ROLE OF GOVERNMENT IN WATER SCARCITY

Spreading water scarcity will make meeting the drinking water, food, and material
needs of an expected world population of 8 billion one of our most difficult
challenges over the next 30 years, reports the World watch Institute.

"Water scarcity is the 'sleeping tiger' of our environmental problems, but the tiger
is waking up, and we had better wake up, too," says Sandra Postel, director of the
Global Water Policy Project in Amherst, Massachusetts, and author of Last Oasis:
Facing Water Scarcity. The book is being re-released by W.W. Norton & Co. and
World watch Institute with a new introduction by the author. The release is in
conjunction with the upcoming PBS documentary "Last Oasis," which is based on
the book, and concludes a four-part series on water called "Cadillac Desert."

"Additional water supplies equal to 20 Nile Rivers could be needed over the next
30 years just to satisfy new food requirements for a still-growing global
population, “Postel said, “and it's not clear where that water will come from on a
sustainable basis. Boosting water productivity by roughly half is essential to avoid
costly water shortages, food shortfalls, and a severely degraded environment."

Key food-producing regions are now plagued by chronic groundwater over

pumping, dried- up rivers, and salt buildup in soils. In addition, an imbalance
between growing populations and finite water supplies may shut off the option of
food self-sufficiency for a growing number of countries. Of the 28 countries in
Africa and the Middle East that have crossed the "water stress" threshold, 19
already import at least 20 percent of their grain. In less than 30 years, Africa and
the Middle East will have more than 1.3 billion people living in water-stressed
countries; more than triple the number today.

"Given these facts, it's not easy to be optimistic about future food security," Postel
said. "An all-out effort is needed to raise the water productivity of the global crop
base, both irrigated and rain fed." She recommends pricing and other policies to
improve irrigation efficiency, to better match crops to local climates and varying
qualities of water, to promote the re-use of urban wastewater for crop irrigation,
and to breed new crop varieties that are more salt-tolerant, drought-resistant, and
water-efficient.

The report also calls for greater investments to repair and protect rivers, streams,
wetlands, and deltas, which have been degraded by decades of large-scale water
engineering, escalating water demands, and mounting pollution. These systems
sustain fisheries, process society's waste, maintain soil fertility, and create habitat
for a rich diversity of aquatic life. The total global value of these freshwater
"ecosystem services" almost certainly amounts to several trillion dollars annually,
according to the report.

Several large restoration attempts are planned or under way, including projects in
the Everglades, the San Francisco Bay-Delta, and a portion of Central Asia's
shrinking Aral Sea. But greater efforts are needed to slow the degradation of the
planet's freshwater assets.

"Each time we build a dam, drain a wetland, siphon off too much river flow, or
pave a critical watershed, we lose valuable ecological functions that we end up
paying for later," Postel said. "Governments have the responsibility to protect
public resources when the market fails to do so, and this is a clear case where
government action is warranted."

The report sees hopeful signs in growing efforts to leave more water "in stream"
and to make habitat protection a more explicit goal of water management. The U.S.
government -- in a shift that could be repeated elsewhere -- has reallocated 800,000
acre-feet of water annually from a large federal irrigation project in California to
maintain fish and wildlife habitat and other ecosystem functions.

In several international river basins, there are promising steps to defuse tensions
that have threatened regional "water wars." In December 1996, India and
Bangladesh signed a treaty on sharing the dry-season flow of the Ganges River,
which has begun to dissipate a generation-old dispute. Israel, Jordan, and the
Palestinians have begun to move toward water- sharing, but the challenging task
remains of equitably allocating Jordan basin waters. And Nile basin countries have
met annually since 1993 to foster cooperation, and have agreed to work toward
"equitable allocation of the Nile waters."
In contrast, little concrete progress is evident in the Tigris-Euphrates basin, where
Turkey is moving ahead with dam plans that will reduce the Euphrates' flow into
Syria and Iraq.

"With supplies unlikely to get much bigger, and with demand continuing to rise,
our challenge is to use the water we have more efficiently, and to divide it in ways
that satisfy basic human needs, protect vital ecosystems, and avert conflict," Postel
said.

Reaching these goals, Postel cautions, could be made more difficult by the growing
trend toward governments turning over the construction, operation, and sometimes
even the ownership of water systems to the private sector. Ensuring that the poor
get water at affordable prices and that rivers, lakes, and watersheds are adequately
protected takes strong regulation -- but it is often lacking in such privatization
schemes. Yet in the last decade, such shifts valued at more than $400 billion have
been proposed, started, or completed in the urban water sector alone. Buenos
Aries, Casablanca, Dakar, and Mexico City are among the large cities in the
developing world that have privatized all or part of their water systems.

Incentives to use water more efficiently, share it more equitably, and protect its
ecological functions are urgently needed, yet this report finds that no national
government has a comprehensive strategy firmly founded on these pillars of
sustainability. Inappropriate pricing still makes it cheaper to waste water than to
conserve it; inadequate regulations permit valuable ecosystem services to be lost,
and gross inequalities persist between rich and poor. Postel concludes:

"Every day we delay, we consign ourselves to more difficult and expensive

solutions, greater human insecurity, and a more degraded world. It is now time --
indeed past time -- for government leaders and citizens worldwide to face these
problems head-on. I hope this new PBS documentary will motivate action."

Global Experiences in Managing Water Crisis

The key lies in strong institutions and cooperation. The Indus River Commission
and the Indus Water Treaty survived two wars between India and Pakistan despite
their hostility, proving to be a successful mechanism in resolving conflicts by
providing a framework for consultation inspection and exchange of data. The
Mekong Committee has also functioned since 1957 and survived the Vietnam War.
In contrast, regional instability results when there is an absence of institutions to
co-operate in regional collaboration, like Egypt's plan for a high dam on the Nile.
However, there is currently no global institution in place for the management and
management of trans-boundary water sources, and international co-operation has
happened through ad hoc collaborations between agencies, like the Mekong
Committee which was formed due to an alliance between UNICEF and the US
Bureau of Reclamation. Formation of strong international institutions seems to be a
way forward – they fuel early intervention and management, preventing the costly
dispute resolution process. It is alleged that the likelihood of conflict rises if the
rate of change within the basin exceeds the capacity of institution to absorb that
change. Although water crisis is closely related to regional tensions, history
showed that acute conflicts over water are far less than the record of cooperation.
One common feature of almost all resolved disputes is that the negotiations had a
“need-based” instead of a “right–based” paradigm. Irrigable lands, population,
technicalities of projects define "needs". The success of a need-based paradigm is
reflected in the only water agreement ever negotiated in the Jordan River Basin,
which focuses in needs not on rights of riparian. In the Indian subcontinent,
irrigation requirements of Bangladesh determine water allocations of the Ganges
River. A need-based, regional approach focuses on satisfying individuals with their
need of water, ensuring that minimum quantitative needs are being met. It removes
the conflict that arises when countries view the treaty from a national interest point
of view, move away from the zero-sum approach to a positive sum, integrative
approach that equitably allocated the water and its benefits.

The Blue Peace framework developed by Strategic foresight Group in partnership

with the Governments of Switzerland and Sweden offers a unique policy structure
which promotes sustainable management of water resources combined with
cooperation for peace. By making the most of shared water resources through
cooperation rather than mere allocation between countries, the chances for peace
can be increased. The Blue Peace approach has proven to be effective in cases like
the Middle East and the Nile basin.