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Time Running Out Faster Than Water, Experts Warn
STOCKHOLM - A major week-long international water conference opened in the Swedish capital Monday with an ominous warning: time is running out faster than fresh water.
A man fills water containers in a slum area in Manila, Philippines. Increasing water pollution and dwindling water quality around the globe will be the main focus as around 2,500 experts begin gathering in Stockholm for the 20th edition of the World Water Week.(AFP/Noel Celis)
If the "massive and complex challenges" facing one of the
world's most finite natural resources are not resolved soon,
the future looks grimly devastating: scarcities, pollution,
droughts, floods, desertification and diseases.
Gunilla Carlsson, the Swedish minister for international development cooperation, described the recent floods in Pakistan as one of the major natural disasters facing that country.
"We are deeply concerned about the situation in Pakistan," she said, of a country where over 60 years of infrastructure development has been literally washed away in a water- related calamity in the flood-affected regions.
She said the Swedish government has so far responded with 20 million dollars in assistance to Pakistan.
Carlsson said the most affected - as in most natural disasters - were the poor and the most vulnerable in society. At last count, over 1,700 have died while more than 1.2 million homes and schools have been destroyed by the floods, according to reports from Pakistan.
Carlsson said there could be more deaths from water-borne diseases, even as Pakistan struggles to cope with the disaster.
Speaking at the opening ceremony in a city surrounded by water, Anders Berntell, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), warned: "Bad water kills more people than HIV, malaria and wars together, affecting the lives of families and the economic development of many countries around the world."
"We are also increasingly seeing that ecosystems and their services are being degraded by pollution, which will affect all functions of society," he added.
The conference, attended by more than 2,500 key water experts, will focus on the theme: "Responding to Global Changes: The Water Quality Challenge."
This is the 20th consecutive year that SIWI is hosting its 'World Water Week' in a city described as Europe's "first green capital".
This year, Berntell said, weather patterns have been increasingly erratic. "We cannot say that any of these individual events are effects of climate change, but the patterns coincide with the scenarios that scientists have predicted: snowfall, floods and severe droughts," he noted. He regretted that many representatives from Pakistan couldn't attend the conference.
"We share the frustration and despair of all those affected, and we share the concern with many over the fact that our leaders did not resume their responsibilities (at the last failed Climate Change conference) in Copenhagen."
In international discussions on water, there is a tendency to focus on the availability of water, but not quality.
"Poor water quality affects human lives and livelihoods and the function of ecosystems in the same way as lack of water," Berntell said.
According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, he said, freshwater ecosystems have degraded more than any other ecosystem, including tropical rainforests.
Several studies indicate that more than 40 percent of fish species and amphibians are threatened with extinction.
Polluted freshwater ends up in the oceans, causing serious damage to many coastal areas and fisheries, thereby constituting a major challenge to ocean and coastal resource management.
Addressing the gathering, Dr Rita Colwell, the 2010 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate, said that shortcomings in addressing the water quality issue, coupled with climate changes, could lead to disastrous outbreaks of water-borne diseases such as cholera.
This, in turn, is bound to affect economic and national security.
But Carlsson, the Swedish minister, also touted some of the success stories. She said a great deal has happened since World Water Week was launched 20 years ago.
For example, almost two billion more people have access to safe drinking water compared with 20 years ago, and around 1.5 billion more people have access to sanitation.
The provision of safe water has actually outperformed global population growth and given more than eight million people, roughly the population of Sweden, access to safe water every month for 20 years, said Carlsson.
Meanwhile, the Sri Lanka-based International Water Management Institute (IWMI) pointedly says that "running out of water is running out of time".
"We are headed for a water crisis," it warns in a new publication authored by Colin Chartres and Samyuktha Varma, and titled 'Out of Water' released here.
As the global population is forecast to reach nine billion by 2050, water is becoming scarcer around the world as expanding cities, developing countries and new biofuel crops suck water in ever-greater amounts from the world's rivers and lakes, say the authors.
