target – the roots of the plants; it is lost to the atmosphere, or returned to the water system unused. If poorly managed, channel irrigation can actually damage the soil, leaving it saline and unproductive. For this and many other reasons, including the social disruption and environmental damage caused by large dams, it is generally acknowledged that the train of “progress”, in which large-scale irrigation projects opened up new agricultural land for cultivation, has run into the buffers. Despite the uneven distribution of land ownership and cheap food, since the expansion of food production that accompanied the Green Revolution it has been possible to envisage a time when no child would go to bed hungry. But over 780 million people are still without a sufficient or nutritious diet, and making a serious dent in the hunger figures is becoming increasingly difficult. If food production is to keep pace with increasing population, and prices are to be kept in check, water efficiency in agriculture will have to be given far more attention. Volumes available for agriculture are likely to decline or remain static as industry and expanding urban centres increase their share. Technology will have to be harnessed to reducing water wastefulness. Up to now, hybrid seeds have mostly required extra water for cultivation; more attention will have to be focused on plant strains that require less water. Farmers will have to rediscover respect for environmental parameters, with drylands used for drought-resistant grains and tubers. Investment is needed in small-scale irrigation and water-harvesting techniques, which could improve the livelihoods of millions of farming families, especially in Africa but also in South Asia. Irrigation needs to be carefully managed, and combined with measures to improve the water-holding quality of the soil, nurture its fertility and increase yields from rain-fed crops. As pressures mount, food production will have to focus on items that use less water per unit of energy or nutrition than the red meat so highly prized in Western cultures. Reduction of water profligacy and improved efficiency are also needed for water use in manufacturing. In many Western countries, water conservation has been enforced by regulation and pricing to the point that recent expansion in industrial water use has been relatively constrained. The challenge is to ensure that these kinds of measures are taken up by less developed and industrializing countries, where water governance and regulatory frameworks are weaker and more frequently flouted. On the domestic front, appliances such as toilets and washing-machines that use less water are now widely available, but even these, as they are taken up by the new middle-class in countries such as China and India, will have a major impact on the quantity of fresh water used in towns and cities, and on the quantity of wastewater discarded. The amount of water used per household varies enormously around the world, and a large part of it is invisible. Consumption is not limited to drinking, bathing, flushing the toilet, using the dishwasher and watering the garden, adding up to well over 100 litres
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per capita a day. Everything that is manufactured – from electronic equipment to newspapers and kitchen gadgets – has involved water in its production. The total amount of water each person consumes if such products are factored into our “water footprint” is far higher than the figure for direct consumption. Nor is usage restricted to water from local sources: it also includes water embedded in food and goods imported from elsewhere. Thus water-stressed areas in Africa, America, Asia and Australia may be used to produce consumer items for export, while – with real injustice – local farmers and herders go short. Pollution At the same time as demand on volumes increase, pressures mount on freshwater quality. No longer can natural water from springs, dug wells and running rivers automatically be assumed to be clean and safe to drink. The natural capacity of waterways to act as the world’s inbuilt dish-washing apparatus is inadequate to cope with the overload of wastes from increased population density. Many towns and cities in the developing world suffer the indignity of London 150 years ago when, in a hot summer season, the Thames was reduced to a Great Stink by a combination of upstream take-off and raw sewage inflows. Around 90 percent of human waste in the developing world is still discharged untreated into rivers. Since the threat of a cholera epidemic by the intake of foul air no longer causes the alarm it once did, the public-health incentive for dealing with this nuisance is not what it used to be. An overload of human waste in rivers, lakes and streams destroys plant and aquatic life and can carry with it bacteria and viruses that cause serious diseases. The pollution caused by chemical wastes and industrial spills may not be as visible, but may be even more damaging. Where pesticide residues and pharmaceutical ingredients are washed into rivers or leached into the soil and from there enter the food chain, their toxic effects may build up in human tissues and cause long-term ill-health. Some pollutants may be traced thousands of miles from where they were originally discharged. For too long, the world’s freshwater and seawater network has been considered as having an unlimited capacity to function as humanity’s sink. As a result, many parts of the network have become degraded. Co-operation over water The increasing pressure on water resources has led to intense competition. Within one community, it is often hard to agree who has the right to take freely from the source for irrigation purposes, or whether people with a tap in their yard should pay a higher rate than those still obliged to walk to the pump. Should fines be imposed on people whose tannery, or cloth-dying business, or latrine has fouled the local source? These are questions that have exercised communities for centuries. At the local level, water governance has always demanded
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co-operation, often reinforced by water’s venerated place in human affairs. But as lifestyles become more water-intensive, and the supply is tampered with at ever greater distances, these problems become more acute, especially at the wider level of district or nation, up to multinational level. Many fear that water is becoming a commercialized commodity, with market forces left to decide who gets to use it or abuse it. Fortunately, that prospect is retreating. Irresponsible profit-making and corruption over water services – the result of inflated expectations from the privatization of services and the efficacy of markets – and the difficulties entailed in persuading customers and authorities to accept much higher pricing regimes, has induced a major re-think about optimal systems of water distribution and its management between public and private sectors. Compared to 10 or 20 years ago, there is now a much wider appreciation that water is a common good, and that it ought to be managed in the common interest by authorities that are answerable in the public domain, even though the role of the private sector has become more ubiquitous. When the task of reconciling all the different user interests is understood in all its parameters, the likelihood is that the business of “water diplomacy” among public and private practitioners will continue to be a growth industry in the 21st century. The idea of “integrated water resources management” sounds so reasonable and just – reconciling upstream and downstream users, allocating so much to agriculture and so much to industry, bringing in all parties across all political boundaries to the river basin forum – that it ought to be adopted universally and without delay. But its realization requires a complex process of reconciling competing claims, and a willingness to share a natural resource in an equitable way; therefore, such an achievement would be virtually unprecedented in human history. The omens, however, are more positive than might be thought. Despite all the talk about “water wars”, experience shows that co-operation over water has occurred more often than conflict, and that antagonists with deeply held differences in almost every sphere can manage to find common cause over water. In the end, the unjust distribution of water in the landscape may provide the stimulus for humanity to find a way of sharing this life-giving resource, and thereby further the cause of bringing humanity together to seek ways of living in peace on our much-pressurized planet. Maggie Black Oxford February 2016
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Acknowledgements
The authors and publishers gratefully acknowledge the help generously given in the form of maps and data by the following individuals and institutions: The WHYMAP team, Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe (BGR), for use of the groundwater resources map on pages 28–29; Center for Environmental Systems Research, University of Kassel for the map of environmental stress due to flow alteration on pages 76–77; Aaron Wolf and Lucia DeStefano of the Program in Water Conflict Management and Transformation, Oregon State University for data used on pages 94–97. We would also like to thank the following photographers and organizations who
