P7

Question 1

Introducing the issue - an unequal water world

Answer 1

• Improving access to water and sanitation underpinned many of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
• The problem is that when a final assessment of progress was made in 2015, some fifteen per cent of the world’s people still did not have reliable access to safe water, and around 25 per cent still lacked clean sanitation.
• Figure 3.1 re-emphasises how, of the volume of water in the global water pot, only 2.5 per cent is available as fresh water for humans to use, and only around one per cent is available as easily accessible surface water.
• In theory, this should not be a problem as, according to the UN, our basic needs can be met by 1000 cubic metres per year.
• In 2010 it was estimated that nearly 60 per cent of this accessible fresh water - contained in rivers, lakes and groundwater aquifers - was being used, leaving some 40 per cent untapped so, in theory, there is more than enough to go round. So, what’s the problem?
• As you will see, the combination of rising demand and the diminishing availability of finite supplies could create a ‘perfect storm’ of resource shortages in combination with food and energy, for which water is a vital part of production.
• The phrase peak water’ is being used increasingly to describe the state of growing constraints on quantity and quality of accessible water.
• The fundamental problem lies with an unequal water world, as opposed to the generally satisfactory global situation.
• There are three facets to this state of affairs: physical distribution, the gap between rising demand and diminishing supplies, and the water availability gap.

Question 2

Players:

Answer 2

Individuals, groups or organisations with an involvement or interest in a particular issue.

Question 3

Physical distribution

Answer 3

• In terms of physical distribution there is a mismatch between where the water supplies are and where the demand is.
• Water supplies are spread very unevenly across the world: 60 per cent of the world’s supplies are contained in just ten countries.
• both physical factors, such as location of precipitation belts/temperature, and level of development are important.
• In conclusion, 66 per cent of the world’s population live in areas receiving only 25 per cent of the world’s annual rainfall.
• Clearly, there are areas of supply shortage such as most of the Middle East where there are potential sources of conflict over shared basin usage/dams and pollution.

Question 4

Gap between rising demand and diminishing supplies

Answer 4

There is a global gap between rising demand (Table 3.2) and diminishing supplies.
Table 3.2 Projections for increasing global water usage
Year
1900
1950
2000
2025
Total annual water withdrawal (km3)
579
1,382
3,973
5,235 (projected)

Question 5

Rising demand
This is driven by a number of factors:

Answer 5

• Population growth, possibly fuelled by an additional 3 billion people by 2030.
• Rising standards of living as countries such as China adopt meat-rich diets, which lead to higher consumption of water for agricultural purposes.
• increased domestic use - for drinking, bathing and cleaning - as people become more affluent.
• Equally, the demand for consumer goods such as white goods and electronics encourages more use of water in manufacturing (i.e. embedded water).
• The combination of rising numbers and changing lifestyles, often in rapidly urbanising environments with high costs of providing water infrastructure, puts pressure on water supplies.
• Economic growth increases demand for water in all economic sectors (agriculture, industry, energy and services). The mining of unconventional energy sources, for example fracking, puts huge demands on water.
• Irrigated farming places a particular strain on resources. Countries such as Israel or areas such as the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia (page
  27) are experiencing increasing droughts as a result. The countries bordering the Aral Sea - Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan - have the highest water use per capita in the world, with around 99 per cent being used for irrigated crops.
  This overuse led to the environmental degradation of the ecosystems surrounding the Aral Sea (see page 56).

Question 6

Fracking:

Answer 6

Hydraulic fracking or oil/gas well stimulation is a technique in which rock is fractured by a pressurised liquid.

Question 7

groundwater aquifers abstaction

Answer 7

• The main reason is for irrigation, which is a voracious consumer of water.
• Comparatively cheap pumping technology, minimal legislation to regulate its use and threats from climate change-induced drought have combined to put pressure on supplies, leading to a falling water table as the groundwater supplies are being extracted faster than they can be replenished.
• Excessive withdrawals lead to land subsidence (as in Mexico City) and intrusion of salt water in coastal districts (as in coastal North Africa).
• The conclusion is that groundwater can no longer be regarded as an unlimited supplement to surface water supplies, which are themselves being diminished by overuse.

