause is that water is not being sufficiently well managed. In some places there is a lack of appropriate infrastructure, for example dams, treatment plants, boreholes, rainwater harvesting systems, pumps and pipes. In other places there is a lack of policies and/or of their enforcement resulting in poor service delivery, inefficient use, pollution, bad planning and/or implementation of projects. In many places, there is a lack of both governance and infrastructure.”

There is also increasing water variability, especially in the transition areas between wetter and dryer climate zones (very roughly around 10 degrees and 30 degrees north and south of the equator), adds Berggren.

There is also an increase in both the frequency and the intensity of extreme water and weather events, like downpours and droughts, increasing the need for both governance and infrastructure, while great inequality within urban areas in Africa and elsewhere — where some citizens are well served with and protected from water while others are struggling to get by on small and variable amounts of unsafe drinking water and get unsanitary floods when it rains — are also some of the causes.

Ways of alleviating the problem depend a lot on the local situation.

“Generally, improvements in governance and infrastructure need to go hand in hand, one without the other doesn’t work. The scope and size of the challenge also varies a lot,” Berggren said.

“In places with very unequal water situations, some citizens must be incentivized to reduce their water use while others are encouraged to increase theirs (in order to stay healthy),” adds the SIWI official, who says in some places supply and demand doesn’t match up over the year, for example during short but intense rainy seasons. That means different methods and techniques exist for storing water.

Where current demands exceed supplies, the possibilities for managing demand may include tiered pricing and expanding supply- transferring water from other basins, looking for new sources like ground- or rainwater, or treating “wastewater” for reuse. In view of the rising water variability, good water management will increasingly be about planning for the unexpected.

“There is a lot to be learned but also a lot to be taught. Experiences and knowledge from urban water management in Africa seems increasingly sought after. For example, water reuse was pioneered in Windhoek, Namibia, and there is a huge interest in how Cape Town has managed the current drought but also in how they managed to reduce the water intensity – per capita as well as per economic activity, of the city before that,” says Breggren.

“Once again, it is impossible to generalize, but a lesson that I think and hope is dawning on the western and northern parts of the world is that there has been overreliance on and overconfidence in infrastructure made of concrete and metal. Working with nature, e.g. avoiding floods by having spongy surfaces in and around cities, using so called green infrastructure or nature-based solutions is becoming more important. The key here is of course to know when to use what how and having governance structures (institutions, laws, guidelines, etc.) that allows and supports both kinds of infrastructure. I am sure that this is an area where African cities could both learn and lead the way.”

While Cape Town’s water problems have attracted international headlines, South Africa’s northern neighbor, Zimbabwe, has silently lived with a serious water crisis for more than two decades. Zimbabwe’s capital city, Harare, has for close to two decades struggled with water  purification problems that resulted in a serious outbreak of typhoid fever a few years ago.

The country’s second largest city, Bulawayo, is forced to ration its water supply almost every year, due to siltation in its supply dams, all located in the drought-stricken southern parts of the country.

A recent BBC report warned that 11 other cities in the world, which include Sao Paulo (Brazil), Cairo (Egypt) and Beijing China, could be headed to equally stormy waters. It would therefore, be fundamental for the city authorities to heed the advice from experts.

Excerpt:

Kottayam in the southern state of Kerala. India's water bodies and fresh water sources are threat from pollution, industrialization, human waste disposal and governmental neglect. Credit: Neeta Lal/IPS

By Neeta Lal
NEW DELHI, Mar 16 2018 (IPS)

As Cape Town inches towards ‘Zero Hour’ set for July 15, 2018, the real threat of water scarcity is finally hitting millions of people worldwide. For on that day, the South African city’s 3.78 million citizens — rich and poor, young and old, men and women — will be forced to queue up with their jerry cans at public outlets for their quota of 25 litres of water per day.

Who knew things would come to such a sorry pass for the rich and beautiful metropolis, ironically lapped by the aquamarine waters of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans? An ominous cocktail of deficient rainfall, devastating droughts and poor planning, say conservationists, have made Cape Town the first major city to run out of fresh water.By 2040, there will be no drinking water in almost all of India.

