Peter Gleick: Wake up - Here is what a real water crisis looks like
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on July 3, 2009 at 6:52 amFrom Peter Gleick at his City Brights blog:
California is in the midst of an ugly debate about water–uglier than normal–because of a confluence of events, including a “hydrologic” drought caused by nature, a longer-term trend to restore some water back to failing ecosystems, and the gross mismanagement of the state’s water, which has been going on for a century, but is affecting us now more than ever.
But despite all of the rhetoric, news stories, name-calling, yelling, and screaming, Californians have very little clue about what a real water crisis looks like. It looks like what’s happening in Australia. Today’s Water Number:
Water Number: 18,000 tons of rice. That is the total rice production from all of Australia last year, compared to the long-term average from 1970 of over 720,000 tons, and the high (in 2000) of over 1.6 million tons. Effectively, Australian rice production has dropped to zero because there is not enough water. And that is only one measure of the severity of their water crisis.
Read more from the City Brights blog by clicking here.
World Water Forum wrap-up: A right to rain
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 28, 2009 at 5:31 pmFrom Grist Magazine:
One man gathers rain to recharge groundwater reserves and another pushes salt water through a desalination plant for subsequent sale. Are these both viable solutions to the world’s water crisis?
With the impacts of climate change, water waste, contamination and mismanagement driving us ever closer to the edge of a cliff, ensuring clean and plentiful water to both people and nature becomes tougher and more urgent each day.
A seemingly broad variety of water management strategies was on display at the recent 5th World Water Forum (WWF), confusing participants with repackaged policy prescriptions and technological bells and whistles. Helping people sift the wheat from the chaff were discussions of how to manage water as a commons. A concise set of principles offered a hopeful roadmap forward.
The forum was a mostly a civil affair, with the notable exception of riot police beating and arresting 25 Turks protesting peacefully for public water and against its privatization. The World Water Forum is convened by the World Water Council, a private, French non-profit whose board of governors tilts towards water privateers.
Read more from Grist Magazine by clicking here.
Egypt: Unquiet flows the Nile
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 24, 2009 at 6:36 amFrom AllAfrica.com:
Differences over sharing of Nile waters may have deepened following the failure among the nine countries along the Nile to come to an agreement.
Egypt refused to sign a long-negotiated water-sharing agreement at the talks held in late May. Egyptian experts say the proposed treaty failed to guarantee a fair share of Nile water. “Egypt’s position on the matter isn’t new,” Hani Raslan, head of the department for Sudan and Nile Basin countries at the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies told IPS. “Egypt has the right to maintain its current share of Nile water under international law.”
Under the two Nile treaties signed in 1929 and 1959, Egypt has the right to consume up to 55.5 billion cubic metres per year of Nile water. “Egypt’s longstanding right to this amount was only referred to in the treaty as a postscript,” said Raslan. “It was not included in the main text of the proposed NBI (Nile Basin Initiative) agreement, prompting Egypt to reject it.”
“We will not concede our historic share of Nile water,” minister for water resources and irrigation Mohamed Nasreddin Allam was quoted as saying in independent daily Al-Dustour Jun. 2. Two days later, Allam declared that Egypt and Sudan had agreed that neither would relinquish water rights as stipulated in previous agreements.
Read more from AllAfrica.com by clicking here.
Thursday’s top of the scroll: Cadiz water deal was all wet the last time, says LA Times columnist
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 11, 2009 at 8:32 amFrom Los Angeles Times Business columnist Michael Hiltzik:
People who say that nothing’s harder to get rid of than a bad penny must never have met Keith Brackpool.
The British-born promoter, who has spent the last dozen years pushing a scheme to pump water to Southern California from beneath 35,000 acres his Cadiz Inc. owns in the Mojave Desert, just won’t go away.
On the contrary, he continues to attract political sycophants happy to attest to his wisdom in the ways of water policy — while they accept campaign contributions and consulting fees from him and his company.
In the past his posse has included ex-Gov. Gray Davis and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Now he has added Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who last week publicly endorsed the scheme as “a path-breaking, new, sustainable groundwater conservation and storage project.”
The endorsement was embedded in an announcement Cadiz issued Friday, saying it executed letters of intent with four Southern California municipal water agencies to jointly investigate reviving the water scheme, which was rejected by the Metropolitan Water District seven years ago.
Read more of Hiltzik’s column from the LA Times Business section by clicking here.
New report puts climate change and global water crisis in business perspective; UN and Pacific Institute detail what businesses need to know and do
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 24, 2009 at 10:56 amFrom the Pacific Institute, this press release:
The Pacific Institute and the UN Global Compact have released Climate Change and the Global Water Crisis: What Businesses Need to Know and Do, a paper exploring the linkages between climate change and water – from both the scientific and corporate management perspectives.
“Climate-related impacts on water resources are already being documented,” said Jason Morrison, director of the Pacific Institute’s Globalization Program. “Businesses need to respond in an integrated way, measuring and assessing the risks associated with their water and carbon footprints, and integrating these issues into strategic business planning.”
Climate Change and the Global Water Crisis details how climate change is expected to impact water scarcity, water quality, and water demand. It also brings to the fore how interconnected water and energy are, particularly in terms of the vast amounts of energy used to treat, distribute, and use water, and the serious shortsightedness and risks of managing water and energy/climate change in isolation of one another.
The Pacific Institute and UN Global Compact present the need for the business sector to take action on both climate and water, detailing how disruptions in water supply can increase water prices and trigger increased socio-political risks. Without forward-thinking management, such disruptions can undermine industrial operations, increase competition for clean water, exacerbate the subsequent tensions that arise between businesses and local communities, and cause ecological impacts from water withdrawal and discharge that require more regulatory action.
“This paper underscores the importance of viewing the many ways in which different environmental challenges are in fact deeply connected, and the need to approach these issues in an integrated way,” said Georg Kell, executive director of the UN Global Compact. “Climate change needs to be understood in terms of how it will impact a range of other issues – such as water, food, energy, and, of course, development, and poverty.”