Question 8

Water availability gap

Answer 8

The underlying concept is that of a water availability gap between the ‘have-nots’, largely in developing nations (for example in sub-Saharan Africa), and the ‘haves’, largely in developed nations. There is an imbalance of usage, with richer countries using up to ten times more water per head: they have a water profile that includes large percentages of embedded water as well as direct water use. Embedded water is known as virtual water, which comes embedded in all the farm products, food and manufactured goods that are imported.
Figure 3.4 (page 48) compares the water profiles of contrasting countries. Many countries will experience water stress (under 1700 m3 per person per year), especially in some parts of western Asia, such as Pakistan, South Africa and Ethiopia and, in recent years, California in the USA. With the onset of climate change and the associated desertification of ecosystems, by 2050 some 4 billion people could be experiencing water stress.
By 2025, it is estimated that nearly half of the world’s population will be water vulnerable (under 2500 m3 per person per year). A state of vulnerability means that there is insufficient water and risks to supplies, especially when unusually hot or dry conditions result from short-term climate change. The list of vulnerable countries includes: Spain, Belgium, the UK, Bulgaria and Poland in Europe, and countries such as India, Ghana, Nigeria and most parts of China.
If there is around 3000 m3 per person available, supplies are declared to be sufficient. This includes virtually the whole of the Americas (if complete countries are considered), Russia, Scandinavia and many countries in equatorial regions. Australia is a surprising example of a country which overall has sufficient water on a per capita basis but, with many drought-prone areas, has regional problems (for example in the Murray-Darling Basin, see page 27).

Question 9

Virtual water:

Answer 9

The hidden flow of water when food or other commodities are traded.

Question 10

Causes of water insecurity
Physical factors determining the supply of water

Answer 10

At a macro scale, climate determines the global distribution of water supply by means of annual and seasonal distribution of precipitation (rain and snow). Precipitation varies globally as a result of atmospheric pressure systems, with the low-pressure zone of mid-latitudes and equatorial regions having the highest totals and, therefore, being generally water secure. Also important is the seasonal distribution of rainfall, its reliability and its availability for use as water supply. As the study of the Sahel shows (page 26),

lower annual totals of rainfall often have greater variation and therefore poorer reliability of supply. Short-term climate change (the ENSO and climate warming) are exacerbating the water security situation.
On a more regional scale, topography and distance from the sea have significant impacts. High relief promotes increased precipitation and rapid run-off, but may also provide greater opportunities for surface water storage in natural lakes and artificial reservoirs, especially where it is combined with impermeable geology. Snowfall and glaciers can be extremely important locally, as in the Bolivian Andes where climate warming has led to widespread melting, diminishing the cryosphere storage and threatening water supplies for La Paz-El Alto. The same issue is also affecting Nepal’s water supply.
The world’s major river systems store large quantities of water and transfer it across continents. The Amazon, for example, has an average annual discharge of 175,000 cubic metres per second from its catchment areas of 6,915,000 square kilometres shared by Brazil and six other South American countries. Recent severe droughts in 2005 and 2010, with a dry period in between (a 1-in-100-years event), covered an area twice the size of California and had a huge impact on Brazil’s water supply. Flows in the main river were at an all-time low, with several tributaries completely dry, along with record sea temperatures off the north-eastern coast of Brazil. Many experts argued that deforestation was a contributor to the drought affecting the Amazon’s hydrological pump.
Geology controls the distribution of aquifers (water-bearing rocks) that provide the groundwater storage.
Permeable chalk and porous sandstones can store vast quantities of water underground, which is valuable as it is not subject to evaporation loss. The water supply comes from springs and can also be accessed by wells, giving an even supply throughout the year, despite the uneven distribution and variability of rainfall - provided they are not overused by demand rising at a faster rate than they can be replenished by natural recharge.
Currently, there is a crisis caused by over-digging of tube wells, leading to massive abstraction and a falling water table, combined in many places with a less predictable pattern of rains, for example in the monsoon areas of India and Pakistan.
Figure 3.5 (page 50) shows how these physical factors can combine to affect the water supply of India, a country that is vulnerable to water insecurity, especially in the Indo-Gangetic Plains, the backbone of the water intensive Green Revolution.

