Is the World Running Out of Water?

“Access to a secure, safe and sufficient source of fresh water is a fundamental requirement for the survival, well-being and socio-economic development of all humanity. Yet, we continue to act as if fresh water were a perpetually abundant resource. It is not.”—KOFI ANNAN, UNITED NATIONS SECRETARY-GENERAL.

AT MIDDAY every Thursday for the past thousand years, a unique tribunal has sat in the Spanish city of Valencia. Its job is to resolve disputes over water.

Local farmers in the fertile Valencian plain depend on irrigation, and irrigation requires lots of water—which has always been in short supply in this part of Spain. The farmers can appeal to the water tribunal whenever they feel that they are not getting their fair share. Disputes over water are nothing new, but they are rarely resolved so equitably as in Valencia.

Nearly 4,000 years ago, a violent dispute erupted among shepherds about access to a well near Beer-sheba in Israel. (Genesis 21:25) And water problems in the Middle East have become much worse since then. At least two prominent leaders in the region have said that water is the one issue that could lead them to declare war on a neighboring State.

In the semiarid countries of the world, water has always aroused strong feelings. The reason is simple: Water is vital to life. As Kofi Annan pointed out, “fresh water is precious: we cannot live without it. It is irreplaceable: there are no substitutes for it. And it is sensitive: human activity has a profound impact on the quantity and quality of fresh water available.”

Today as never before, both the quantity and quality of our planet’s fresh water are under threat. We should not be misled by the apparently abundant supply in some fortunate parts of the world.

The Shrinking Reservoir

“One of the great contradictions in human nature is that we value things only when they are scarce,” points out UN Under-Secretary-General Elizabeth Dowdeswell. “We only appreciate the water once the well runs dry. And the wells are running dry not just in drought-prone areas but also in areas not traditionally associated with water scarcity.”

Those who face water scarcity every day understand the problem only too well. Asokan, an office worker in Madras, India, has to get up two hours before dawn every morning. Carrying five buckets, he goes to the public water tap, which is a five-minute walk away. Since there is water only between 4:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m., he needs to get in line early. The water he takes home in his buckets will have to last all day. Many fellow Indians—and one billion other people on the planet—are not so fortunate. They have no tap, river, or well near their home.

Abdullah, a boy who lives in the Sahel region of Africa, is one of those. The road sign announcing his small village describes it as an oasis; but the water has long since disappeared, and there is hardly a tree in sight. Abdullah has the job of fetching the family’s water from a well over half a mile [1 km] away.

In some parts of the world, the demand for fresh, clean water has already begun to outstrip the supply. The reason is simple: A large portion of mankind live in arid or semiarid areas, where water has long been scarce. (See the map on page 3.) According to the Stockholm Environment Institute, a third of the world’s population already live in areas that suffer moderate to severe water shortage. And demand for water has risen at more than twice the rate of the population increase.

The water supply, on the other hand, is basically fixed. Deeper wells and new reservoirs may bring temporary relief, but the amount of rain that falls on the earth and the amount of water stored under the ground essentially remain the same. Therefore, meteorologists calculate that within 25 years, the quantity of water available to each person on earth may be cut in half.

Effect Upon Health and Food

How does water scarcity affect people? First of all, it harms their health. It is not that they will die of thirst; rather, the poor quality of the water available for cooking and drinking may make them ill. Elizabeth Dowdeswell points out that “about 80 per cent of all diseases and more than one-third of all deaths in developing countries are caused by contaminated water.” In the semiarid countries of the developing world, water supplies are frequently polluted by human or animal wastes, pesticides, fertilizers, or industrial chemicals. An impoverished family may have little option but to use such tainted water.

Just as our bodies require water to dispose of waste products, abundant water is required for proper sanitation—water that for much of mankind is simply not available. The number of people without adequate sanitation rose from 2.6 billion in 1990 to 2.9 billion in 1997. This is nearly half the people on the planet. And sanitation is literally a matter of life and death. In a joint statement, United Nations officials Carol Bellamy and Nitin Desai warned: “When children lack water that is fit for drinking and sanitation, virtually every aspect of their health and development is at risk.”

