African ministers say share water to combat hunger

African ministers say share water to combat hunger

'African states lack the resources to deal alone with climate change and must share water better to feed growing populations, government ministers said at a water conference in Libya on Wednesday.

The world's poorest continent has failed to feed a fast-growing population due to under-investment, bad farm management and more frequent droughts and floods, leaving it hooked on food imports.

The cost of those imports soared to $49.4 billion in 2008 from $10.5 billion in 2005 as world prices jumped, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

That has put a massive strain on state budgets in countries that subsidize imports to make them more affordable.

Of 36 countries grappling with food crises, 21 are in Africa and the World Food Program estimates that nearly a sixth of the world's population -- almost 1 billion people -- are hungry.

African officials meeting over three days in the Libyan city of Sirte said governments should redouble a 2003 promise to commit 10 percent of national budgets to boosting farm output, according to their final declaration.

With droughts and flash flooding increasingly common, they called for more modern irrigation systems that store water and channel it where and when it is needed.

They agreed to seal more region-wide deals to share the water stored in rivers, lakes and underground.

Cooperation would be strengthened on weather forecasting and early warning systems to minimize the impact of drought, desertification, floods and pests.

"Together we must find concrete and effective measures to address the issues of water in Africa, in a spirit of shared responsibility," Jacques Diouf, Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, told delegates.

The ministers also decided to establish continent-wide information systems to better coordinate farm output and make commodity trade more efficient.

The skills and the resources to make Africa self-sufficient exist if only governments would cooperate on managing their water, delegates said.'
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And not only to combat hunger, but to combat war. This is the most crucial environmental crisis facing Africa right now: water scarcity. It is such because it is bringing with it hunger, famine, malnutrition, drought, disease, and war. A scarcity of water combined with a scarcity of education and opportunity to help the people of Africa become self sufficient is at the crux of the wars they face as well. However, so many countries in Africa are being run by corruption in order to take their resources as in the case of Sudan, that it is hard to now comprehend a pact that will allow the people the self determination they need to survive.

In my view there is also too much interference from government agencies such as the World Bank and WTO that prevent access to food and keep prices high thus perpetuating the poverty of countries in Africa that rely solely on imports of food, much of it now genetically modified in an attempt to force this technology on farmers for profit.

There is no reason why farmers in Africa cannot have access to natural seeds that will grow their own food naturally for them to stimulate the economies of their countries, save for a concerted effort by world organizations and governments to control the production and access to food and water for profit. And this I fear will become more prevalent due to climate change as we are seeing glaciers in Africa melting as well at a more rapid pace than predicted, which also puts water resources for many in jeopardy.

To come to an amicable agreement among African states to share water for agricultual purposes in an efficient way (drip irrigation particularly) is definitely a step in the right direction. The fulfillment of that goal however, is what is unclear at the moment as we see so much of Africa in the throse of turmoil, war, and corruption. Water is the key to their sustainability and must be made accessible to the poor without cost in order to allow them to be able to feed themselves and live with dignity. Water can combat hunger, war, disease, and hopelessness. It must be the lynchpin to any plan to lift Africa into a sustainable future.

Germany Suspends Funding For Controversial Ilisu Dam In Turkey

Germany Suspends Funding For Controversial Ilisu Dam In Turkey

My entry on this good news on Current TV.

One of my previous entries on this from two years ago.

The Ilisu Dam Controversy

The Search For Clean Water In The Coming Year

I have done this year what I have done every year successively for the last few years; report here on the global water crisis in an attempt to not only inform but to inspire and to move us to action. The need for that action has never been more necessary than it is now. The Earth now sits on a precipice, with man having the power to pull it back or push it off.

Around the world from North America to Africa and beyond, we see water scarcity and drought becoming more a part of daily life for more people. This does not bode well for the future as population continues to rise as the quality of life in the developing world decreases due to war, climate change, pollution, and poverty. Climate change continues to melt glaciers globally at a much more rapid pace than predicted, and man finds himself because of it at a crossroads in a world filled with war, disease, famine, injustice, poverty, and despair. It would be very easy to give up looking at the picture we have painted, but we cannot do so. Our own survival depends on how we treat this planet and our fellow man. How we react to these crises now will determine if the world falls off that precipice or is saved.

I firmly believe that even though we now live in a world of turmoil, this next year will be a year of awakening for many. There are many more organizations that are now bringing awareness and action to the parts of our world in need of potable water and sanitation. There are many more people becoming aware of not only their carbon footprint, but their water footprint as well. This past year saw a surge in activism against the bottled water industry with citizen groups across the world standing up to the corporations seeking to take our water for profit.

These are good signs that point to a more intense activism in the year to come to hold political leaders accountable for policies that seek to fix water infrastructure, restore wetlands, reduce pollution, hold officials accountable for proper water management and efficient agriculture policies, and also hold them to signing a climate treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions that lead to drought and glacier melt this next year.

However, none of these things can happen without us. Without our voices, our hands, our perseverence, and our love for this planet and for the one resource we cannot live without. It is that love and perseverence that carries me into another year of water activism and of reporting to you the stories of our water, it's life, and our contributions to its preservation. May this coming year bring us closer to a world where water is truly appreciated for the beautiful life sustaining source and human right it is.

Water Is Life.

Could India and China Go To War Over Water?

India Quakes Over China's Water Plan

India quakes over China's water plan
By Sudha Ramachandran

BANGALORE - Even as India and China are yet to resolve their decades-old territorial dispute, another conflict is looming. China's diversion of the waters of a river originating in Tibet to its water-scarce areas could leave India's northeast parched. This is expected to trigger new tensions in the already difficult relations between the two Asian giants. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is reported during his recent Beijing visit to have raised the issue of international rivers flowing out of Tibet. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has said that water scarcity threatened the very "survival of the Chinese nation". The river in question is the Brahmaputra, which begins in southwestern Tibet where it is known as the Yalong Tsangpo
River. It flows eastwards through southern Tibet for a distance of about 1,600 kilometers and at its easternmost point makes a spectacular U-turn, known as the Shuomatan Point, or the “Great Bend”. This is just before the river enters India, where it is joined by two other major rivers; from this point of confluence it is known as the Brahmaputra. It then snakes into Bangladesh, where it is joined by the Ganges River to create the world's largest delta before emptying into the Bay of Bengal.

It is at the Great Bend that China plans to divert water, in addition to its hydroelectric power project that is expected to generate 40,000 megawatts of power. The diversion of the waters is part of a larger hydro-engineering project, the South-North water diversion scheme, which involves three man-made rivers carrying water from the icy Tibetan plateau to the arid north. This water diversion scheme will draw from the waters of the Yalong, Dadu and Jinsha rivers, which rise in the Tibetan plateau, and channel them to the Yellow River. The aim of the project is to provide water for human use, including farming and industry in China's water-scarce areas in the north and northwest. This water diversion project involves three diversion routes - the eastern, central and western routes. The diversion of the Yalong Tsangpo at the Great Bend is the western route of the project - the most technologically challenging and controversial of the three routes.

