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<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-size: 17pt"><span style="color: #3333FF">Something new to worry about - a world water crisis</span></span>
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KEEBLE McFARLANE
Saturday, March 28, 2009
"Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink."
KEEBLE McFARLANE
Nearly everyone is familiar with that line by the 18th century English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge from his famous fantasy, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In it the dastardly sea captain with a dead albatross around his neck after killing it can't slake his thirst because the only water available is the salty stuff of which the ocean is made. In a way, it describes the quandary facing the human population of the world today.
Our world is unique in the universe, so far as we know. It is the only one with the narrow band of temperatures which allows the bewildering array of life forms to thrive around us. And <span style="font-weight: bold">the most critical element in all of this is water</span>, which, chemically, is not an element at all but a compound. It is made up of two of the simplest elements, hydrogen and oxygen, and it thumbs its nose at the rules that govern such things in the way those two are bound together into a maverick compound.
That's one of two phenomena that give the Earth its unique character. The other is the tilt of the poles from the plane of rotation, allowing for the change of seasons. If the poles were perpendicular, every part of the Earth would have the same temperature all year round and life would be quite different from what we know. And contrary to the usual pattern, in which substances become denser as they cool down, water expands just before it freezes. Thus, ice floats, and acts as an insulator for the water beneath. If this were not so, much of the oceans, seas, lakes and rivers would be solid blocks of ice and life would be much less diverse and plentiful.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Human beings can live for more than two months without food, but we wouldn't last a week if we had no water</span>. Our bodies are mostly made of it - only about one-third of our body weight is composed of other substances. All the chemical processes that allow all animals, plants, insects and even the smallest organisms to exist are based on water. <span style="font-weight: bold">The hydrological cycle, in which water is constantly cycled through the ground, rivers, lakes, wetlands, oceans and the atmosphere, is absolutely essential to the way the earth works and to the life that inhabits it.</span>
There's an enormous quantity of water on this planet of ours - 70 per cent of the surface is covered by water, but 97 per cent of that is in the salty oceans and seas. The remaining 3 per cent is fresh water, but <span style="font-weight: bold">only about 0.3 per cent of that is available from rivers and lakes</span>, as the rest is ice. If that water were evenly distributed, there would be way more than enough to sustain all of us who live here - by one calculation, 15,000 litres per person per day. But as we know all too well, life isn't fair, and there are places with water galore while other places treat it like the most precious jewels.
In the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, the driest spot on earth, there are places where <span style="font-weight: bold">rain hasn't fallen for several hundred years</span>. In contrast, the town of Cherrapunjee, in north-eastern India, is reputed to be the wettest place in the world. During the past 35 years, the average rainfall has been 11.9 metres - as tall as a four-storey building! There were several years when it was substantially more than this. According to the town's most reputed weather-watcher, Denis Rayen, in 1974 they measured 24.5 metres of rain, "the highest recorded rainfall in any one place in any one year". But even here, <span style="font-weight: bold">scientists detect a worrying sign - in the last few years the amount of rainfall has fallen off dramatically</span>, and they suspect climate change may be the reason.
Climate change isn't the only problem affecting the world's water supply. Last week thousands of water specialists, environmentalists and activists assembled in Istanbul, Turkey, for <span style="font-weight: bold">an international conference on water.
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It was the fifth World Water Forum, organised by the World Water Council, which has been holding these meetings every three years since 1997. A report presented at the meeting by a group of UN agencies warns that <span style="font-weight: bold">demand for water has never been as great as it is today and that it will only increase</span>. The main factors are population growth and increased mobility, rising living standards, changes in food consumption and increased energy production, including biofuels.
The report says the link between poverty and water resources is obvious, as the number of people who live on less than US$1.25 a day is about equal to the number who have no access to safe drinking water.
Consequently, some <span style="font-weight: bold">three million people die prematurely because almost four-fifths of diseases in developing countries are associated with polluted water.</span> Every 17 seconds, for instance, one child dies from diarrhoea - a total of 5,000 a day. Think about this: we could avoid one-tenth of all illnesses worldwide by simply improving water supply, sanitation, hygiene and proper management of water resources.
The pressure is there, all right. The world's population is now around 6.6 billion, and grows by some 80 million a year. While much of that growth is in the poorer parts of the world, the report emphasises that <span style="font-weight: bold">all countries have to concentrate on investing in water</span>, since the future wealth of developing countries will depend in part on such investment. This can pay off in several ways: each dollar invested in improving access to safe water and sanitation can produce a return of three to 34 dollars! But if investment is weak, Gross Domestic Product could be as much as 10 per cent lower. Such investment can also ease the burden on the environment: more than 80 per cent of sewage in developing countries is discharged into rivers, lakes and coastal areas without treatment.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Water is only one of the serious issues facing all countries, especially the developing ones. But it is one they absolutely have to deal with expeditiously, if they are to survive, let alone grow.</span> The poet Byron reflected on this theme in his Don Juan:
"<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-style: italic">Till taught by pain, men really know not what good water's worth."</span></span>
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