Food production is dependent on water. Many crops, of course, are watered by rain, but in recent times irrigation has become the key to feeding the world’s burgeoning population. Today 36 percent of the world’s harvest depends on irrigation. But the world’s total area of irrigated cropland reached a peak about 20 years ago, and it has been falling steadily since then.

If plentiful water gushes out of every tap in our home and if we have a hygienic toilet that conveniently flushes away waste, it may be hard to believe that the world is running out of an adequate supply of water. We should remember, however, that only 20 percent of mankind enjoy such luxuries. In Africa many women spend as much as six hours a day fetching water—and frequently it is polluted. These women comprehend much more clearly the harsh reality: Clean, safe water is scarce, and it is getting scarcer.

Can technology solve the problem? Can water resources be exploited more economically? Where has all the water gone? The following articles will seek to answer these questions.

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THE WATER CRISIS

◼ CONTAMINATION In Poland only 5 percent of the river water is fit for drinking, and 75 percent of it is too polluted even for industrial use.

◼ URBAN SUPPLIES In Mexico City, the world’s second-largest metropolis, the water table, which supplies 80 percent of the city’s water, is sinking inexorably. Pumping exceeds the natural replenishment by more than 50 percent. Beijing, the capital of China, suffers from a similar problem. Its aquifer has dropped more than three feet [1 m] a year, and one third of its wells have dried up.

◼ IRRIGATION The huge Ogallala aquifer in the United States has become so depleted that irrigated land in northwest Texas has shrunk by a third for lack of water. Both China and India, the second- and third-largest producers of food, are facing a comparable crisis. In the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, irrigation has caused the water table to sink more than 75 feet [23 m] in ten years.

◼ DISAPPEARING RIVERS During the dry season, the mighty Ganges no longer reaches the sea, as all its water is diverted before that. The same is true of the Colorado River in North America.

[Map on page 3]

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WHERE WATER IS IN SHORT SUPPLY

Areas of water shortage

Where Has All the Water Gone?

Cherrapunji, India, is one of the wettest places on earth. During the monsoon season, 350 inches [9,000 mm] of rain drench its hills, which lie at the foot of the Himalaya Mountains. Incredible as it may seem, however, Cherrapunji also suffers from water shortage.

SINCE there is little vegetation left to hold the water, it rushes away almost as quickly as it falls from the sky. Two months after the monsoon rains have gone, water becomes scarce. Robin Clarke, in his book Water: The International Crisis, years ago described Cherrapunji as “the wettest desert on earth.”a

Not far downstream from Cherrapunji lies Bangladesh, a densely populated, low-lying country that bears the brunt of the monsoon waters that cascade down the denuded hillsides of India and Nepal. Some years, two thirds of Bangladesh gets flooded. But once the floodwaters subside, the Ganges River slows to a trickle, and the land becomes parched. Over 100 million people in Bangladesh face this cruel, yearly cycle of floods and drought. To make matters worse, well water there has become contaminated with arsenic, which may have already poisoned millions of people.

In Nukus, Uzbekistan, not far from the Aral Sea, salt rather than arsenic is the problem. White, crusty deposits are enveloping the cotton plants and stunting their growth. The salt rises to the surface from waterlogged subsoil. This problem, called salinization, is not a new one. Mesopotamian agriculture went into decline four thousand years ago for exactly the same reason. Too much irrigation along with poor drainage causes salts in the soil to accumulate at the surface. To get a decent harvest, more and more fresh water must be used. However, eventually the soil becomes useless—for generations to come.

Where Does All the Water Go?

Unfortunately, much of the rain occurs in the form of torrential downpours. These not only cause flooding but also result in water running quickly off the land and into the sea. And some places get a lot of rain, while others get little. Cherrapunji has been known to record more than 1,000 inches [26,000 mm] of rain in one 12-month period, whereas the Atacama Desert in northern Chile may experience several years without any significant rainfall at all.

Furthermore, most of the people on our planet live where water is not plentiful. Relatively few people, for example, live in the tropical areas of Africa and South America where rainfall is abundant. The mighty Amazon River disgorges into the Atlantic Ocean 15 percent of the annual global runoff, yet because the population in that area is sparse, very little water is needed for human consumption. On the other hand, some 60 million people live in Egypt, where rainfall is minimal, and practically all their water needs must be met by the depleted Nile River.

