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Key Trend Alert: Can We Learn to Manage our Water Resources?
Written by Michael Akerib
Over the last 100 years, water needs have increased tenfold. The biggest user of water is agriculture, which represents 70 percent of all water used, with industry consuming 20 percent and individuals, the remaining 10 percent. Some authors have called water "blue gold," and increasingly well-known public figures have stated that the wars of the future will be waged to secure water sources rather than oil or gas.
A small number of countries are the world's water reservoir, accounting for 60 percent of resources. Brazil has the world's largest water reserves, most of which are in the Amazon River, followed by Russia, which claims 20 percent of the world's water in Lake Baikal. Should there be severe shortages in other countries, both Brazil and Russia could develop substantial export markets for their water resources. At present prices relative to transport costs, however, such trade does not make economic sense.
Fears of global warming, and therefore of increased evaporation, together with increased urbanization, improved living standards and wastage due both to poor, leaky, infrastructure increase the risk of future shortages. In some areas, up to 70 percent of the water in the adduction system is believed to be lost due to leakages and poor maintenance. It is estimated that improvements in infrastructure would require investments of around $5 trillion.
Many bodies of water worldwide have seen their amount of water diminish to the point that water availability is now a factor limiting economic growth. The case of the Aral Sea is the most dramatic example of an increase in the salt content followed by a disappearance of a substantial part of its surface. The United Nations has called it the world's worst man-made environmental disaster. Much of the water from the Aral Sea’s tributaries, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, was diverted to cotton fields in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan for irrigation purposes. Cotton, the region’s most economically important crop, requires considerable amounts of water and modernizing the irrigation systems of the area would require investments of around $16 billion.
Compared to other industries, agriculture does not make the most economically-effective use of water, so over the long term, it would make sense to develop agricultural production and exports from water-rich countries, such as Canada and Russia, to water-poor areas. An alternative to such a dependency is investment in major irrigation projects or the encouragement of small-scale agricultural developments that recycle some spent water or rainwater. Roughly half the food produced worldwide comes from fields whose water source is exclusively rain. Governments should therefore encourage investments in water reservoirs and other water-retention techniques or invest in them.
For the full document written by Michael Akerib please click here.
Michael Akerib is a Senior Consultant with Rusconsult and a professor at Sacred Heart University in Luxembourg.