For Beijing, the argument in favor of the water diversion project is simple. More than a quarter of China is classified as desert. Its north and northwest areas are water scarce. Increasing consumption of water, rapid industrialization and pollution have rendered the waters of many of China's rivers unusable. Besides, sections of the Yellow River run dry. In contrast, rivers that rise in the Tibetan plateau's glaciers have much water. Once completed, the water diversion scheme is expected to transfer over 40 billion cubic meters of water annually to China's water scarce areas, relieving China's thirst to a significant extent. It is true the Tibetan plateau is a source of much water. It is Asia's principal watershed and the source of 10 of its major rivers, including the Yalong Tsangpo/Brahmaputra, the Sutlej and the Indus. China, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, indeed 47% of the world's population, are dependent on water rising in the Tibetan plateau. But while rivers with sources in the icy Tibetan plateau are rich in water, critics of the water diversion project say they are not inexhaustible, as Chinese officials claim. The Tibetan plateau is ice-covered but it is an arid desert with very little rainfall. The source of much of its water bodies and rivers is glaciers, which are melting due to global warming.

If, alongside the impact of rising temperatures on glaciers, China diverts water from its natural course, Tibet will be a water-scarce region in a few decades. Critics also point to the environmental and ecological destruction it is likely to cause. The water diversion project at the Great Bend spells disaster not only for the Tibetan plateau but also for the lower riparian countries - India and Bangladesh. These countries view the project with some concern as it represents a direct threat to the lives and livelihoods of millions of people living downstream. With the Yalong Tsangpo's waters being diverted, the amount of water in the Brahmaputra will fall significantly, affecting India's northeast and Bangladesh. It will severely impact agriculture and fishing there as the salinity of water will increase, as will silting in the downstream area.

A shortage of water in the Ganges has already affected the lives and livelihoods of millions in Bangladesh, pushing them to migrate to India, especially to its northeast. This migration of Bangladeshis has changed the demographic composition of vast tracts in the northeast (especially in Assam) and triggered serious ethnic conflicts there. A shortage of water in the Brahmaputra will accentuate these problems to dangerous levels. There is concern too that with the water diversion project taking off, China will acquire great power and leverage over India, worsening tensions between these two countries.
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This does not bode well for the people of India should this diversion happen as reported. With the Himalayas also melting at a far faster rate than predicted, water resources for billions who count on the freshwater from those glaciers will only make any diversion of water from the Brahmaputra a more contentious issue. For sure, both the people of India and China deserve to have enough water to survive(how much of it China really plans on using for their coal plants is also a question.) However, it would appear that China believes they hold autonomy over this region and may simply take this water without the consent of the India govt.or the people of Tibet.

Here we have a classic example of how water wars will begin. I surely hope that does not happen, but considering the latent animosities between India and China already, this potential diversion of a sacred source as well as the only source of their survival could give us a glimpse into the world of the future where water is more precious than oil, and where stronger countries will exert their power over weaker countries to take their resources.

Some history on their land dispute:

India and China Skirmish Over Isolated Tibetan Land

Using Water To Understand Human Society

Using Water To Understand Human Society

Some of the greatest societies would not have lasted as long as they did without water and the use of it in their infrastructures, agriculture, and traditions. The one that first comes to my mind is Ancient Rome. Their intricate and brilliant aqueduct system (though built through plundering Gaul and Britain) was an engineering marvel that rivaled and even surpassed water systems of today. Even the Roman baths were well known historically for their influence on social mores.

The Great Pyramids of Egypt would not have been built without the access to the Nile River. The Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges, even the Hudson and Mississippi Rivers here in the US have all had an influence on life as we now know it. Trade would also not have been possible from early centuries to current times had it not been for the access to water. Water has been instrumental in the economic and environmental lives of people for many centuries.

It is then about time that water is being included in the histories of these great civilizations in trying to understand human society. Water is really the one element that binds all humans together. It is the one resource that can spark war and yet also bring peace. It can bring sustenence and also unfortunately tragedy as in floods. However, it cannot be denied that water has shaped human civilization as we know it, and today as it has been for centuries remains the only liquid on Earth that gives us life and shapes our destinies.
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From the article:

Water shapes societies, but it is a factor only just beginning to be appreciated by social scientists. The Norwegian professor, writer and film maker Terje Tvedt, of the Universities of Oslo and Bergen, argues that water has played a unique and fundamental role in shaping societies throughout human history.
Speaking at a European Science Foundation and COST conference in Sicily in October, Tvedt proposed that social scientists and historians have long made a serious error by not taking natural resources into account in their attempts to understand social structures.

Water, according to Tvedt, is a unique natural resource for two reasons. First, it is absolutely essential for all societies, because we cannot live without it. Secondly, it is always the same. Whatever you do with water on the surface of the Earth, it reemerges. "You can destroy or create rivers and lakes," he says, "but you cannot destroy water itself."

How rivers shaped industry
Tvedt used the example of the industrial revolution to show how water can help to understand human history. Historians have proposed two contrasting theories to explain why the industrial revolution started in Europe, specifically in Britain, and not in China, India or Australia.

They debate about whether it is because of specific political ideologies and social structures in Europe at the time, or due to the unequal relationship that already existed between Europe and the rest of the world, through slavery and colonialism. The two theories can be termed exceptionalism and exploitation, respectively.

But according to Tvedt, the structure of the water system can adequately explain why the industrial revolution began in Britain. The early industrial revolution was enabled by the power of water mills, and bulk transport of goods by canal. Britain's rivers were perfect for both things.

They provided a good network across the country. All are fairly close to the sea, with good flows throughout the year and not too much silt. Elsewhere in the world, rivers were too silty, too large and uncontrollable, all flowing in the same direction or had flows that were too seasonally variable.

The exclusion of nature from our understanding of society is not a benign, academic problem. "Since World War II, the dominant theories relating to the international aid system have, without exception, disregarded the role of nature," Tvedt says.

"Modernisation theory has told us that all societies could develop modernism in the same way, if they just find the right economic instruments." This, he argues, is simply not right.


This is a great site to read about the history of water in society from ancient times until now:

Water History

Access to water must be high on climate agenda

Access to water must be high on climate agenda

Access to water is a basic human right and should be high on the agenda of climate change talks in Poland next week, the head of an Italian advocacy group said on Friday.

With more than 1 billion people having no access to safe water, the World Water Contract group for years has sought to make availability of water a basic right and add it to the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

"Given that water is threatened by climate change, it is time to include the human right to water in (the new climate) protocol," Emilio Molinari, chairman of the group's Italian branch, told Reuters on the margins of a water conference.

Molinari said his group would lobby the United Nations to add water access rights to the climate change debate next week in Poznan, Poland.

About 190 countries will meet there to lay the groundwork for a global deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol after 2012.

Molinari said his non-profit organisation would try to ensure guarantee rights to water access are included in the final climate deal, widely expected in December 2009.
"One of our strategic objectives is to insert the right to water in the climate change protocol as a fundamental element," he said.

The battle for access to water has never been easy and would become more difficult with the global credit crunch, because the lion's share of public funds would be channelled to rescue banks and big corporations, he said.

"They (authorities) will play a recession card. They will say: 'There is no money for public interventions, all should go to help companies to recover... We need to scrap environmental target'," he said.

Previous efforts by human rights and environmental activists to improve water access largely have run aground due to lack of public funds and the resistance of multinational water companies which want to control water resources, he said.