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31 Comments so far
Show AllWater, that will be the new oil soon,everyone will be fighting over it,and he who controls the water, will control the planet. We are going to have to travel to outer-space within a hundred years to get resources, there will not be enough here. Regardless of what we do, if we keep growing in population, then we must search the stars... it will be a cool time to live in.
you have been watching too many sci-fi movies and listening to idiotic futurists that think technology is going to save us, when in fact it is destroying us, in combination with the capitalist/imperialist/western ideological mind set.
good luck out in the stars...yes, please leave the earth to the rest of us that will try our best to nourish, rather than exploit the planet for profit.
I am with you, Malatesta. This person is out to lunch.
I believe it would bet that this planet's future human population will never reach 9B. The great dying off will start well before that. But it would be a bad bet for me. I won't be around in 2050 to collect it.
"As the global population is forecast to reach nine billion by 2050, water is becoming scarcer around the world..."
Sound like the most effective thing we can do to ensure fresh water for everyone is to popularize birth control.
Fresh water is not the only thing that's becoming scarcer.
Most of the world's fisheries are on the verge of collapse or have already collapsed (e.g., see north Atlantic cod fisheries). We have fewer and fewer acres of functional tropical rainforest every year. Coral reefs are in decline. More and more arable land is turning into desert, due to over-use and/or climate change and/or salinity problems.
There's just too many people on our planet (especially, but not only, in the highly-consuming, "developed" economies of the world). Mother Earth is getting sicker daily.
We can only support 9 billion with a massive input of stored (carbon) energy into the biosphere. And even then, we can only do so by modifying more wild habitat and driving thousands of species extinct.
To set the forthcoming disaster in context, I would recommend "Collapse" by Jared Diamond who has studied many groups (Easter Island, Anasazi, Greenland Vikngs) who blazed the trail we are wilfully following towards a ghastly end for most of our grand- and great-grand children.
One child per family worldwide for the next several generations. Empower women.
I'm sure that china would not be the powerhouse it is at present if it had not (amongst other things) instituted limitations to family size.
Totally on the money, Parallax.
And popularize drastic cuts in consumption by the West.
ABSOLUTELY!!!!!
If the water runs out, we're al going to be in hot water.
AD
There's hope. Perhaps a global pandemic of, say, drug resistant TB, MRSA, c. difficile, etc., will reduce demand.
What do you think the H1N1 pandemic was created for? Watch and see how many vaccinated females will mysteriously have trouble conceiving over the next few years.
yeah, the great h1n1 pandemic that never was.............
whatever happened to it anyway? we should all be dead by now....................
One thing each of us are able to do to impact one area of MASSIVE water consumption and pollution is to withdraw support from the meat industry. (I think I'm on shakey ground even just for saying that, I think they made it against the law to say anything bad about any "food group") That is the power of that industry. It boggles the mind to try to imagine the scale of what it must be. 98% of restaurants offer menus with 98% of the offerings containing animal. (I made those #'s up, it's gotta be something like that though. Believe me, it is a real challenge finding vegan food out there). It shouldn't have to be that hard. There are even some bonus byproducts, you'll get off those heart meds and probably lose weight. It's time to make some sacrifices to help the earth.
Though still found in most habitable areas of the US and also in WASH DC, Courage, Imagination, and Intelligence are on the verge of extinction. If they survive our educational institutions, it is only to serve as domesticated pets and laborers. Pioneers in science, social scientists included, are free to explore as long as they remain docile and don't rock the boat. The causes of the water crisis facing the planet are well understood as are the necessary actions to prevent more and likely worse problems in the future. Unfortunately most of the solutions include reaching deep into the pockets and egos of those, I don't think ruthless criminals is too harsh a term, profiting immensely from the rape of every ecosystem on Earth.
" Courage, Imagination, and Intelligence are on the verge of extinction." HOW ABOUT CONTROL OF THE LOWER "SELF": what happened to true humility, righteous action, Truth, attempts to practice PURE LOVE, harmlessness to all sentient beings, PEACE?
