Water is not just necessary for life.  Water is life.  Our planet is mostly made of it and so are we–one species of intelligent aliens identified us as “ugly bags of mostly water.” (Bonus points to the comment that correctly identifies the source.)  

We grow up knowing the simple formula for water: H2O. Yet for all our vaunted science and technology, we have no idea how to make it.  Our science knows a few things about it, but we don’t know really what water is.

We can’t build or manufacture or create water.  Our lives depend on the water that exists, that our earth as a complex system provides.  Water is in many ways the basis of civilization, and how water is shared is a primary creator and medium of culture.  But as the world’s fresh water is increasingly threatened by what the modern world has done to the planet, water again becomes a test of our civilization and our future.  For many, it already is.  For the rest of us, it soon will be.
crossposted with photos eventually at Captain Future’s Dreaming Up Daily.

Problems

Right now more than a billion people don’t have access to safe drinking water. Water-related disease are the leading cause of death in the world, and are responsible for 80% of all the sickness experienced.

According to the World Resources Institute, some 41% of the world’s population– or 2.3 billion people- “live in river basins under ‘water stress,’ meaning they are subject to frequent water shortages. Some 1.7 billion of these people live in `highly stressed’ water basins where problems with local food production and economic development abound.”

The world’s fresh water supply has been diminishing for centuries, due to chemical pollution from industries, and bacterial pollution from human and animal waste.  Among the nations that currently have serious water problems are India, Bangladesh, Kenya, Ethiopia and Honduras.  

The World Bank predicts that by 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population will suffer from lack of clean and safe drinking water.The United Nations General Assembly recognized the extent of the problem by declaring the years 2005 to 2015 as the International Decade for Action, “Water for Life.”

Now the current distribution of the world’s fresh water, and ultimately the systems that support all water in the world, are threatened  by the Climate Crisis.  Droughts will be larger and longer.  But even when more rain falls it will end up meaning less water: warmer temperatures mean moisture will fall earlier as rain rather than snow, which slowly melts into the land; warmer seas, etc. mean the normal rainfall is dumped in big storms, in a time too short for the land to absorb and hold it.

We are likely already seeing the first Climate Crisis war in Darfur, where “increasing drought cycles and the Sahara’s southward expansion” created conflicts between nomadic and urban groups over water and land.

Deserts are rapidly expanding in Africa and Asia, as the land is ravaged of forests and vegetation, a situation that the Climate Crisis is unlikely to improve.

Desalinization to turn abundant sea water into fresh water was  once believed to be the cure-all, but it turns out to have many problems, one of which is the cost and amount of energy required.  So we mostly depend on the fresh water that exists in the world.

Another possible problem looms, however: privatization of water delivery systems and water supplies. Huge corporations are now busy buying up water reserves with the aim of selling it as bottled water or in bulk shipments, and they are already using their clout to lower water quality standards. (The aforementioned World Bank is backing some of these companies.)

 One has to assume that companies buying up systems and resources are out to make a profit, and know that as water gets scarcer, they are in position to hold the biggest gun to the head of the public ever conceived.  It could make “Urinetown” look like a socialist utopia.

Water, goes the glib cliché, will be the new oil.  But try drinking oil when the water runs out.  Human beings can survive without a trip to WalMart indefinitely.  But without water, we are all dead within days.        

Solutions

The Climate Crisis solutions are obvious if complex (basically the two part fix it and stop it I’ve been advocating)but that’s not precisely the specific kind of water story on the UN’s underreported list.

They are talking about solutions now, in the “fix it” phase of the Climate Crisis, as well as for the many other reasons for water shortages, such as pollution, overpopulation, deforestation and poor management.

Knowing how vital water is, its simple to assume that the attempted solution would most likely be war. And that’s been tried–something like 7 wars in modern times are attributed to fighting over water. But you may be surprised to know that historically this has not often been the case.  Water sharing has been far more common than water conflict becoming violent, or so the scholars say:

Aaron Wolf, a leading authority on the politics of water, makes a compelling case that unlike diamonds, oil, and land, the demand for water resources does not promote conflict. Historical records and data from over 400 fresh-water agreements decidedly demonstrate more cooperation than conflict.[3] Many scholars share Wolf’s view that water is a resource “whose characteristics tend to induce cooperation and incite violence only in exception,” resulting in water-sharing treaties that are “creative, resilient, and manage to transcend other conflicts.