Molinari said about $10 billion a year is needed to meet the UN Millennium Goal Campaign's target of halving the proportion of people with no access to safe drinking water by 2015, but only about five percent of required funds has been raised.
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Today begins the second round of climate talks by the UN in Poznan, Poland in an attempt to come to an agreement regarding limits on greenhouse gas emissions on the road to Copenhagen in December 2009. Last year, the talks in Bali had people hopeful with actually little to anything of substance happening, and nothing concerning water as a human right or as part of the climate agenda was addressed.

Now, once again the opportunity exists to bring forth water and safe access to potable water as a chief concern in Poznan. However, reports claim that due to a worldwide financial crunch there is not much hope for the outcome of these talks to produce much of substance regarding the environment as a whole, let alone place water as the priority it must now be.

This is what happens when you place the fate of the planet in the hands of a few politicians and corporate benefactors who only see profit coming from the climate and water crises. When the melting of the Arctic is only seen as another opportunity to plunder the very oil that has exacerbated the melting in the first place over doing what is morally right to preserve our planet for all, it speaks volumes about what these governments really consider important.

Around the globe we see millions of people suffering from the effects of unnecessary diseases due to unpotable toxic water. We see girls being deprived of an education because they must spend hours everyday in dangerous conditions fetching water for their families, many times water that is polluted and in short supply. We see glaciers worldwide melting at an unprecedented pace breaking all scientists' predictions, thus placing billions of people worldwide at risk of dwindling water supplies which bring with it famine, disease, privitization of water by multinationals, and the poverty that keeps those in third world countries at the mercy of those very multinationals and the governments that cater to them.

How this current global crisis regarding water and water access could not be a top priority of such a meeting only proves that these meetings are not for the benefit of the environment or the people as a whole. They are for the benefit of the governments looking to gain profit from the misery of others. It is all well and good that organizations such as the one mentioned in this article wish to bring the water crisis to the attention of these meetings. However, I believe it is only through citizen activism that this will be given the attention it deserves. Leaving it only in the hands of those who precipitated the financial crisis to begin with and the climate change we now see causing repurcussions worldwide will not do anything for the over one billion people who need access to clean water now.

It must be us who brings this to fruition. Through our words, our actions, our activism, our caring, and our standing up to the governments seeking to ignore this the most crucial environmental issue of the 21st century.

Water Scarcity In The Sahel

Water Scarcity In The Sahel


Sitting on the shores of Lake Debo, the vast body of water at the heart of the River Niger's inland delta, the Malian village of Guidio seems well positioned to withstand the effects of drought. Unlike many other villages in the Sahel, the semi-arid region flanking the Sahara, it has an apparently plentiful supply of water on hand to raise crops and a back up if the drinking wells run dry.


Yet for Guidio's inhabitants, water is now becoming a daily concern. "Before we had enough rain and we could grow anything," says Moussa Guindo, a farmer who has lived in Guidio all his life. He gestures to the dusty ground. "When I was a child, where we're sitting was in the river. Now look: it's the middle of the village. Sometimes the rain starts, but then it doesn't last and the places where we used to be able to grow we can't anymore."


Guidio is a microcosm of the problems being felt up and down the Niger. West Africa's great waterway is a lifeline for an estimated 110 million people who rely on its annual floods to cultivate crops and raise cattle. But as the example of Guidio illustrates, the river is also fickle, and there are signs that growing human exploitation and an increasingly volatile climate are putting its future as a sustainable resource under serious threat.


Certainly, recent history suggests a grim future for those who depend on the Niger. Since the 1970s, with a few exceptional years, the region has been in the grip of a drought. Figures collated by conservation body the IUCN suggest rainfall in some parts of the Sahel have decreased by as much as 30% since the early 70s, with dramatic effects on river levels. Separate research by the Niger Basin Authority (NBA), the international body set up to manage the river's resources, shows that at Koulikoro, a town upstream from the Inland Delta, the river's flow over each of the three decades between 1970 and 2000 was on average 25% below the daily norm.


With the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicting that temperatures in the Sahel could rise by up to 0.5 degrees every decade, it would be easy to conclude that the trends of the past 30 years can only continue. But according to Jamie Skinner, a water expert with the International Institute for Environment and Development, climatologists have yet to predict with any certainty future rainfall patterns in the Sahel.


The only thing anyone can agree on is more variability," Skinner says. "There's a massive effort underway to devise a better model for studying Sahelian weather systems, but the reality is that no one really understands the West African monsoon."




Water And Land In The Sahel

Overuse of water, wasteful practices, overpopulation, and multinational inteference in agriculture have all lent to the drought being experienced in this area of Africa as well as climate change. Have we reached a tipping point in Africa? Can we stop the multi nationals such as Monsanto that seek to force GMOs on Africa to continue to kill biodiversity? This is now happening in too many places throughout the world to simply just be cyclical or coincidence.

Acute Water Scarcity At Wettest Place On Earth

Acute water scarcity at wettest place on Earth

Meghalaya India, the wettest place on Earth is now known as a wet desert due to water scarcity. Has climate change also now even reached the most hidden pristine parts of our world?

From the article:

Nothing can be more ironical: despite being the wettest place on earth Cherrapunjee is suffering from acute water scarcity, earning for itself the epithet wet desert. And now the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) is assisting the Meghalaya government to go into the causes of the scarcity, especially during the lean period.

The study will include technical assessments on the status of river catchments in Meghalaya and social and institutional analysis of the forces that have led to the shortage of water, says Jevon Harding of TERI. TERI will assist the Rain Water Harvesting Mission, formed by the state government, to combat the shortage of surface water. One of the components of the study will be to come up with a strategy of rainwater harvesting. Cherrapunjee receives about 12000 mm rainfall annually, but the residents face severe crisis of surface water specially during the lean season when rainfall is sometimes nil. Women and children trudging uphill with water-filled clay-pots on their backs from deep gorges is a common sight in Cherrapunjee today. The perennial springs gushing out abundant water are also now on the verge of drying up due to random large-scale destruction of forests.

Environmentalist Naba Bhattacharjee said, It-s a false notion that high rainfall will ensure perennial water supply for infinity. Only 0.0007 per cent of the world-s total water is potable and which is on decline due to change in rainfall pattern and inadequate precipitation due to global warming and climate change. He, however, emphasized on revival of traditional rain water storage systems supplemented by improved modern technology suitable for hilly the terrain. Emphasizing on equitable distribution of water among people, anthropologist Nitish Jha of the TERI said, There is no physical crisis of water in Meghalaya, but there is an economic scarcity of water only in Cherrapunjee (now called Sohra), which receives the highest rainfall in the world.

Jha said that the TERI would venture into an extensive survey over a period of one year to ascertain the cause of water crisis in Shillong and Sohra and subsequently come out with a detailed project report on tackling the situation through effective management and conservation measures. snipJha pointed out that the peculiar land tenure system prevalent in the State coupled with the menace of unscientific coal mining and stone quarrying have depleted water levels in the perennial catchments of the state.

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Unscientific Coal Mining Affecting Meghalaya Environment

It is truly heartbreaking to see this happening to one of the last pristine places on Earth. It is totally inhumane. Population will increase while the availability of freshwater declines due to such practices which toxify the land and water. Add to that the effects of climate change in this area as far as erratic rainfall patterns, species extinction, and invasive species as well as the spread of diseases and we are looking at an environmental catatrophe where there should have been none. What is it about so many in the human species who still cannot connect these dots? To think that even there natural biodiversity cannot be respected is dark news indeed. Governments are totally irresponsible in their actions as well. They hurt the very people they are supposed to be helping.

