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Demand outstrips supply as populations grow
More than 80 countries are short of water and more than two million people have no access to clean water or sanitation.
It is a crisis that threatens the health and the economic welfare of 40 percent of the world, according to a report by the World Bank and it can only get worse as the population continues to grow.
The report says world-wide demand for water is doubling every 21 years, more in some regions, and supply cannot remotely keep pace with demand.
World population has recently reached six billion and the United Nation's predicts that it will reach nine billion by 2050.
But population growth alone does not account for increased water demand. Since 1900, there has been a six-fold increase in water use for only a two-fold increase in population size.
This reflects greater water usage associated with rising standards of living (for example diets containing less grain and more meat).
It also reflects potentially unsustainable levels of irrigated agriculture which uses 74 percent of all water taken by humans from rivers, lakes, aquifers, and wetlands against 18 percent for industry and just eight percent for domestic and other uses.
Water quality is deteriorating in many areas of the developing world as population increases and salinity caused by industrial farming and over-extraction rises. About 95 percent of the world's cities still dump raw sewage into their waters.
Ninety percent of the most severe water problems are in the developing countries. But the crisis is not confined to the poor. A 2006 WWF report says rich countries too must make drastic changes.
In a survey of the industrialised world, it said many cities were already losing the battle to maintain water supplies as governments talked about conservation but failed to implement their pledges.
"Supporting large-scale industry and growing populations using water at high rates has come close to exhausting the water supplies of some First World cities and is a looming threat for many, if not most, others," the report warned.
It suggested that agriculture in the richer countries should have to pay more for water and be held responsible more actively for its efficient use and for managing wastes, like salt, especially in intensive livestock farming.
Water had become a key political issue at local, regional, and national levels as climate change and loss of wetlands dramatically reduce supplies.
"At the rhetoric level, it is now generally accepted in the developed world that water must be used more efficiently and that water must be made available again to the environment in sufficient quantity for natural systems to function.
"Many countries also recognise that extensive -- and very expensive -- repairs are required to reduce some of the damage inflicted on water systems and catchments in the past," it said.
But it added: "Putting the rhetoric into practice in the face of habitual practices and intense lobbying by vested interests has been very difficult."
In Europe, the report said, countries around the Atlantic are suffering from recurring droughts, while in the Mediterranean region water resources were being depleted by the boom in tourism and irrigated agriculture.
In Australia, already the world's driest continent, salinity had become a major threat to a large proportion of key farming areas, while in the United States wide areas were using substantially more water than could be naturally replenished
Even in Japan with its high rainfall, contamination of water supplies had become a serious issue.
The overall picture, the WWF said, would only get worse in coming years as global warming brought lower rainfall and increased evaporation of water and changed the pattern of snow melting from mountain areas.
It’s a crisis of bad management
Poor management of water resources and infrastructure, not a scarcity of water, is the real issue according to many experts.
"There is no shortage of water in the world, but there is a crisis of management of water supplies," Asit Bitwas, head of the Third World Centre for Water Management, told an August 2006 meeting of 1,000 experts.
"There is enough water, even in the Middle East, if we manage our water properly," Bitwas said, disputing the findings of a new international report that said one in three of the world's people lived in areas where water was in short supply.
He said many developing nations often wrongly put priority on expensive schemes to build dams or divert rivers in a bid to increase supplies. The key was in simpler measures like fixing leaks.
"In nearly all the mega cities nearly 40 to 60 percent (of water) never reaches the consumer because of leaks and poor maintenance," he said.
"It is cheaper to fix your leaks, improve your maintenance systems which you can do in a couple of years rather than build a dam 200 kilometres away," he said.
His views were echoed in a recent report (September 2006) by the Business Council of Australia which said rather than restrict water use, governments should fix water supply flaws, which would boost the economy by as much as $9 billion.
"Australia's water supply system is broken and needs urgent solutions," BCA chief executive Katie Lahey said. "Unavoidable water scarcity is one of Australia's greatest myths."
Since 2002, Australians have endured one of the worst droughts in recorded history, with governments imposing restrictions on householders watering their gardens and banning people from using hoses to wash their cars.
Water restrictions in many communities would be unnecessary if a competitive water-trading scheme was introduced and there was more investment in water infrastructure.
"Water use in our major cities has declined by nine percent since 2001, but our water supply problems are getting worse," she said.
Harvesting the rain
Every time it rains, billions of litres of water go down the drain. Yet rainwater is a safe, sustainable source of water that can meet all of a household's requirements.
Rainwater tanks can aid self-sufficiency, providing a back-up supply in case of water restrictions caused by drought, peak supply shortages, or water quality problems and reduce demand for mains water.
Because it is chlorine free, rainwater can provide a better quality potable supply than mains, bore or dam water.
Recycling
Water recycling is a contentious issue and causes heated debate.
In August 2006 the Queensland city of Toowoomba voted against a plan to introduce recycled water despite having three dams that are nearly empty and predictions of a worsening drought.
The recycled water supply would have been sustainable—and safe.
Expensive new infrastructure may now be needed to resolve the city’s water crisis.
The water recycling process involves the treatment of effluent, and this is what the opponents object to, despite the fact that it produces safe, pure, uncontaminated water.
The process is being used successfully—and without complaints from consumers—in a number of cities around the world.
Disputes over water are likely to become more frequent as water supply problems grow worse.
Singapore, a small island state with limited land of its own and a large population, currently takes much of its water from neighbouring Malaysia. The two countries are now squabbling over the price Singapore will have to pay when the current supply agreement expires in a few years.
Singapore’s solution has been to augment its water supply with rainwater harvesting and new wastewater treatment plants supplying pure recycled water.
Sydney Water (www.sydneywater.com.au) has introduced a number of initiatives to provide recycled water to homes for non-drinking uses such as laundries, toilets, gardens, and car washing.
The state’s biggest industrial user of water, the Port Kembla Steelworks, began taking recycled water from a new Wollongong treatment plant in September 2006, saving twenty million litres of fresh water a day. The plant’s use of water from the nearby Avon Dam drops from 37 million litres a day to 17 million litres.
Desalination
Desalination is an expensive option that involves processing seawater to remove the salt. Proponents see it as the answer to Australia’s water woes but opponents say it is a costly and unrealistic option that is energy-intensive. We should be better managing our existing water resources.
There are currently 11,000 desalination plants in 120 countries, 60 percent of them in the Middle East. They use power generated by fossil fuels and contribute enormously to global warming with heavy greenhouse emissions.
In some places there have been worrying suggestions of converting these plants to nuclear power.
The NSW Government recently abandoned plans to build a massive desalination plant in Sydney. Emissions from the plant would have been equivalent to putting an additional 220,000 cars on the road, or burning two litres of petrol for every 1,000 litres of fresh water produced.
More people are getting safer water
A goal of halving the number of people with no access to safe drinking water by 2015 is within reach, according to a 2006 UN review, but the world is lagging in a linked goal of better sanitation.
Diarrhoea and malaria, the main water-related diseases, killed 1.8 million and 1.3 million people respectively in 2002, almost all of them children under the age of five.
•Fact.
A calorie of food needs about a litre of water to produce. Typical food consumption is 3000 calories a day per person, or 3000 litres of water.
A kilo of industrially produced meat requires 10,000 litres.
•Fact.
Beijing, host to the next Olympic Games, has been dubbed the driest major city on the planet. Its population of 15.4 million people will swell by 2.5 million during the Games.