Water Conflicts Flashcards
All relevant case study knowledge
How are water resources distributed unevenly?
66% of the world’s people recieve just 25% of rainfall
How much of the world’s population lack access to clean and safe water?
Nearly 25%
How much of the world’s freshwater supply is used by agriculture?
69%
How much of total crop area is irrigated?
17%
How much more water does beef use than rice in production?
10x
LEDCs spend how much percentage of their freshwater supply on agriculture in some places…
90%
Industry uses what percentage of freshwater?
21%
How much is domestic demand increasing by every 20 years?
2x
How much water do developed countries use compared to Africa?
100,000 litres/year per person compared to 50,000 in Africa
$1 spent on sanitation…
Generates $7
Why is water access so poor for LEDCs?
By 2005, only 12% had effective strategies
How is use of water resources unequal?
12% of the world’s population consume 85% of the avaliable water on earth
How many dont have access to clean water?
783 million
How many are without sanitation?
Nearly 2.5 billion
How many deaths is sewage in rivers predicted to cause by 2020?
135 million
How does the physical landscape of calafornia cause physical water scarcity?
- Mountain chains, including the Sierra Nevada mountains, run parallel to the coast, causing a shadow effect inland (death valley)
- Sinking air at hadley cell, so high pressure restricts rainfall in the area.
What is the extent of Calafornia’s arid climate?
- 200-500mm of rainfall per year
- Under 100mm to the south and east, where rainshadow effect occurs
How do groundwater stores form?
Surface water infiltrates through the surface layer and percolates through the rocks as groundwater
How is Calafornia reliant on groundwater sources?
1/3 of all fresh water is from groundwater sources
How is rainfall in calafornia uneven?
75% of rain falls between November and May
How do el nino and la nina effect rainfall?
El nino brings increased rainfall, La nina the reverse.
What year was the colorado compact devised?
1922
What is the colorado compact?
determines water rights between 7 US states, Native american groups and Mexico
How many golf courses do Calafornia have irrigated?
883
How is the San Joaquin river delta being damaged?
Its becoming salinised as a result of poorly man-made levees allowing salty water in.
How is the Salton sea being polluted?
- 75% inflow from agricultural runoff
- salt content 25% higher than pacific
- 7.5 million fish died in 1 day!
What is the population predictes to be by 2025 in california?
40-50 million
How much of southern calafornia’s water does the colorado river provide?
60%
What is the problem with water supply and demand in calafornia?
- 75% demand comes from Sacramento
- 75% rainfall falls to north of Sacramento
What percentage of the average nigerian family’s $2 a day goes towards water?
60% ($1.20)
Why is water for nigerians so expensive?
- Very few places have access to mains or pipe water
- Water comes from privately bored wells
What profit did Agua del Tunari, a subsidiary of Bechtel, expect on the water system in bolivia?
16%
How much did locals in Cochabamba, Bolivia, face paying for water?
20% of their income
Why was Bolivia’s water privatised?
The world bank made it an explicit condition when offering aid in the mid 1990s
How much water does it take to produce 1 litre of coca cola?
2.7 litres
How much did the water table drop by between 1992 and 2008 in Rajasthan?
Almost 40m
How much is extraction from Murray Darlin Basin increasing annually?
4%
Average rainfall of Murray Darlin Basin is…?
480mm/year
On what is Argriculture in the Murray Darlin Basin reliant?
30 dams + 3500 weirs and pipelines for irrigation
How have the Dams affected wetland and bird species in the MDB?
50-80% now extinct
How much did water consumption rise between 1996-2002 in the MDB?
29%
Who uses the MDB?
- Farmers
- residents,
- industrialists,
- tourist operators,
- international heritage organisations.
How many hectares of farmland are on the MDB?
89 million
How is water use on the MBD uneven?
1.4% of the MBD uses 75% of all Australia’s irrigation water
Environmental degradation to the MDB
- increased salinity (rising water table increasing soil salinity)
- soil degradation (due to overexploitation)
- Eutrophication
- Groundwater beccoming depleted.
- Ecosystem loss (e.g Barmah- Millewa forest for farmland)
What is the Murray Darlin Basin Authority? (MBDA)
Responsible for preparing and overseeing a legally enforceable management plan, including limiting the amount of water taken from the basin. An integrated management system.
Where is the Aral sea, and who decided to divert the Syr Darya and Amu Darya that contributed to the shrinking of it?
