(Scott Wallace)
Is water becoming ‘the new oil’?
Population, pollution, and climate put the squeeze on potable supplies – and private companies smell a profit. Others ask: Should water be a human right?
By Mark Clayton| Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor/ May 29, 2008 edition
Reporter Mark Clayton discusses the growing market for 'blue gold'.
Reporter Mark Clayton
Public fountains are dry in Barcelona, Spain, a city so parched there’s a €9,000 ($13,000) fine if you’re caught watering your flowers. A tanker ship docked there this month carrying 5 million gallons of precious fresh water – and officials are scrambling to line up more such shipments to slake public thirst.
Barcelona is not alone. Cyprus will ferry water from Greece this summer. Australian cities are buying water from that nation’s farmers and building desalination plants. Thirsty China plans to divert Himalayan water. And 18 million southern Californians are bracing for their first water-rationing in years.
Water, Dow Chemical Chairman Andrew Liveris told the World Economic Forum in February, “is the oil of this century.” Developed nations have taken cheap, abundant fresh water largely for granted. Now global population growth, pollution, and climate change are shaping a new view of water as “blue gold.”
Water’s hot-commodity status has snared the attention of big equipment suppliers like General Electric as well as big private water companies that buy or manage municipal supplies – notably France-based Suez and Aqua America, the largest US-based private water company.
Global water markets, including drinking water distribution, management, waste treatment, and agriculture are a nearly $500 billion market and growing fast, says a 2007 global investment report.
But governments pushing to privatize costly to maintain public water systems are colliding with a global “water is a human right” movement. Because water is essential for human life, its distribution is best left to more publicly accountable government authorities to distribute at prices the poorest can afford, those water warriors say.
“We’re at a transition point where fundamental decisions need to be made by societies about how this basic human need – water – is going to be provided,” says Christopher Kilian, clean-water program director for the Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation. “The profit motive and basic human need [for water] are just inherently in conflict.”
Will “peak water” displace “peak oil” as the central resource question? Some see such a scenario rising.
“What’s different now is that it’s increasingly obvious that we’re running up against limits to new [fresh water] supplies,” says Peter Gleick, a water expert and president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, a nonpartisan think tank in Oakland, Calif. “It’s no longer cheap and easy to drill another well or dam another river.”
The idea of “peak water” is an imperfect analogy, he says. Unlike oil, water is not used up but only changes forms. The world still has the same 326 quintillion gallons, NASA estimates.
But some 97 percent of it is salty. The world’s remaining accessible fresh-water supplies are divided among industry (20 percent), agriculture (70 percent), and domestic use (10 percent), according to the United Nations.
Meanwhile, fresh-water consumption worldwide has more than doubled since World War II to nearly 4,000 cubic kilometers annually and set to rise another 25 percent by 2030, says a 2007 report by the Zurich-based Sustainable Asset Management (SAM) group investment firm.
Up to triple that is available for human use, so there should be plenty, the report says. But waste, climate change, and pollution have left clean water supplies running short.
“We have ignored demand for decades, just assuming supplies of water would be there,” Dr. Gleick says. “Now we have to learn to manage water demand and – on top of that – deal with climate change, too.”
Population and economic growth across Asia and the rest of the developing world is a major factor driving fresh-water scarcity. The earth’s human population is predicted to rise from 6 billion to about 9 billion by 2050, the UN reports. Feeding them will mean more irrigation for crops.
Increasing attention is also being paid to the global “virtual water” trade. It appears in food or other products that require water to produce, products that are then exported to another nation. The US may consume even more water – virtual water – by importing goods that require lots of water to make. At the same time, the US exports virtual water through goods it sells abroad.
As scarcity drives up the cost of fresh water, more efficient use of water will play a huge role, experts say, including:
• Superefficient drip irrigation is far more frugal than “flood” irrigation. But water’s low cost in the US provides little incentive to build new irrigation systems.
• Aging, leaking water pipes waste billions of gallons daily. The cost to fix them could be $500 billion over the next 30 years, the federal government estimates.
• Desalination. Dozens of plants are in planning stages or under construction in the US and abroad, reports say.