Question 11

Defining water security levels

Answer 11

There are a number of measures used to define water shortages: if there is less than 1000 m3 per capita of available water, a state of water scarcity occurs. There are two types:

Question 12

Physical scarcity

Answer 12

occurs when more than 75 per cent of a countrys or a region’s blue water flows are being used - this currently applies to around 25 per cent of the world’s population (water-scarce countries are clustered in the Middle East and North Africa, and regionally in some larger countries, such as North East China and parts of the Great Plains of the USA). Some Middle Eastern countries, such as the desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia, are using up to four per cent more water than their supplies and therefore have to rely on desalination

Question 13

Economic scarcity

Answer 13

occurs when the development of blue water sources is limited by lack of capital, technology and good governance. Around 1 billion people currently have satisfactory physical availability but can only access some 25 per cent of the water supplies because of the high levels of poverty prevalent in these developing countries. Solutions may be reliant on privatisation (research Tanzania or Ghana in Africa, or Bolivia in South America).
By 2050, 1.5 billion people will be experiencing water scarcity, especially in Middle East and parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

Question 14

Human factors influencing the security of water supplies
Human activities can lead both to diminishing supply and rising demands. Humans can also impact on both the quantity of available water and its quality.
Quality

Answer 14

Human actions can pollute both surface water and groundwater supplies, so diminishing the quality of both sources and having a knock-on effect on the security of supplies. Pollution is widespread throughout the world, although its impact is felt especially in developing countries (1 billion people are without safe water and 2.3 billion lack adequate sanitation). The difference of impact is related to the ability of developed countries to do something about it, either by prevention or remediation of supplies.
The pollution of surface water in rivers, streams and lakes is a cause for concern, for example in China where 300 million people use contaminated water daily and
190 million suffer from water-related illnesses annually.
In China, one-third of all rivers, 75 per cent of major lakes and 25 per cent of coastal zones are currently classified as highly polluted. It has been reported that longer-term 2 million Chinese people may suffer from water-related diseases, including those in the
‘cancer cluster’ villages in Guandong province where liver and digestive cancers were responsible for 80 per cent of recent deaths (heavy metal toxins from the Dabaoshan mine had washed into the Hengshi River).
Contaminants usually enter waterways via run-off or sewage. However, groundwater contamination is potentially even more serious if important aquifers are irreversibly damaged by the high levels of toxicity. Nearly 20 per cent of all the tube wells sunk in Bangladesh, often concentrated in particular villages, were found to be unsafe because of a high concentration of arsenic. This led to major health problems, with correlated social impacts, as the victims developed arsenicosis with skin lesions. Worldwide, 137 million people in over 70 countries have some signs of arsenic poisoning from drinking water.

Question 15

Some common types of pollution include:

Answer 15

• Untreated sewage disposal, especially in developing countries where sanitation is poorer. This causes water-borne diseases such as typhoid, cholera and hepatitis. As many people are forced to use unsafe water, it is estimated by WHO that, by 2020, 135 million people could die unnecessarily from these water-borne diseases. In India, only 20 per cent of sewage is treated before being discharged in rivers.
• Chemical fertilisers, used increasingly by farmers (part of the Green Revolution) contaminate groundwater as well as rivers, causing eutrophication in lakes and rivers. This leads to hypoxia and the formation of dead zones in coastal waters. Many of the pesticides used are banned in developed countries because of the health hazards.
• Industrial waste is dumped into rivers and, subsequently, oceans. Heavy metals and chemical waste are particularly toxic. The Ganges is a useful example to study; many toxic industries, such as tanneries, discharge their waste directly into the holy river.
• As over 60 per cent of the world’s major rivers are impeded by large dams, this has a major impact on sediment movement, which can impact on river ecology.