Years ago such disparities in water supplies did not cause serious problems. According to one survey, in 1950 no region on earth suffered from a very low or extremely low water supply. But those times of plentiful water have changed. In arid regions of North Africa and Central Asia, the amount of water available per person has dropped to a tenth of what it was in 1950.

Apart from the population increase and the low rainfall in many densely populated areas, demand for water has risen for other reasons. In the world today, progress and prosperity go hand in hand with a reliable water supply.

The Rising Demand for Water

If you live in an industrialized country, you have no doubt noticed that factories cluster around important rivers. The reason is simple. Industry needs water to produce practically everything, from computers to paper clips. Food processing also uses a surprising amount of water. Power stations have an insatiable appetite for water and are located alongside lakes or rivers.

The need for water in agriculture is even greater. In many places rainfall is either too little or too unreliable to guarantee a good harvest, so irrigation seemed to be the ideal solution for feeding a hungry planet. As a result of dependence on irrigated crops, agriculture takes a major part of the planet’s supply of fresh water.

In addition, domestic water consumption has grown. During the 1990’s, a staggering 900 million new city dwellers needed decent sanitation and access to safe water. The traditional sources of water, such as rivers and wells, are no longer sufficient for large cities. Mexico City, for example, now has to pipe in water from more than 70 miles [125 km] away and pump it over a range of mountains that rise 4,000 feet [1,200 meters] above the city’s elevation. The situation, says Dieter Kraemer in his report Water: The Life-Giving Source, is “kind of like an octopus; arms going out of the city to try to get water.”

Thus, industry, agriculture, and urban areas have all been clamoring for more water. And many of their demands have been met, for the time being, by drawing on the planet’s reserves—groundwater. Aquifers are one of the earth’s main deposits of fresh water. But they are not inexhaustible. Such water deposits are like money in the bank. You can’t keep on withdrawing it if you make few deposits. Sooner or later, the day of reckoning will come.

Use and Misuse of Groundwater

Groundwater is the water supply we tap into when we sink a well. The United Nations Children’s Fund report Groundwater: The Invisible and Endangered Resource calculates that half the water used for domestic purposes and for irrigating crops comes from this source. Since groundwater is usually less polluted than surface water, it also provides much of our drinking water, both in cities and in the countryside. If withdrawals were moderate, groundwater supplies would remain constant, since they are regularly renewed by rain that slowly seeps through to these underground reservoirs. But for decades mankind has been siphoning off much more water than the natural water cycle can replace.

The result is that the level of the groundwater gets farther from the surface, and it becomes either uneconomical or impractical to dig deep enough to reach it. When the well runs dry, economic and human disaster results. In India such tragedies have already begun to occur. Since the food for a billion people who live in the central plains of China and India depends on water stored underground, the outlook is alarming.

Depletion of groundwater supplies is further aggravated by contamination. Agricultural fertilizers, human and animal wastes, and industrial chemicals are all finding their way into the groundwater. “Once an aquifer is contaminated, remedial measures can be long and costly, even impossible,” explains a report published by the World Meteorological Organization. “The slow penetration of pollutants has been called a ‘chemical time bomb.’ It threatens humankind.”

The final irony is that water pumped out of the underground aquifers may end up ruining the very land it was intended to irrigate. Much of the irrigated land in the arid or semiarid countries of the world now suffers from salinization. In India and the United States—two of the world’s major food-producing countries—25 percent of irrigated land has already been seriously damaged.

Waste Not, Want Not

Despite all these difficulties, the situation would not be so bleak if the planet’s precious water were used more carefully. Inefficient irrigation methods often squander 60 percent of the water before it reaches the crops. Increased efficiency—using available technology—could reduce industrial water consumption by half. And even urban water use could be cut by 30 percent if broken pipes were fixed quickly.

Measures to conserve water require both the will and the way. Are there sound reasons to believe that our planet’s precious water will be conserved for future generations? Our final article will address this question.

[Footnote]

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WATER MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND

Practically all industrial processes consume large quantities of water.