• Privatization. When private for-profit companies sell at a price based on what it costs to produce water, that higher price curbs water waste and water consumption, economists say.
In the US today, about 33.5 million Americans get their drinking water from privately owned utilities that make up about 16 percent of the nation’s community water systems, according to the National Association of Water Companies, a trade association.
“While water is essential to life, and we believe everyone deserves the right of access to water, that doesn’t mean water is free or should be provided free,” says Peter Cook, executive director of the NAWC. “Water should be priced at the cost to provide it – and subsidized for those who can’t afford it.”
But private companies’ promises of efficient, cost-effective water delivery have not always come true. Bolivia ejected giant engineering firm Bechtel in 2000, unhappy over the spiking cost of water for the city of Cochabamba. Last year Bolivia’s president publicly celebrated the departure of French water company Suez, which had held a 30-year contract to supply La Paz.
In her book, “Blue Covenant,” Maude Barlow – one of the leaders of the fledgling “water justice” movement – sees a dark future if private monopolies control access to fresh water. She sees this happening when, instead of curbing pollution and increasing conservation, governments throw up their hands and sell public water companies to the private sector or contract with private desalination companies.
“Water is a public resource and a human right that should be available to all,” she says. “All these companies are doing is recycling dirty water, selling it back to utilities and us at a huge price. But they haven’t been as successful as they want to be. People are concerned about their drinking water and they’ve met resistance.”
Private-water industry officials say those pushing to make water a “human right” are ideologues struggling to preserve inefficient public water authorities that sell water below the cost to produce it and so cheaply it is wasted – doing little to extend service to the poor.
“There are three basic things in life: food, water, and air,” says Paul Marin, who three years ago led a successful door-to-door campaign to keep the town council of Emmaus, Pa., from selling its local water company. “In this country, we have privatized our food. Now there’s a lot of interest in water on Wall Street…. But I can tell you it’s putting the fox in charge of the henhouse to privatize water. It’s a mistake.”
Water and war: Will scarcity lead to conflict?
Cherrapunjee, a town in eastern India, once held bragging rights as the “wettest place on earth,” and still gets nearly 40 feet of rain a year. Ironically, officials recently brought in Israeli water-management experts to help manage and retain water that today sluices off the area’s deforested landscape so that the area can get by in months when no rain falls.
“Global warming isn’t going to change the amount of water, but some places used to getting it won’t, and others that don’t, will get more,” says Dan Nees, a water-trading analyst with the World Resources Institute. “Water scarcity may be one of the most underappreciated global political and environmental challenges of our time.” Water woes could have an impact on global peace and stability.
In January, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon cited a report by International Alert, a self-described peacebuilding organization based in London. The report identified 46 countries with a combined population of 2.7 billion people where contention over water has created “a high risk of violent conflict” by 2025.
In the developing world – particularly in China, India, and other parts of Asia – rising economic success means a rising demand for clean water and an increased potential for conflict.
China is one of the world’s fastest-growing nations, but its lakes, rivers, and groundwater are badly polluted because of the widespread dumping of industrial wastes. Tibet has huge fresh water reserves.
While news reports have generally cited Tibetans’ concerns over exploitation of their natural resources by China, little has been reported about China’s keen interest in Tibet’s Himalayan water supplies, locked up in rapidly melting glaciers.
“It’s clear that one of the key reasons that China is interested in Tibet is its water,” Dr. Gleick says. “They don’t want to risk any loss of control over these water resources.”
The Times (London) reported in 2006 that China is proceeding with plans for nearly 200 miles of canals to divert water from the Himalayan plateau to China’s parched Yellow River. China’s water plans are a major problem for the Dalai Lama’s government in exile, says a report released this month by Circle of Blue, a branch of the Pacific Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.
Himalayan water is particularly sensitive because it supplies the rivers that bring water to more than half a dozen Asian countries. Plans to divert water could cause intense debate.
“Once this issue of water resources comes up,” wrote Elizabeth Economy, director of Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Affairs, to Circle of Blue researchers in a report earlier this month, “and it seems inevitable at this point that it will – it also raises emerging conflicts with India and Southeast Asia.”
