Water Education Foundation

California attorney chosen to lead international water panel

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 24, 2008 at 6:23 am

Thank you to Jennifer for sending this press release along to me:

RIVERSIDE, Calif. _ Attorney Eric Garner, who co-wrote the definitive book on California water, was elected as chair of the International Bar Association committee that examines the pressing issues of the Earth’s declining freshwater supply. Garner, 46, will become the first American and the youngest to chair the association’s water law committee when he begins his two-year term on Jan. 1.

His tenure comes at a time when population growth, climate change and other factors are stressing water supplies globally, and as California faces the possibility of another dry year and rationing in the face of plummeting reservoir levels. “The long-term trends are going to dictate some changes in California that will force us to use water more efficiently,” Garner said.

More cities, he said, will likely follow the lead of Long Beach, Los Angeles and San Diego, which have banned wasteful water practices such as the hosing down of sidewalks and over-watering of yards.
Garner, managing partner of Best Best & Krieger, was nominated and confirmed as the next chair of the 250-member committee during the association’s annual conference, held Oct. 12-17 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

“Eric is one of the leading water lawyers in the U.S. and brings his knowledge of the intricacies of dealing with the complex local, regional and international water issues to the service of the IBA water committee,” said John D. Crothers, a Paris-based attorney and the committee’s current chair.

Under Garner’s direction, the committee will work on solutions to water woes in the United States and around the globe as the world grapples with the growing scarcity of freshwater supplies. The panel will discuss suggestions to update the principles that guide the use of international rivers, 263 in all, as climate change alters the amount of snowmelt that swells them with drinkable water. The committee will also help create the legal structure necessary to increase the private sector’s role in bringing much-needed water to homes and businesses in developing countries where water rights are not well-defined.

Garner, who already has helped craft water laws in South Africa, Trinidad and Pakistan, said his experience on the international panel will give him more opportunities to learn unique ways of understanding water problems in California. “We don’t need to always re-invent the wheel,” Garner said. “Other countries are struggling with some of the same issues that we are and sometimes they have come up with solutions that we haven’t thought of.”

For instance, Garner said, issues in the Baltic Sea are similar to those in California’s largest water source, the Sacramento Bay-San Joaquin Delta. Both are ecologically vulnerable bodies that are plagued by invasive species, aging infrastructure and water quality issues.

Garner and Arthur Littleworth, the senior partner at Best Best and Krieger, are the authors of California Water II, published in 2007. It is a comprehensive guide to the state’s complex water law and policy.

November 24, 2008 · Filed Under General Water Issues, International Water Issues

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‘Brown clouds’ changing weather, United Nations report says

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 14, 2008 at 5:34 am

From the Los Angeles Times:

A dirty brown haze sometimes more than a mile thick is darkening skies not only over vast areas of Asia, but also in the Middle East, southern Africa and the Amazon Basin, changing weather patterns and threatening health and food supplies, the United Nations reported Thursday.

The huge smog-like plumes, caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and wood, are known as “atmospheric brown clouds.” When mixed with emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for warming Earth’s atmosphere, they are the newest threat to the global environment, according to a report commissioned by the U.N. Environment Program.

Brown clouds are caused by an unhealthy mix of particles, ozone and other chemicals that come from cars, coal-fired power plants, burning fields and wood-burning stoves and fireplaces. First identified by the report’s lead researcher in 1990, the clouds were depicted Thursday as being more widespread and causing more environmental damage than previously known.

The clouds have been found to be more than a mile thick around glaciers in the Himalayan and Hindu Kush mountain ranges. They block sunlight and absorb radiation, leading to new worries not only about global climate change but also about extreme weather conditions.

“All these have led to negative effects on water resources and crop yields,” the report says.

Read more from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.

November 14, 2008 · Filed Under International Water Issues

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Profligate water use in the U.S. is fueling the flight of Mexicans across the border

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 12, 2008 at 5:32 am

From AlterNet:

On October 21, 2008, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne inaugurated the ground breaking of the new Imperial Valley water reservoir near the U.S.-Mexico border. The 500-acre $172.2-million reservoir, to be completed in August 2010, will store surplus Colorado River water for use by coastal Southern California, southern Nevada, and central Arizona; previously this water had been flowing to Mexico and used by its cities and thousands of Mexican farmers.

