Water – You Can’t Wage War Without It

Napoleon said that an army marches on its stomach. Turns out today’s army marches on its canteen – when it can find enough water to fill it.

The Pentagon says that difficulties in finding potable water are shaping its activities and not just in places like Iraq. From Reuters:

Soldiers, weapons, food and fuel are important but the U.S. Army absolutely cannot operate for long without water, a top Pentagon official said on Tuesday.

This simple fact is just as true for domestic bases as it is in “austere” forward installations in Iraq, said Tad Davis, the Army’s deputy assistant secretary for environment.

In Iraq, 80 percent of cargo in Army convoys headed into forward areas over the last several years consisted of fuel and water. To make the convoys shorter — and therefore less of a target — the Army worked on making bases more fuel-efficient and looked for ways to reuse or purify existing water supplies, Davis said.

Ultimately, they set up six water bottling facilities in Iraq to serve U.S. Army needs.

Davis said that water supply issues are also a concern at military bases in the United States where the Pentagon has begun pilot studies at two major bases to examine water consumption and the true state of regional water resources.

 

Poor + Water = Screwed and Screwed Again

It’s a bitch to be poor and thirsty. You see the poorest people on the planet naturally have the least amount of money (that’s why they’re poor) and yet they have to pay the most for water – and often by a huge margin – compared to rich folks.

Check out this eye-opening analysis piece from the Financial Times:

“Slum-dwellers in Dar es Salaam pay the equivalent of £4 ($8, €5) for 1,000 litres of water, bought over time and by the canister. In the same Tanzanian city, wealthier households connected to the municipal supply receive that amount for just 17p. In the UK, the same volume of tap water costs 81p and in the US it is as low as 34p.

Figures from other countries confirm the evidence: it is generally the poorest who pay most for what is one of the most essential of all natural resources. Water is in short supply for a large proportion of the world’s people: about 1bn lack access to clean water and 2.6bn have no sanitation. An estimated 5,000 children die every day from water-related disease, according to WaterAid, the London-based charity.

One of the most damaging effects of the failure to price water fairly is the global trade in “virtual water” – that is, water used in the production of food or manufactured goods. Some countries that are poor in water nevertheless send it abroad in the form of agricultural and industrial exports.

Australia exports more “virtual water” than any other country, through shipments of wheat and other crops. Its farmers have suffered a seven-year drought, only now showing signs of easing. As a result, they are the most efficient agricultural users of water in the world. Experts wonder, however, whether it makes sense for such an arid country to engage so much in growing irrigation-intensive crops for export.

The trade in “virtual water” goes largely unnoticed by consumers of the processed goods. But the price of many goods sold around the world shows that the water that went into their production was very cheap. A pair of jeans that sells for a few pounds uses up to 11,000 litres of water, according to Waterwise, a UK not-for-profit organisation. A hamburger that sells for less than a dollar requires more than 2,400 litres of water to produce.

Agricultural users of water are often heavily subsidised, whether directly or indirectly, making the water for farmers “vastly underpriced”, says Andrew Hudson, leader of the water governance programme at the UNDP. This is contributing to serious problems: the UN organisation estimates that in parts of India, ground-water tables are falling by more than a metre a year, jeopardising future agricultural production.
Other businesses may also have their water supply subsidised or may be granted extraction rights that give them cheap or even free access to water sources. The UNDP concludes: “When it comes to water management, the world has been indulging in an activity analogous to a reckless and unsustainable credit-financed spending spree. Countries have been using far more water than they have, as defined by the rate of replenishment.” This recklessness is storing up problems for the future, when the world’s population is forecast to rise to 9bn by 2050 from nearly 6.7bn today.”

You can find well over 200 posts on this blog concerning water and the looming problems that are facing the world, including Canada. It’s a potential, multi-dimensional catastrophe that’s tied to global warming, population growth (and migration), global security issues (Darfur for one), droughts, floods, freshwater salination, pollution and depletion (including groundwater exhaustion).

We’re all but blind to the enormity of this building problem and the impacts it will bring to everyone on this planet – and that means you too. But, so long as it keeps pouring freely whenever we turn the tap, it’s out of sight, out of mind.

We have to stop taking this for granted. If we leave this issue at the bottom of the pile, the day will come when we give ourselves cause to regret that.

 

Water – Mine and Yours

It appears that Canada has scuppered a United Nations effort to have water, or at least access to it, recognized as a basic human right. It seems we acted out of fear; fear that not obstructing this effort could land Canada in a situation where other nations could claim entitlement to our freshwater resources in the name of upholding basic human rights.

This is a tough question that’s deeply rooted in the larger environmental crisis and, as so typical in these matters, there are no good answers.

What are basic human rights and who is responsible for ensuring access to them? I suppose it would be hard to argue that access to clean air is a basic, as in the sense of fundamental, human right. No one has a right to foul another person’s air. But wait a minute. What do you tell the people of Toronto or Hong Kong or so many other places where residents have to be warned to stay indoors lest they be exposed to the air?