◼ The production of one ton of steel can consume 280 tons of water.

◼ Manufacturing one pound [1 kg] of paper can require as much as 700 pounds [700 kg] of water (if the factory does not recycle the water).

◼ To make a typical U.S. car, the manufacturer uses 50 times the car’s weight in water.

Agriculture may be just as demanding, especially if livestock is raised in semiarid regions of the earth.

◼ To produce one pound [1 kg] of steak from California beef cattle requires 2,500 gallons [20,500 L] of water.

◼ Processing just one frozen chicken takes at least seven gallons [26 L] of water.

[Graph/Pictures on page 8]

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WHERE IS THE WATER USED?

Agricultural 65%

Industrial 25%

Domestic 10%

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Millions of gallons of water are wasted because of broken water mains and faucets that are left running

[Credit Line]

AP Photo/Richard Drew

In Search of the Water of Life

OVER two thousand years ago, a thriving city of 30,000 people grew to prominence in the Arabian Desert. Despite the area’s unforgiving climate, where average rainfall measures only six inches [150 mm] a year, the citizens of Petra learned to cope with little water. And Petra grew rich and prosperous.

The Nabataean inhabitants of Petra had no electrical water pumps. They did not build massive dams. But they did know how to harvest and conserve their water. A huge network of small reservoirs, dikes, channels, and cisterns enabled them to funnel the carefully hoarded water into their city and onto their small plots of land. Hardly a drop was wasted. Their wells and cisterns were so well built that modern-day Bedouin still use them.

“Hydrology is the unseen beauty of Petra,” marvels one water engineer. “Those guys were absolute geniuses.” Recently, Israeli experts have been seeking to tap the genius of the Nabataeans, who also cultivated crops in the Negeb, where rainfall rarely exceeds four inches a year [100 mm]. Agronomists have examined the remains of thousands of small Nabataean farms whose owners skillfully channeled the winter rain to their small terraced fields.

Already lessons learned from the Nabataeans are helping farmers in the drought-plagued Sahel states of Africa. Modern methods of water conservation, however, can be just as effective. On Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands, which lie off the coast of Africa, farmers have learned how to grow grapes and figs where rainfall is practically nonexistent. They plant the vines or fig trees at the bottom of rounded hollows and then cover the soil with a layer of volcanic ash to prevent evaporation. Sufficient dew can then trickle down to the roots to ensure a good crop.

Low-Tech Solutions

Similar stories of adaptation to arid climates can be found all over the world—such as among the Bishnoi people, who live in the Thar Desert of India; the Turkana women of Kenya; and the Navajo Indians of Arizona, U.S.A. Their techniques for harvesting rainwater, learned over many centuries, are proving much more reliable for solving agricultural needs than impressive high-tech solutions.

The 20th century was an age of dam-building. Mighty rivers were harnessed, and massive irrigation systems were developed. One scientist estimates that 60 percent of the world’s streams and rivers have been controlled in some way. While such projects brought some benefits, ecologists point to the damage done to the environment, not to mention the effect on the millions of people who lost their homes.

Furthermore, despite good intentions, the benefits of these schemes rarely reach farmers who desperately need the water. Referring to irrigation projects in India, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi said: “For 16 years we have poured money out. The people have got nothing back, no irrigation, no water, no increase in production, no help in their daily life.”

Low-tech solutions, on the other hand, have proved more useful and less harmful to the environment. Small ponds and dams constructed by local communities have been very successful in China, where six million have been built. In Israel, people have found that with a little ingenuity, the same water can be used first for washing, then for sanitation, and finally for irrigation.

Another practical solution is drip irrigation, which conserves the soil and uses only 5 percent of the water required by traditional methods. Wise use of water also means choosing crops that suit a dry climate, such as sorghum or millet, rather than those that need extensive irrigation, such as sugarcane or corn.

With a little effort, domestic users and industry can likewise cut back on their demands for water. A pound of paper, for example, can be manufactured with about a pint of water if the factory’s water is recycled—a saving of over 99 percent. Mexico City has replaced conventional toilets with ones that use only one third the amount of water. The city also sponsored an information campaign that aimed to reduce water usage significantly.