This reservoir, along with the $250 million project to line a 23-mile stretch of the All-American Canal, also in the Imperial Valley, with concrete to prevent water seepage to an underground aquifer, Mexicali Valley aquifer, which is used currently by Mexican cities and farmers, means that there will be substantially less water from the Colorado River and dire consequences for Mexico.

An estimated 67,000 acre-feet of water seeps from the canal annually. In 2006, the Mexican government and two California environmental groups filed a lawsuit to stop the canal-lining project-ultimately unsuccessful. This captured seepage water will be sent to San Diego for municipal use. Now, Mexico has even less water to use, although theoretically it will still get its share of water of 1.5 million acre-feet under the 1944 treaty. The new Imperial Valley reservoir and the All-American Canal lining are two nails in the coffin of Mexico’s water future. The triumphant U.S. water and irrigation districts, the winners of the two latest battles in the U.S.-Mexico water wars, are gloating over their victory in capturing the last drops of water in the Colorado River before they reach Mexico. Now, in the drought-stricken southwest, they can continue to irrigate vast corporate farms planted with thirsty crops, hose millions of suburban lawns, sprinkle golf courses, and fill tens of thousands of private swimming pools.

Read more from AlterNet by clicking here.

November 12, 2008 · Filed Under All-American Canal, International Water Issues

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Low-lying country of Maldives considers buying dry land if seas rise

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 10, 2008 at 10:50 pm

From the New York Times:

The president-elect of the Maldives, a nation of 1,200 low islands in the Indian Ocean, is planning to establish an investment fund with some of its earnings from tourism so it can buy a haven for its citizens should global warming raise sea levels at a dangerous pace, according to several news reports.

Mohamed Nasheed, a former political prisoner who will be sworn in Tuesday as the country’s first democratically elected president, named Sri Lanka and India as possible spots for a refuge, according to the BBC.

Mr. Nasheed’s spokesman, Ibrahim Hussein Zaki, said that the new government had to take action. “Global warming and environmental issues are issues of major concern to the Maldivian people,” he said on the BBC’s “World Today” program. “We are just about three feet above sea level. So any sea level rise could have a devastating effect on the people of the Maldives and their very survival.”

Read more from the New York Times by clicking here.

November 10, 2008 · Filed Under International Water Issues

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Special Reports: Water resources: Efficiency and conservation – Swimming in dwindling waters; As the planet’s once plentiful blue resource gets used up, companies are acting to secure supply and be more efficient users of water

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 10, 2008 at 5:44 am

From Ethical Corporation Magazine, this special report:

Kazakhstan’s mapmakers have their work cut out. No sooner do they chart the boundaries of the Aral Sea than they have to take out their pens and redraw it. Once the world’s fourth largest inland sea, this massive expanse of water has shrunk to a tenth of its original size due to a huge irrigation project introduced in the 1960s. The fishing industry is now floundering, the flora and fauna perishing and the summers becoming hotter and hotter.

The fate of the Aral Sea is not unique. The world’s water supplies are drying up. Half of the planet’s wetlands have disappeared over the past century. In Europe, six in every 10 cities with more than 100,000 people are using their groundwater supplies at a faster rate than they are being replenished, the European Environment Agency reports.

Water experts have coined the phrase “water stressed” to describe the scenario. It’s reckoned that countries require 4,654 litres of water per year per person to meet citizens’ needs. If they fall short, they are said to be stressed. Today, the term covers about 440 million people, including the inhabitants of European states such as Denmark and Poland. In much of the Middle East and some parts of Africa the situation is even worse.

The outlook is not encouraging. By 2075, the number of people in regions with chronic water shortages is estimated to be between three and seven billion, according to the Stockholm International Water Institute.

Little wonder, therefore, that the normally moderate United Nations recently defined the world’s water crisis as “one of the largest public health issues of our time”. So what’s behind the water scarcity? In short: man. The world’s population has tripled over the past century and is expected to increase by about 50% to more than nine billion by 2050.

Read more from Ethical Corporation Magazine by clicking here.

November 10, 2008 · Filed Under International Water Issues

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Lelystad, the Netherlands: A low country seeks higher ground

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 8, 2008 at 5:55 am

From the New York Times (via the Sisweb):

In this tiny, low-lying country, where much of the land has been clawed from the sea, people like to say that while God may have created the world, it was the Dutch who created Holland.

Consider this seaside town of brick homes huddled behind steep dikes. In the 1960s, Lelystad was mostly shacks housing workers who erected dikes and drained water to create land for farming, industry and homes. Since then, Lelystad has grown by leaps and bounds, to 73,000 people — and it is growing still.