You see, once you recognize something as a basic right, those who interfere with or impair that right must bear some moral, if not outright legal, responsibility to those adversely affected. I won’t get into cases like Rylands v. Fletcher but let’s say you and I live beside each other on a hill. My property slopes down to yours. You have a lovely back yard with a patio and swimming pool, the whole deal. I decide I want to really get my lawn looking great so I have a truckload of manure delivered to my backyard. A massive rainstorm hits, loosening the manure pile and sending it sliding across into your yard and your swimming pool. How would you feel about that?

Do you have a basic right not to have my manure slide into your swimming pool? Of course you do and I’d have to pay to have everything made right and, even then, you’d still be furious with me for a long time to come.

So why then do we feel entitled to release other forms of contamination into our most essential, common property – the air? We don’t keep that pollution on our side of the fence, we don’t even attempt it. Why not? Because we wouldn’t want to live or breathe in such a place. Just to keep going we’d have to spend a lot of money to clean up our mess and that, in turn, would eat into our profits, our prosperity. So therefore our very prosperity is directly linked into having most of that pollution released to be carried elsewhere.

Now, if we were going to recognize access to safe, clean water as a basic human right, how could we resist the argument that access to safe, clean air is an even more fundamental human right? You see, if we let that one slip past us, we could be held to account for the garbage we spew into mankind’s air.

And who would be howling the loudest? Why those poor folks who, while they contribute almost nothing to greenhouse gas emissions, just happen to live where its effects are most strongly felt. We get the prosperity bonus of releasing this contamination into the atmosphere and they get to pay the real price of that. Sounds fair, doesn’t it? Isn’t that sort of like telling your neighbour that as soon as that manure slid across the lot line it became his and therefore he can clean up his own damned yard? Of course it is.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that we can’t treat water and air and resources (renewable and non) on a problem by problem basis. All that will ensure is that we don’t succeed on anything because even meaningful success on one front can be rendered meaningless by failures on others. What good is it if I ensure you have an abundant supply of clean, freshwater yet, at the same time, you can’t breathe the air? What good is it if you have clean air and adequate drinking water but nothing to eat? Sustaining life demands that we deal with all of these issues comprehensively and we’re nowhere near acknowledging that yet even as the clock ticks down.

We need to be really clear-headed on these challenges. There are no Goody Two Shoes solutions. Overpopulation has to be addressed. It’s one thing for an agrarian China to have 1.3-billion people. It’s another thing altogether for an industrialized China to impose on the world the burden of that population. China, like India, is still just getting into second gear but it’s on the accelerator and wants to get into fourth or fifth just as soon as it can and that, friends, spells disaster if we haven’t dealt with these challenges comprehensively. We have to find a workable balance and that’s probably going to mean some measures to curb overpopulation.

I think what we’re most afraid of and yet won’t mention is that, if we’re going to call upon others to make concessions, we’re going to have to be willing to give ground ourselves. We have reached the point where our consumption exceeds our planet’s finite resources. We have hit the wall. Now if these wealthy newcomers decide they want the same sorts of things we Westerners enjoy, somebody is going to have to give up something and all eyes are going to be on those guys who have the most.

The thing is we don’t even have to wait for this to happen. It’s already begun. Look at the food riots in Africa and as close to home as Mexico. Look at our collapsing fisheries. 70% of our food fish species are endangered and we’re switching over to the put the remaining species in the same position. A lot of the world’s poorest people are dependent on fish for their survival. At the same time they’re facing the disappearance of their fisheries, global warming is bringing them freshwater disruptions and desertification.

Here’s something you need to understand, something you have to remember. These people look at their misery and misfortune and they see your face. If you check out any Third World papers there are plenty of reports about just who has brought this devastation to them. We’re not talking about horseshit in a swimming pool, we’re talking about people struggling and failing to find food and water for their kids. Can you see what’s coming?

 

Worth Its Weight in – Water!

One of the most immediate effects of climate change has been disruption of water systems around the world. It’s not that there’s less rain, it’s that rainfall patterns have changed. It produces a “feast or famine” problem of flooding followed by droughts.

Any farmer can tell you that crops depend on the supply of the right amount of water at the right times. Too much rain is as devastating as too little.

The eastern Mediterranean region has been particularly hard hit by drought and soaring temperatures. The Greek tourism minister warned last summer that his country is losing its Mediterranean climate. In places like Turkey, asphalt roads melt.

Ankara came awfully close to running out of water last summer. According to the Environmental News Network, the municipality had to impose strict rationing:

“Faced with low rainfall and a shrinking reservoir, the city of 4 million resorted to water rationing. Hospitals delayed surgeries. Stray dogs died in the streets. Mayor Melih Gokcek asked residents to “wash your hair, not your bodies” and came under heavy criticism for alleged water mismanagement.”

Global warming is presenting an enormous water challenge to both India and China. The Himalayan glaciers are in full retreat which threatens the major irrigation arteries of both countries including the Ganges and the Yellow River. India’s bread basket region is utterly dependent on Himalayan runoffs for agricultural production.