If this is so, we perhaps owe it to traditions begun in more civilized times, if you take civilized to mean when cultures recognized their dependence on nature and each other.  People in particular who live with scarcity and drought have integrated cooperation into their traditional cultures.  One such culture is the Gabra, as described in the landmark book Millenium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World by David Marbury-Lewis (he is the founder of the organization Cultural Survival.) The Gabra live in the Chalbi Desert area now in Kenya, and have a longstanding tradition of lending camels, their most precious and sacred possession, to others who are in need because of drought.  This even extends to people outside their own culture:

“They will also lend them to outsiders in time of dire need.  During the last, particularly vicious drought they lent many camels to the neighboring Boran. In fact, many Boran came to live with the Gabra during those difficult times.”

This is not only a deeply felt obligation, it is a relationship that offers protection, for the recipients take on the obligation of helping others in need when they are able, and specifically to help those who helped them.

“Whether the lending is between Gabra and Boran, or among the Gabra themselves, the ties created along the lending paths endure for generations, and a herder must therefore know the genealogy of his animals so as to know to whom he is indebted.”

Still,there are some modern precedents. The UN site on the topic notes:

With world demand for water increasing six-fold over the 20th century, there was no let-up in disputes over transboundary water issues, prompting some experts to predict that the wars of the 21st century will be fought over water. While freshwater’s propensity to strain relations among countries frequently makes headlines, the other side of the coin – water as an agent of cooperation – rarely gets sufficient attention. Nevertheless, research has shown much more historical evidence of water playing the role of a catalyst for cooperation, rather than a trigger of conflict. There are examples of workable accords on water reached even by States that were in conflict over other matters, including the cases of India and Pakistan, and Israel and Jordan.

Which brings us to one of the stories the UN has highlighted: Lake Titicaca which is partly in Bolivia and partly in Peru.  Using the technical sophistication of the World Water Assessment Program and a planning process aided by the European Community, these two nations created a common Autonomous Water Authority (known as ALT) to manage water use for agriculture, electricity generation and drinking water and sanitation.  

Focusing on water use has led to analyses of the local economy and in particular highlighted the need to improve public health.  There are substantial remaining problems.  The area is still subject to sudden flooding which is likely to get worse.

  But the combined authority has some important accomplishments: new floodgates, dredging of the Desaguadero River, new sewage treatment facilities, and the beginnings of a cooperative biodiversity conservation program by the governments of Bolivia and Peru, and the United Nations .

It has in turn become a model for similar large-scale situations:

The lessons learned from this large process of the studies and negotiations between two countries oriented to the preservation and sustainable use of a shared hydraulic resource, for the regional importance for two countries, were collected in different instances. Steps like the ones listed below,
are an example of the procedures, which could be followed by local organizations, regions and nations that share hydraulic resources:

  • Define the juridical situation of the basin
  • Carry out basic studies of the basin in a joint basis
  • Obtain international assistance, if necessary
  • Elaborate a Master Plan to determine the handling of the water resources and its use
  • Establish a technical mix organisms (if possible) for the handling of the Master Plan
  • Make the studies in a joint way and realize a system of geographic information t define the positive or negative aspects which may happen in the future.

One notable achievement: Indigenous cultures and populations have become part of the decision-making process, and Native communities are planned to be participants in the biodiversity conservation program.  There is often conflict between contemporary governments, advised by international banks and their globalized economists, and the cultures that have been living the natural environment for thousands of years.  Their traditions often embody the knowledge appropriate to the local environment and the natural economy that outsiders miss.    

Another example the UN points to is in the former Soviet Union:

The Northern Aral Sea is being successfully restored after its surface had shrunk to less than half its original size as a result of a massive diversion of water under the Soviet Union, which had drained the two rivers feeding it and devastated the surrounding environment. The Aral Sea is shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, but its fresh water basin also encompasses Afghanistan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. Thanks to a World Bank project, the sea has now begun to fill up following the completion of the Kok-Aral Dam. Newly rehabilitated waterworks along the Syr Darya River are benefiting farmers by irrigating their lands. The next step is to improve the irrigation efficiency of two-thirds of the land in the Kazakh part of the Aral Sea basin.

It’s obviously a complex set of problems, that will be at the center of things for a long time.  If it’s a bit too much to take in all at once, perhaps you should take a couple of aspirins, or the pain reliever of your choice.  With a nice drink of water, of course.