Today, just as they have for centuries, the Dutch need more land to house an expanding population. They also need to confront a new threat to their lands, roughly two-thirds of which lie below sea level: the specter of rising ocean levels associated with global warming.

So a government commission recently proposed pushing out the Netherlands’ shoreline to meet the challenge of an increase in the ocean’s levels; another commission proposed the construction of islands off the Dutch coast, like barrier reefs in the North Sea.

One such commission, inspired by Dubai, which built several islands off its coast to form giant palm trees as part of a major urban development plan, suggested a bit whimsically that the Dutch islands be given the shape of plants, specifically tulips. One waggish blogger, alluding to the Netherlands’ traditional tolerance of marijuana, suggested cannabis leaves instead.

“It was a joke, a metaphor,” Hans de Boer, a commission member, said of the tulip design for the proposed islands. “We came up with a metaphor, and everybody wanted to take part in the discussion.”

The idea, Mr. de Boer went on, would be not only to gain land and protect the coast, but also to showcase Dutch engineering skills. At the same time, an island could be an energy powerhouse, shaped like a ring to create so-called blue energy by using the contrast of fresh and salt water to generate electricity, or the ebb and flow of the tides. Wind turbines could also produce even more energy, he said.

More from the New York Times by clicking here.

November 8, 2008 · Filed Under International Water Issues

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Spain experiments with water markets; Nicklaus golf courses keep green drinking spanish farms’ water

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 7, 2008 at 5:50 am

From Bloomberg News:

Manuel Vicente Piriz has turned farming on its head. After tilling corn for 20 years on the banks of the Tagus River in central Spain, he didn’t plant this spring. Piriz instead sold his water to arid towns in the south for 216,000 euros ($275,000), more than he would have earned on the crop.

“This is a great harvest for farmers,” the 43-year-old said after plowing under 150 acres. He’s one of 200 farmers in Aranjuez, 30 miles south of Madrid, who were paid to shut irrigation canals from the Tagus. This year they let their water meander south through 250 miles of rivers and pipelines to the buyer, a utility supplying 43 towns in parched Murcia.

Demand for water on Spain’s southern Mediterranean coast has become so intense that the Murcia region, home to more than 17 golf courses and a resort boom, has begun importing billions of gallons from farmers up north. That helps keep local taps running, swimming pools full and the grass green at three Jack Nicklaus-designed courses owned by Polaris World.

Deals like Piriz’s, which required approval from regional water boards and even the nation’s cabinet, are set to become far easier. Spain plans to strip control from local authorities over 9.25 trillion gallons of annual water flow and hand it to a new market by 2012. The government will create 10 water banks to let rights holders including farmers sell to the highest bidder.

Read more from Bloomberg News by clicking here.

November 7, 2008 · Filed Under International Water Issues

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Drought land ‘will be abandoned’; Climate change will cause ‘economic deserts’ even in rich countries, warns UN environment chief

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 2, 2008 at 8:03 am

From the Guardian.co.uk:

Parts of the world may have to be abandoned because severe water shortages will leave them uninhabitable, the United Nations environment chief has warned.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, said water shortages caused by over-use of rivers and aquifers were already leading to serious problems, even in rich nations. With climate change expected to reduce rainfall in some places and cause droughts in others, some regions could become ‘economic deserts’, unviable for people or agriculture, he said.

Steiner argued that only urgent action to combat global warming and poverty could prevent the creation of thousands of ‘environmental refugees’. Previous UN agreements to reduce global warming emissions and the Millennium Development Goals on poverty had not been met. His warning echoes those of other environment leaders, who have said that water shortages could be the greatest threat posed by climate change.

‘In many ways [water] is the most dramatic expression of mismanagement of natural or nature-based assets,’ Steiner said. ‘The day a person or a community is bereft of water is the day that your chance of even the most basic life or livelihood is gone and economic activity seeps away.

More from the Guardian.uk by clicking here.

November 2, 2008 · Filed Under International Water Issues

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Three Gorges Dam area farmers should avoid fertilizer

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 28, 2008 at 6:24 pm

From Bloomberg News:

Chinese farmers should stop using fertilizer during the flood season and fishermen experiment with fish-net systems to mitigate damage from the Three Gorges Dam.