Between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, with the soviets diverting them to boost agricultural production
How did rate of abstraction from the rivers feeding the aral sea increase between 1960 and 2000
x2
How great is salinity in Aral sea compared to oceans?
35g/l compared to 15g/l in oceans
How much has the Aral sea declined by?
90%
How has the fish trade died in the Aral sea?
No longer any fishing jobs, so 90% unemployment in the area. Used to produce 1/6 of the USSR fish catch
What has been done to restore the Aral sea? Did it work?
- $68 million loan from world bank to Kazak government to build kokaral dam that sllits the sea.
- Has improved sea levels and reduced salinity in the north, but has led to further decline in the south.
How has the Kokaral dam restored the aral sea to the north?
- Raised it by Over 12m
- Fish catch from the aral have grown from 695 metric tonnes in 2005 to 5595 in 2014 (was 34000 in 1961 though)
- More than 5000 people have moved back over the past few years
What percentage of Africa’s population live on the Nile Basin?
40%
Why has ethiopia’s demand for water suddenly increased?
- GDP per capita more than doubled between 2005-2010 ( at $400)
- rapidly growing population (at 78 million)
- Need water for irrigation and agriculture to fuel economic growth, after emerging from decades of famine and civil war.
Why is Egypt worried about water security?
- Ethiopia’s Grand Renassiance Dam may restrict suppply to Lake Nasser, the world’s largest artificial lake and reliant supply.
- Precipitation is predicted to drop 10-20% by 2030
How much will the Grand Ethiopean Renassiance Dam cost and what benefits will it provide?
- Cost $4.7 billion
- Provide 6000Mw/year, some of ehich can be exported to neighbouring sudan
- employ 8500 people in construction
What percentage of Kenyans don’t have access to safe drinking water?
39%
How is Lake Naivasha important to Kenya?
It supports the flourishing industry of horticulture and Floriculture
How does Kenya’s flower industry exacerbate water scarcity?
- Virtual water
- Large exports to britain, every 50g of salad exported uses up 50L of virtual water
- the 88 million tonnes of flowers grown annually compromise the ability to grow food for self- sufficiency
Reasons for physical water scarcity in the middle east…
- One of the driest regions in the world ( average rainfall annually expected to be 500m*3 by 2025)
- on high pressure belt
- Continental (extremes in climate)
- 5% worlds population, 1% worlds freshwater
- large disparity in rainfall (iran 1200m*3 per year vs 200 in jordon)
How is the mountain aquifer split between israel and palestine?
- 80% israel
- 20% palestine
Why does Israel have water insecurity?
- consumes 500 billion litres more than it recieves naturally
- population growth 1.5% per year
- greater periods of drought
what is the difference in water usage between israel and palestine?
- Israelis use 240 cubic metres of water per person per year
- West bank palestinians 75 and Gazans 125 cubic metres per person per year.
Why is there water conflict between Israel and Palestine?
- Palestine have had access of the west bank obstructed since Israeli occupation of west bank in 1967
- Wall has been built on the west bank, in a way that prevents Palestinians from accessing their most valuable and fertile land, as well as blocking the part of the west bank containing the most vital water sources.
Israel solution to secure water supply
- Importing 50 million cubic metres from turkey per year
- pumping sea water from the red sea and med for desalinisation
- sewage recycling (65% all crops already use water treated this way)
what percentage of total water supply will desalinisation account for by the year 2020 in Israel?
25%
Why might there be high potential for water conflict between Israel and palestine?
- There is already tension and dispute over the land that the aquifers lie under
- Between the muslim population in palestine and the Jewish population of israel
What is the Turkish GAP Project and how much will it cost?
- South-Eastern Anatolian project is a multisecoral and integrated regional development project based on the concept of sustainable development
- Cost $32 billion
What does the Gap project aim to do?
Social-economic developments:
- better education
- healthcare
- prevent out migration of young people
What does the Gap project involve and what are the aims?
- 22 Dams and 19 HEP plants
- Irrigate 1.7 million hectares of farmland
- Grow South East Anatolia econony by 400%
- Dam Euphrates and Tigris rivers
Why are Syria and Iraq concerned about the GAP project?
Euphrates and Tigris Rivers provide most of their water, so worried their water supplies will be cut off, making this a geopolitical issue
Purpose of South-North Transfer project
-Move Southern China’s highly abundant water resources to the highly populated north (where demand is high)
How great is demand in the Beijing-Tianjin region?
- 4.9 billion cubic metres per year
- risen due to 6x increase in agricultural output in 20 years
What is the cost and scale of the South-North water transfer project?
