Leading water conservationist, Amy Vickers put it rather succinctly: “America’s biggest drinking problem isn’t alcohol, it’s lawn watering.” Rare, yet essential to life, fresh water is the precious elixir we take for granted. Among all of the environmental specters confronting humanity in the 21st century – global warming, destroyed rainforests, over-fished seas – the catastrophic shortage of fresh water is the most urgent and the most perilous. The Economist estimates that by 2050, one third of the world’s population will lack a clean, secure source of water. The looming freshwater crisis has very real consequences for the rest of the world and pervades every sphere of life, potentially having disastrous effects of the environment, society and politics.
So how did we get to this point? As the world’s population has soared, so too has the usage of water. The World Water Council states that water consumption has risen by a whopping six hundred percent in the past decade. As the pace of development accelerates, we destroy wetlands, cut down forests, and deplete natural catchment areas. To make matters worse, we pollute our rivers and lakes allowing chemicals, sewage and waste to contaminate our already scarce supplies. And then there is the wanton waste- from dripping faucets to rarely used swimming pools, we are consuming fresh water at a foolhardy rate.
Environmental & Human Costs
First, in the human scramble to secure water, the non-human consumers, flora and fauna, are simply cast aside. We sink wells, pump ground water, and drain bogs and swamps. But we fail to realize that we are setting off an inevitable cataclysmic chain reaction. By diminishing swamps and wetlands, we are killing algae, vegetation and aquatic life. If they die, the oxygen and filtered water they provide will be forever lost to mankind. In our thirst for more water we build our dams higher and we dig our wells deeper, changing the topography and environment forever. In the process, we are decimating aquatic life, animal life and human settlements.
If the environmental consequences weren’t damning enough, perhaps readers might sympathize more with the effects the fresh water crisis will have on society. The human cost is likely to be tremendous. 66% of the planet’s fresh water is used for agriculture and animal husbandry. It takes 140 liters of fresh water to create each cup of coffee, 1,300 liters for a kilogram of wheat and 16,000 liters for every kilogram of beef. Steak anyone?
As fresh water becomes scarce, our planet will be forced even deeper into famine. Already, parts of Spain, India, Sudan and Tunisia have turned into semiarid deserts. It is no coincidence that the most arid and driest areas of our planet are also the hungriest. Water is also essential to health and sanitation. According to WHO, one in six people lack access to clean drinking water. Half of the world’s hospital beds are filled with people suffering from water related illnesses. By 2020 there will be 76 million deaths due to water borne diseases alone – 76 million deaths, all for the lack of a glass of clean drinking water.
Interestingly, an often-overlooked fact is that water is in many ways a gender issue. In fact, it is the girls who fetch water in the developing world, often spending hours walking miles to carry home every precious drop. It is the girls who are kept out of school to fetch this water. It is the girls whose education is terminated because of a lack of clean toilet facilities. It is a shortage of water, which perpetuates their unequal status, generation after generation.
Political Consequences
Finally let me turn to the political consequences. Fresh water is not only scarce, it is inequitably distributed. Let me give you an example. Canada has 20% of the world’s fresh water for 0.5% of the world’s population, Mexico has less than 1% for 4% of the world’s population. To put it another way, each Canadian has 100 million liters per capita while a Mexican has just 4 million liters available. As water has gradually become “the oil of the 21st century,” we are seeing political conflicts erupt. Even today, China, Bolivia, India and Spain are engaged in water conflicts. In 2009 alone, the Pacific Institute states that there were 6 new outbreaks of strife and violence over water. The stakes are high; violent conflict is an ever-greater threat.
Water is what gives us life. “It is the briny broth of our origin, the pounding circulatory system of the world,” writes Barbara Kingsolver and “we have been too slow to give up on the myth of Earth’s infinite generosity.” Even in arid Arizona, golf courses and lawns abound. We need to think carefully about our incessant loads of laundry and dishwashing cycles. In the last decade, China’s Yellow River has frequently lost its way to the Pacific, the Aral Sea has shrunk by half, and last year the Rio Grande dried up before it reached the Gulf of Mexico. Do we really need a louder wake up call?