Question 16

Green Revolution:

Answer 16

The use of high yield varieties (HYVs) of crops along with the use of agrochemicals and irrigation to increase yields and improve food supplies; begun in the 1960s.

Question 17

Quantity

Answer 17

Humans can over-abstract from both rivers and lakes, and groundwater sources, for domestic purposes (drinking water), agriculture (largely irrigation) and industrial usage. By 2025, total projected water withdrawals are predicted to reach over 5000 cubic kilometres per year, of which agricultural use will be two-thirds. Regionally and locally, a combination of a number of drivers (population growth, migration and urbanisation, rising living standards,
economic development and industrialisation) will have increased water demand to unsustainable levels.
The removal of fresh water from aquifers on coastal locations can upset the natural balance of saline and fresh water, and can lead to salt water incursion and salinisation of wells, boreholes and wetlands.

Coastal storm surges and rising sea levels compound the problem.
Until recently agriculture absorbed over 70 per cent of extractions globally, but industrial usage is rising, especially in developed countries and emerging economies where the proportion of use can rise up to 60 per cent, especially in paper and metal industries.
The energy industry also requires increasing amounts of water for new energy developments such as biofuels and fracking. A number of technological developments are available to cut water usage in all sectors of the economy (smart water’ is the watch word) but, with a finite source, the damage has been done.
Figure 3.6 summarises the human impact on water supply and quality, both of which impact on water security.

Question 18

Key concept: The water poverty index

Answer 18

In 2002, the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology published the first water poverty index (WPI). It is an assessment of the degree of water shortage and the subsequent water insecurity problems. Scores can be generally correlated with GNP per capita, with Canada having the highest score (78) and Ethiopia one of the lowest (48).

The index uses five parameters:
• Resources: the quantity of surface and groundwater per person and its quality.
• Access: the time and distance involved in obtaining sufficient safe water.
• Capacity: how well the community manages its water (and health).
• Use: how economically water is used in the home and by agriculture and industry.
• Environment: ecological sustainability (green water).
Each of the parameters is scored out of twenty to give a maximum possible score of 100. Figure 3.7 shows the water poverty index. The red line illustrates how a country’s score would be presented.

Question 19

Water shortages
Access to water

Answer 19

Water insecurity means not having access to sufficient safe/clean water. Despite global efforts to improve water supply and sanitation (US$35 billion is spent each year worldwide by a number of players including international agencies, national and regional governments, private water companies and NGOs), around 1 billion people are still without access to clean water. Many of these people live in 30 or so developing countries where the root cause is poverty; others live in areas of physical scarcity where only technology and capital investment can overcome the shortage or unreliability of supply.

Question 20

The problem of water insecurity is therefore related to:

Answer 20

• availability - having not only a water supply but a water distribution network
• access - freedom to use, or income to buy, water in a particular location
• usage - entitlement to, and understanding of, water use and health issues.

Question 21

Physical scarcity

Answer 21

Physical scarcity is largely determined by climate (the balance between precipitation inputs and evapotranspiration outputs) with concentrations, in general terms, in high-pressure latitudinal bands between 23.5°N and S and 35°N and S. However, factors such as continentality (for example, the interior of Asia) and topography (the Murray-Darling Basin is in the rainshadow of the Great Divide and rain-bearing south-easterly trade winds) are significant regionally.
A number of factors may be significant at a more local scale, such as geology. The situation is not static, as temperate areas such as South Africa, north-eastern Brazil or California can be affected by drought-related climate change. Climate change can lead to physical scarcity, as the case study of the Central Asian Highlands shows. An interesting area to research is the Pacific Islands, where there are also acute water shortages for physical reasons.