- cost $78 billion
- build 3 canals running 1300km across eastern, middle and western parts of china
- Transfer 45 billion cubic metres per year
Issue with South-North water transfer
- 380,000 displaced, moving over 500km away
- Central government will pay 60% of the costs
- fear of ecological disatser and high water pollution
- Wont be finished until 2050
Problems of water geopolitics
- Upstream users will claim territorial sovereignty (on our land so is ours)
- Downstream countries claim territorial integrity (cant just take it away)
Name an example of a successfully managed water geopolitics and why could it work?
2000 EU Water Framework Directive
- protect, enhance european groundwater, rivers and lakes by making each country resposible for the sections in their country (integrated exonomic management)
Possible due to:
- good relations between EU countries
- wealth to afford tech fixes and other measures (e.g virtual water trading)
- Europe has larger precipitation than other areas (e.g middle east)
What are the Helsinki rules?
Aim to ensure equitable use across a water basin Factors to be taken into account: -natural (e.g precipitaion levels) -socio-economic needs -dependancy on river -downstream impacts -prior use and efficiency
What is the Major problen with the Helsinki rules?
They are not binding, so often, more powerful countries get the better deals (e.g middle east)
What is the Snowy Mountains scheme? (Australia)
- 16 major dams
- 7 power stations
- 225km of tunnels and pipelines
What is the purpose of The Snowy Mountains Scheme?
- High economic purpose
- Supples vital water to farming industries of inland New South Wales and Victoria.
- Produces up to 10% of all electricity needs in New South Wales
Conflicts with Snowy Mountains Scheme?
- Lake Eucumbene (largest reservoir in project) has destroyed many habitats
- Snowy River beliw 1% of its original discharge in some places
- Water scarcity set farmers against city dwellers
What is the Lesotho Highlands Water Project?
Bi- National infrastructure project between Lesotho and South Africa
- Network of 5 dams, 200km of tunnel
- Transfer 2 billion cubic metres of water to South Africa
- Produce 72 MW of HEP for Lesotho
- estimated cost $8 billion
What were the costs if the Lesthoto water project?
Social:
- 20,000 people displaced due to Katse Dam (biggest)
- 20,000 migrated to work on project, introducing AIDS to the country
Economic:
- Water tariffs rose by 4% in 2004 (in SA)
- Forced to buy water from Lesotho.
Environmental:
- Reduction in Fisheries
- Loss of flooding, critical to local ecosystems
- Lower oxygen levels in water and change in temperature
What is the World’s largest Desalinisation plant, and how much water can it export per day?
Ras Al Khair plant, Saudi Arabia. Export 1 million Cubic metres of water per day.
How can ‘players’ be grouped?
- Political (IGOs, governments, pressure groups)
- Social (individuals, consumers, scientists)
- Economic (developers, TNCs, agricultural producers)
- Environmental (conservationists, NGOs)
What are the 4 main water solution types?
- Hard engineering (e.g desalinisation, transfers,dams)
- Restoration (e.g Aral sea)
- Water conservation (can be more attitudinal fixes)
- Intermediate technology
What is the purpose of the Three gorges dam?
- supply water to region responsible for 22% of china’s GDP
- power 1/3 households in china (power generated equivilant to 50 million tonnes of raw coal)
- reduce flood risk for 15 million people
What issues does the building of the three gorges dam present?
- 1.9 million displaced
- 100,000 hectares arible farmland flooded
- 530 million tonnes of silt annually trapped behind dam (reduce water quality)
How have levels in use of desalinisation increased? and why is this?
Since 1985, global amount of drinking water used produced gone from 7.5% to 35%. More economically viable, due to rise in demand and subsequent rise in cost
Why was the Kissimmee river channelised and what were the impacts?
To try and reduce river flooding
Impacts:
- Less recharge in miami groundwater aquifers
- Flow from 0.42-0.05 meteres per second
- 92% loss bird life
- salinisation of water supply
How was the Kissimmee River Restored?
- Leeves removed and meanders restored
- Some of canal remains to protect settlement
- 11,000 hecters restored to wetlands
- 89% increase in fish to restored areas
What is water conservation?
Involves reducing the amount of water used in all spheres of its use e.g efficient irrigation or recyling in industry
Name three examples of water conservations schemes
Agriculture -using infrared sensors to monitor when crops need water.
Education -annual pee outside day in sweden
Domestic - shorten showers (attitudinal fix)