The Pacific Institute is dedicated to protecting our natural world, encouraging sustainable development, and improving global security. Founded in 1987 and based in Oakland, California, the Institute provides independent research and policy analysis on issues at the intersection of development, environment, and security and aims to find real-world solutions to problems like water shortages, habitat destruction, global warming, and environmental injustice. www.pacinst.org
The CEO Water Mandate is a United Nations Global Compact initiative, launched by the U.N. Secretary-General, and is designed to help the private sector better understand and address its impacts on and management of water resources, working to facilitate actions and partnerships that help companies become more sustainable and equitable. One of the most comprehensive and visible cross-sectoral, public-private partnerships on water, it represents both a call to action and a strategic framework for responsible water management by business.
The world water crisis: High cost, low priority; Clean and steady water that circumstance denies to up to two-thirds of the world’s population remains a low priority even as trillions are spent on carbon and stimulus initiatives, a new United Nations report states
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 23, 2009 at 8:51 amFrom Miller-McCune:
Despite promises made by world leaders nearly a decade ago, a new United Nations report has concluded it is still “business as usual” for 5 billion people — about two-thirds of the world population — who do not have access to safe drinking water, adequate sanitation or enough food to eat.
That’s the grim assessment of “Water in a Changing World”, the U.N.’s third triennial water development report since 2000. It was presented this spring at the World Water Forum in Istanbul, Turkey, as several hundred protesters demonstrated against large dam construction and the privatization of water supplies in the developing world.
The report called on governments and the private sector urgently to increase their investment in water resources, noting that the funds needed for water resources are miniscule compared to the funds already pledged and obtained to reduce carbon emissions and deal with the global financial crisis.
Read more from Miller-McCune by clicking here.
‘Green revolution’ trapping India’s farmers in debt
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 15, 2009 at 7:35 amFrom NPR:
As the world’s population surges, the international community faces a pressing problem: How will it feed everybody? Until recently, people thought India had an answer.
Farmers in the state of Punjab abandoned traditional farming methods in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the national program called the “Green Revolution,” backed by advisers from the U.S. and other countries. Indian farmers started growing crops the American way — with chemicals, high-yield seeds and irrigation. Since then, India has gone from importing grain like a beggar, to often exporting it.
But studies show the Green Revolution is heading for collapse.
Read more from NPR by clicking here.
Dry taps in Mexico City: A water crisis gets worse
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 14, 2009 at 6:18 am
From Time Magazine:
The reek of unwashed toilets spilled into the street in the neighborhood of unpainted cinder block houses. Out on the main road, hundreds of residents banged plastic buckets and blocked the path of irate drivers while children scoured the surrounding area for government trucks. Finally, the impatient crowd launched into a high-pitched chant, repeating one word at fever pitch: “Water, Water, Water!”
About five million people, or a quarter of the population of Mexico City’s urban sprawl, woke up Thursday with dry taps. The drought was caused by the biggest stoppage in the city’s main reservoir system in recent years to ration its depleting supplies. Government officials hope this and four other stoppages will keep water flowing until the summer rainy season fills the basins back up. But they warn that the Mexican capital needs to seriously overhaul its water system to stop an unfathomable disaster in the future.
It is perhaps unsurprising that the biggest metropolis in the Western hemisphere is confronting problems with its water supply — and becoming an alarming cautionary tale for other megacities. Scientists have been talking for years about how humans are pumping up too much water while ripping apart too many forests, and warning that the vital liquid could become the next commodity nations are fighting over with tanks and bombers. But it is hard for most people to appreciate quite how valuable a simple thing like water is — until the taps turn off.
Read more from Time Magazine by clicking here.
Depleted reservoirs threaten Mexico City’s water supply
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 10, 2009 at 6:19 amFrom the Latin American Herald Tribune:
VILLA VICTORIA, MEXICO – Reservoirs that are a source of water to Mexico City – one of the world’s biggest metropolises – are at record low levels due to insufficient rainfall last year, prompting authorities to curtail supply. “We’ve never been at such low levels,” the head of the National Water Commission, or Conagua, Jose Luis Luege, told reporters at the Villa Victoria reservoir, near the capital.
The average capacity of three of the seven reservoirs that make up the Cutzamala dam system, which supplies the Mexico City metropolitan area, stood at 47.8 percent on Wednesday morning, compared to a normal level of 63 percent.
That shortage, combined with planned maintenance work on hydric infrastructure, will lead to supply cuts in Greater Mexico City during Holy Week that will affect some 5 million people, a fifth of the metropolitan area’s total population.
The low water levels are due to insufficient rainfall last year, and Luege said that if forecasts for another dry year in 2009 prove to be correct (and particularly if reservoirs do not swell during the May to November rainy season) the interruption to supply could be prolonged.
Read more from the Latin American Herald Tribune by clicking here.
What will global warming look like? Scientists point to Australia
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 9, 2009 at 5:54 amFrom the Los Angeles Times:
Reporting from The Murray-Darling Basin, Australia — Frank Eddy pulled off his dusty boots and slid into a chair, taking his place at the dining room table where most of the critical family issues are hashed out. Spreading hands as dry and cracked as the orchards he tends, the stout man his mates call Tank explained what damage a decade of drought has done .
“Suicide is high. Depression is huge. Families are breaking up. It’s devastation,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve got a neighbor in terrible trouble. Found him in the paddock, sitting in his [truck], crying his eyes out. Grown men — big, strong grown men. We’re holding on by the skin of our teeth. It’s desperate times.”
A result of climate change? “You’d have to have your head in the bloody sand to think otherwise,” Eddy said.