Ohio State University researchers say if farmers in the flooded area that extends 410 miles (660 kilometers) behind the dam, longer than the U.S.’s Lake Superior, don’t avoid fertilizers, the waters will be fouled with excessive nutrients and cause algae blooms in standing water covering fields along the Yangtze River.

Harnessing the Yangtze’s energy has been a longstanding dream of the Chinese, originally envisioned by Sun Yat-sen almost 90 years ago. But since construction began on the dam in 1994, and power generation started in 2003, the project has been fraught with warnings from scientists of a burgeoning environmental nightmare.

The Three Gorges Dam, set to become the world’s biggest hydroelectric power station when fully operational by 2012, has already forced about 1.5 million people to relocate. Damming Asia’s longest river has led as well to the extinction of the Yangtze river dolphin as scientists foresee further ecological fallout.

“Nature is going to see something it’s never seen before,” said William Mitsch, an Ohio State University wetlands expert and natural resources professor. “There is no ecosystem that has such an exaggerated change in flooding levels, even the Amazon River.”

Read more from Bloomberg News by clicking here.

October 28, 2008 · Filed Under International Water Issues

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Thomas M. Kostigen Commentary: What we need to do to address the coming water crisis

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 13, 2008 at 6:20 am

From the Sundance Channel “Voices on the Election Backtalk”, this commentary, written by author Thomas M. Kostigen:

We are facing a crisis that is bigger than the financial mess we are in, is scarier than terrorism, and puts global warming to shame because it is so immediate: We are running out of enough fresh water for ourselves. Without fresh water we as human beings die within about 72 hours. And according to myriad projections, we need to increase our fresh water supply by some 20% over the next decade to meet demand. That’s a difficult task considering almost the exact same amount of fresh water has existed on the planet since the time of dinosaurs. As it stands, five million people die each year because of lack of access to H2O; half of them are children under the age of five. The numbers worldwide and in the US are expected to increase exponentially in the near future.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can legislate our way out of this crisis. Here’s how: the Clean Water Act has not been updated since 1972 except to be weakened; it should be strengthened. The Act governs the amount of pollution allowable in our water supplies and sets testing criteria. (Perhaps then we won’t have to worry about pharmaceutical drugs getting into our tap water either.) We can also propose bond measures for safer water infrastructure.

Every year legislators (mostly from the “water states” around the Great Lakes basin) put forth legislation to shore up our water supply and increase efficiencies. Every year the legislation gets shot down, or fails to gain enough support. It’s too expensive. It is going to cost an estimated $3 trillion to update the water systems in the U.S., $20 trillion for systems around the world. Meanwhile, we lose up to 40% of our municipal water supplies because of leaks, poor recapture, and mismanagement. In fact, each and every one of us wastes about 2,000 gallons of water per year in the U.S. because of drips and leaks in our homes. Better management on an individual level combined with better management on a municipal level will go a long way toward helping solve the crisis. As well, an international compact needs to be embraced between the business sector and governments to better manage the world water resources. Otherwise, as Nestle’s chief executive told the Financial Times recently, “We will not find sufficient water to produce all the crops.” Remember, we are amidst a food crisis too.

Read more of Thomas M. Kostigen’s commentary from the Sundance Channel by clicking here.

October 13, 2008 · Filed Under International Water Issues

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Arava spills on solutions to L.A. water shortage

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 11, 2008 at 7:58 am

From the Jewish Journal:

A recent conference at UCLA’s School of Law, “Transboundary Environmental Management in the Arava and Beyond,” proposed that Los Angeles might gain some ground regarding its often-contentious water policies if the city turned to Israel’s example.

The Sept. 9 forum, sponsored by the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, a leading teaching and research program in the Middle East, suggested that both Israel and Los Angeles have made many of the same mistakes when trying to develop water in arid, dry lands and could learn a great deal from each other when dealing with issues of water scarcity.

“There are very strong parallels between what’s going on in the Western United States and what’s going on in the Middle East,” said Peter Gleick, the keynote speaker at the conference.

Gleick, a MacArthur Fellow and co-founder of the Pacific Institute, an Oakland-based environmental research organization, said both countries are struggling with the issue of how to best share their water supplies with neighbors. Although Israel, according to Gleick, faces the more complicated problem of sharing water from sources like the Sea of Galilee, natural underground aquifers and the Jordan River with its Jordanian and Palestinian neighbors, the dilemma in both countries is much the same.