The issue of water scarcity was first raised in the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. Since then, each year, March 22 is observed across the world to shine the spotlight on different water-related issues. The theme for World Water Day this year is — ‘Nature for Water’ — Exploring nature-based solutions to the water challenges we face in the 21st century.

But even as the world is letting out a collective sigh for Cape Town, spare a thought for India. By 2040, there will be no drinking water in almost all of India. A UN report on water conservation published in March 2017 reveals that due to its unique geographical position in South Asia, the Indian sub-continent will face the brunt of the water crisis and India would be at the epicentre of this conflict.

By 2025, the report predicts, nearly 3.4 billion people worldwide will be living in ‘water-scarce’ countries and that the situation will become even more dire over the next 25 years.

With the planet’s second largest population at 1.3 billion (after China’s 1.4 billion), and expectant growth to reach 1.7 billion by 2050, India is struggling to provide safe, clean water to most of its populace. According to data from India’s Ministry of Water Resources, though the country hosts 18 percent of the world’s population, its share of total usable water resources is only 4 percent. Official data shows that in the past decade, annual per capita availability of water in the country has plummeted significantly.

If that isn’t scary enough, a glance at the World Bank’s latest statistics reveals the magnitude of the problem: 163 million Indians lack access to safe drinking water; 210 m have no access to improved sanitation; 21 percent of communicable diseases are linked to unsafe water and 500 children under age five die from diarrhoea each day in India.

Experts say India’s gargantuan population increases the country’s vulnerability to water shortage and scarcity. Further, the country’s exponentially growing middle-class is raising unprecedented demands on clean, safe water. Long dry spells — with the temperamental monsoons (the seasonal rains that visit south Asia between June and August) — only aggravate this paucity.

In 2016, a whopping 300 districts (or nearly half of India’s 640 districts) were under the spell of an acute drinking water shortage across India. The government then had to operate special trains at great expense just to carry water to the affected places.

Surface water isn’t the only source reaching a breaking point in India. The country’s freshwater is also under great stress. This is largely because State policies have failed to check groundwater development. With continued neglect and bureaucratic mismanagement and indifference, the problem has intensified.

Grassroots efforts like those led by Rajendra Singh, who won the prestigious Stockholm Water Prize, presented annually by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), in 2015, have had a positive effect. His pioneering work in rural development and water conservation, starting in the 1980s, brought some 8,600 rainwater storage tanks, known as johads, to 1,058 villages spread over 6,500 sq km in nine districts of Rajasthan. Five seasonal rivers in the state which had nearly dried up have since become perennial.

But adverse fallouts from water shortage aren’t just limited to people. They impact the Indian economy too.

“As an agrarian economy, India relies heavily on agriculture. There is aggressive irrigation in rural areas where agriculture provides the livelihood for over 600 million Indians, However, technological advances in agriculture haven’t kept pace with the population explosion,” explains economist Probir Choudhury of Reliance Capital.

As a result, he says, even as much of the world has adopted lesser water-intensive crops and sophisticated agricultural techniques, India still uses conventional systems and water-intensive crops. An excessive reliance on monsoons further leads to crop failures and farmer suicides.

The country’s industrialization has brought its own set of woes, say market analysts. Contamination of fresh water sources by industrial waste has sullied the waters of all major rivers. Over 90 percent of the waste water discharged into rivers, lakes, and ponds is untreated that leads to further contamination of fresh water sources.

Wastage by urban population is already a great challenge in Indian cities. By far the greatest waste occurs in electricity-producing power plants which guzzle gargantuan amounts of water to cool down. More than 80 percent of India’s electricity comes from thermal power stations, burning coal, oil, gas and nuclear fuel.

Now researchers from the US-based World Resources Institute, after analysing all of India’s 400 thermal power plants, report that its power supply is under threat from water scarcity.

The researchers found that 90 percent of these thermal power plants are cooled by freshwater, and nearly 40 percent of them experience high water stress. The plants are increasingly vulnerable, while India remains committed to providing electricity to every household by 2019.