They call Australia the Lucky Country, with good reason. Generations of hardy castoffs tamed the world’s driest inhabited continent, created a robust economy and cultivated an image of irresistibly resilient people who can’t be held down. Australia exports itself as a place of captivating landscapes, brilliant sunshine, glittering beaches and an enviable lifestyle.
Look again. Climate scientists say Australia — beset by prolonged drought and deadly bush fires in the south, monsoon flooding and mosquito-borne fevers in the north, widespread wildlife decline, economic collapse in agriculture and killer heat waves — epitomizes the “accelerated climate crisis” that global warming models have forecast.
With few skeptics among them, Australians appear to be coming to an awakening: Adapt to a rapidly shifting climate, and soon. Scientists here warn that the experience of this island continent is an early cautionary tale for the rest of the world.
Read more from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.
Sin aqua non: Water shortages are a growing problem, but not for the reasons most people think
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 9, 2009 at 5:53 amFrom the Economist:
THE overthrow of Madagascar’s president in mid-March was partly caused by water problems—in South Korea. Worried by the difficulties of increasing food supplies in its water-stressed homeland, Daewoo, a South Korean conglomerate, signed a deal to lease no less than half Madagascar’s arable land to grow grain for South Koreans. Widespread anger at the terms of the deal (the island’s people would have received practically nothing) contributed to the president’s unpopularity. One of the new leader’s first acts was to scrap the agreement.
Three weeks before that, on the other side of the world, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California declared a state of emergency. Not for the first time, he threatened water rationing in the state. “It is clear,” says a recent report by the United Nations World Water Assessment Programme, “that urgent action is needed if we are to avoid a global water crisis.”
Local water shortages are multiplying. Australia has suffered a decade-long drought. Brazil and South Africa, which depend on hydroelectric power, have suffered repeated brownouts because there is not enough water to drive the turbines properly. So much has been pumped out of the rivers that feed the Aral Sea in Central Asia that it collapsed in the 1980s and has barely begun to recover.
Yet local shortages, caused by individual acts of mismanagement or regional problems, are one thing. A global water crisis, which impinges on supplies of food and other goods, or affects rivers and lakes everywhere, is quite another. Does the world really face a global problem?
Read more from The Economist by clicking here.
Study maps Canada’s hidden water to stave off shortages
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 7, 2009 at 5:56 amFrom CBC News:
Canadian scientists are partway through a project to map underground water supplies across the country. The goal is to help policy makers prevent water shortages as industrial and urban development, along with climate change, put pressure on groundwater supplies.
Alfonso Rivera, chief hydrogeologist with the Geological Survey of Canada, said so far the study has found there are close to 100,000 cubic kilometres of water hidden in aquifers across the country — a large, rich supply. But most of that is “fossil water” that was trapped underground long ago and isn’t rechargeable, Rivera said. Those aquifers that can recharge do so more slowly than previously believed, and most of them aren’t very deep.
“The point there is you may run out of water — they don’t have a huge capacity of availability in the long run,” he said.
Rivera said that up until now, Canada has had little information about how much groundwater it has, how that water is recharged and when it might run out.
Mark Hinton, a hydrogeologist with the Geological Survey who is working with Rivera on the project, said that information is important because all human activities from agriculture to the construction of subdivisions affect groundwater supplies. “This kind of research is really useful because it helps us make decisions — how much can we use?” said Hinton, who is currently near Cornwall studying the aquifer in layers of an esker, a ribbon of sand and gravel deposited by glacier.
Read more from the CBC News by clicking here. Hat tip to the Sisweb for this one!
Fixing our water crisis can’t be done by the corporations that are exacerbating it
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 3, 2009 at 6:28 amFrom AlterNet:
As the Fifth World Water Forum ended recently in Istanbul, a number of stories came out, each of which might have emerged as the main water story of the week. But in fact, to see the most important story of the Forum you have to look beyond the Forum itself. Here’s what happened.
Father Miguel d’Escoto, President of the UN General Assembly, and an outspoken critic of water privatization, had requested a public audience at the Forum — which presents the appearance of a UN event — but was denied; in response, Maude Barlow, his Senior Advisor on Water, delivered a statement from him to the alternative, People’s Water Forum, where 600 global water rights activists had gathered in an unsanctioned popular event. In this statement, Father Miguel provides a serious critique of the World Water Council and calls upon member states of the UN to implement a process leading to a legitimate global water forum under the auspices of the United Nations.
But a story about the UN General Assembly President being excluded from speaking at the World Water Forum, and his advisor speaking instead to the grassroots forum to ask that the UN step in to replace the World Water Council, this is not the main story. After all, everyone knows that nobody listens to the UN.
Read more from AlterNet by clicking here.
Yanks raid Aussie water market
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 31, 2009 at 11:28 amFrom the Australian Weekly Times Now:
A major US-backed company is scooping up irrigators’ entitlements as part of a $500 million global water-purchasing strategy.
California-based Summit Global Management has so far bought about $20 million of Australian irrigators’ water through its local interests. Summit Global’s chief marketing officer Matt Dickerson said “there were few areas where we can execute our strategy, but Australia is one of them. There’s a need for liquidity in the market and we’re in a position to monetise these assets and act as a water bank as well.”
However, the US-backed company will have to compete with the Federal Government for high-reliability water entitlements in an already thin market.
Mr Dickerson said Summit was aware of the Federal Government’s water-purchasing program for the environment. “But our intention is to lease it (water) back to farmers,” he said. “We’re trying to be partners with farmers.”
Read more from Weekly Times Now by clicking here.
Murray-Darling Basin, Australia’s dry run: What will happen when the climate starts to change and the rivers dry up and a whole way of life comes to an end? The people of the Murray-Darling Basin are finding out right now.