Moreover, Gleick said, these transboundary issues extend far beyond conflicts about water. With an abundance of vehicles and factories in both regions, combating air pollution can be an equally contentious issue.

Despite the scope of the problems, Gleick insists that each region’s failure to disentangle environmental challenges stems from a lack of direction rather than a lack of attainable solutions. “I don’t think the water crisis is the result of a lack of resources, a lack of money … but a lack of a vision of where we want to be,” he said.

Read the rest of this story from the Jewish Journal by clicking here.

October 11, 2008 · Filed Under General Water Issues, International Water Issues

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Ebb without flow: Water may be the new oil in a thirsty global economy

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on October 2, 2008 at 6:25 am

From the Law & Public Policy section of Knowledge @ Wharton:

Is water the new oil? The answer is yes, according to a number of economists, business leaders, scientists and geopolitical strategists, who argue that it’s time to stop taking for granted the substance that covers 70% of the planet and makes up a similar proportion of the human body. Just as the late 20th century saw an oil shock, the early 21st century may feature a water shock, where scarcity leads to a sharp price hike on a resource that has always been plentiful and cheap. Such a scenario could have an even bigger impact than peak oil, transforming markets, governments and ecosystems alike.

The basic story: 97% of the world’s water is salty. Human use of the remaining 3% has boomed, the result of industrialization and the need to produce more food to feed a growing, wealthier population.

In 1900, global water consumption totaled approximately 770 cubic kilometers, according to a 2007 report by Zurich-based consultancy Sustainable Asset Management. Today, the figure is 3,840 cubic kilometers. It is projected to grow to over 5,000 by 2025. That’s well under the 9,000-12,000 cubic kilometers of annual rainfall that winds up in places humans can access. But pollution, waste and inefficient delivery take a big bite out of that figure, as does climate change, with its attendant droughts and early snowmelts. The consequences, including water rationing in California and the occasional drying up of portions of the Yellow River in China, are increasingly visible. By 2030, estimates the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, more than half the human population will live in areas where the water supply is stressed.

Read more from Knowledge @ Wharton by clicking here.

October 2, 2008 · Filed Under International Water Issues

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Planet is running out of clean water, new film warns

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 19, 2008 at 5:45 am

From CNN:

One sixth of the world’s population does not have access to clean drinking water. More than 2 million people, most of them children, die each year from water-borne diseases.

Water-related problems aren’t restricted to the developing world. A harmful pesticide, banned by many European countries, remains widely used in the United States, where it runs into rivers and streams. And one expert estimates California’s water supply will run out in 20 years.

These sobering statistics come from “FLOW,” a new documentary film about the world’s dwindling water supply. The filmmakers and their sources argue a combination of factors, including drought and skyrocketing demand, have created a looming global crisis that threatens the long-term survival of the human race.

After premiering in January at the Sundance Film Festival, “FLOW” opened September 12 in New York and Los Angeles, California, and expands to more cities this week. The New York Times called the documentary “less depressing than galvanizing, an informed and heartfelt examination of the tug of war between public health and private interests.”

As the film shows, some nations are banking on controversial technology, such as desalination plants that convert seawater into freshwater, to meet future water needs. Meanwhile, water has become a commodity that supports a $400 billion global industry — the third largest behind electricity and oil.

CNN spoke to “FLOW” director Irena Salina and Maude Barlow, author of “Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water.” Some of their answers have been condensed.

Read the interview from CNN by clicking here.

September 19, 2008 · Filed Under International Water Issues

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Adapt or die: Environmentalists have long said the world should concentrate on preventing climate change, not adapting to it, but that is changing

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on September 15, 2008 at 5:35 am

From The Economist:

“I USED to think adaptation subtracted from our efforts on prevention. But I’ve changed my mind,” says Al Gore, a former American vice-president and Nobel prize-winner. “Poor countries are vulnerable and need our help.” His words reflect a shift in the priorities of environmentalists and economists.

For years, greens said adaptation—coping with climate change, rather than stopping it—was a bit like putting out a fire on the Titanic: desirable, no doubt, but the main thing was to change course. In July, however, a committee of America’s Senate set aside $20m for international adaptation efforts. That was peanuts; and nothing will come of it anyway because there is no comparable legislation in the House of Representatives. But it was the first time American legislators had showed willingness to put money into global efforts at coping. In June, the United Nations hammered out the details of how to control spending of the first carbon tax earmarked for international adaptation.

Two things have changed attitudes. One is evidence that global warming is happening faster than expected. Manish Bapna of the World Resources Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC, believes “it is already too late to avert dangerous consequences, so we must learn to adapt.”

Second, evidence is growing that climate change hits two specific groups of people disproportionately and unfairly. They are the poorest of the poor and those living in island states: 1 billion people in 100 countries. Tony Nyong, a climate-change scientist in Nairobi, argues that people in poor countries used to see global warming as a Western matter: the rich had caused it and would with luck solve it. But the first impact of global warming has been on the very things the poorest depend on most: dry-land agriculture; tropical forests; subsistence fishing. In a recent paper* for the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington DC, Robert Mendelsohn of Yale University estimates that African farmers on rain-fed land will lose $28 per hectare per year for each 1°C rise in global temperatures. Global warming erodes coastlines, spreads pests and water-borne diseases and produces more erratic weather patterns.

The victims share two characteristics. They are too poor to defend themselves by expensive flood controls or sophisticated public-health programmes. And (unlike China or Brazil) their own carbon footprints are tiny. Kirk Smith, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, calls climate change the world’s biggest regressive tax: the poorest pay for the behaviour of the rich.

Read more from The Economist by clicking here.

Hat tip to the Sisweb for this one!

September 15, 2008 · Filed Under Climate change & water supply, International Water Issues

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Think tank urges Canada to flow towards water exporting

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 28, 2008 at 5:49 am

From the Toronto Star:

A Montreal think tank says it’s “urgent” for Canada to dip its toe in the water exporting business for financial gain - but some folks aren’t too sure about watching our water go down the drain.

“Large-scale exports of fresh water would be a wealth-creating idea for Quebec and for Canada as a whole,” says the Montreal Economic Institute’s chief economist Marcel Boyer, author of a research paper released today. “The development and marketing of this expertise requires a strategic plan to enable Quebec to become a leader in water management,” says Boyer, vice president of the Institute, an independent, non-profit organization that takes part in public policy debate in Quebec and across Canada.

The report proposes that the provincial and federal government set out a regulatory framework for the trade in water to make owners or concession-holders more fully aware of the benefits and costs associated with the various uses of the water under their control. These restrictions should be accompanied by a “realistic” fee structure that would give consumers and other users incentives to use the resource responsibly and encourage the businesses involved to ensure a stable supply, the paper says.

“At a time when water is becoming scarce in many parts of the world, its economic development stirs up substantial opposition, however. Though some people fear harmful exploitation or even the drying up of our water resources, it is urgent to look seriously at developing our blue gold,” Boyer argues in the report.

Read the rest of this story from the Toronto Star by clicking here. Read the press release from the Montreal Economic Institute by clicking here. The WaterWired blog weighs in - click here.

August 28, 2008 · Filed Under International Water Issues

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Spanish fear day when tap will run dry

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on August 18, 2008 at 6:04 am

From the Chicago Tribune:

Spain, a Mediterranean country with arid plateaus, has always known turbulent periods of water shortages, but its predicament these days is built on modern-day ambitions.

Agriculture and large-scale irrigation have soared in the past decade, and in that sense, many environmentalists see this chapter in Spain’s history as analogous to California’s rush for water. Analysts say that farm growth—far more damaging than golf course and hotel development that has also soared in the past decade—has been a decisive factor in Spain’s new thirst.

Economic tensions seep into every conversation about water here. Regions throughout Spain are bound to local growers, the indisputable heaviest users of water. And every region, intent on 21st Century growth, is just as keen to diversify its economy and capture the profits of Mediterranean tourism.

This spring, Aragon and Catalan authorities, regional neighbors in Spain, sniped at each other over political deals to lay claim to the rushing waters of the Ebro. Catalonia wanted the river siphoned to help meet its water needs, including those of its capital, Barcelona, a tourism dynamo. Aragon officials, however, balked at the idea of sharing from the river, which runs through its capital, Zaragoza.

In a decision awash with political tensions, national authorities decided to approve a temporary transfer from the Ebro to Catalonia during the drought, a decision that riled Aragon’s political elite. Only the rains stopped the turmoil. The water transfer, in the end, never happened.

Aragon authorities in Zaragoza cast this year’s water fight as a matter of justice. They want to keep the Ebro waters at home to encourage development such as golf courses and theme parks across their big-sky landscape. It is the kind of change that environmentalists deride but government officials in charge of ecological protection see as an economic necessity. Barcelona had its era of development. Now, they say, it is Aragon’s turn.

“The single most important thing for me? Jobs,” Aragon Environmental Minister Alfredo Bone said in an interview in his office in Zaragoza. “The question is how to get this growth so that it is not a problem.”

Read more from the Chicago Tribune by clicking here.

August 18, 2008 · Filed Under International Water Issues

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Blooming deserts turn Israeli water industry into money magnet

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 31, 2008 at 10:46 pm

From Bloomberg News (hat tip to JFleck at Inkstain):

At the end of a road winding through Israel’s Negev desert, the entrance to Kibbutz Hatzerim is flanked by jojoba shrubs jutting from the arid earth.

The grove is the result of drip irrigation developed by Israeli engineer Simcha Blass in the 1960s that enabled the kibbutzniks to farm the desert. The company they started, Netafim Ltd., has sold the product in 110 countries from Germany to Peru.

“The founders were living in the middle of the desert and saw one agricultural failure after the other,” Naty Barak, 64, a director at Netafim, said at the kibbutz visitors center. “Back then it was their problem, but now it’s a global necessity.”

Today, some 300 Israeli companies make equipment to deliver water or purify it with lasers or diffusion, putting them in a position to profit as climate change, population growth and food shortages strain supplies. With agriculture accounting for about two-thirds of global water use, the Israeli government predicts overseas sales of the technology will top $10 billion by 2017.

July 31, 2008 · Filed Under International Water Issues

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US lawmakers hope to approve Great Lakes compact, but lawyer warns Canadians the water pact will deplete Great Lakes

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 24, 2008 at 5:33 am

From MLive.com:

A compact to prevent the diversion of water from the Great Lakes has widespread support in Congress and a strong chance of winning approval by the end of the year, lawmakers said Wednesday.

House and Senate leaders from the region said they had not detected any significant opposition to the plan and would aggressively push to complete the process this year to provide more protections for one of the world’s largest sources of fresh water. “It will be done by the end of this session, I assure you,” said Rep. James Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat who is leading efforts in the House.

Senate leaders, however, were more cautious, noting their chamber can be unpredictable because rules allow individual members to block legislation from moving forward. Election year politics also can add complications. “I cannot tell you with confidence that it will pass this year — but I will tell you with confidence that it will pass,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. His Republican colleague, Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, said he was hopeful it would pass before the end of the year.

More from MLive.com by clicking here.

However, a U.S. environmental lawyer has warned Canadians that the pact is actually bad news for the Great Lakes in this article from The Star:

A pact designed to preserve the Great Lakes is in reality a “slippery slope” that threatens severe harm to the world’s largest body of fresh water, a top U.S. environmental lawyer has warned Canadians. “In effect, a precedent is being set, in that it allows for the commercialization of water. You are privatizing it,” James Olson said yesterday of an agreement among eight Great Lakes states now before the U.S. Congress and linked to Ontario and Quebec through a side deal.

Among other concerns, Olson criticizes an exemption in the Great Lakes Compact allowing water to be removed by private industry as long as it’s not “bulk diversion” – in other words, restricted to containers no more than 20 litres in Canada or 5.7 gallons in the U.S., with no limit on the number of containers a business, such as a bottler, can sell. That means an important legal precedent has been set giving water a “product” exemption from the diversion ban on Great Lakes water at the heart of the deal. It is a product to be exploited for private gain, and not to be recognized as a public trust.

While Olson is worried about the gradual loss of water levels through the activities of, say, bottling companies, under current limitations, he predicts these quantitative restrictions will turn out to be mere formalities destined to be overturned in court challenges. “The agreement has been reported to have a veneer of glory around it, but it’s much less than that,” Olson said in an interview from Traverse City, Mich. “But it can do great public harm, including to Canadians.”

Read the full text of this story from The Star by clicking here.

July 24, 2008 · Filed Under International Water Issues

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Facing the freshwater crisis: As demand for freshwater soars, planetary supplies are becoming unpredictable. Existing technologies could avert a global water crisis, but they must be implemented soon

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 23, 2008 at 6:38 am

From Scientific American:

A friend of mine lives in a middle-class neighborhood of New Delhi, one of the richest cities in India. Although the area gets a fair amount of rain every year, he wakes in the morning to the blare of a megaphone announcing that freshwater will be available only for the next hour. He rushes to fill the bathtub and other receptacles to last the day. New Delhi’s endemic shortfalls occur largely because water managers decided some years back to divert large amounts from upstream rivers and reservoirs to irrigate crops.

My son, who lives in arid Phoenix, arises to the low, schussing sounds of sprinklers watering verdant suburban lawns and golf courses. Although Phoenix sits amid the Sonoran Desert, he enjoys a virtually unlimited water supply. Politicians there have allowed irrigation water to be shifted away from farming operations to cities and suburbs, while permitting recycled wastewater to be employed for landscaping and other nonpotable applications.

As in New Delhi and Phoenix, policymakers worldwide wield great power over how water resources are managed. Wise use of such power will become increasingly important as the years go by because the world’s demand for freshwater is currently overtaking its ready supply in many places, and this situation shows no sign of abating. That the problem is well-known makes it no less disturbing: today one out of six people, more than a billion, suffer inadequate access to safe freshwater. By 2025, according to data released by the United Nations, the freshwater resources of more than half the countries across the globe will undergo either stress—for example, when people increasingly demand more water than is available or safe for use—or outright shortages. By midcentury as much as three quarters of the earth’s population could face scarcities of freshwater.

Scientists expect water scarcity to become more common in large part because the world’s population is rising and many people are getting richer (thus expanding demand) and because global climate change is exacerbating aridity and reducing supply in many regions. What is more, many water sources are threatened by faulty waste disposal, releases of industrial pollutants, fertilizer runoff and coastal influxes of saltwater into aquifers as groundwater is depleted. Because lack of access to water can lead to starvation, disease, political instability and even armed conflict, failure to take action can have broad and grave consequences.

Fortunately, to a great extent, the technologies and policy tools required to conserve existing freshwater and to secure more of it are known; I will discuss several that seem particularly effective. What is needed now is action. Governments and authorities at every level have to formulate and execute concrete plans for implementing the political, economic and technological measures that can ensure water security now and in the coming decades.

Read the rest of this article from Scientific American by clicking here. Hat tip to Water Wired blog for the link to the article - click here for Michael’s summary and thoughts on the article.

July 23, 2008 · Filed Under International Water Issues, National water news

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Mideast facing choice between crops and water

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 21, 2008 at 5:45 am

From the New York Times:

Global food shortages have placed the Middle East and North Africa in a quandary, as they are forced to choose between growing more crops to feed an expanding population or preserving their already scant supply of water.

For decades nations in this region have drained aquifers, sucked the salt from seawater and diverted the mighty Nile to make the deserts bloom. But those projects were so costly and used so much water that it remained far more practical to import food than to produce it. Today, some countries import 90 percent or more of their staples.

Now, the worldwide food crisis is making many countries in this politically volatile region rethink that math. The population of the region has more than quadrupled since 1950, to 364 million, and is expected to reach nearly 600 million by 2050. By that time, the amount of fresh water available for each person, already scarce, will be cut in half, and declining resources could inflame political tensions further.

“The countries of the region are caught between the hammer of rising food prices and the anvil of steadily declining water availability per capita,” Alan R. Richards, a professor of economics and environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said via e-mail. “There is no simple solution.”

Losing confidence in world markets, these nations are turning anew to expensive schemes to maintain their food supply.

Djibouti is growing rice in solar-powered greenhouses, fed by groundwater and cooled with seawater, in a project that produces what the World Bank economist Ruslan Yemtsov calls “probably the most expensive rice on earth.”

Several oil-rich nations, including Saudi Arabia, have started searching for farmland in fertile but politically unstable countries like Pakistan and Sudan, with the goal of growing crops to be shipped home. “These countries have the land and the water,” said Hassan S. Sharaf Al Hussaini, an official in Bahrain’s agriculture ministry. “We have the money.”

In Egypt, where a shortage of subsidized bread led to rioting in April, government officials say they are looking into growing wheat on two million acres straddling the border with Sudan.

Economists and development experts say that nutritional self-sufficiency in this part of the world presents challenges that are not easily overcome. Saudi Arabia tapped aquifers to become self-sufficient in wheat production in the 1980s. By the early 1990s, the kingdom had become a major exporter. This year, however, the Saudis said they would phase out the program because it used too much water. “You can bring in money and water and you can make the desert green until either the water runs out or the money,” said Elie Elhadj, a Syrian-born author who wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the topic.

Read more on this story from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.

July 21, 2008 · Filed Under International Water Issues

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