This article sounds just like Charlie Brown's teacher. Wa wa wa, waawaa wa wa ! Really, it feels like the movie, the Day the Earth Stood Still, It is only on the brink of annihilation, will we ever get a clue. All this gloom and doom falls on too many deaf ears. Global devastation articles are so common. I truly wonder if anybody cares. I garohntee the super rich would be thrilled beyond belief to see millions of super poor people extinguished. On to the next article....!
I think this site should be renamed "Common Nightmares"
OK--you're probably right that there is little good news--only people bemoaning how bad things are getting without trying very hard to develop alternatives that reverse the present course.
How about "un-desertification"?
What do I mean by this?
Envision a vast array of Atmospheric Vortex Engines, optimized for high water throughput using pumps, on the eastern shore of the warm Mediterranean Sea from GAZA to the northeast corner. The warm sea water is sprayed in the entrance, fresh water evaporated, rising 10 km into the troposphere in a vortex. From there, winds carry the humidified air eastward toward the Lebanese mountains and northward to Turkey where it falls as rain or snow, replenishing the Euphrates river.
With enough water, the Turks allow it to flow into Iraq, where it's badly needed.
Yes it would require a big investment, but something far short of 100 billion dollars, which is spent each year in the Iraqi occupation. But it could replenish water supplies in all the countries east and north of the Mediterranean.
Something to think about. http://vortexengine.ca
Could the same process work on the east coast of Africa? Could it really be done for a hundred billion? Rhetorical question: Why isn't this happening instead of spending trillions on warfare?
I meant to say WEST coast of Africa, causing moisture and rain all across the continent. This would go a long way toward improving life on the continent.
The process could work anywhere there is relatively warm water and winds to carry the moisture inland, and highlands to condense it out. Southern Australia would be perfect for this where warm surface water could be collected from St. Vincents Gulf and condensed in the Murray-Darling watershed to the east, replenishing that river system.
In the case of West Africa, it already exists in the form of the Congo rain forest. However, there, the flow is driven by monsoonal winds from the sea toward the continent instead of prevailing westerlies, as is the case for the Mediterranean.
In the eastern Mediterranean, the effective season for this would be July through November when the sea is relatively warm producing a high "vapor pressure" and the device is capable of evaporating large amounts of water from the sea. The saltier, cooled "spent" seawater would be discharged through a pipe or channel where it would sink to the bottom, allowing warm surface water to replace it.
A "local" version of this idea which depends either on "tradewinds" or monsoonal flow is the seawatergreenhouse where there is no requirement for a a vortex--see
http://seawatergreenhouse.com
"If the "massive and complex challenges" facing one of the world's most finite natural resources are not resolved soon, the future looks grimly devastating: scarcities, pollution, droughts, floods, desertification and diseases."
This is a terribly misleading opening paragraph.
This nightmare is here already and nothing like water scarcity gets 'resolved soon'. The only way to pretend this isn't already happening is to pretend that because it isn't happening to you (or the author) it isn't happening. Millions of humans already live this reality. If you are reading the internet and posting to it, chances are you've got water running into your house too. The horror of scarcity, drought, and famine is already here on earth. (it has always been here by the way, thanks Jared Diamond), It just gets BIGGER and closer to YOU!
you said it pedro..................
The Earth is going to return to its solar carrying capacity within the next decades. If nations and their leaders, and, generally, individuals at the local level do not take stock of what is awaiting us and do not do their best to mitigate the transition out of the era of cheap fossil fuels, the transition will take a large toll in human lives, indeed.
I am speaking about fossil fuels, for the enormous population that the Earth is carrying right now is the direct result of the use of easily available fossil energetic inputs (primarily oil and natural gas).
At the inception of the industrial revolution in 1800, the world's population stood at one billion people. In the year 1000, there were 350 million of us. In 1999, the world's population had risen to a staggering 6 billions folks. What made that possible were fossil fuels, especially oil. On the solar carrying capacity of Earth alone, that would have been impossible.
Every success at staving off the effects of critical resource shortages, such as water, whether by better extraction, efficiency of use, storage, efficiency of distribution, is a step towards the bigger disaster as the population continues to grow and to strip this earth.
We need major amounts of both population reduction and affluence reduction. Affluance reduction can be best done, and is most meaningful when done by the currently wealthy nations. To the extent that wealth and assets can redistribute, and reduce the demands on our globe, this will most help the rest of the world. The ultra wealthy cannot hold out forever and not be physically unaffected by the starving masses. As we are coming up against the limits, global affluence reduction for nearly everyone, is unavoidable as there is less to share with everyone.
Redistribution as an egalitarian measure is pointless without global depopulation. As margins for survival become thinner and more widespread, the probability of any large region or group suddenly having disaster, with removal of life supports, and consequent deaths, becomes high. It will happen more often, to more people, somewhere. In the simplest of terms, the size in area and numbers of people at risk increases with time. If our compensation and global helping mechanisms are good enough, then by extension, eventually the entire world human population is at risk. There is then no outside agency which can intervene to rescue us all when final disaster strikes. Final disaster may strike because we cannot constrain growth, and redistribution happens sufficiently to maintain growth. History and geography tells us of vast disparities in peoples and places, so redistribution will never be sufficient. Trade and profits do benefit some much more than others. Technology, knowledge and skills transfer, do allow each region to maximise its environmental exploitation, with the aims of global trade.
Time is not on our side, as is not global climate change. Arctic melting may bring short term profits for oil and gas extraction, to keep the game going a little while longer, but the disasters are coming our way for everyone else.
What many more fortunate nations attitudes to immigration shows, and their limited stingy attitude to equalising the disparity in circumstances shows, is that we all deeply know, when the crunch comes, that we will not sacrifice our own groups well being for the rescue of others, no matter what the morals of causation decide. The rich nations believe that through their current fortune of being relatively wealthy and least effected, they will stand and survive, and watch as the rest of the world dies, thereby solving for a time, the competition for disappearing resources. They do not see how greatly interdependent the global economy is for energy, food and virtual water, and how much wealth depends apon global exploitation.
The mini storm of the global financial crisis, only a taste of the large physical crises to come, shows that when one big player falls, we all fall. How far we fall depends apon for how much longer we let this game of economic growth continue, before starting to let whole regions fall. The first step is to de-globalise. The peak oil crisis will help a bit here. A war with Iran by those gross military ape-heads, the US, might trigger this. The more the US tries to maintain its costly empire, the more surely they must eventually fail.
Local regions must be allowed to fall back to their lower intensity means of local sustainability, even as this means taking losses. Keeping up the global connections, to sustain our unsustainable empires, food, water and energy systems, means losing our life support systems globally. We the plague species will go bust globally, unless we can disconnect our critical dependencies. To bad the biggest connection we all share is the global climate, and its chains are unbreakable. We must welcome the first breakages, because the sooner we fall apart, the less likely that we will all fall together.
Very well said. Yes, as Reg Morrison said, we are just another plague species, no smarter than yeast in a briefly nutrient-filled jar.
We are all on the rapidly moving Titanic. Some of the wealthy are dancing, many are in steerage hungry but playing cards, others proudly drive the ship blind to the realities of the sea. I'd like to think I have learned to swim in cold water. I have also tried in my way to have my ass firmly planted next to one of the few life boats--but it is a long shot.
Even here on this site we see the technotriumphalist, the si-fi dreamers. What would it really take to turn this thing around? I never ceases to amaze me how the idea of endless population and economic growth is seldom challenged. At least I see it on CD.
"Time Running Out Faster Than Water, Experts Warn"
No experts cited in this article said any such thing!
Perhaps English is not the primary language of Thalif Deen, or he misunderstood the Sri Lankan message.
Pakistan: "water water everywhere and not a drop to drink..."
-30-
About that overpopulation problem, Katrina, Haiti, Pakistan are showing us right now how that is being handled. Let the poor die. Not that many aid resources are left to do anything about what will be increasing need anyway. With lower population pressure the earth may recover. It also may give some insight into why those who have want more, just to make sure they are not the ones abandoned to their fate. Bet that life is all set to go that short nasty brutal route again. A lot of people are already there.
Again it is suggested: Have you web-researched "The Carlyle Group"?