Tibetan Glaciers Melting Rapidly

Tibetan Glaciers Melting Rapidly

Glaciers high in the Himalayas are dwindling faster than anyone thought, putting nearly a billion people living in South Asia in peril of losing their water supply.

Throughout India, China, and Nepal, some 15,000 glaciers speckle the Tibetan Plateau. There, perched in thin, frigid air up to 7200 metres above sea level, the ice might seem secluded from the effects of global warming.

But just the opposite is proving true, according to new research published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Professor Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University and a team of researchers travelled to central Himalayas in 2006 to study the Naimona'nyi glacier, expecting to find some melting.

Mountain glaciers have been receding all over the world since the 1990s and there was no reason this one, which provides water to the mighty, Indus, and Brahmaputra Rivers, should be any different.

But when the team analysed samples of glacier, what they found stunned them.

Radioactive signals

Glaciers can be dated by looking for traces of radioactivity buried in the ice. These are the leftovers from US and Soviet atomic bomb testing in the 1950s and 1960s.

In the Naimona'nyi samples, there was no sign of the tests. In fact, the glacier had melted so much that the exposed surface of the glacier dated to 1944.

"We were very surprised not to find the 1962-1963 horizon, and even more surprised not to find the 1951-1952 signal," says Thompson.

In more than twenty years of sampling glaciers all over the world, this was the first time both markers were missing.

He suspects the reason for this is that high-altitude glaciers, despite residing in colder temperatures, are more sensitive to climate change.

As more heat is trapped in the atmosphere, he said, it holds more water vapour. And when the water vapour rises to high altitudes it condenses, releasing the heat into the upper atmosphere, where high mountain landscapes feel the brunt of warming.

"At the highest elevations, we're seeing something like an average of 0.3°C warming per decade," says Thompson. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects 3°C of warming by 2100. But that's at the surface; up at the elevations where these glaciers are there could be almost twice as much, almost 6°C."

"I have not seen much as compelling as this to demonstrate how some glaciers are just being decapitated," says Associate Professor Shawn Marshall of the University of Calgary.

snip

The finding has ominous implications for the hundreds of millions of people who depend on the waters of the Naimona'nyi and other glaciers for their livelihoods. Across the region, no one know just how much water the Himalayas have left, but Thompson says it's dwindling fast.

"You can think of glaciers kind of like water towers," he says. "They collect water from the monsoon in the wet season, and release it in the dry season. But how effective they are depends on how much water is in the towers."
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In a world where it warms by three degrees, we will see this beginning to happen more rapidly. The world based on current global climate events is now between two and a half and three degrees. The burning of fossil fuels which has now been scientifically linked to the exacerbation of climate change must be drastically cut within the next ten years to avoid a climate catastrophe. It is unimaginable to picture a world where we reach four degrees or above. In such a world the planet we call our home would be unrecognizable and our lives would change forever. War over water will be commonplace, and hundreds of millions of climate refugees would be seeking higher ground from Bangladesh and other low lying areas due to sea rise, which is already making itself known in these areas.

And it is not as if people in this world are not aware of what we are experiencing. Yet, we continue to waste water, mismanage it, and elect people to represent us who do not take the issue of water management and conservation seriously. We will rue the day we acted so cavalierly regarding this most precious resource. The glaciers of the Himalayas are only one of many glacier chains across the world losing mass more rapidly than even the IPCC predicted. We cannot as a species continue to be distracted by diversions while our world melts around us. We are on a collision course with our destiny. It is absolute arrogance to think we are omnipotant over nature and that we have no responsibility for our actions. To tempt fate due to apathy is to tempt our own demise.

Half The World Faces Water Shortage By 2080

Half The World Faces Water Shortage By 2080

Half the world's population could face a shortage of clean water by 2080 because of climate change, experts warned Tuesday.

Wong Poh Poh, a professor at the National University of Singapore, told a regional conference that global warming was disrupting water flow patterns and increasing the severity of floods, droughts and storms — all of which reduce the availability of drinking water.

Wong said the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that as many as 2 billion people won't have sufficient access to clean water by 2050. That figure is expected to rise to 3.2 billion by 2080 — nearly tripling the number who now do without it.

Reduced access to clean water — which refers to water that can be used for drinking, bathing or cooking — forces many villagers in poor countries to walk miles to reach supplies. Others, including those living in urban shanties, suffer from diseases caused by drinking from unclean sources.

At the beginning of the decade, the World Health Organization estimated that 1.1 billion people did not have sufficient access to clean water.

Asia, home to more than 4 billion people, is the most vulnerable region, especially India and China, where booming populations have placed tremendous stress on water sources, said Wong, a member of the U.N. panel.

"In Asia, water distribution is uneven and large areas are under water stress. Climate change is going to exacerbate this scarcity," he told the two-day Asia Pacific Regional Water Conference attended by policy makers, government officials, academics, businessmen and consumer group representatives.

Scientists have said global climate change takes many forms, causing droughts in some areas while increasing flooding and the severity of cyclones in others. Droughts reduce water supply, and floods destroy the quality of water. Rising sea levels, for instance, increase the salt content at the mouths of many rivers, from which many Asians draw their drinking water.

"As human civilization develops, the environment is increasingly affected in negative ways. Floods, drought, changing rainfall patterns and rising temperatures are signs of our misdeeds to nature," said Rozali Ismail, head of a state water association in Malaysia.
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And that half world will be looking for clean water sources from those areas that may remain that have water. This is a recipe for disaster. How can humans see the impending disaster before their eyes and continue to not do enough to reverse it? What stops us from doing the morally right thing? Even though we know there is enough water in this world to stave off the thirst that kills, we will continue to allow multi national corporations to steal it and sell it for exhorbitant prices that the poor of this world cannot afford. We will continue to spew GHG pollution into the atmosphere at a rate of 70 million tons a day thus exacerbating drought, glacier melt, and erratic weather patterns.

We will continue to allow governments working in tandem with global organizations fix prices that are out of the realm of reality in order to exacerbate war and suffering because it keeps them profitable and in power. We will continue to allow mismanagement of funds on every level that could be used to fix and build infrastructure. We will continue to pollute and waste the very source of life we need to sustain us.

Or will we? Will it have to get this bad before we reach our epiphany as a species? Will we then see how much a part we are in the solutions to this crisis? We all have hands. We all have feet. We all have voices. We all have consciences. We need to use them all now to prove the title of this article wrong. I fear if we do not we are setting up the human species for its own extinction.

World Toilet Day

From Water Partners International:

Yes! You CAN change someone’s life with a toilet

It is no joke. Today we celebrate World Toilet Day and the incredible value of the can. Call it what you will – the pot, the loo, the throne, the latrine, the water closet, the bog – it’s one of the most important inventions in history.

Why recognize World Toilet Day? Because the majority of illness in the world is caused by fecal matter. Because 2.5 billion people, 42 percent of the world’s population, don’t have access to proper sanitation. Because 1.2 billion people have no toilet, no hole in the ground, no pit latrine – nothing. And because 1.8 million children die each year from diarrhea alone – 4,900 deaths each day.

