HOT TOPICS

WATER WARS

Never mind oil and gas, says CIWEM Executive Director, Nick Reeves, it is arguments over water that could cause the next global conflict.

Forgive the hyperbole that reads like the plot of the latest doomsday flick: melting polar ice is revealing  hidden secrets of oil and mineral reserves, forcing the United Nations to arbitrate between countries - including Russia, the US and Canada - that are arguing over extraction rights that will undermine action on climate change. It's a dangerous time made scary by the prospect of diminishing water resources that is not just an environmental problem but a global security issue. This is not fiction, it's for real!

At the recent Bali climate conference UK Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn, couldn't have been more clear: unless the developed world commits to targets that will prevent a two degree Celsius rise in temperatures, water wars will become the reality that will destabilise the world. But the public has just - and only just - got used to the idea of a looming energy crisis, a fisheries crisis, melting glaciers, deforestation, endangered species, a growing population and a housing problem. Now, to add to the misery, we have dire warnings on water that has global resonance. High population growth, rising consumption, pollution and poor water management pose significant threats made worse by water resources that continue to be spoiled, wasted and degraded. And suddenly water is big business as well as being a big global issue. Private equity firms and other city suitors have bought water companies in the belief that a scarce water resource will soon be worth a lot of cash as the population and public demand grows.

This is not just a local difficulty. France received just half its average rainfall in 2005 and there was an almost equally dry 2006 and 2007, resulting in crop failures and restrictions on domestic consumption. Meanwhile, desertification is gathering pace as parched Portugal and southern Spain lose millions of acres of woodland to forest fires. Across Europe many farmers are moving from water-hungry crops to those that thrive in hotter and drier conditions. The spectre of global warming is growing and there is little reason to believe that things won't get worse. We are, after all, hard-wired to profligate consumption and shocking water waste that won't end any time soon. As we build more houses, drain more wetlands, lay more concrete….we use (and lose) more water.

It's a discredited formula for living that does us no credit at all. The consequences for humanity are grave as water scarcity threatens economic and social gains and is a potent fuel for conflict and wars. The United Nations reminds us that every time we in the developed world flush a lavatory we pump away enough water to supply the daily needs of someone in the developing world for drinking, cooking and basic health needs. Globally, £50 billion a year is spent on new water resources. Those in the know say it's not enough and that it should be doubled. There is a crisis, it's global and it's local. The human rights of the world's poorest and most vulnerable will continue to be violated unless we in the developed countries accept the need for drastic and immediate steps to prevent global warming from triggering dangerous climate change that will cause water scarcity and water wars.

Back in the UK we also have our problems. They are more about a war of words than conventional conflict. The River Kennet, surely one of the most delightful rivers in England, has declined to such a degree that it is officially described as 'poor'. Its level is falling and its flow is slowing. There is less life there now. And, come late summer, it is a pathetic sight with mud flats exposed and water trickling far below the height banks. What's gone wrong? Well, abstraction is the main culprit. Whatever the weather or conditions, around 19,000 tonnes of water a day is taken out at Axford in Wiltshire to supply the fast-growing town of Swindon. Thames Water is required to meet the present but growing needs of people and businesses there and the future needs of new communities that will appear as a result of the huge building programme demanded by Gordon Brown and his Government's Sustainable Communities Plan. It is plan that has so far, in my opinion, taken inadequate account of the infrastructure necessary to deliver it and no account at all of climate change predictions.  So we must ask: just how sustainable is the Sustainable Communities Plan when development in southern England has already breached environmental limits and is contributing to global climate change?   

Over time we have come to find more ways of using water. Agriculture is a huge consumer. Around 10,000 gallons is needed to produce the grazing required for a pound of beef - a fact that will shock the most ardent of meat-eaters. On a domestic level it is estimated that we are using one gallon a day more per person than we did ten years ago, and that we use twice as much as we need to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

A quarter of all water supplies is lost through leakage, and although the water companies are doing all they can, conflicting pressures from regulators and from shareholders means that they are not yet investing enough. But, for now, water supply problems in Britain only mean parched gardens and dirtier cars. Elsewhere in the world millions die for the want of clean, accessible water and tensions about supply and ownership are vastly more serious. They are matters of life and death. The possibility of water wars is very real and it may take conflict over water elsewhere to shake us out of our complacency in the UK.  With over 200 of the world's major rivers flowing through more than one country, claims and counter-claims about access are becoming more common. Egypt, for instance, is alarmed by Ethiopia's damming and abstraction activities on the Upper Nile. Millions of people in both countries depend on the river for their survival. Similar conflicts exist around the Zambesi with Zimbabwe and Mozambique bickering over rights of access.

As populations grow and with economic development polluting and consuming more water, neighbouring countries will clash over supplies. The war in Darfur is the paradigm case of what can happen when the climate alters and resources become scarce. Water scarcity is now the single biggest threat to global food security. And China, with its economy growing fast, is spending huge sums on improving water supplies. The Chinese Government knows that if it is to sustain a burgeoning economy - that takes the poor out of poverty and enriches the rest - it must have secure supplies of water for business and for people.

News that Africa's Lake Chad is disappearing fast because of increased water demand and irrigation, and because of global warming, is shocking. Check out the satellite pictures. It is yet another example of the damage we do to a world bent out of shape by our actions and by inertia. In the last 40 years the lake, once one of the world's largest, has shrivelled from 23,000 square kilometres to just 900, forcing maps of Africa to be re-drawn. The water which once reached Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon is now entirely within the borders of Chad.

At last we have come to understand that oil and gas are finite resources. We must hope that very soon we also learn to understand that water too is a precious commodity, and to love it more. In the UK, if we truly value our environment and the rivers and waterways that nurture it, we can no longer plunder them at will to satisfy our insatiable desire for clean cars and ever-green garden lawns.  It behoves us all, and governments, to think more strategically about water supplies. Most of us will surely have to pay more for water and use less of it. We will need to capture and store more, even in our own gardens and in our public parks. We must learn to recycle household spill-off for irrigation of plants and lawns. And we must ditch the decking, and the paving for parking our cars.

Unless we want to see rivers like the Kennet vanish from the landscape - as some have already - we must forget reckless abstraction that is tolerated now. It's time for a 'blue revolution' in water use that is fair for all.

Compared to many countries we Britons are fortunate. Mis-government, poverty and lack of investment elsewhere has led to water shortage and conflict. But 20 years or so from now we may look back and wonder why we complained about rainy days. And we may yet look back with nostalgia to the time when we believed - like the air we breathe - that water was a free and limitless resource. We will also come to know what really causes wars: unsustainable consumption in the developed world, changing patterns of rainfall, disputes over water, food production and land use.