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 25, 2009 at 5:43 am
Could this be California’s future? From National Geographic:
On the side of a road somewhere in southeastern Australia sits a man in a motionless pickup truck, considering the many ways in which his world has dried up. The two most obvious ways are in plain view. Just beyond his truck, his dairy cattle graze on the roadside grass. The heifers are all healthy, thank God. But there are only 70 of them. Five years ago, he had nearly 500. The heifers are feeding along a public road—”not strictly legal,” the man concedes, but what choice does he have? There is no more grass on the farm he owns. His land is now a desert scrubland where the slightest breeze lifts a hazy wall of dust. He can no longer afford to buy grain, which is evident from the other visible reminder of his plight: the bank balance displayed on the laptop perched on the dashboard of his truck. The man, who has never been rich but also never poor, has piled up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. The cows he gazes at through his windshield—that is all the income he has left.
His name is Malcolm Adlington, and for the past 36 of his 52 years he has been a dairy farmer, up at five every morning for the first milking of the day. Not so long ago Adlington used to look forward to a ritual called a dairy farm walk. State agriculture officials would round up local dairy farmers to visit a model farm—often Adlington’s, a small but prosperous operation outside of Barham in New South Wales. The farmers would study Adlington’s ample grain-fed heifers. They would inquire about his lush hay paddocks—which seeds and fertilizers he favored—and Adlington was only too happy to share information, knowing they would reciprocate when it came their turn. That was the spirit of farming, and of Australia. A man could freely experiment, freely reveal his farming strategies, with the quiet confidence that his toil and ingenuity would win out.
“That,” Adlington observes today, “was before the drought came along.” A decade ago, Adlington employed five farmhands. “It’s just the wife and I now,” he says. “The last three years we’ve had essentially no water. That’s what is killing us.”
Except there is water. You can see it rippling underneath the main road just a mile from where his truck is parked. It’s the Southern Main Canal, an irrigation channel from Australia’s legendary Murray River, which along with the Darling River and other waterways is the water source for the South Australia capital of Adelaide and provides 65 percent of all the water used for the country’s agriculture. Adlington possesses a license to draw 273 million gallons of water annually from the Murray-Darling River system. The problem is the water has been promised to too many players: the city of Adelaide, the massive corporate farms, the protected wetlands. And so, for the past three years, the New South Wales government has forbidden Adlington from taking little more than a drop. He still has to pay for his allocation of water. He just can’t use it. Not until the drought ends. Adlington finds himself chafing at the unfairness of it all. “It’s the lack of rain,” he says, “but also the silly man-made rules.” Those rules seem to favor everyone except farmers like him. Meanwhile, he’s selling off his treasured livestock.
Read more from National Geographic by clicking here. (The link will drop you on page 2 of the 11 page article.)
As climate changes, is water the new oil?
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 23, 2009 at 7:53 amWhoops, yesterday was World Water Day. I knew that, but in the haste to make it out the door in the morning, it slipped my mind. However, not my fellow bloggers, so click here to see how other bloggers celebrated the day. And in the meantime, here’s a wrap up of the World Water Forum from Reuters News:
If water is the new oil, is blue the new green? Translation: if water is now the kind of precious commodity that oil became in the 20th century, should delivery of clean water be the same sort of powerful political force as the environmental movement in an age of climate change? And, in another sense of green, is there money to be made in a time of water scarcity?
The answer to both questions, according to environmental activists watching a global forum on water, is yes.
The week-long meeting in Istanbul ends Sunday, which is International World Water Day, an annual United Nations event that began in 1993 to focus attention on sustainable management of fresh water resources.
The yearly observance recognizes water as an absolute human need: people can live as much as 30 days without food but only seven without water. How long can a person live without oil?
Read more from Reuters News by clicking here.
Drought reveals Iraqi archaeological treasures
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 21, 2009 at 5:40 am
From NPR’s All Things Considered:
Iraq is suffering one of the worst droughts in decades. While this is bad news for farmers, it is good news for archaeologists in the country. The receding waters of the Euphrates River have revealed ancient archaeological sites, some of which were unknown until now.
For Ratib Ali al-Kubaisi, the director of Anbar province’s Antiquities Department, the drought has opened up a whole new land of opportunity. He explains that civilization began in Anbar, next to the Euphrates River. “Everyone … thought that Anbar was only desert with no historical importance. But we discovered that this area is one of the most important archaeological areas in all of Iraq. This part of Iraq was the first to be settled,” he says.
In the mid-1980s, Saddam Hussein’s government dammed the Euphrates in the area, flooding a 120-mile-long stretch of land near Iraq’s border with Syria. What once was an enormous reservoir that stretched as far as the eye could see has shrunk an astonishing 90 percent since summer, officials say.
And those receding waters have uncovered ruins of civilizations from a plethora of time periods, from 3,000 B.C. to the Sumerian and Roman periods. Read more from NPR by clicking here.
Sprinkling the message of water conservation: Don’t celebrate World Water Day, do something about it
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 20, 2009 at 7:36 amFrom MarketWatch, this commentary by Thomas Kostigen:
Sunday is World Water Day. It shouldn’t be celebrated, it should be a reminder of concern for the biggest environmental crisis facing the planet today: water shortage.
Individuals and businesses need to understand the water crisis facing us — and take action to help stem it. By 2025, two-thirds of the world will face severe water shortages, including a majority of U.S. states.
Businesses already are taking steps to shore up supplies and cultivate awareness. The Global Water Challenge comprises major multinational businesses and nonprofit organizations that work together to create water “fairness.” Coca-Cola Co. just last week committed $30 million to support clean water projects across Africa.Corporations are beginning to realize there soon won’t be enough water to go around. The five largest beverage companies, for example, use as much water as the entire world’s population. Nestle SA’s chairman last year admitted there won’t be enough water to produce all the food we need.
The water crisis spills into business risk.
Read more of this commentary by clicking here.
Saving every last drop: With drought conditions and water restructions set to impact businesses across the US, some businesses are acting now to reduce their water risks
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 19, 2009 at 2:34 pmFrom Business Green:
Frito Lay’s factory in parched Casa Grande, Arizona, is close to moving off the water grid.