Last week 38-mayors met in Istanbul to hammer out the Istanbul Urban Water Consensus. They’re working to develop protocols for water supply to major cities and, not surprisingly, that means for some the dreaded “public private partnership” solution. This is a huge growth market. The Indian newspapers leave no doubt that the emerging economic superpowers will have to rely on the private sector to manage and operate their water supply services.

The typical P3 operation sees the water remain a public asset. The private operator establishes the infrastructure to collect, treat and distribute water at a price that discourages wasting the resource while still being affordable to the entire population. Unfortunately that can be an impossible task without government subsidies.

With half the world’s population now living in cities, you could do worse than to invest in a successful water supply company. It’s a definite growth industry although it’s still in the teething stage so the outcome remains a bit unpredictable.

 

Making Water The Old Fashioned Way

The good folks of Orange County, California are poised to begin drinking their own water. The county has just put into operation the biggest sewage reclamation plant in the world, one that is expected to generate more than 70-million gallons of pristine drinking water every day.

Since you asked, here’s how it works. Sewage is treated, the effluent purified and then the already “clean” water is injected into the county’s massive acquifer, a process that further cleans it. By the time it’s pumped out of the acquifer it’s so clean that lime has to be added to keep it from dissolving the system’s concrete pipes.

The reclamation plant cost the county just shy of half a million dollars. At capacity, the plant could produce 130-million gallons per day. Although the reclaimed product is a little more expensive than water brought in from northern California, imported water prices are soon expected to close the gap.

Another benefit is that the effluent is no longer being pumped into the ocean after primary treatment.

 

Water, It’s the New Oil

Looking for a good investment? Have a look at the leading companies in the rapidly expanding, global water supply industry. There are a lot of places in the world where people lack access to clean, fresh water and that’s a growing market at least for the century to come. What’s more, people who need fresh water will pay what it takes to get it. Life itself doesn’t really work too well without it.

Water as a commodity. It’s something a lot of Canadians have fretted over for years, the idea of somebody selling our stock of freshwater to foreign bidders. Keep your eye on that.

An interesting development in the US southwest where water is becoming increasingly scarce. It arises out of the apportionment of water between agriculture and domestic use. About three-quarters of their fresh water supply is earmarked for agriculture. People gotta eat – or do they? Some clever farmers in the region are reportedly now getting into the business of selling water they might otherwise be putting on their fields. They’re not selling their quota, just the water. That means they’re taking a common resource, privatizing it and putting it onto the commercial market. The best thing is they never pay dime one for the water itself. They get it so they can grow crops. The new way, however, cuts out all the bother of planting and irrigating and harvesting. You simply sell what you never produced in the first place. Neat trick, eh?

“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”

For some people – a lot of people actually – the danger is too much water, sea water to be specific. Rising sea levels forecast to result from global warming pose an enormous problem to the Middle East. Egypt’s Nile River is especially vulnerable to rising water levels and the associated infusion of salt and brackish water. The UN Environment Programme estimates it could result in the displacement of between two and four million Egyptians by 2050.

Sea water levels don’t have to rise very much at all before they begin salinating the groundwater supplies of particularly vulnerable spots like Gaza. A little salinity in groundwater can be incredibly destructive. It’s widely believed that the ancient Mesopotamian civilization was destroyed when they rendered the once richly fertile lands of the Tigris and Euphrates delta utterly sterile by centuries of irrigating with brackish water. The salts don’t wash away. Instead they accumulate over time until the soil becomes incapable of supporting plant life. Remember how the Romans took revenge on Carthage?

Sea water levels are also expected to wreak proper hell on security in the Jordanian, Israeli and Palestinian areas (and, please, don’t send me e-mails screaming that there is no Palestine).

The report entitled Climate Change: A New Threat to Middle East Security, by the non-governmental organisation Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME), was presented at the annual UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia.

It believes climate change could act as a “threat multiplier”, exacerbating water scarcity and tensions over water between nations linked by hydrological resources, geography and shared borders, particularly in Jordan, Gaza and Egypt.

“Poor and vulnerable populations, which exist in significant numbers throughout the region, will likely face the greatest risk”, says the study.

Okay, this isn’t the delusional ranting of some whacko, leftie NGO. It’s a reality already recognized in studies by very hard-nosed Israeli hydrologists who argue fiercely that Israel needs to keep a permanent hold on the Golan Heights and the West Bank for its own hydrological survival. They worry that a Palestinian West Bank and a Syrian-controlled Golan will leave Israel at the mercy of its enemies for essential access to freshwater.

Of course there’s always desalination plants. Sure, but not really. Desalination plants use a lot of fossil fuel and generate a lot of contamination of coastal waters but the product they produce, while economically feasible for urban consumption, is way too expensive to quench the enormous thirst of the agricultural sector.

“Economic unrest across the region, due to a decline in agricultural production from climate impacts on water resources, could also lead to greater political unrest, posing a threat to current regimes and, thereby, affecting internal and cross-border relations,” the FOEME report claims.