Question 22

The Central Asian
Highlands

Answer 22

Glaciers in the ‘high heart’ of Asia feed its greatest rivers - a lifeline for 1 billion people - including the Mekong, Yangtse, Huáng Hé (Yellow River) and Ganges. Glacial melt plays a vital role in maintaining river discharge before and after the summer monsoon rainy season, providing an abundance of water that needs to be captured for agricultural and domestic use otherwise it is lost forever.
As is the case in many mountain ranges (including the Andes, Rockies and East Africa, as well as the Himalayas and Tibetan plateau) there is direct photographic evidence that the glaciers have dramatically retreated as a result of climate warming.
Of 680 glaciers monitored by Chinese scientists, 95 per cent are shedding more ice than they are adding, leading to the deterioration of mountain pastures.

Question 23

Economic scarcity

Answer 23

Economic scarcity has a very different global distribution. Above all it is associated with developing countries that lack capital and technology and good governance to fully exploit their often adequate supplies of blue water. Sub-Saharan Africa stands out as the key concentration of countries experiencing economic water scarcity, although there are one or two other countries, such as Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, and Laos in South East Asia.

Question 24

The price of water

Answer 24

Clearly, the price paid for water has a bearing on economic scarcity. As Figure 3.9 shows, which city pays most for its water is rather a surprise. In theory, you would expect a strong correlation between income and the price paid for water. However, the situation is far more complex.

Question 25

The price of water is determined by a number of factors:

Answer 25

• The physical costs of obtaining the supply. In some cities, the water has to be piped for many kilometres from mountain reservoirs (for example the Californian coastal city of Los Angeles gets its water from Colorado through a very long pipeline).
• The degree of demand for the water. If water is scarce, as in the 2015 Californian drought, the price increases to manage demand (inevitably the poor miss out). Even in cities in developed countries, such as Detroit and New York in the USA, there are considerable numbers of very poor people who do not have a direct supply to their homes.
• In developing world mega cities such as Accra in Ghana, there is insufficient infrastructure. Poor people living in slum districts have to rely on water tankers, stand pipes and bottled water. The costs of water from informal vendors are nearly always twice that of standard tap connections; in Manila costs are four times higher.
• Who supplies the water is also an important influencing factor. In many areas in developing countries water is free, but usually it is not treated in any way and therefore is not clean.
People (usually women and children) often have to spend many hours of the day walking up to 10 km to the supplies, carrying heavy containers (Figure 3.10, page 54). In many urban areas, the water is supplied by private water companies that charge the market price for it, as in Barranquilla, Colombia, with poor people, again, losing out.
In some countries, such as Cuba, the government subsidises the price of water to ensure supplies are available for all.

Answer 26

If people are to have taps, safe drinking supplies and flushing toilets, there has to be an ‘industry’ to build and manage the infrastructure, and the water it delivers has to be paid for by someone. However, what the price should be to different consumers - farmers, industrialists, rich householders, poor slum dwellers - and who, if anyone, should benefit from its sale, remains a matter of considerable controversy.
Despite its status as a vital human need, in the twenty-first century water is increasingly seen as a commodity for which a realistic price should be paid. In the late twentieth century, politicians, financiers and other decision makers promoted the neo-liberal view in favour of privatisation of public utilities such as water, on the assumption that market mechanisms would simultaneously conserve water, improve efficiency and increase service quality and coverage. Subsidies would end, so all consumers would be charged for water at the price it costs to capture, treat and deliver it. With private companies, water is seen as a commodity from which profits could, and should, be made, so there are inevitable issues.