What would you do without a toilet? In the Kibera slum in Nairobi, people defecate in plastic bags, which they throw on the roof of moving trains, in order to keep the waste out of their community. In Atabaha, Bangladesh, people relieve themselves in fields – the same fields that grow their food. In Dasra, Ethiopia, community members use a nearby river, which also serves as their source of water.

“This is not only about public health, it is also about dignity,” said Gary White, executive director of WaterPartners. “Can you imagine not having a safe place to go to the bathroom each day? World Toilet Day is an opportunity for us to call attention to this vast, solvable crisis, and invite us to act.”

By donating only $30 to WaterPartners, you can fund a toilet for someone in need in a developing country. Together, we CAN end this crisis.

Toilet Facts
One-third of all Americans flush the toilet while they are still sitting on it.

An average person visits the toilet 2,500 times a year, about 6-8 times a day. This adds up to three years of your life.

40,000 Americans are injured by toilets each year.

The first toilet ever seen on television was on “Leave It To Beaver.”

Car steering wheels carry more than twice as many germs as a toilet seat.

Urine on the toilet seat - although disgusting, it is a nearly sterile liquid.

In Florida, a 7th grade student recently won a school science fair by proving there was more bacteria in ice machines at fast-food restaurants than in toilet bowl water in the United States.

Contrary to popular lore, Thomas Crapper didn’t invent the toilet. Seated toilets with drainage systems date back to 2500 B.C. The flush toilet was invented in 1596 by John Harrington.

See pictures taken by WaterPartners of toilets around the world.

About World Toilet Day

Lack of safe sanitation has been called a silent crisis, a scandal of human indignity, and the number one enemy of world health. This is why the international community recognizes World Toilet Day every Nov. 19, and the United Nations deemed 2008 the International Year of Sanitation. One of the Millennium Development Goal’s (MGD) set in 2002 is to halve the number of those without access to basic sanitation by 2015.

Farmers In California Feeling Effects Of Drought

Farmers In California Feeling Effects Of Drought

Water restrictions, higher prices, and wildfires that are more ferocious brought on by climate change are changing the landscape of California and the lives of those who have farmed there for decades.Is California another Australia in the making?

Rancho Water to me is wrong to charge what they are charging and taking advantage of the drought to make more money. But also, farmers then need to learn to conserve water and cut down on the crops they grow that use much water. Unfortunately, having to pay more for the water may eventually help them get to that point.

Conservation is the key.

From the article:

Farmers served by the Rancho California Water District will pay more for water. It's just a question of when.

A program that allowed farmers to get cheaper water in exchange for agreeing to cutbacks in supplies in drier times could be phased out by 2013. That means farmers used to getting discounted water for crops will pay the same as the district's household and industrial customers.

That, combined with higher fuel and fertilizer costs and cheaper foreign goods, is the last thing local farmers need, said Ben Drake, a district board member who runs a farm management company.

"I may not be able to farm in the next eight to 10 years," said Drake, who has been in the Temecula Valley since the 1970s.

"None of my clients are spending any extra money on anything."

For years, many Rancho Water farmers received discounted water through the Metropolitan Water District's Interim Agricultural Water Program. Metropolitan wholesales water to Rancho, and its program gave farmers a lower rate in exchange for being first on the chopping block for supply cuts.

The program relies on surplus water; right now, there is none and Metropolitan doesn't expect to have a surplus in the next few years, said Rancho spokeswoman Meggan Reed.

About 1,700 customers take part in the program. About 48 percent of the water sold by Rancho Water goes to agriculture.

With a long-term drought and a court decision cutting supplies from the Sacramento River Delta, Metropolitan, which supplies 70 percent of the Rancho district's water, announced last year a 30 percent cut in water supplied to program participants.

Rancho Water had little choice but to pass along the cuts to farmers. To take the sting out of the cutbacks, district staff worked with farmers to find more ways to conserve water. Now, with the program gone by 2013, the district is giving farmers a chance to opt out now and pay the same rate as regular customers.

Program participants pay 65 cents per hundred cubic feet or 88 cents per hundred cubic feet, depending on where they are. With the program's demise, those customers would pay either 72 cents per hundred cubic feet or $1.88 per hundred cubic feet.

Those who opt out -- the deadline is Jan. 1 to opt out for next year -- will not be subject to the 30 percent cutback, although they face much higher charges if they exceed their water allowance.

Gene Bianchi, of De Luz, said he's not sure whether he'll opt out of the program.

Bianchi has about 1,100 avocado trees on his 12-acre parcel. He says he is spending about $11,000 to $12,000 annually on water.

Also see:



Wildfires Ravage Southern California

Drought brings wildfires, and climate change along with human waste brings drought. It is a vicious cycle that can only be broken when humans see their hand in this.

Drought Monitor-California

The entire area of California currently experiencing these devastating fires is also experiencing moderate to severe drought which only adds to its ferocity.

Protest Over Water Privitization In Mali Turns Deadly

One dead five hurt at protest against privitization of water in Mali

Protesters march behind police with a banner reading 'hunger justifies the means' in central Bamako in April 2008 during a demonstration. One person died and five were injured Monday when security forces opened fire on a protest over plans to privatise drinking water distribution in northwestern Mali, hospital and official sources said. Photo courtesy AFP.


And so it begins.

Water Report On Mali

The people of Mali have reason to protest.

Drought to make land worldwide uninhabitable

Drought land 'will be abandoned'

Parts of the world may have to be abandoned because severe water shortages will leave them uninhabitable, the United Nations environment chief has warned.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, said water shortages caused by over-use of rivers and aquifers were already leading to serious problems, even in rich nations. With climate change expected to reduce rainfall in some places and cause droughts in others, some regions could become 'economic deserts', unviable for people or agriculture, he said.

Steiner argued that only urgent action to combat global warming and poverty could prevent the creation of thousands of 'environmental refugees'. Previous UN agreements to reduce global warming emissions and the Millennium Development Goals on poverty had not been met. His warning echoes those of other environment leaders, who have said that water shortages could be the greatest threat posed by climate change.

'In many ways [water] is the most dramatic expression of mismanagement of natural or nature-based assets,' Steiner said. 'The day a person or a community is bereft of water is the day that your chance of even the most basic life or livelihood is gone and economic activity seeps away.

'Unchecked climate change will mean that some parts of the world will simply not have enough water to sustain settlements both small and large, because agriculture becomes untenable and industries relying on water can no longer compete or function effectively. This will trigger structural changes in economies right through to the displacement of people as environmental refugees.'

Steiner said it was not possible to identify specific places at risk, but said vulnerable areas were those which were already considered to be 'water scarce' because of dry weather and a lack of infrastructure to store and transport water. Last week a study of the water footprints of 200 nations led by conservation group WWF warned that 50 countries were already experiencing 'moderate to severe water stress on a year-round basis'.

This week experts from the UN Convention to Combat Desertification meeting in Turkey will warn that high food prices and endemic droughts are jeopardising the lives of hundreds of millions of people, particularly in Africa.

Some of the most dramatic examples of water shortages this year include conflict-stricken Sudan, the dramatic drying of Lake Faguibine in Mali on which 200,000 mostly nomadic people depend, fatal clashes over drying boreholes in northern Kenya, and economic and social crisis on the sparsely populated border between Bolivia and Argentina, according to Unep. Oxfam has estimated that 25 million people have been affected by the most recent drought in Ethiopia.