A large-scale water recycling system, now in its final stages of installation, will direct all water used in the plant through a membrane bioreactor filter system to treat it to drinking-quality standards before funneling it back into the facility for reuse. When fully operational at the end of 2009, the Texas-based global snack food company expects to recycle 85 per cent to 90 per cent of the water used in the plant.
“As an agro-based business, we realised a long time ago that water is critical to our operations,” says Al Halvorsen, Frito Lay’s director of environmental sustainability.
Drought conditions and impending water regulations are spurring smart and environmentally-savvy companies like Frito Lay to focus their sustainability efforts on conserving and managing a precious resource crucial for their long-term viability. Experts say conserving water is moving from noble gesture to shrewd business decision because of the sour economy and the likelihood of the price rising over the next decade to reflect its true cost. [For more on the challenges facing companies in measuring and reducing water use, see Water Basics: You Can't Manage What You Don't Measure, by Andrew Collier and Andrew Glantz.]
“Water upgrades used to be “good to have” but didn’t offer a major return on investment,” says Eric Meliton, an environmental technology research analyst at Frost and Sullivan. “But now with the economy, companies see water reduction projects as good investments.”
Find out other forward-thinking companies, such as Avon & GE, are doing to reduce their corporate water footprint by clicking here.
World Water Forum Update: Business facing surging water risk
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 19, 2009 at 7:36 amFrom the Pacific Institute, this press release:
March 18, 2009: Istanbul, Turkey: A world running short of water is presenting a new category of risk to business that many have not even begun to appreciate, the World Water Forum in Istanbul was told today.
And while some leading companies have made great improvements in using water more efficiently in their own operations, they will need to look deep into their supply chains and into the performance of water regulators, warned WWF and noted U.S.-based water research body, the Pacific Institute. “If you are an efficient business sitting in a poorly managed river basin you are still exposed to extremely high water risk,” said Stuart Orr, freshwater manager at WWF International.
Water is so basic a commodity that many businesses do not realise the extent to which disruptions in supply or increases in price – both predicted with increasing frequency – can effect their operations.
“The companies that will best shield themselves from the unexpected will be those that have assessed water requirements and risks in both their direct and indirect operations and in an integrated way with other emerging risk categories such as with climate and energy,” said Jason Morrison, program director at the Pacific Institute.Morrison used an example of a brewery in an area where climate change had impacted heavily on water supplies. The company not only found unexpected cost increases and reductions in its own water supplies but also rapid increases in energy costs as hydroelectric generation capacity was reduced and difficulties in sourcing barly and hops as water-short farmers put land into fallow.
“Water risk assessment should include physical risks, such as running out of water, and reputational risks where companies can be perceived as irresponsible users of a scarce resource by communities, consumers of their products, regulators or financiers,” said Morrison. “Companies should also consider the risk of more onerous and costly regulation and financial risks as water shortages translate into higher energy prices, higher insurance and credit costs and lower investor confidence.”
The growth in instruments such as water footprint studies and industry standards for water use and discharges was an encouraging sign, but business, often together with civil society, should also become involved in urging better water policy and management overall, Orr said.
“It will be better for business to be seen making a positive contribution to public policy processes over water in a climate of water shortages rather than as a powerful player interested mainly in grabbing or defending its share of water,” Orr said.
Business involvement in improved water management can include advocacy and lobbying for better policies in company with civil society and communities, other partnerships with governments and water authorities, and financial support for infrastructure and capacity building, a key factor in the developing world.
Reports:
WWF: Understanding Water Risks: A Primer on the Consequences of Water Scarcity for Government and Business at http://assets.wwf.org.uk/downloads/understanding_water_risk.pdf
Pacific Institute: Water Scarcity and Climate Change: Growing Risks for Businesses and Investors at http://www.pacinst.org/reports/business_water_climate/index.htmAbout the Pacific Institute
Based in Oakland, California, the Pacific Institute is a nonpartisan research institute that works to create a healthier planet and sustainable communities. Through interdisciplinary research and partnering with stakeholders, the Institute produces solutions that advance environmental protection, economic development, and social equity. The Pacific Institute’s Water Program seeks to transform the way societies perceive, manage, and use freshwater resources. www.pacinst.orgAbout WWF
WWF is one of the world’s largest and most respected independent conservation organizations, with almost 5 million supporters and a global network active in over 100 countries. WWF’s mission is to stop the degradation of the earth’s natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature, by conserving the world’s biological diversity, ensuring that the use of renewable natural resources is sustainable, and promoting the reduction of pollution and wasteful consumption. www.panda.org/media for latest news and media resources
Activists offer noise but not solutions to world’s water woes
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 17, 2009 at 4:24 pmFrom Water World:
LONDON, UK, March 16, 2009 — As the Fifth World Water Forum begins in Istanbul today, activists have already begun to create trouble, with violent protests that have diverted attention from the real issue — the one billion people who do not have clean drinking water.
Kendra Okonski, IPN Research Fellow and editor of The Water Revolution, said of the protestors: Whether it’s Tokyo, Mexico City or Istanbul, a few global activists show up like clockwork at the World Water Forum to protest and make noise. Unlike the bona fide participants in the forum, they offer few — if any — concrete solutions to real water problems. In fact, these activists harm the world’s one billion people who lack clean water and the 2.6 billion without sewerage.
Caroline Boin, IPN Research Fellow, explained that the status quo with water is harmful and unsustainable: The activists attack the World Bank, multinationals and the very notion of profit. But less than five percent of global water management today is private. The real culprits are governments who mismanage and misallocate water to farmers and other special interests, as well as the politically connected, in poor countries. Not only does this harm the poor, it also harms the environment by encouraging waste.
Read more from Water World by clicking here.