As part of the controversial neo-liberal policies of the 1970s and 1980s, the World Bank, in tandem with the IMF, developed structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), which it claimed would help developing countries to overcome their debt issues. The privatisation of utilities, including water, was seen as essential, as existing systems were inefficient, corrupt and failed to provide water to poorer citizens.
The provision of contracts by developing world governments to international water companies such as Veolia or Suez, both European transnational corporations (TNCs), proved a disaster in some cases, not only for the developing countries and their citizens (especially impoverished ones) but also for the water companies themselves, who had hoped for huge profits from these opportunities.
The cost of providing the water (often under very difficult conditions) meant huge price increases, which meant that the poor could not pay.
A seminal case of protest against privatisation took place in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 1999-2000, where a local company (Aguas del Tunari, a subsidiary of US TNC Bechtel) was given a monopoly to collect water charges and actually took over water co-operatives run by the householders and tried to make them pay very high prices. Months of simmering protests culminated in the occupation of the city square by 80,000 people. After street battles, the company fled…
Other unsuccessful privatisation schemes to research include those in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) in 2003 and in Djakarta, Indonesia.
In recent years, some western TNCs have retreated from managing privatised water in developing countries, often in some disarray with governments abruptly cancelling their contracts, defeated by the many complexities and insufficient profit margins.
Their place has been taken by
Chinese and Indian companies as part of their policy of foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing countries, often using local companies to help with the work.

Privatised or not, the challenge of developing affordable water services in developing countries remains, as does the need to conserve water yet sell it at equitable prices. In some cities, such as Paris, there is a move to take water back into public ownership in order to do this.

Question 27

Structural adjustment programmes (SAPs):

Answer 27

Neoliberal policies promoted by the World Bank and IMF to help developing countries overcome their debt problems. These are now superseded by poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs) as for many countries SAPs resulted in unacceptable hardship and little progress with solutions to debts.

Question 28

Water supply and economic development

Answer 28

Water plays a central role in all economic productivity, either directly as an input or as part of the context in which the economic activity takes place (for example, recreational tourism).
As shown in Figure 3.11, agriculture will continue to absorb around two-thirds of water extractions globally - but industrial usage is growing, especially in emerging countries such as China and India. The energy industry also requires water and, as with industrial usage, there are major concerns about the environmental impacts of these activities, from the destruction of ecosystems to uncontrolled discharge of polluted effluents.
Aquaculture too (fish farming) has expanded rapidly in recent years as wild fish stocks have declined. Again, there is an environmental downside: although it has provided both employment and vital food supplies, especially for South East Asian markets, the lack of regulation and the degradation of ecosystems, such as coastal mangroves, is a major concern in countries such as Thailand.

Question 29

Agricultural use

Answer 29

Figure 3.12 shows the spectrum of agricultural practices from producing crops under entirely rain-fed conditions, using green water in the soil, to producing under fully irrigated conditions. In rain-fed agriculture, fields and grazing lands are entirely dependent on rainwater. Farmers focus on storing water (rainwater harvesting) to conserve supplies.
Moving along the spectrum, more surface water or groundwater (blue water) is added to enhance crop production, as well as providing opportunities for multiple use.
Around a fifth of the world’s land is under full irrigation. In water-short and monsoon areas, traditional practices such as basin irrigation (for example, along the River Nile) have always been used.
Industrial scale irrigation, which began in the 1960s using high-yield variety seeds combined with fertilisers and pest control, has greatly increased the pressure.

Question 30

Although the Green Revolution has improved food security enormously, it is causing environmental concerns:

Answer 30

• Around 30 per cent of this irrigation is provided using dams from which systems of irrigation canals radiate. Much irrigated land becomes waterlogged, leading to salination of the soils.
• The majority of irrigation is pumped up electrically from aquifers, leading to massive groundwater depletion, especially in India, the USA, China and Pakistan.

Answer 31

A study of the Aral Sea emphasises the environmental downside of large scale irrigation schemes. It also emphasises how different stakeholders have been affected by the environmental and ecological catastrophe, and therefore have different opinions depending on whether they were winners or losers.

A further source of pressure on water supplies for agriculture is the dietary revolution in countries such as China, where there has been a huge rise in the consumption of dairy products and meat. While it may take around 2975 litres of water to produce 1 kg of rice, it takes nearly six times as much water to produce 1 kg of beef.
Clearly, managing agricultural demands is of paramount importance in managing overall water security, as it is by far the greatest water user. The maxim for irrigated systems is ‘more crop per drop’, using modern automated spray technology and more advanced drip irrigation.
Even more exciting developments are associated with phase 3 of the Green Revolution, which recognises how food security is closely interlinked with water security in drought-prone areas. It is focused on drought-restraint and salt-tolerant crop strains.