“A severe lack of regulation, over privatization and entrenched corruption are the salient reasons pushing the country to a water crisis,” says Dr. Chintamani Reddy, a water expert and former professor of geography at Delhi University.

Worsening the situation, adds Reddy, are regional disputes over access to rivers in the country’s interior. Clashes with neighbours — Pakistan over the River Indus and River Sutley in the west and north and with China to the east with the River Brahmaputra — have become increasingly common.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Thankfully, some measures are underway to improve the scenario. Indian farmers are being sensitized about the latest irrigation techniques such as drip irrigation, and utilizing more rainwater harvesting to stem the loss of freshwater sources. Modern sanitation policies are being drafted that both conserve and prudently utilize water sources.

Massive investments in wind energy and solar energy, along with rejection of fossil fuel facilities in water-stressed places, are also being vigorously pursued. India has a target for 40 percent of its power to come from renewables by 2030 under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

Water conservationists say if these steps are followed strictly, India may be able to minimize its water scarcity. Otherwise, the apocalyptic scenario currently bedeviling South Africa may well become India’s fate.

Excerpt:

Floods in Morigaon, India submerged about 45 roads in October 2014. Most people wade through the water, believing this is quicker than waiting for a rickety boat to transport them across. Credit: Priyanka Borpujari/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 9 2015 (IPS)

As the United Nations continues its negotiations to both define and refine a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) before a summit meeting of world leaders in September, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has expressed support for a new “International Decade for Water for Sustainable Development.”

“It would complement and support the achievement of the proposed Sustainable Development Goals – for water,” he said.“A dedicated Sustainable Development Goal, explicitly addressing the multifaceted nature of water - as a social issue, an economic issue, an environmental issue, as well as the main cause of disasters on our planet – is an imperative." -- Torgny Holmgren

The proposal for a new International Decade, which has to be eventually approved by the 193-member General Assembly, was initiated Tuesday by the president of Tajikistan, Emomali Rahmon, at a ‘Water for Life” high-level international conference in the capital of Dushanbe.

Tajikistan, which has taken a leading role in highlighting the significance of water as a source of life, also sponsored the International Decade of Water For Life (2005-2015) “to raise awareness and galvanize action.”

The proposed new International Decade will be a successor to Water for Life which concludes in December this year.

Ban told delegates water’s place in the SDGs go well beyond access — taking into account critical issues such as integrated water resources management, efficiency of use, water quality, transboundary cooperation, water-related ecosystems, and water-related disasters.

“Water, like other areas of the post-2015 development agenda, is intricately interconnected with other challenges,” he noted.

John Garrett, senior policy analyst of development finance at the London-based WaterAid, told IPS: “We at WaterAid are glad to see U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon highlighting in Tajikistan the human right to water and sanitation, and the enormous need that still exists for these essential services among the world’s poorest and most marginalised populations.”

The new SDGs, he pointed out, represent a once-in-a-generation chance to reach everyone, everywhere with clean water, decent toilets and a way to keep themselves and their surroundings clean.

“A new decade for action on Water for Sustainable Development would continue a much-needed focus on the enormous challenges ahead,” he said.

However, he cautioned, the action should also focus on sanitation and hygiene, because without these, clean water is neither achievable nor sustainable, and neither are the health benefits nor economic progress that results.

Over the years, the United Nations has continued to place water-related issues on its socio-economic agenda: the first-ever International Year of Water Cooperation; World Water Day commemorated every year on Mar. 22; and the annual World Toilet Day on Nov. 19.

Ban said the world achieved the Millennium Development Goal target for safe and sustainable drinking water five years ahead of schedule.

In the course of one generation, 2.3 billion people – one-third of humanity – have gained access to an improved drinking water source.

The United Nations General Assembly declared access to clean drinking water and safe sanitation to be a human right, he pointed out.

Torgny Holmgren, executive director at the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), told IPS his organisation welcomes Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s strong support for water as a key ingredient in all efforts towards sustainable development.

It is clear that the global community increasingly realises the challenges caused by growing water stress and unwise water management, he added.

