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Report Predicts Thirstier World
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Going
Backwards
Report Predicts Thirstier World
One in three people won't have access to sufficient
water by 2025, forum sponsored by the U.N. concludes. Clashes loom,
it says.
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by
Maggie Farley
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UNITED NATIONS -- "Whiskey's for drinking, water's for fighting about,"
Mark Twain is said to have observed, and on Monday, scientists warned
that more people may be fighting over water this century than over
oil.
A report issued Monday at the U.N.-sponsored World Water Forum in
Stockholm says that one in three people will not have access to enough
water by 2025 and that it is unlikely that traditional agriculture
could feed the world's population by then. Already, bottled drinking
water costs more per gallon than gas around the world, and it is bound
to become even more precious.
Water shortages affect about 450 million people in 29 countries, and
tensions over water rights in Asia and Africa could erupt into serious
clashes if governments don't find new ways to use existing supplies
more efficiently, the report warns. "Water could become the new oil
as a major source of conflict," Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander,
chairman of the 2000 World Water Forum, said after opening the Stockholm
conference Monday.
"Increasing scarcity, competition and arguments over water in the
first quarter of the 21st century will dramatically change the way
we value and use water and the way we mobilize and manage water resources,"
he said.
From clashes over the use of local watering holes to disagreements
between countries over the right to dam a shared river to corporations'
desire to privatize distribution, water has already become a major
source of strife. While few wars have been fought over water outright,
political disagreements are intensified when such essential resources
become scarce.
Californians are familiar with the challenges of making a city grow
from a desert. Just as Los Angeles had to siphon water from rivers
and watersheds hundreds of miles away as its population exploded,
rapidly expanding cities in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are thirsting
for adequate supplies for drinking and sanitation.
Despite innovations that have lowered costs of water treatment, more
than a billion people still lack safe drinking water, said Sandra
Postel, director of the Global Water Policy Project based in Amherst,
Mass. "We're running as fast as we can just to stay in one place,"
she said.
Rural, agricultural areas are threatened the most, the report says.
A combination of global warming, wasteful practices and pollution
means that major rivers that traditionally have been relied on by
millions of people are now running dry for part of the year. The Yellow
River in China, the Nile in Africa and the Indus and the Ganges in
south Asia don't always reach the sea during the dry season, leaving
farmers struggling. Agricultural scientists are trying to find ways
to grow more food with less water to prevent famine in the next 25
years.
"There's not enough water available to produce enough food. That's
the problem," said Peter Gleick, director of the Pacific Institute
for Studies in Development, Environment and Security in Oakland.
There is no shortage of answers when scientists, government leaders
and environmentalists gather at a meeting like the one in Stockholm--just
a lack of consensus.
There are many small things that can be done that could have broad
effects on water use around the world, Gleick said. Farmers can choose
more water-efficient crops to produce "more crops per drop." Consumers
can rethink their diets: It takes 16 times as much water to produce
a ton of beef as a ton of grain, Gleick said.
"There are people who say we're heading for disaster and those who
say we don't have a problem," he said. "It all depends on the choices
we make."
Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times
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