Rich nations are not immune. California has declared a state of emergency over water shortages, Australia has committed billions of dollars to cope with drought, and governments in Europe have been forced to ship in water to stop communities running dry.

'A plant, never mind a human being, simply cannot live without water,' said Steiner. 'It's not a matter of how we can live for three years without some water; these are not the kind of things we can do for a while and recover.
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I weep for humanity and the Earth. And I don't mean that figuratively. For those of us who know the inmportance of the connection to this Earth and especially to the water that is the lifeblood of this planet, reading about these events unfolding and knowing that the human spirit can reverse it if it wants to but chooses not to out of some sort of denial, apathy, or other emotion over reason that does not place water as the priority it should be truly leaves me empty inside.

This is not only hurting us and other species. This is a clear statement of the character of humanity as a whole and our total loss of respect for a planet that is not only our only home but the one place that has given us everything we need to survive. However, we have decided not to respect those gifts as so many civilizations and cultures before us have and some still do. We think we know it all... we have all the answers... we are so superior to the Earth and think its resources are only here for our pleasure.

How many deaths due to drought will it take to see the truth? How much famine? How much displacement? How much war? What kind of world are we making for our children? How can we make it better? These are the questions we must ask and answer with a positive reply. I simply just don't know how many more years people can afford to simply ask the questions without them being answered.

We have set this all in motion and then we walk away? What does that say about humanity? Will it truly take a revolution to bring this world to its senses?

Water Wars Hit Rural Zimbabwe

Water Wars Hit Rural Zimbabwe

There is increasing competition for water due to a combination of numerous environmental and political factors, including climate change, poor local planning and lack of adequate financial and material resources to bring running water to poor communities.

In rural Zimbabwe, lack of clean water has become a reality for many communities, in addition to other hardships, such as food shortages, insufficient health services and lack of sanitation.

Poor rains and government’s failure to provide adequate resources to reduce water scarcity -- including skilled water experts, fuel for field technicians to reach remote areas, drilling machines to make boreholes and water purification chemicals -- have worsened water woes.

After president Robert Mugabe embarked on a violent land reform programme, expropriating white-owned commercial farms in 2000, new farm owners have done little to maintain the infrastructure and facilities they inherited when taking over farms, including water systems and irrigation dams.

According to Justice for Agriculture (JAG), a unit set up by the Commercial Farmers of Zimbabwe (CFZ), an organisation that represents the legal interests of dispossessed farmers, wells have dried up throughout the country and no efforts have been made to drill more boreholes to provide water to both humans and livestock.

This is particularly significant since such infrastructure used to provide water for the surrounding communities as well as the farms.

Plumtree

For one rural community, buried deep in the tropical forests between two southern African countries, Zimbabwe and Botswana, the water plight has been particularly harsh when their main water source, a river running between the two countries, almost dried up.

In Plumtree, a poor, drought-prone rural community located about 160 kilometres southwest of Zimbabwe‚s second largest city, Bulawayo, a hostile fight has broken out between neighbouring communities around access to the few remaining water sources.

The Ramakgoebana River has become a major source of conflict for villagers from both sides of the border, Thabiso Mkwena, a 36-year-old man who lives in Tshitshi, near Plumtree, told IPS. "This is a dry area and we have to walk for many kilometres to the fast-drying river. This has led to disputes with villagers from the other side of the river who are accusing us of finishing the water," said Mkwena.

He said residents from the Botswana side of the river have claimed parts of the river as their own, threatening those from the Zimbabwean side with assault if they come to fetch water.

What has heightened tensions even further, Mkwena explained, is that out of desperation, villagers have started to bring their livestock to drink from the river too, as there is no alternative water source for animals.

"The Batswana say we must not bring our livestock here, but we cannot let our cattle die in this heat," Mkwena said.

Letting livestock drink from the same water source as humans has exposed locals to a number of water-borne diseases. Earlier this year, medical staff at the public hospital in Plumtree reported an outbreak of diarrhoea caused by contaminated drinking water.

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Zimbabwe National Water Authority Petitioned to Reverse Takeover

Why is the answer for governments always privitization that has proven to only worsen the problem? Easy: GREED. They don't care if their people die from lack of water or poisoned water as long as they make profit off of it. This is the biggest reason for the growing scope of this crisis: Political upheaval, corruption and greed, which leads to inadequate infrastructure, pollution, and mismanagement, which leads to privitization. And in places where people are too poor to fight back it is a recipe for water wars.

And now that drought has gripped this land water is an even more crucical resource. Governments that do not take proper steps to fairly distribute water to all families as wel; as providing for its clean up in this region should be penalized by fine that comes out of their pockets. Their people drink toxic water with no food living on less than a $1 a day while they live in fancy houses and wear silk suits! Rationing should also be instituted with government giving back control of the water to local entities that have more knowledge of the problem and can better assess the situation. This too is a moral issue, but I fear as in the case of many other areas of the world experiencing drought it only opens the doors to corruption and privitization which in my opinion in some cases is by design to keep control.

In the case of Zimbabwe, people are going for days without supplies after the national water authority has failed successively to raise cash to buy critically needed water treatment chemicals after some water chemical firms refused to supply the chemicals after the Authority failed to clear outstanding debts. ZINWA owed about 1.5 billion to eight chemical supplying companies as of 2006. This is a stark example of how political corruption has affected water after more than seven years of mismanagement and economic collapse caused by the Mugabe regime. Those living there are now experincing water scarcity to the point that they are forced to drink poison and sewerage laden water as they dig deeper to find a source.

This is also a clear example of what happens when you leave solutions strictly in the hands of politicians without the people having a voice.
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From last year:
Zimbabwe's Water Crisis

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Humanitarian Crisis In Zimbabwe

We can help by doing what we can to help organizations like Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, Water Partners International, and other NGOS that are respected organizations that bring resources to these regions. However, just throwing money at the problem is not the silver bullet. People need opportunity and a chance to take control of their own lives with the tools they need to make their communities thrive. To be able to have their own water systems to grow their own food and to be free of corrupt governments looking only to sell off their land and their water to multi nationals for profit.

Oil sands will pollute Great Lakes, report warns

Oil Sands will pollute Great Lakes, report warns


Massive refinery expansions for processing crude threaten to wipe out clean-up progress around world's largest body of fresh water

MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT
ENVIRONMENT REPORTER
October 8, 2008

The environmental impacts of Alberta's oil sands will not be restricted to Western Canada, researchers say, but will extend thousands of kilometres away to the Great Lakes, threatening water and air quality around the world's largest body of fresh water.

In a new report, the University of Toronto's Munk Centre says the massive refinery expansions needed to process tar sands crude, and the new pipeline networks for transporting the fuel, amount to a "pollution delivery system" connecting Alberta to the Great Lakes region of Canada and the U.S.

It warns that the refineries will be using the Great Lakes "as a cheap supply" source for their copious water needs and the area's air "as a pollution dump."
The report, which is being released today at a conference at the university, says that as many as 17 major refinery expansions around the lakes are being considered for turning the tar-like Alberta bitumen into gasoline and other petroleum products. While not all will be undertaken, enough of them will be to have a regional environmental impact.

Proposed pipeline and refinery projects around the lakes are expected to lead to total investments of more than $31-billion (U.S.) by 2015, spending similar in scale to expenditures at many oil sands projects. For this reason, the report says the various projects, when taken together, threaten to "wipe out many of the pollution control gains" achieved around the lakes since the 1970s.