“A dedicated Sustainable Development Goal, explicitly addressing the multifaceted nature of water – as a social issue, an economic issue, an environmental issue, as well as the main cause of disasters on our planet – is an imperative, but by no means sufficient, step towards the world we want.”

It is therefore particularly inspiring, he said, to see Ban’s encouragement for a process beyond the SDGs – “a process that allows and requires the involvement of all sectors and actors, public and private, individuals and organisations to collectively take a giant leap towards a water wise world.”

Garrett of WaterAid told IPS progress in the next decade will be critical and “we welcome efforts to keep these issues in the spotlight”.

The Millennium Development Goals succeeded in halving the number of people in the world without improved water, but left many of those most in need without.

Sanitation is among the most off-track of those goals. “We must refocus efforts in the next decade to ensure no one is left behind.”

Ban said sanitation has also made progress during the Decade, with more than 1.9 billion people gaining access to improved sanitation.

“That is all good news. Yet we also know that even today, in the 21st century, some 2.5 billion people still lack access to adequate sanitation”, while some one billion people still practice open defecation.

Even today, in the 21st century, nearly 1,000 children under the age of five are killed each day by a toxic mix of unsafe drinking water, poor sanitation and hygiene, he said.

And inadequate water supply and sanitation cost economies about 260 billion dollars worldwide every year.

Just 10 years from now, 1.8 billion people will live in areas with absolute water scarcity, and two out of three people around the world could live under water-stressed conditions.

“It is little wonder that many global experts have called the ‘water crisis’ one of the greatest global risks that we face,” warned Ban.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

By Torgny Holmgren
STOCKHOLM, Oct 30 2014 (IPS)

It demands repetition: water is a precondition for all life. It keeps us alive – literally – while being a prerequisite for or integral part of most of our daily activities. Think hospitals without water, think farms, energy producers, industries, schools and homes without our most needed resource. All sectors, without exception, are dependent on water.

The 2014 World Economic Forum in Davos reported that water security is one of the most tangible and rapidly growing current global challenges. But: water is a finite resource. And along with more people entering the middle class, a growing global population, and rapid urbanisation, comes an increased demand for freshwater.

Courtesy of SIWI.

More food needs to be grown, more energy needs to be produced, industries must be kept running, and more people will afford, and expect, running water and flushing toilets in their homes.

Global demand for freshwater is, according to OECD, projected to grow by 55 per cent between 2000 and 2050. These demands will force us to manage water far more wisely in the future.

However, how to manage water is still a luxury problem for the two billion people in the world who still lack access to clean drinking water. Without clean water you cannot safely quench your thirst, prepare food, or maintain a basic level of personal hygiene, much less consider any kind of personal or societal development.

In addition to being a breeding ground for diseases and human suffering, as seen during the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak in West Africa, a lack of water keeps girls from school and women from productive work. On a larger scale, it keeps societies and economies from developing.

Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) is firmly advocating for a dedicated Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on Water in the Post-2015 development agenda. A water goal needs to address several key aspects of human development. It is needed for health.By 2050, business-as-usual will mean two billion smallholder farmers, key managers and users of rainwater, eking out a living at the mercy of rainfall that is even less reliable than today due to climate change.

In addition to the two billion people lacking access to safe drinking water, 2.5 billion people do not have access to improved sanitation facilities. One billion people are still forced to practice open defecation. On the positive side, every dollar invested in water and sanitation equals an average return of four dollars in increased productivity.

A dedicated water goal is needed for sustainable growth. The manufacturing industry’s demand for water in the BRICS countries is expected to grow eight times between 2000 and 2050. Water scarcity and unreliability pose significant risks to all economic activity. Poorly managed water causes serious social and economic challenges, but if managed well can actually be a source of prosperity.

A water goal is needed for agriculture. Today, 800 million people are undernourished. In combination with a growing population’s dietary needs, it is projected that by 2050, 60 per cent more food will be needed as compared to 2005.