What Is Needed for Success

Solutions to the water crisis—and most environmental problems—require changes in attitudes. People need to be cooperative rather than selfish, to make reasonable sacrifices where necessary, and to be determined to take care of the earth for its future inhabitants. In this regard Sandra Postel, in her book Last Oasis—Facing Water Scarcity, explains: “We need a water ethic—a guide to right conduct in the face of complex decisions about natural systems we do not and cannot fully understand.”

Such “a water ethic,” of course, requires more than just a local approach. Countries as well as neighbors need to cooperate, since rivers are no respecters of national boundaries. “Concerns about water quantity and quality—historically treated as separate—must now be seen as a global issue,” says Ismail Serageldin in his report Beating the Water Crisis.

But getting nations to handle global issues is no easy task, as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan admits. “In today’s globalized world,” he says, “the mechanisms available for global action are hardly more than embryonic. It is high time we gave more concrete meaning to the idea of the ‘international community.’”

Clearly, an adequate supply of good water—although vital—is not all that is needed if we are to enjoy a healthy and happy life. Humans must first recognize an obligation to the One who provided both water and life itself. (Psalm 36:9; 100:3) And rather than shortsightedly exploit the earth and its resources, they need to ‘cultivate and take care of it,’ as our Creator instructed our original parents to do.—Genesis 2:8, 15; Psalm 115:16.

A Superior Kind of Water

Since water is so vital, it is not surprising that in the Bible it is given a symbolic significance. Indeed, to enjoy life as we were meant to, we must recognize the source of this symbolic water. We must also learn to reflect the attitude of the woman in the first century who requested of Jesus Christ: “Sir, give me this water.” (John 4:15) Consider what happened.

Jesus stopped at a deep well near modern-day Nablus—evidently the same well that people from around the world often visit even to this day. At the time, a Samaritan woman also came to the well. Like many women of the first century, she no doubt made regular trips there in order to keep her home supplied with water. But Jesus said that he could provide her with “living water”—a source of water that would never run out.—John 4:10, 13, 14.

Understandably, the woman’s interest was aroused. But, of course, the “living water” that Jesus spoke about was not literal water. Jesus had in mind the spiritual provisions that can enable people to live forever. There is a link, however, between symbolic and literal water—we need both to enjoy life to the full.

On more than one occasion, God provided his people with a solution to an actual water shortage. He miraculously supplied water for the huge crowd of Israelite refugees who crossed the Sinai desert on their way to the Promised Land. (Exodus 17:1-6; Numbers 20:2-11) Elisha, a prophet of God, cleansed the well of Jericho that had become contaminated. (2 Kings 2:19-22) And when a remnant of repentant Israelites returned from Babylon to their homeland, God led them to ‘water in the wilderness.’—Isaiah 43:14, 19-21.

An inexhaustible supply of water is what our planet urgently needs today. Since our Creator, Jehovah God, provided a solution to water problems in the past, will he not do so again in the future? The Bible assures us that he will. Describing conditions under his promised Kingdom, God says: “Upon bare hills I shall open up rivers, and in the midst of the valley plains, springs. I shall make the wilderness into a reedy pool of water, and the waterless land into sources of water, . . . in order that people may see and know and pay heed and have insight at the same time, that the very hand of Jehovah has done this.”—Isaiah 41:18, 20.

The Bible promises us that when that time comes, people “will not go hungry, neither will they go thirsty.” (Isaiah 49:10) Thanks to a new global administration, there will be a definitive solution to the water crisis. This administration—the Kingdom, for which Jesus taught us to pray—will operate “by means of justice and by means of righteousness, from now on and to time indefinite.” (Isaiah 9:6, 7; Matthew 6:9, 10) As a result, people everywhere on earth will finally become a true international community.—Psalm 72:5, 7, 8.

If we search now for the water of life, we can look forward to seeing the day when there will truly be enough water for everyone.

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Above: Ancient inhabitants of Petra knew how to conserve water

Below: A Nabataean water channel in Petra

[Credit Line]

Garo Nalbandian

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Farmers on one of the Canary Islands have learned how to grow plants where rainfall is nearly nonexistent

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What did Jesus mean when he promised this woman “living water”?