The massive expenditures are needed because typical refineries can't process heavy crude derived from tar sands without costly upgrades.

"This expansion promises to bring with it an exponential increase in pollution, discharges into waterways including the Great Lakes, destruction of wetlands, toxic air emissions, acid rain, and huge increases in greenhouse gas emissions," it says.
Most of the projected spending is on the U.S. side of the lakes. Only one major refinery project has been announced for the Canadian side, but that expansion, at a Shell refinery in Sarnia, was put on hold in July because of surging costs.

However, two big Canadian companies, TransCanada Pipelines Ltd. with its Keystone project, and Enbridge Inc., with its Alberta Clipper project, are vying to build pipelines to bring crude from the tar sands to U.S. refineries around the lakes.
The report says the environmental effects in Alberta from tar sands development - from dying ducks caught in tailings ponds to massive carbon dioxide emissions - are well known, but the implications for the Great Lakes "are less well-understood and less extensively explored."

Policy makers around the lakes, in both Canada and the U.S., are largely unaware that the tar sands will lead to massive industrial development in their region, and consequently have no strategy to minimize the environmental impacts, it says.
Some of the harshest criticism is for the Ontario government, which it characterizes as "remarkably unengaged" over how tar sands oil will affect the province and "doesn't seem to even be asking the key questions, let alone contemplating the possible policy answers."

end of excerpt.
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More about the refineries and activism from the Alliance for the Great Lakes:

Alliance for the Great Lakes


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Public outcry and pressure is the only thing that will stop this. This is nothing less than a crime against our Earth and humanity. Humans definitely need an intervention for this addiction. We are destroying the very waterways that we will need to give us sustenence in years to come, especially with a rising population. Climate change is already taking its toll on the water tables of the Great Lakes, and we will now pollute what is left?! This is pure greed and willful ignorance. And the fact that nothing much has changed since my last entry on this Oil Sands Development Not Sustainable is sad.

Join the debate on water commoditization-Economist.com

Join The Debate On Water Commoditization-Economist.com

You can register there and give your opinion in an open debate on water commoditization up to October 10th. Vandana Shiva represents the con side, and someone named Steven Hoffman represents the pro side. This is a good opportunity to let your voice be heard about commoditization of water resources. And of course, it isn't any surprise to see DOW Chemical sponsoring this especially since they wish to buy desalination plants and probably wants to see privitization to hold back resources to spur the building of such plants. There is an all out assault on our resources by corporate America for profit now and we must fight it for our own survival. I firmly believe that now, and this open debate is where you can make your opinions known. I am registered there as 'waterahumanright.' Please participate and give the water justice movement and environmental democracy a hand.

Currently, the voting is: pro 40%/con 60%.

Thanks!

Jordan valley withers in wilderness of Mideast politics

Jordan valley withers in wilderness of Mideast politics

The Ein Gedi spa, built 40 years ago on the shore of the Dead Sea -- the lowest point on Earth -- now offers a tractor shuttle to carry bathers across the kilometre (more than half a mile) of salt flats that separate it from the water's edge. A few kilometres (a couple of miles) up the shore, a campsite that used to rent out cabins by the sea has been sucked underground by the opening of cavernous sinkholes, some more than 30 metres (yards) wide.

The first one burst open in 1998, swallowing a cabin and a cleaning woman. "The earth swallowed her up. She fell nearly 10 metres. They made everyone leave that day and closed the camp down," says Gundi Shahal, an Israeli environmentalist who came to Ein Gedi from Germany in 1979. "Since then it hasn't stopped. The whole campground looks like a moonscape," she says as she walks past the massive holes, one of which contains the rusted shell of a car.

Across the street are rows of dead trees, the remains of a date plantation that was closed because of the danger of the sinkholes. Scientists have documented some 2,500 such holes, with an average of 300 new ones opening up each year. As the Dead Sea shrinks, the level of groundwater drops and as it retreats under the surface it dissolves layers of salt, creating underground caverns that eventually collapse into the sinkholes.

The Dead Sea derives most of its water from the Jordan river, which over the past 50 years has virtually disappeared as a result of massive upstream water projects in Israel, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. For Mohammed Saida, a farmer in the Palestinian village of Al-Auja some 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of Ein Gedi, the Jordan river vanished completely when Israel fenced it off after seizing the West Bank in the 1967 Six Day War. The land his family once owned along the river is now in a closed military zone and they have to rely on village wells and a seasonal underground spring. During the winter, the spring spouts up to 2,000 cubic metres (70,000 cubic feet) of water a day but in the summer and early autumn it is reduced to a squalid puddle. "This valley floods every year, but we have no dams so it all goes into the Jordan," Saida says. Israel restricts the building of dams and drilling of wells by Palestinians in the West Bank.

At the foot of the valley sits a water pump freshly painted blue and white like the Israeli flag. Inside an engine pumps water for Israeli settlers and Al-Auja residents. Per capita water consumption in the West Bank stands at 50 litres (around 13 gallons) a day, according to a World Bank report published this month, about two-thirds less than the target recommended by the World Health Organisation. Israel uses around 83 percent of the water originating in the occupied territory, with the rest going to the Palestinians, whose annual water extraction has dropped by around 10 percent in the past decade, according to the same report. "(The Israelis) took the entire river, their share and ours, they took the land, and now they are drilling wells to take our water," says Hussein Saida, Mohammed's cousin and a village councillor. "How can there be peace?"

Shahal and the Saidas belong to Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME), a group of environmentalists from Israel, Jordan, and the West Bank. They have long lobbied for a project to rejuvenate the Jordan valley and the Dead Sea by using desalinated water from the Mediterranean to meet upstream demands. But the idea getting the most attention, and dividing scientists and environmentalists, is the proposed construction of a massive canal between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea.
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It is a human rights abuse to use water as a political weapon. All people have an inherent right to use water for farming and to live. This tactic used by the Israeli government against Palestinians in the West Bank is in my view one of the biggest yet untold reasons why there is no peace in this region. Any peace negotiations that have gone on should have addressed the subject of water and using it as a political weapon to come to a consensus and agreement on sharing this resource amicably. Is it no wonder that terrorism persists in this area with peace agreement after peace agreement falling apart? The lack of water breeds hunger which breeds famine which breeds death and resentment. When are people going to see this? And if they do, to care?

The answer to peace in this region is not war, it is water. And unfortunately, the Dead Sea is now really dead because of politics, hatred, greed, and the policies of those who fail to understand that peace cannot be attained unless common similarities are shared. Water is something all life on Earth requires to live. To deliberately withhold it as a political policy to break any people and hold them in perpetual poverty and servitude is a crime against humanity and the Democracy any country claims to support. I truly hope a consensus can be reached. It may well be the only way to peace. And hopefully without interjection by the World Bank in making stipulations for Palestinians to have their fair share of this water at a higher prorated price.

Photo credit

Running Dry/The answer is in irrigation

Running Dry

Excerpt:

The world has a water shortage, not a food shortage

MOST people may drink only two litres of water a day, but they consume about 3,000 if the water that goes into their food is taken into account. The rich gulp down far more, since they tend to eat more meat, which takes far more water to produce than grains. So as the world’s population grows and incomes rise, farmers will—if they use today’s methods—need a great deal more water to keep everyone fed: 2,000 more cubic kilometres a year by 2030, according to the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), a research centre, or over a quarter more than they use today. Yet in many farming regions, water is scarce and likely to get scarcer as global warming worsens. The world is facing not so much a food crisis as a water crisis, argues Colin Chartres, IWMI’s director-general.