How to grow more food, without having access to more water, is a potent challenge. In a recent Declaration, SIWI’s Professor Malin Falkenmark, along with Professor Johan Rockström of Stockholm Resilience Centre and other world-renowned water, environment and resilience scientists and experts, said that better management of rain is key to eradicating hunger and poverty.

They said they are “deeply concerned that sustainable management of rainwater in dry and vulnerable regions is missing in the goals and targets proposed by the UN Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals on Poverty, Hunger and Freshwater.”

By 2050, the scientists said, business-as-usual will mean two billion smallholder farmers, key managers and users of rainwater, eking out a living at the mercy of rainfall that is even less reliable than today due to climate change. Setting out to eradicate global poverty and hunger without addressing the productivity of rain is a serious and unacceptable omission.

The proposed SDGs cannot be achieved without a strong focus on sustainable management of rainwater for resilient food production in tropical and subtropical drylands, said the scientists.

An SDG for water is needed for energy.

Today, an estimated 1.3 billion people lack access to electricity. Most of them live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Approximately 90 per cent of global power generation is water intensive. To be able to deliver sustainable energy globally, we must manage our water resources more efficiently.

We need a water goal for our climate. Climate change over the 21st century is projected to reduce renewable surface water and groundwater resources significantly in most dry, sub-tropical regions. Climate change is also projected to reduce raw water quality and pose risks to drinking water quality, even with conventional treatment.

Floods, droughts and windstorms are the most frequently occurring natural disasters and account for almost 90 per cent of the most destructive events since 1990. Wise water management that builds on ecosystem-based approaches is essential for building resilience and combatting adverse impact from climate change.

I believe that the adoption of a dedicated SDG for water will help avoid fragmented and incoherent solutions, and contribute to a fairer handling of any competition between different water users.

I believe that water also needs to be addressed and integrated into other SDGs, in particular those addressing food security, energy, climate and health. These areas must then be integrated in a water goal. There is an urgent need for reciprocity. We simply cannot afford to disregard water’s centrality in all human activity.

2015 will put the world to the test. Are we willing to commit to and act upon goals and targets that are necessary to accomplish a future for all? This question needs to be answered, not only by politicians and decision makers, but by us all. Water, as we have shown, plays an important role in securing the future we want. And the future we want is a joint effort.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

A Sri Lankan boy bathes in a polluted river. South Asia, home to 1.7 billion people of which 75 percent live in rural areas, is one of the most vulnerable regions to water shocks. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
STOCKHOLM, Sep 23 2014 (IPS)

A gift of nature, or a valuable commodity? A human right, or a luxury for the privileged few? Will the agricultural sector or industrial sector be the main consumer of this precious resource? Whatever the answers to these and many more questions, one thing is clear: that water will be one of the defining issues of the coming decade.

Some estimates say that 768 million people still have no access to fresh water. Other research puts the number higher, suggesting that up to 3.5 billion people are denied the right to an improved source of this basic necessity.

As United Nations agencies and member states inch closer to agreeing on a new set of development targets to replace the soon-to-expire Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the need to include water in post-2015 development planning is more urgent than ever.

“In the next 30 years water usage will rise by 30 percent, water scarcity is going to increase; there are huge challenges ahead of us." -- Torgny Holmgren, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI)
The latest World Water Development Report (WWDR) suggests, “Global water demand (in terms of water withdrawals) is projected to increase by some 55 percent by 2050, mainly because of growing demands from manufacturing (400 percent), thermal electricity generation (140 percent) and domestic use (130 percent).”

In addition, a steady rise in urbanisation is likely to result in a ‘planet of cities’ where 40 percent of the world’s population will reside in areas of severe water stress through 2050.

Groundwater supplies are diminishing; some 20 percent of the world’s aquifers are facing over-exploitation, and degradation of wetlands is affecting the capacity of ecosystems to purify water supplies.

WWDR findings also indicate that climbing global energy demand – slated to rise by one-third by 2030 – will further exhaust limited water sources; electricity demand alone is poised to shoot up by 70 percent by 2035, with China and India accounting for over 50 percent of that growth.

Against this backdrop, water experts around the world told IPS that management of this invaluable resource will occupy a prominent place among the yet-to-be finalised Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in the hopes of fending off crises provoked by severe shortages.