Tibet is not the only water-rich country wary of a water-poor neighbor. Canada, which has immense fresh-water resources, is wary of its water-thirsty superpower neighbor to the south, observers say. With Lake Mead low in the US Southwest, and now Florida and Georgia squabbling over water, the US could certainly use a sip (or gulp) of Canada’s supplies. (Canada has 20 percent of the world’s fresh water.)
But don’t look for a water pipeline from Canada’s northern reaches to the US southwest anytime soon. Water raises national fervor in Canada, and Canadians are reluctant to share their birthright with a United States that has mismanaged – in Canada’s eyes – its own supplies. Indeed, the prospect of losing control of its water under free-trade or other agreements is something Canadians seem to worry about constantly.
A year ago, Canada’s House of Commons voted 134 to 108 in favor of a motion to recommend that its federal government “begin talks with its American and Mexican counterparts to exclude water from the scope of NAFTA.”
( More stories )
Comments
2. Giles Slade | 05.29.08
Great piece, Mark, thank you…
Canada not only has 20% of the current freshwater supply in the world, but that supply will increase within the next 2 generations. The Yukon and MacKenzie rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean (as 60% of all Canadian water currently does) will increase (it is estimated) by about 40% of their capacity under global warming. At the same time, the United States will lose about 30% of its current water supply due the disappearance of snow-melt, increased evaporation, and the over-drafting of aquifers (like the Ogallala in the High Plains, which currently irrigates 35% of all American agricultural products).
The USGS has predicted –imagine how unpopular this news was– that 36 states will suffer acute drought within the next 5 years… In part this is due to the poleward expansion of sub-tropical zones and increases in the La Nina effect which cut a dry swath across the subtropical regions of the globe including America’s southwest and southeast (yes, Atlanta). In North America, what we’re looking at is an end to the era of the ‘Cadillac Desert’ and the beginning of a very dry period that across many separate geographical regions from the Great Lakes to the southern United States. This period will make the Dust Bowl with its outmigration from the High Plains and Southwest pale in comparison.
North American outmigration has actually already begun (although no one yet notices because the migrants speak Spanish and come either from the Central American Drought Corridor –Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize– or from Mexico which is already experiencing acute water shortages due to desertification, over-drafting and a remarkable increase in their urban populations). There are 40 million Mexicans in the United States (about 1/2 of them are legal). (This leaves only 60 million Mexicans in Mexico at any given time). The rush to erect border fences in Texas, Arizona and California is really an admission on the part of the United States government that Latin migration will become an acute economic problem within the next few decades as essential human resources in the continental United States decline under global warming and really poor water management policies.
No massive NAWAPA pipeline from Canada will be sufficient to provide the level of water consumption for America’s increasing population. This is just wishful thinking. In any case, Canadians will not likely give up their water very easily or very cheaply. There would have to be a war. Of course, America would win very easily, but can you imagine that? Things are simply going to hurt south of the 49th parallel and people are going to move to cooler climes and higher, wetter ground. America itself may have to move house. No one is happy about this. But at this late date, there’s little that can be done.
Chris Wood’s new book DRY SPRING deals with these issues very thoroughly and Marc Reisner’s CADILLAC DESERT provides the historical background. Another really good thing to read is Wallace Broeker’s new FIXING CLIMATE. Ken Midkiff has a good book called NOT A DROP TO DRINK, and Robert Glennon has a better book called WATER FOLLIES.
3. Suzanne Settle | 05.29.08
Besides the natural causes, most Americans take water for granted and are very wasteful. I’m in the Pacific NW where we don’t have as much of a problem but states like Georgia and South Carolina last year had towns that had NO water and had to truck it in like some of the countries that are talked about in the article.
We pretty much overuse and waste everything. Not all of us. Some of us make better use of resources than others but also government waste is a major issue. And over-regulation is ridiculous.
4. milton | 05.29.08
Potable water from our sewage treatment centers will just be recycled back into our drinking water systems. It is being done already in many places. Urinals will reduce use as can compost toilets. Alternate sources of energy(windmills, solar cells)can replace thermal electric plants (coal,nukes, natural gas). Thus freeing up billions of gallons of water. In the US we only have to be a bit smarter about our usage. It wouldn’t hurt to stop growing lettuce in the dessert.
