In the early 19th century, Lord Byron wrote in Don Juan that “Till taught by pain, men really know not what good water’s worth.”
Nearly 200 years later, humanity still does not seem to understand water’s value, exemplified in decades of poor water management and governance practically everywhere. However, the impending water crisis is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore — especially for those who are already feeling its effects.
To be sure, some improvements in water management have been made in recent years. However, they have come incrementally, at far too slow a pace to address the problem effectively.
Illustration: Kevin Sheu
To help start progress, major multinational companies like Nestle, Coca-Cola, SABMiller and Unilever — which have long emphasized to their investors the challenge that water scarcity poses for their businesses, not to mention the communities in which they operate — are working to improve water availability, quality and sustainability. Their success will require an innovative strategy that upends entrenched assumptions about — and approaches to — water-related problems.
For example, the prevailing view that the world needs good water management, though accurate, is too narrow. Water management should not be regarded as an end in itself — a single-variant solution for a single-variant problem — but as a means to several ends, including environmental conservation, and social and economic development.
Viewed in this broader context, many of the paradigms, practices and processes that are currently being used to manage communities’ water resources must change. Given that competition for water resources cannot be disentangled from competition for, say, food and energy, it cannot be addressed independently. Multivariant problems demand multivariant solutions.
Complicating matters further, these problems’ backdrop is likely to change considerably over the next few decades, owing to demographic shifts, population growth, urbanization, migration within and among countries, globalization, trade liberalization and rapid expansion of middle classes in the developing world. These shifts will accompany rapid industrialization and advances in science and technology — especially information and communications technology — and will transform dietary habits and consumption patterns.
As a result, water-consumption patterns will change greatly, including indirectly, through shifts in agriculture, energy and land use. These linkages are already evident in many places.
For example, in many Asian countries, including India, China and Pakistan, groundwater levels are declining at an alarming rate, owing to over-extraction and energy subsidies.
For India, the problem began in the 1970s, when major donors encouraged the Indian government to provide farmers with free electricity for irrigation. The subsidies were manageable at first and achieved their goal of boosting food production in many states.
However, the policy removed the incentive for farmers to limit the amount of water they pumped. They had to invest only in installing the actual pumps — and they did so willingly, resulting in a total of 23 million water pumps today.
This profligacy has taken a serious toll on groundwater levels, forcing the tube-wells from which the water is pumped to be installed ever more deeply. According to the Third World Centre for Water Management, the amount of electricity required to pump water in India has doubled — and, in some cases, even tripled — in the past decade alone, as tube-wells have moved from 10-15m to 200-400m deep. The increased depth requires three to four times more horsepower for each pump.
Under these conditions, state water ministries have few options to make groundwater irrigation sustainable. With the relentless increase in electricity subsidies, which are squeezing the energy sector, it is difficult to devise effective policies to stem over-pumping.
The water sector will have to react to developments in the energy and other sectors, over which, despite close ties, it has very limited control. Coordinating the various sectors’ policies effectively will be difficult, to say the least.
It might sound daunting, but the reality is that these challenges are surmountable — if, that is, leaders commit to tackling them. The needed technology, know-how, experience and even financing are all available. With strong political will, sustained pressure from an informed public, and a “can do” attitude from water professionals and institutions pursuing intersectoral cooperation, the world’s water-management problems can be addressed effectively.
However, action must be taken now. Time — and water — is running out.
Asit Biswas is a distinguished visiting professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore and the cofounder of the Third World Centre for Water Management. Ahmet Bozer is executive vice president of the Coca-Cola Company and president of Coca-Cola International.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under