World Bank appeals for water investment
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 17, 2009 at 4:22 pmFrom the Associated Press:
ISTANBUL (AP) — The global economic crisis threatens to shrink investment in water infrastructure, an already underfunded sector vital to growth and public health, the World Bank said Tuesday
The first global economic contraction since World War II threatens to overshadow the scarcity of clean water in many poor regions, where inadequate sanitation is a major cause of deadly disease and a drag on economic development. The United Nations says the total cost of replacing aging water supply and sanitation infrastructure in industrial countries could be as high as $200 billion per year.
Jamal Saghir, director of energy, transport and water at the World Bank, said there were not significant funds earmarked for water investment in the stimulus packages of the United States and other countries fighting the economic meltdown. He appealed for greater efficiency in water management.
“We can do more with the same or even less,” he said in an address to a packed auditorium at the World Water Forum, a weeklong global conference that is held every three years to issue recommendations on how governments should conserve, manage and supply water. It ends March 22.
Read more from the Associated Press by clicking here.
Chilean town withers in free market for water
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 16, 2009 at 6:21 amFrom the New York Times:
During the past four decades here in Quillagua, a town in the record books as the driest place on earth, residents have sometimes seen glimpses of raindrops above the foothills in the distance. They never reach the ground, evaporating like a mirage while still in the air.
What the town did have was a river, feeding an oasis in the Atacama desert. But mining companies have polluted and bought up so much of the water, residents say, that for months each year the river is little more than a trickle — and an unusable one at that.
Quillagua is among many small towns that are being swallowed up in the country’s intensifying water wars. Nowhere is the system for buying and selling water more permissive than here in Chile, experts say, where water rights are private property, not a public resource, and can be traded like commodities with little government oversight or safeguards for the environment.
Private ownership is so concentrated in some areas that a single electricity company from Spain, Endesa, has bought up 80 percent of the water rights in a huge region in the south, causing an uproar. In the north, agricultural producers are competing with mining companies to siphon off rivers and tap scarce water supplies, leaving towns like this one bone dry and withering.
“Everything, it seems, is against us,” said Bartolomé Vicentelo, 79, who once grew crops and fished for shrimp in the Loa River that fed Quillagua.
Read more from the New York Times by clicking here.
Water scarcity ‘now bigger threat than financial crisis’
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 16, 2009 at 6:15 amFrom the U.K.’s Independent:
Humanity is facing “water bankruptcy” as a result of a crisis even greater than the financial meltdown now destabilising the global economy, two authoritative new reports show. They add that it is already beginning to take effect, and there will be no way of bailing the earth out of water scarcity.
The two reports – one by the world’s foremost international economic forum and the other by 24 United Nations agencies – presage the opening tomorrow of the most important conference on the looming crisis for three years. The World Water Forum, which will be attended by 20,000 people in Istanbul, will hear stark warnings of how half the world’s population will be affected by water shortages in just 20 years’ time, with millions dying and increasing conflicts over dwindling resources.
A report by the World Economic Forum, which runs the annual Davos meetings of the international business and financial elite, says that lack of water, will “soon tear into various parts of the global economic system” and “start to emerge as a headline geopolitical issue”.
It adds: “The financial crisis gives us a stark warning of what can happen if known economic risks are left to fester. We are living in a water ‘bubble’ as unsustainable and fragile as that which precipitated the collapse in world financial markets. We are now on the verge of bankruptcy in many places with no way of paying the debt back.”
Read more from The Independent by clicking here.
Water forum seeks way through worsening crisis
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 16, 2009 at 6:12 amFrom Google News/AFP:
Politicians, corporate executives, engineers and greens gather here on Monday for a week-long arena aimed at tackling the planet’s fast-growing water crisis. Around 20,000 people are expected for the Fifth World Water Forum in the Turkish city of Istanbul, where a charged agenda awaits them.
Access to clean water and sanitation, river pollution, madcap extraction of aquifers, jockeying for water rights and the impact of climate change have turned the stuff of life into a fiercely contentious issue.
The Forum, held only every three years, has been foreshadowed by a report issued by a constellation of UN agencies. In 348 pages, their document, published last Thursday, warned of a triple whammy in which supplies of freshwater were being viciously squeezed by demographic pressure, waste and drought.
It spoke of a “global water crisis” with plenty of potential for instability and conflict.
Loic Fauchon, head of the World Water Council which is organising the Istanbul meeting, said the facts amounted to a glaring message that times have changed. “The era of easy water is over. We have to embark on policies for regulating demand,” Fauchon said in Paris last week.
Read more from AFP by clicking here.
Improved corporate water reporting needed despite progress in recent years
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 11, 2009 at 7:19 pmFrom YubaNet.com:
Significant improvement is needed in the depth and breadth of corporate reporting on water, particularly regarding water issues outside of direct business operations, according to a major study released today.
Commissioned by the United Nations Global Compact’s CEO Water Mandate, the report by the Pacific Institute finds better and more expansive disclosure is critical for understanding the true risks and impacts associated with companies’ water needs.
“Many companies are disclosing important aspects of water management in their corporate social responsibility reports, but the study demonstrates that very few are conveying complete and consistent information on a range of important water issues,” said Gavin Power, Deputy Director of the U.N. Global Compact and Head of The CEO Water Mandate. “This groundbreaking report assesses current and emerging practices, and offers critical guidance for companies on next-generation water reporting.”
The newly released CEO Water Mandate report, Water Disclosure 2.0 - Assessment of Current and Emerging Practice in Corporate Water Reporting, examines and analyzes corporate reporting on water sustainability for 110 companies across 11 water-intensive sectors. The assessment tracks the six key elements addressed by the CEO Water Mandate: Direct Operations, Supply Chain and Watershed Management, Collective Action, Public Policy, Community Engagement, and Transparency.
Managing water use and impacts is increasingly important in a world where water scarcity is becoming more pronounced, climate change is exacerbating water problems and uncertainty, pollutants from corporate water discharge is fouling waterways, and communities are becoming more conscious of their water resources. Thus accurate measurement and reporting is a key to more sustainable water management.