5. Michael Campana | 05.29.08
Canada does not have 20% of the world’s fresh water supply. What it does have is 20% of the world’s fresh, unfrozen, surface water. There is a big difference. There is far more fresh water beneath the ground and frozen in snow and ice than there is on the Earth’s surface.
6. Teresa Binstock | 05.30.08
Western civilization’s most influential administrators have long enforced economic growth and population growth. As a result, the biosphere has become a modern-day Titanic, and we’re all passengers. Redirecting western civilization’s ongoing metastasis requires some of its central tenets be revised.
7. Karen Ortiz | 05.30.08
Water is Blue Gold!
WE Create Water From Thin Air
THis is the water alternative for the future!
This product will also help save the environment
from all the plastic
http://www.H2OfromAir.com
call me - 931-455-9434
Karen Ortiz
8. Tricia | 05.30.08
I don’t have an issue with privatizing water, so long as the first 20 gallons per day is free. There should be enough provided free to each household to sustain life. But additional usage should have a charge. It’s the charge that will make people conserve.
9. Norm | 05.31.08
Water is necessary for life. Access should not be left to market forces which oft times are driven by short_term gains, not long term survival issues for society as a whole. With reluctance I must admit government intervention and mgt is a must.
10. Ponce | 05.31.08
We can live without oil but not without water…… Oil wars are small ones when compared to the wars to be over water.
11. solohoh | 05.31.08
Oscar Goodman, the mayor of Las Vegas, told our professional engineering luncheon group a few years ago “whatever we flush, we drink.” That will be the future for much of the world’s population.
12. D. L. | 05.31.08
Would you believe… Who has the largest supply of fresh water in the Middle East? Give yourself a pat on the back if you said Iraq. NOW YOU KNOW why “we” went to war there! Oil? Gimme a break! It was for water. The Tigris and Euphrates. and what US ally has a serious lack of fresh water, what with the Sea of Galillee now little more than a mud puddle and the Jordan River having to be shared by Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and that little ally of ours, who many say is directing our foreign policy. Yes, folks, we DID go to war for the sake of Israel, but not over security…so that we could supply what Chirac called that “[expletive] little country” enough water to fill their swimming pools–while the Palestinians go as thirsty as a bone. Nice one, Bush!
13. Edwin Pell | 05.31.08
The issue is over population. Too many people. The U.S. can start to address it’s over population problem by ending immigration.
14. jon b | 05.31.08
It’s funny how this was predicted years ago yet only now do we think it’s time to do something about it. Further not much will really be done about it because it takes too much time to argue about what to do.
All the things predicted are now coming together as the “perfect storm.” Peak oil, global warming, water resources, land use and the long ago prediction of overpopulation problems is the ultimate crux of it all.
Attitudes must change. Certainly posters such as Tricia “I don’t have an issue with privatizing water, so long as the first 20 gallons per day is free,” don’t have a clue. 20 gallons of water per day is an ocean to the vast majority of people in the world. Within the decade even in parts of the USA, 20 gallons a day will be a dream.
I live in Michigan among the Great Lake states trying to organize a defense against the piping out of the Great Lakes water. Thirsty states are beginning to drool for our water nor thinking of the damage to the whole system draining it will do. Even today the Great Lakes are already at low levels. I’ve been telling my fellow Michiganders to expect an in-migration of people (currently due to a bad economy people are leaving) as high costs/shortages of water and energy in the south US drive them north.
Global warming is advancing faster than most people realize. The great plains could be reverting back to desert within 20 years due to droughts most years. The Southeast is already experiencing droughts. Two degrees of global warming is already built into the system even if humans vanished from the Earth today, but since the world can’t even begin to bring carbon emissions to a level to not increase warming, two degrees isn’t the limit.
Finally desalinization is somewhat of a bondoogle solution as it is energy intensive contributing to global warming and is environmental sensitive to the ocean near the plants. Here I’ll only mention the over-fishing of our oceans as another problem in the “perfect storm.”
15. Adi Gandhi | 06.01.08
Every political candidate must pledge their 100% loyalty to support the State of Israel in front of the all powerful AIPAC lobby or they will never get elected to any public office! Each of the current Presidential candidates have all been wetted by IPAC before their presidential campaign even got off the ground! The same goes for Senators and Congressman!
Each of our presidential candidates were outdoing the other giving their firm assurances to AIPAC guaranteeing continuous financial give aways, financial guarantees, military and foreign aid to flow into Israel’s coffers…..
You can read the transcripts of these testimonies, of all these candidates on the web given to AIPAC-an organization that is a lobby to represent a foreign government’s interest-yet have not been compelled to register with the Justice Department under the Foreign Agency Act that prevents agent’s of a foreign government to dabble in US domestic politics to have undue influence in US Foreign Policy!
16. esther | 06.01.08
This goes even worse in developing countries that privatized their fresh water to private companies from developed countries. Just like oil, fresh water from developing countries is being exploited by developed countries.
17. John Thomas | 06.01.08
Watch out. Once Big, money grubbing Corporations get a whiff of Profit, its all over! Kiss it goodbye.
18. willson | 06.01.08
No, it is not a “right”. That is, something everyone is entitled to. Potentially supplied, by others, without effort on ones own part. With the right enforced by law.
We’ve too many things that are considered “rights” and adding to the list dilutes the value of the others.
What amount, purity, ease of accessibility, affordability would the right to water give someone? What uses may it be put to? What obligation, what requirement to not waste water would balance that right?
No, not a right. Although there might be a social interest in solving the problem it probably is not something that we want to use global resources to enforce.
19. Eric | 06.02.08
There is plenty of water in the ocean. You just need to build a lot of desalination plants and also build a lot of aquaducts.
20. jogesh | 06.03.08
dear edwin pell,
you’re right - should have done it 500 years ago, when the savages first showed up.
21. marilynn | 06.03.08
If people will join together in the effort to conserve, clean, and purify water we can accomplish a great deal. So much is already being done and so much can still be done if people will communicate in a positive way. There are thousands of water project and programs worldwide that work well. One problem is that people do not know about them. Another problem is that there is no rating system for how well water projects and programs aimed at improving our water work. The fears are valid and the solutions are complicated. However, we have means at our disposal to alleviate a great deal of these issues if we care to be less greedy, more conservation and environmentally minded, and open to new ideas.
22. Steve W. | 06.03.08
The need for water and and the profit motive are inherently in conflict??? What about the needs for food, clothing, and shelter? Somehow they get provided primarily by people working w/ a profit motive. There is no reason a profit motive w/ reasonable regulatory control can’t do at least as good a job providing good water as a government agency.
23. M. Shahjahan Bhatti | 06.04.08
Wonderful analysis of global water conflicts. In collaboration with NASA studies should be held to resolve global water conflicts by removing regional hurdles. Water security is more important than over stretched politics or business. I personally hold strong belief that Space Sciences can play vital role in conflict resolutions. Traditional approach to resolve water crisis is rather increasing them.
24. M Barber | 06.05.08
Here’s a challenge to consider - having 20 Gallons of fresh water free every day would be an absolute joy to the 2/3rds of the world’s population that don’t even have access to 2 gallons of fresh water!
Check out this paper on water, published in the Journal of Future studies and available at http://www.lookingupfeelinggood.com/uploads/A_Drop_in_the_Ocean_web.pdf that shows the issue of water is how societies understand what ‘water’ is actually for (as a social and commercial benefit)
25. VX | 06.05.08
“In collaboration with NASA studies should be held to resolve global water conflicts by removing regional hurdles.”
What does that mean? I hope that’s not a fancy way to say you have a right to Michigan’s or Canada’s or any countries water.
With all these shortages coming (water, oil, energy, overpopulation), there are a lot of challenges ahead. Not sure if we’re up to the task.
26. Scribblz | 06.06.08
Frankly I think if a certain percentage of the world is starving and thirsty it will create a violent chaos that will likely kill a large portion of our species, and will utilize weapons that will destroy our environment speeding up global warming. Sooner or later 50 yrs 100yrs or 200yrs from now it is very likely to happen. I think it will require a lot of effort to convince governments to publicly admit this and pressure will have to be exerted on them to create policy forcing water conservation before the need is dire. But what I’ve noticed is Americans frequently don’t know whats going on outside of their own state ( except sports…) never mind being aware of other countries’ issues. But above all else they obey the media. I find television is the basis for most U.S. citizens guide on what to worry about. If every major network focused on one issue ie water shortage and conservation and consistently repeated instructions to put pressure on the government; it would be done. The media is controlled by a few wealthy people who have no interest in doing what I just mentioned. the air time would have to be taken whether by money, hackers, someone. and then a national warning would have to be broad casted showing footage all over the world of current areas with no water. If you upset enough people money will be invested in water conservation, desalination and in recycling water most efficiently. Maybe the water crisis and global warming is inevitable. But it’s human nature to fight the inevitable even though generally we bring it on ourselves. We’ll all likely be dead when it gets really ugly but with more awareness I hope we can implement measures that give our children and grandchild a world united not destroyed by crisis. On a lighter note if we got invaded by aliens of some kind from space maybe it would unite us as a species to have a common non-human enemy.
27. David Anderson | 06.07.08
National Geographic predicts a lasting mega drought in the southwest for a long time, making solar powered desalinization plants attractive. Already we know that using radio waves on salt water creates energy. Put these two principles together, and the sun irrigates a lush garden stretching across the southwest, enabling us to sell food to our masters in the oil rich Arab states. No oil? Gee, sorry… Enjoy your diet, Achmed…
28. petra | 06.09.08
People should stop eating meat every day. They sould see meat eating as an huge treat which one can do every once a month.
I’am Dutch so that’s why I come up with Dutch numbers:
If Holland only would stop the production of meat that only would safe so much water enough for 1/3 of the worlds population drinking water.
ONE KILO (2.20462 lb) OF MEAT TAKES 11.250 liter (2.47465 gallons (UK)) OF WATER!!!
30. Tom Kryzak | 06.09.08
New environmental technology provides several water related functions with clean water as a byproduct, US Patent # 7264713. Water and sediment are the final resting points for most contamination,soil runoff of pesticides, fertilizers, while wastewater treated sewage is now known to carry hormone-disrupting contaminants, estrone, estradiol, and ethynylestradiol and many more disgarded pharmaceuticals and personal care products. Estrogens are released into the environment with wastewater effluent wich migrates down into the sediments. With more money and science required to rid the drinking water of these contaminants, why not end the cycle of contaminants entering the water, entering sediments,reentering the water. CLEAN THE SEDIMENT AND THE WATER TOGETHER, AND ONLY ONCE. APPLY THE TECHNOLOGY
32. Uncle B | 06.15.08
Society is funny. First we were trapped on the family farm, traded our brawn, morality and beauty for jobs with the ‘man’, now we are headed back to an organic-agricultural life. We will bring with us all that modern technology has to offer, and probably will have a more comfortable and healthier time of it. The ‘Man’ will try to follow us there with taxes for him to pay for his wild dreams, but this time, he will have to back down because we are educated enough to not be taken advantage of, and numerous enough to out vote his lunacies. Once the migration is underway, oil prices will fall since less will be burnt, the rains will return, global warming will retreat, the whore-houses of the ‘man’ will die off, and humanity will return from extreme consumerism to a more humble and sustainable reality. Many will die off, mostly those who do not or can not adjust, those who survive will never forget the lesson taught to mankind about the evils of forming corporations. A new chapter to the ‘Book’ will be written, and a new more humane, gentle respectful life will continue. We are at the end of a horrible exploitation. We will go through a fiery cleansing into a new enlightened world. We are not short of water or oil, we are short of knowledge and we will be taught by mother Nature.
33. Feliks | 06.18.08
Oscillating dynamo product “Water Oil” If we have enought energy, we product hydrogen , and transport too place .And next made of sea water , clean water.
http://www.new4stroke.com/quest book
1. Anne | 05.29.08
Well, i fyou look at the history of the middle east, waater has been ‘the new oil” there for centuries: They have fought over water supplies since the dawn of man. In the industrialized west, we are just too shortsighted to plan for this looming crisis. Instead of planning to manage our resources, we react to crisis and this will be our way of handling the new “blue gold”.