“We are discussing the goals, and most member [states] agree that water needs better coordination and management,” Amina Mohammed, the United Nations secretary-general’s special advisor on post-2015 development planning told IPS on the sidelines of the annual Stockholm World Water Week earlier this month.

What is needed now, Mohammed added, is greater clarity on goals that can be mutually agreed upon by member states.

Other water experts allege that in the past, water management has been excluded from high-level decision-making processes, despite it being an integral part of any development process.

“In the next 30 years water usage will rise by 30 percent, water scarcity is going to increase; there are huge challenges ahead of us,” Torgny Holmgren, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), told IPS.

He added that the way the world uses water is drastically changing. Traditionally agriculture has been the largest guzzler of fresh water, but in the near future the manufacturing sector is tipped to take over. “Over 25 percent of [the world’s] water use will be by the energy sector,” Holmgren said.

For many nations, especially in the developing world, the water-energy debate represents the classic catch-22: as more people move out of poverty and into the middle class with spending capacity, their energy demands increase, which in turn puts tremendous pressure on limited water supplies.

The statistics of this demographic shift are astonishing, said Kandeh Yumkella, special representative of the secretary-general who heads Ban Ki-moon’s pet project, the Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) initiative.

Yumkella told IPS that by 2050, three billion persons will move out of poverty and 60 percent of the world’s population will be living in cities.

“Everyone is demanding more of everything, more houses, more cars and more water. And we are talking of a world where temperatures are forecasted to rise by two to three degrees Celsius, maybe more,” he asserted.

South Asia in need of proper planning

South Asia, home to 1.7 billion people of which 75 percent live in rural areas, is one of the most vulnerable regions to water shocks and represents an urgent mandate to government officials and all stakeholders to formulate coordinated and comprehensive plans.

The island of Sri Lanka, for instance, is a prime example of why water management needs to be a top priority among policy makers. With climate patterns shifting, the island has been losing chunks of its growth potential to misused water.

In the last decade, floods affected nine million people, representing almost half of Sri Lanka’s population of just over 20 million. Excessive rain also caused damages to the tune of one billion dollars, according to the latest data from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Ironically, the island also constantly suffers from a lack of water. Currently, a 10-month drought is affecting 15 of its 25 districts, home to 1.5 million people. It is also expected to drive down the crucial rice harvest by 17 percent, reducing yields to the lowest levels in six years. All this while the country is trying to maintain an economic growth rate of seven percent, experts say.

In trying to meet the challenges of wildly fluctuating rain patterns, the government has adopted measures that may actually be more harmful than helpful in the long term.

In the last three years it has switched to coal to offset drops in hydropower generation. Currently coal, which is considered a “dirty” energy source, is the largest energy source for the island, making up 46 percent of all energy produced, according to government data.

Top government officials like Finance Secretary Punchi Banda Jayasundera and Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunga have told IPS that they are working on water management.

But for those who favour fast-track moves, like Mohammed and Yumkella, verbal promises need to translate into firm goals and action.

“If you don’t take water into account, either you are going to fail in your development goals, or you are going to put a lot of pressure on you water resources,” Richard Connor, lead author of the 2014 WWDR, told IPS.

The situation is equally dire for India and China. According to a report entitled ‘A Clash of Competing Necessities’ by CNA Analysis and Solutions, a Washington-based research organisation, 53 percent of India’s population lives in water-scarce areas, while 73 percent of the country’s electricity capacity is also located.

India’s power needs have galloped and according to research conducted in 2012, the gap between power demand and supply was 10.2 percent and was expected to rise further. The last time India faced a severe power crisis, in July 2012, 600 million people were left without power.

According to China Water Risk, a non-profit organisation, China’s energy needs will grow by 100 percent by 2050, but already around 60 percent of the nation’s groundwater resources are polluted.

China is heavily reliant on coal power but the rising demand for energy will put considerable stress on water resources in a nation where already at least 50 percent of the population may be facing water shortages, according to Debra Tan, the NGO’s director.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida