Humanity facing ‘Water Bankruptcy’
<http://www.greywatersystems.co.za./2010/06/21/humanity-facing-water-bankruptcy/>
Jun 212010
Humanity is facing “water bankruptcy” as a result of a crisis even greater
than the financial meltdown now destabilising physical water scarcity
the global economy two authoritative new reports show. They add that it is
already beginning to take effect and there will be no way of bailing the
earth out of water scarcity.
The two reports – one by the world’s foremost international economic forum
and the other by 24 United Nations agencies – presage the opening tomorrow
of the most important conference on the looming crisis for three years. The
World Water Forum which will be attended by 20000 people in Istanbul will
hear stark warnings of how half the world’s population will be affected by
water shortages in just 20 years’ time with millions dying and increasing
conflicts over dwindling resources.
A report by the World Economic Forum which runs the annual Davos meetings
of the international business and financial elite says that lack of water
will “soon tear into various parts of the global economic system” and “start
to emerge as a headline geopolitical issue”.
It adds: “The financial crisis gives us a stark warning of what can happen
if known economic risks are left to fester. We are living in a water
‘bubble’ as unsustainable and fragile as that which precipitated the
collapse in world financial markets. We are now on the verge of bankruptcy
in many places with no way of paying the debt back.”
The Earth – a blue-green oasis in the limitless black desert of space – has
a finite stock of water. There is precisely the same amount of it on the
planet as there was in the age of the dinosaurs and the world’s population
of more than 6.7 billion people has to share the same quantity as the 300
million global inhabitants of Roman times.
Water use has been growing far faster than the number of people. During the
20th century the world population increased fourfold but the amount of
freshwater that it used increased nine times over. Already 2.8 billion
people live in areas of high water stress the report calculates and this
will rise to 3.9 billion – more than half the expected population of the
world – by 2030. By that time water scarcity could cut world harvests by 30
per cent – equivalent to all the grain grown in the US and India – even as
human numbers and appetites increase.
Some 60 per cent of China’s 669 cities are already short of water. The huge
Yellow River is now left with only 10 per cent of its natural flow
sometimes failing to reach the sea altogether. And the glaciers of the
Himalayas which act as gigantic water banks supplying two billion people in
Asia are melting ever faster as global warming accelerates. Meanwhile
devastating droughts are crippling Australia and Texas.
The World Water Development Report compiled by 24 UN agencies under the
auspices of Unesco adds that shortages are already beginning to constrain
economic growth in areas as diverse and California China Australia India
and Indonesia. The report which will be published tomorrow also expects
water conflicts to break out in the Middle East Haiti Sri Lanka Colombia
and other countries.
“Conflicts about water can occur at all scales” it warns. “Hydrological
shocks” brought about by climate change are likely to “increase the risk of
major national and international security threats”.