Intermediate technology solutions for water conservation play a role too, such as the ‘magic stones’ system practised in the Sahel (pages 69).

Question 32

The Aral Sea

Answer 32

Once the world’s fourth-largest inland sea (68,000 square kilometres), the Aral Sea (Figure 3.13) has been steadily shrinking since the 1960s. In the late 1950s the Soviet government diverted much of the water from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, which fed into the Aral Sea, for irrigation of agriculture. By 2007, the sea had declined to just ten per cent of its original size and had split into separate lakes; its level had fallen to 40 m (Figure 3.14). This is an environmental catastrophe.

Question 33

The Aral Sea crisis has involved several stakeholders:

Answer 33

• The former Soviet government. Communist leaders began an ambitious irrigation scheme to develop fruit

and cotton farming in what had been an unproductive region and create jobs for millions of farm workers.
• The fishing community. A once-prosperous industry that employed 60,000 people in villages around the lakeshore has collapsed. Unemployment and economic hardship are everywhere. Ships lie useless on the exposed seabed.
Local residents. Health problems are caused by the windblown salt and dust from the dried-out seabed.
Drinking water and parts of the remaining sea have become heavily polluted as a result of weapons testing, industrial projects, and fertilizer and pesticide run-off. Infant mortality rates are among the highest in the world, with ten per cent of children dying in their first year, mainly of kidney and heart failure.
The Uzbekistan government. The irrigation schemes based on the Aral Sea allowed this poor country, with few resources, to become one of the world’s largest exporters of cotton. It also hopes to discover oil beneath the dry seabed.
• Scientists. Only 160 of the 310 bird species, 32 of the 70 mammal species and very few of the 24 fish species remain. The climate has changed too, making the area even more arid and prone to greater extremes of temperature.
• Kazakhstan farmers. Irrigation has brought the water table to the surface, making drinking water and food crops salty and polluted.
International economists. People in the region may no longer be able to feed themselves because the land has become so infertile. Up to 10 million people may be forced to migrate and become environmental refugees.
• Water engineers. Inspections have revealed that many of the irrigation canals were poorly built, allowing water to leak out or evaporate. The main Karakum Canal, the largest in Central Asia, allows perhaps 30-75 per cent of its water to go to waste.
Since 2007, Kazakhstan has secured massive World Bank loans to save the northern part of the Aral Sea - an extremely ambitious project aimed at reversing one of the world’s worst environmental disasters.

Question 34

Use by industry and energy

Answer 34

Just over 20 per cent of all fresh water withdrawal worldwide is for energy production and industry. While in developed countries this percentage is currently around half of all water used, especially for the chemical, petroleum, paper and electronics industries,

there has been a fall in use as heavy manufacturing industries, such as steel, have declined. A major concern is the global shift in industrial production towards emerging nations such as China and South Korea. This rapid industrialisation, particularly in developing countries, has contaminated both rivers and groundwater, affecting the quality of water.
Considerable progress has been made by many TNCs, such as Coca-Cola India, to reduce their consumption by efficient recycling and also to control effluents.

Energy use is a very mixed picture. Over half of the water used is either for generating HEP or for the cooling of thermal and nuclear power stations, so is returned to its source virtually unchanged, although its warmth can impact on river ecosystems. Countries that rely heavily on HEP for the production of electricity, such as New Zealand, are affected by changing patterns of rainfall - especially the decreasing amounts of rainfall associated with short-term climate change.
A further area of concern, for a variety of reasons, is the growth of biofuels. The crops grown to produce bioethanol and biodiesel are very thirsty: up to 10,000 litres of water is needed to produce 1 litre of bioethanol, and 20,000 litres for 1 litre of biodiesel.