Opinion

Water shortage is global crisis

Tom Carpenter
Opinion Columnist

An estimated 2.4 billion people on Earth lack adequate sanitation and 1.1 billion people don't have access to clean drinking water. Based on data from NASA and the World Health Organization, scientists estimate two-thirds of the Earth's population will live in water-stressed conditions in fewer than 25 years.

As ferociously as nations battle to control the rich mineral resources in the Middle East and Africa, these struggles will pale in comparison to the wars that will rage in the near future over the rapidly diminishing resource known as "blue gold." Dramatic changes in global fresh water policies need to be drafted soon.

More than 70 percent of the available fresh water is used to irrigate crops. Using antiquated techniques that make it cheaper to squander water than to improve the irrigating process, agriculture depletes groundwater resources faster than the water can be resupplied.

Approximately 260 rivers worldwide flow through multiple countries, but few treaties exist on how to share water. The flow of these rivers has been changed to increase crop production and provide electricity with more than 45,000 dams that rise higher than 15 meters. 

So much water has been diverted for irrigation that the Rio Grande River no longer flows into the Gulf of Mexico. Africa's Lake Chad and the marshes of southern Iraq have almost disappeared. The Aral Sea has shrunk to less than one-third of its original size in the past 25 years.

Major droughts around the world aggravate the situation. The Yellow River in China ran dry for a record 226 days in 1997 and major rivers like the Indus in Pakistan, the Ganges in South Asia and the Colorado in the American Southwest now run dry for long periods each year.

A recent study by the United Nations Environment Programme predicts that water shortages affecting more than 400 million people today will affect 4 billion people by 2050. 

In addition to fresh water shortages, the runoff from fertilizers and industrial waste products pollute the oceans, rivers and lakes, depleting fish populations and creating dead zones.

Twenty percent of the world's 10,000 recorded fish species have become extinct or endangered in the past 50 years because of pollution. These depleted fish stocks increase the pressure on other types of agriculture to produce enough food to feed the world's population.

Magnifying the fresh water shortage, an estimated 90 percent of human wastewater is still discharged directly into rivers and steams, according to the WHO.

Without adequate sanitation for an estimated 2.5 billion people, this untreated, raw sewage goes directly into fresh water, a major source of health problems for about 3 billion people around the globe.

The battle for clean water could be won if people decided that money for clean drinking water was more important than manufacturing missiles and bombs.

Efficient irrigation techniques exist to maximize water resources. Drip irrigation systems in India, Israel, Spain and the United States deliver water directly to crop roots and cut water use by 30 to 70 percent while increasing crop yields by 20 to 90 percent. 

Desalinization plants, while still expensive compared to subsidized water, effectively process salt water into fresh drinking water in Israel, China and the United States.

The United Nations predicts a 40 percent increase in global water use in the next 20 years. Last week the U.S. Congress wrote a check for $75 billion to wage war against Iraq. 

According to the WHO, for a mere $30 billion a year, poor people around the globe could have universal access to clean drinking water by 2015. It's all a matter of priorities.

Carpenter, a College of Education student, can be reached via dccampus@mail.uh.edu.