South Africa’s crisis surrounding fresh water, both in terms of availability and quality, has featured strongly over recent months in the media, in some cases the tone of reports bordering on panic.

Some research on the Internet, however, reveals that South Africa is far from unique on this front.

While much of the local hype has, with good reason, focused on the impact and dangers of acid water spillage originating form mining activities over the past century or more, a recent Associated Press report from the United States makes interesting reading: “At least 3.6 million barrels of the ultra-salty, chemically tainted wastewater produced by gas drilling operations were discharged into state waterways in the 12-month period that ended on 30 June 2010.

“Drinking water for hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians is drawn from those rivers and streams.”

The newsletter “Energy and Capital” reported that, coming at a time of depleting international fossil fuel reserves, the tainted water is a byproduct of the state of Pennsylvania’s growing shale gas industry.

From Germany, there was a recent report that bogs and marshland in that country are increasingly yielding to corn farming, threatening biodiversity and resulting in the release of huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

A report by the World Water Council (WWC) on www.worldwatercouncil.org states that while the world’s population tripled in the 20th century, the use of renewable water resources has grown sixfold.

Within the next 50 years, the world population will increase by another 40% to 50%. This population growth, coupled with industrialisation and urbanisation, will result in an increasing demand for water and will have serious consequences on the environment.

People lack drinking water and sanitation

Already there is more waste water generated and dispersed today than at any other time in the history of our planet: more than one out of six people lacks access to safe drinking water, namely 1.1 billion people; and more than two out of six lack adequate sanitation, namely 2.6 billion people (estimation for 2002, by the World Health Organization/United Nations Children’s Fund Joint Monitoring Programme, 2004).

According to research by the WHO in 2004, 3 900 children die every day from water-borne diseases.

These figures represent only people with very poor conditions. In reality, these figures should be much higher, according to the WWC report.

Although food security has been significantly increased in the past 30 years, water withdrawals for irrigation represent 66% of the total withdrawals and up to 90% in arid regions, the other 34% being used by domestic households (10%), industry (20%), or evaporated from reservoirs (4%).

As the per capita use increases due to changes in lifestyle, and as the population increases as well, the proportion of water for human use is increasing. This, coupled with spatial and temporal variations in water availability, means that the water to produce food for human consumption, industrial processes and other uses is becoming scarce.

Environmental crisis

It is all the more critical that increased water use by humans does not only reduce the amount of water available for industrial and agricultural development, but has a profound effect on aquatic ecosystems and their dependent species.

Environmental balances are disturbed and cannot play their regulating role.

Water stress results from an imbalance between water use and water resources.

A water stress indicator measures the proportion of water withdrawal with respect to total renewable resources.

It is a criticality ratio, which implies that water stress depends on the variability of resources.

Water stress causes deterioration of fresh water resources in terms of quantity (aquifer over-exploitation, dry rivers, etc.) and quality (eutrophication, organic matter pollution, saline intrusion, etc.)

The value of this criticality ratio that indicates high water stress is based on expert judgment and experience (Alcamo et al., 1999). It ranges between 20% for basins with highly variable runoff and 60% for temperate zone basins.

As the resource becomes scarce, tensions among different users may intensify, at national and international level.

More than 260 river basins are shared by two or more countries. In the absence of strong institutions and agreements, changes within a basin can lead to transboundary tensions.

When major projects proceed without regional collaboration, they can become a point of conflicts, heightening regional instability. The Paraná La Plata, the Aral Sea, the Jordan and the Danube may serve as examples.

Due to the pressure on the Aral Sea, half of its superficy has disappeared, representing two-thirds of its volume.

So far, 36 000 square kilometres of marine grounds have now been recovered by salt.

Toward improving the situation

The “World Water Vision” report states that “there is a water crisis today. But the crisis is not about having too little water to satisfy our needs. It is a crisis of managing water so badly that billions of people – and the environment – suffer badly.”

With the current state of affairs, correcting measures still can be taken to avoid the crisis from worsening.

There is an increasing awareness that our fresh water resources are limited and need to be protected both in terms of quantity and quality. This water challenge affects not only the water community but also decision-makers and every human being.

“Water is everybody’s business” was one of the key messages of the second World Water Forum, the WWC report states.

Whatever the use of freshwater (agriculture, industry, domestic use), huge saving of water and improving of water management is possible. Almost everywhere, water is wasted; and as long as people are not facing water scarcity, they believe access to water is an obvious and natural thing.

With urbanisation and changes in lifestyle, water consumption is bound to increase. However, changes in food habits, for example, may reduce the problem, knowing that growing one kilogramme of potatoes requires only 100 litres of water, whereas 1kg of beef requires 13 000 litres.

Water should be recognised as a great priority. One of the main objectives of the WWC is to increase awareness of the water issue. Decision-makers at all levels must be implicated.

One of the UN Millennium Development Goals is to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

To that aim, the WWC recommends that several measures be taken:

• Guarantee the right to water;

• Decentralise the responsibility for water;

• Develop know-how at the local level;

• Increase and improve financing;

• Evaluate and monitor water resources; and

• Improve transboundary co-operation.

As far as transboundary conflicts are concerned, regional economic development and cultural preservation can all be strengthened by states co-operating in water issues. Instead of a trend toward war, water management can be viewed as a trend toward co-operation and peace.

Many initiatives have been launched to avoid crises. Institutional commitments, such as the Senegal River Basin Water and Environmental Project, have been created.

In 2001, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and Green Cross International joined forces in response to the growing threat of conflicts linked to water.

They launched the joint “From Potential Conflicts to Co-Operation Potential” programme to promote peace in the use of transboundary watercourses by addressing conflicts and fostering co-operation among states and stakeholders.

According to an article on Wikipedia on “Water Crisis”, one common feature of almost all resolved water disputes is that the negotiations had a “need-based” instead of a “right-based” paradigm. Irrigable lands, population, and technicalities of projects define “needs”.

The success of a need-based paradigm is reflected in the only water agreement ever negotiated in the Jordan River Basin, which focuses on needs, not on rights of riparians.

On the Indian subcontinent, irrigation requirements of Bangladesh determine water allocations of the Ganges River.

“A need-based, regional approach focuses on satisfying individuals with their need of water, ensuring that minimum quantitative needs are being met. It removes the conflict that arises when countries view the treaty from a national interest point of view, move away from the zero-sum approach to a positive sum, integrative approach that equitably allocated the water and its benefits,” the article states.

Piet Coetzer