Read more from YubaNet.com by clicking here.
Australia’s biggest dry: a future of drought and water scarcity?
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 11, 2009 at 6:56 amFrom J. Carl Ganter and the Huffington Post:
Sometimes a story is just so big it needs superlatives. A story as big as a continent.
Take Australia’s water, what’s left of it.
“Not since the American Dust Bowl of the early 20th century has an industrialized nation sustained more damage from drought and water scarcity in its prime food-growing region than in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin,” writes Keith Schneider, a veteran reporter who’s covered global agriculture and environmental issues for three decades. His full reportage is published online in our new multimedia piece, “The Biggest Dry: Australia’s Epic Drought is a Global Warning of Water Scarcity.”
While much-needed rain has come to parts of Australia over the past few days, it’s hardly enough to sate the thirst of the drying Murray and Darling rivers and their great economies of cities and agriculture. The reality of the situation remains grim for many in Australia and potentially the world: tragic bush fires, drying wetlands, dying forests, failing crops and depressed communities.
Read more from the Huffington Post by clicking here.
Preventing a water crisis
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 9, 2009 at 4:53 amFrom the Boston Globe, this commentary by Mindy Lubber and Peter Gleick:
Californians know all too well that water shouldn’t be taken for granted, especially as the state now faces what many are calling “the worst drought in modern times.” On the heels of losing more than $260 million last year due to the drought, California farmers are at risk of losing most of their federal water supplies critical for irrigation - a blow that could cause even more severe economic losses this year.
“Water is our life - it’s our jobs and it’s our food,” said Ryan Jacobsen, executive director of the farm bureau in Fresno County. “Without a reliable water supply, agriculture is at great risk.”
So are many other industries.
On a warming planet, scientists have said to expect water scarcity problems like these to rise and become even more severe. Consequences for a reeling global economy will be profound.
Water is one of our most critical raw materials - even more important than oil, for there are no alternatives. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman of Nestlé, one of the world’s largest food conglomerates, put it starkly in an article in The Economist in December 2008: “I am convinced that, under present conditions and with the way water is being managed, we will run out of water long before we run out of fuel.”
Read more from the Boston Globe by clicking here.
A new mantra for China’s big thirst: Less is more
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on March 9, 2009 at 4:23 amFrom the Associated Press:
Experts and environmentalists say it’s time China took a different approach to its growth-related challenges, one based on conservation rather than engineering. That may not come easy in a country with a long history of megaprojects. When China wanted to keep out foreign invaders, it built the Great Wall. When it wanted to move rice, it built the 1,100-mile Grand Canal. When it needed electricity, it built the Three Gorges Dam, completed in 2006.
“States that continue to have a monopoly on political power do tend toward these large engineering solutions,” said David Pietz, a Washington State University professor who focuses on the water policies of the 60-year-old communist government.
Alternatives include using water more efficiently, desalinating seawater and recycling wastewater — to water golf courses, for example.
There are signs that government officials, many of them trained engineers, are beginning to heed their critics.
The most expensive and technically difficult leg of the canal project has been postponed for more study after scientists questioned its feasibility. Another leg has been delayed for four years to smooth the resettlement process.
Perhaps most important, a key official concedes that the project won’t slake the north’s thirst for long. “It can only be a supplement to the water shortage in the short term,” Zhang Jiyao, the minister in charge of the water project, told The Associated Press. “More important, we must depend on saving water.”
Read more from the Associated Press by clicking here.
When water is everything: Chico’s “Water Walk” aims to increase awareness of the world’s water crisis while raising money for the World Health Organization
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 19, 2009 at 7:35 amFrom the Chico Enterprise-Record:
Most Americans simply turn on a faucet to receive a cool drink of clean water. But in countless countries around the globe, millions of women and children walk hours for the life source, only to find water that most Americans would never dream of drinking.
On March 21, Chicoans will have the opportunity to walk in these women’s shoes — although they often go barefoot — when Bridging The Gap hosts Chico’s first Water Walk.
Shirley Adams, founder of the nonprofit organization, said the walk is a way to increase awareness of the world’s water crisis while raising money for the World Health Organization’s estimates of 1.1 billion people who live without clean water every day.
“People just aren’t aware of the problem,” Adams said. “This is a way to involve the whole community to inform them about the lack of clean water worldwide and our need for water conservation in our own country.”
The walk set in Bidwell Park will take participants on a 2K or 5K journey, with a water bucket in hand. Adults will pay $20 to take part; children will pay $10 to participate. Halfway through the walk, participants will fill their buckets with water and walk the remaining distance, visiting educational booths along the way.
“The idea is to take the walk and each station will give you a feel of what it is like to walk in a developing country for water,” Adams said.
Read more from the Chico Enterprise Record by clicking here.
Desalination schemes stir debate in parched Australia
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 19, 2009 at 6:29 amFrom the Voice of America:
Authorities in Western Australia say they can show the world how to conquer a water crisis that had threatened to decimate the state capital, Perth, amid a long-standing drought and declining rainfall. Desalination is at the heart of Western Australia’s approach to satisfying the thirst of a booming population that lives on the edge of a desert.
Western Australia’s efforts to curb consumption and find new sources have led officials to make the bold claim that the state no longer has a water crisis, even though rainfall levels have been halved in recent decades.
The southern hemisphere’s first desalination plant opened near Perth, just over two years ago.
“2001 was the winter from hell and we only get our rainfall in winter. So, it was unbelievably dry and we postulated the scenario of another two or three or four years like that and, frankly, we were going to have to shut Perth down,” Gill said. “We were going to run out of drinking water. Luckily, we’d done the homework on desalination and we had the confidence to go ahead and do it. No, we don’t have a water crisis anymore. Desalination was just one component of what we did. We put a lot of effort into demand management, as well, so we tried to get people to save 15 percent, which is not huge.”
