During the 20th century the world population tripled - while water use for human purposes multiplied sixfold! The most obvious uses of water for people are drinking, cooking, bathing, cleaning, and - for some - watering family food plots. This domestic water use, though crucial, is only a small part of the total. Worldwide, industry uses about twice as much water as households, mostly for cooling in the production of electricity. Far more water is needed to produce food and fibre (cereals, fruits, meat, cotton) and maintain the natural environment.
Providing six times more water now than a hundred years ago, an enormous task, has significant impacts on people and the environment. On the positive side:
- A major investment drive, the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (1981-90) and its follow-up - led by national governments and supported through international organisations - ended with safe and affordable drinking water for 80% of the exploding world population and sanitation facilities for 50%
- Major investments in wastewater treatment over the past 30 years have halted the decline in - or actually improved - the quality of surface water in a many developed countries.
- Food production in developing countries has kept pace with population growth, with both more than doubling in the past 40 years. A successful international research program in agriculture- funded through the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research- has produced higher-yielding varieties, and there has been a worldwide drive to intensify agriculture through fertiliser application and irrigation. A major factor in this success story - in agricultural productivity and farmer controlled investment - has been the rapid growth of groundwater- irrigated agriculture in the past 20 years.
- In perhaps the biggest achievement of the century, rising living standards, better education, and other social and economic improvements have finally slowed population growth.
But at the same time:
- An unacceptably large portion of the world population - one person in five - does not have access to safe and affordable drinking water, and half the world's people do not have access to sanitation. Each year at least 3-4 million people die of waterborne diseases, including more than 2 million children who die of diarrhoea, according to World Health Organisation statistics (WHO 1996). Other sources provided even higher estimates.
- More than 800 million people, 15% of the world population, get fewer than 2,000 calories a day. Chronically undernourished, they live a life of permanent or intermittent hunger (Conway 1999b). Most are women and young children from extremely poor families. More than 180 million children under 5 are severely underweight - more than two standard deviations below the standard weight for their age. Seventeen million children under 5 die each year, with malnourishment contributing to at lease a third of these deaths (Conway 1999a). Lack of proteins, vitamins, minerals, and other micronutrients in the diet is also widespread, particularly among children and women of childbearing age (UNICEF 1998).
- Much economic progress has come at the cost of severe impacts on natural ecosystems in most developed and transition economies. The world's wetlands were halved in the 20th century, causing a major loss of biodiversity. Rapidly, declining surface and groundwater quality in almost all major urban centres in the developing world threatens human health and natural values. Because of the adverse social and environmental impacts, large dams have become controversial and have lost public support in many places.
- Water services - irrigation water, domestic and industrial water supply, wastewater treatment - are heavily subsidised by most governments. This is done for all the right reason (providing water, food, jobs) but with perverse consequences. Uses do not value water - and so waste it. To a large extent the subsidies do not end up with the poor but are captured by the rich. Water conservation technologies do not spread. There are too few investment funds and revenues to maintain water infrastructure and research and training systems. As a result the sector is conservative and stagnant, not dynamic with a stimulating flow of innovative thinking.
- Unregulated access to groundwater, affordable small electric and diesel pumps, and subsidised electricity and diesel oil have led to overpumping of groundwater for irrigation and to rapidly falling groundwater tables in key aquifers.
- In most countries water continues to be managed sector by sector by a highly fragmented set of institutions. This approach is not effective for allocating water across purposes. It does not allow for the effective participation of stakeholders. And it is a major obstacle to integrated water resource management.
The conclusion: while much has been achieved, today's water crisis is widespread. Continuing current policies for managing water will only widen and deepen the crisis.
For full report see " www.watervision.org "
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