Read more from the Voice of America by clicking here.
A world without water: An interview with Peter Gleick
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 16, 2009 at 5:21 pmFrom The Nation:
If you’ve read anything about the global water crisis, you’ve likely read a quote from Dr. Peter Gleick, founder and president of the Pacific Institute, and one of the world’s leading water experts. His name has become as ubiquitous as drought itself, which is suddenly making major headlines. A report from the World Economic Forum warned that in only twenty years our civilization may be facing “water bankruptcy”–shortfalls of fresh water so large and pervasive that global food production could crater, meaning that we’d lose the equivalent of the entire grain production of the US and India combined.
But we don’t have to wait twenty years to see what this would look like. Australia, reeling from twelve years of drought in the Murray-Darling River Basin, has seen agriculture grind to a halt, with tens of billions of dollars in losses. The region has been rendered a tinderbox, with the deadliest fires in the country’s history claiming over 160 lives so far. And all this may begin to hit closer to home soon. California’s water manager said that the state is bracing for its worst drought in modern history. Stephen Chu, the new US secretary of energy, warns that the effects of climate change on California’s water supplies could put an end to agriculture in the state by 2100 and imperil major cities.
The bad news is that these droughts are not just characteristic of a few hot spots around the world. Climate change is liable to affect already stressed drinking water in countless places, including much of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and parts of the Americas and Europe. Water is the essence of life, vital not just for drinking and sanitation but for agriculture and industry. If we don’t change our ways, and fast, we are courting global economic collapse, the World Economic Forum warned.
But there is good news, according to Gleick. For years he has advocated for a fundamental change in policy, infrastructure and thinking that he calls the “soft path” for water. I first met Gleick when I edited Water Consciousness, the newest book from AlterNet, which takes a comprehensive look at solutions to the global water crisis. With the flurry of drought related headlines recently and the release of Gleick’s newest edition of his biennial book, The World’s Water, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to catch up with him again and see how we can begin to put his thinking into practice–before it’s too late.
Read this interview with Peter Gleick from The Nation by clicking here.
Peace in the pipeline: “Water wars are coming!” the newspaper headlines scream, but are they?
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 13, 2009 at 8:16 amFrom BBC News, this commentary:
It seems obvious; rivalries over water have been the source of disputes since humans settled down to cultivate food. Even our language reflects these ancient roots: “rivalry” comes from the Latin rivalis, or “one using the same river as another”. As the number of international river basins and impact of water scarcity has grown, so do the warnings that countries will take up arms to ensure access to water.
In 1995, for example, World Bank Vice President Ismail Serageldin famously claimed that “the wars of the next century will be about water,” a sentiment echoed regularly ever since.
These apocalyptic warnings fly in the face of history.
No nations have gone to war specifically over water resources for thousands of years; the only documented case of war with such a specific cause was between the city states of Lagash and Umma on the Tigris River 4,500 years ago.
International water disputes - even among fierce enemies - are generally resolved peacefully, even as conflicts erupt over other issues.
Today, more than ever, it is time to stop propagating threats of ‘water wars’ and aggressively pursue a water peacemaking strategy. Why? Because water is so important that nations cannot afford to fight over it.
Instead, water fuels greater interdependence. By coming together to manage their shared water resources jointly, countries can build trust and help prevent conflict.
By crying “water wars,” doomsayers ignore a promising way to help prevent war: co-operative water resources management.
Read more of this commentary by clicking here.
Possible link between dam and China quake
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 6, 2009 at 5:40 amFrom the New York Times:
Nearly nine months after a devastating earthquake in Sichuan Province, China, left 80,000 people dead or missing, a growing number of American and Chinese scientists are suggesting that the calamity was triggered by a four-year-old reservoir built close to the earthquake’s geological fault line.
A Columbia University scientist who studied the quake has said that it may have been triggered by the weight of 320 million tons of water in the Zipingpu Reservoir less than a mile from a well-known major fault. His conclusions, presented to the American Geophysical Union in December, coincide with a new finding by Chinese geophysicists that the dam caused significant seismic changes before the earthquake.
Scientists emphasize that the link between the dam and the failure of the fault has not been conclusively proved, and that even if the dam acted as a trigger, it would only have hastened a quake that would have occurred at some point.
Nonetheless, any suggestion that a government project played a role in one of the biggest natural disasters in recent Chinese history is likely to be politically explosive.
Read more from the New York Times by clicking here.
Water expert Eric Garner tapped to shape global laws; Riverside lawyer wants to build legal structure to help developing nations
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on February 5, 2009 at 8:08 amOriginally published in the Los Angeles Daily Journal, here’s an article on Riverside water rights attorney Eric Garner, who has been chosen to chair the International Bar Association’s water rights committee:
Eric Garner grew up playing alongside a creek that meandered through his family’s backyard in North Carolina. Later, he visited major waterways in his extensive global travels. One was the River Thames in London and another the Seine in France. The experiences, he said, underscored the beauty and importance of bodies of water. In fact, he’s devoted his life to protecting them.
Garner, managing partner of Best Best & Krieger in Riverside, has carved out a reputation as one of
California’s highest profile and most sought after lawyers for bitter legal brawls over groundwater. He’s
helped guide resolutions of some of the state’s biggest water wars, including fights over supplies in Santa Maria, the American River in Sacramento and the Mojave River near Barstow.Garner co-wrote a book, “California Water,” that is viewed as the leading text on historical, legal and policy issues guiding the state’s supply. He’s helped Pakistan, South Africa and other countries draft water laws, and this month began duties as chair of the International Bar Association’s water law committee.
“Eric is one of the few really bright stars among the water bar,” James L. Markman, a partner with
Richards, Watson & Gershon in Brea who has worked with Garner on several cases, said. “Water law is
very arcane, but he has almost total recall of case citations - it’s a little scary.”
Read the rest of this article by clicking here.
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