The solution, Mr Chartres and others contend, is more efficient use of water or, as the sloganeers put it, “more crop per drop”. Some 1.2 billion people, about a fifth of the world’s population, live in places that are short of water (see map). Farming accounts for roughly 70% of human water consumption. So when water starts to run out, as is happening in northern China, southern Spain and the western United States, among other places, farming tends to offer the best potential for thrift. But governments, whether to win votes or to protect the poor, rarely charge farmers a market price for water. So they are usually more wasteful than other consumers—even though the value they create from the water is often less than households or industry would be willing to pay for it.

The pressing need is to make water go further. Antoine Frérot, the head of the water division of Veolia Environnement, a French firm, promotes recycling, whereby city wastewater is treated until it can be used in industry or agriculture. This costs about a third less than desalination, and cuts pollution. He expects his recycling business to quadruple in the next decade. Yet as Mr Frérot himself concedes, there are many even cheaper ways to save water. As much as 70% of water used by farmers never gets to crops, perhaps lost through leaky irrigation channels or by draining into rivers or groundwater. Investment in drip irrigation, or simply repairing the worst leaks, could bring huge savings.

Farmers in poor countries can usually afford such things only if they are growing cash crops, says David Molden of IWMI. Even basic kit such as small rainwater tanks can be lacking. Ethiopia, for example, has only 38 cubic metres of storage capacity per inhabitant, compared to almost 5,000 in Australia. Yet modest water storage can hugely improve yields in rain-fed agriculture, by smoothing over short dry spells. Likewise, pumping water into natural aquifers for seasonal storage tends to be much cheaper than building a big dam, and prevents the great waste of water through evaporation.


Irrigation methods


I believe that irrigation holds the solution to a great part of the global water crisis. In many parts of the world sprinkler irrigation is still the most used method of irrigation because it is the most available and least expensive. This method however is very wasteful, and using it in places where pervasive drought is common is not cost effective. In order for us as a species to mitigate the crisis we will surely face regarding water if present behavior persists we will have to change how we do things. Regarding the irrigation of crops it will be how they are irrigated, when they are irrigated based on changing weather patterns, and also in focusing on areas looking towards less water intensive crops in drier areas.

It is unfortunate that the very places where the most water intensive crops are grown such as cotton, rice, and corn (India, China, Africa, and the Southwest US ) are experiencing the most pervasive droughts and desertification now. As population increases towards 9 billion and resources become scarcer, farmers will most certainly have to devise ways of conserving water to get optimal growth and yield from a limited resource.

Through shifting the emphasis on crop varieties grown in these areas if possible and by changing irrigation methods from sprinkler to drip irrigation, trillions of gallons of water could be saved. Also in places where weather patterns are changing and are seeing more rain, rain catchement systems will be invaluable in helping to catch excess rain and use it for irrigation purposes.

This is where satellites that predict such patterns can also certainly be of great help in pinpointing what areas will need such changes as the effects of climate change are also felt more in these areas as well. We must begin now to work on a global plan for water conservation that takes climate change into account, but also seeks globally to shore up outdated water systems and infrastructure.

This is not something that requires any new inventions to be made that will take years to get to market. All it will take is an effort on the part of government and undividuals to see how their actions are affecting the planet and adjust them accordingly. That will not be an easy task granted, but the consequences of not doing so regardless of the types of crops planted will be detrimental to the continued sustainability of the human species.

This as well encompasses other efforts that include a global climate treaty that places caps on Co2 emissions (which causes drought and water evaporation as well as glacier melt) with an emphasis on looking at the population issue which is also an important component of resource depletion, and enforcing caps on water usage in areas where overusage is not necessary. And of course, not allowing private enterprises to buy up water rights simply to exploit water as a commodity.

The global water crisis is the most important environmental issue we will face in this century. We can no longer take this precious resource for granted. We are running dry. It is time to take action to conserve what we have left through effective irrigation practices, infrastructure, and more informed personal choices.

When It Comes To Water, Pickens Is Far From Green

Easy Pickens?

"While touting his plan to wean us off foreign oil, Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens says little of his intention to market fossil water. Thanks to help he obtained from the Texas Legislature, he has stacked the board of a tiny water district and by the power of eminent domain also granted him by the Legislature, he can force landowners to sell him rights to a 320-mile strip of land by which he will pipe the water down the same corridor to Dallas that he plans to use transmitting his wind power. But Pickens is just one of thousands of capitalists who sell precious Ogallala water for private gain. Like him, they are aided by government.

Pickens shouldn't be allowed to sell 65 billion gallons a year as he proposes, but neither should Plains farmers be allowed to pump 6.2 trillion gallons annually, over half of which is poured onto corn. With populations increasing and global warming likely to cause widespread drought, we should redirect the billions we spend on corn subsidies and take control from local water districts. Under federal or state control, we could end Texas's 'right of capture' policy, which parcels water to the landowner with the biggest pump."

Julene Bair is a writer and author of One Degree West: Reflections of a Plainsdaughter. She will soon complete Where Rivers Run Sand, a personal account of the crisis facing the Ogallala Aquifer.
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How outrageous is this? That one man could use his wealth and political favors to secure ownership of what is a human right in order to sell it for his own profit. This is a blatant example of using the current water crisis we face for personal gain. People like T. Boone Pickens have no soul as far as I am concerned, and we now know the real story behind his so called green wind initiative.

Water for this plan would come from the panhandle section of the Ogallala Aquifer. As one of the largest underground aquifers in the world, the Ogallala runs from Texas to South Dakota and a century ago was said to hold more water than Lake Huron. Since then, cheap electric pumps gave farmers the power to bring water up hundreds of feet, and the depletion began. This aquifer waters a little over one-fifth of the nation's irrigated land, and is steadily being depleted due to population growth, overuse, ineffective agricultural methods that waste trillions of gallons a year, and now global warming/climate change in the form of drought. See my previous entry on this: Devastating Drought Settles On The High Plains. It is a ripe area for exploitation, and that is exactly what T. Boone Pickens is doing. He is hoping to sell this scarcer water at a high price to make a profit from it. A green venture? Hardly.

And the Ogallala isn't the same as rivers or lakes. There is no source of replenishment. It holds "fossil water" which has been sealed underground for hundreds of thousands of years. Once it's gone it's gone forever... again, forever. However, as the Ogallala Aquifer's water level continues to decline, Pickens is looking to expand its usage and more than likely that includes making even more profit agriculturally from ethanol production.

So the wind mills... a diversionary ruse on the part of an oil man posing as a green convert who supported George W. Bush to the hilt and is now being repaid for it at the expense of a precious resource now more precious than oil? A resource of the Ogallala that should not belong to him exclusively, or any one farmer over another. This is why Texas' 'right of capture' policy must be stopped in order to preserve the declining water level of the Ogallala Aquifer and to protect it from vulture capitalists who seek to steal it.

These states need to stand up for their water!

Please help me raise funds for Water Partners International

Along the side of this page you will see a widget for Firstgiving. I am currently raising funds for Water Partners International and would appreciate any help you could give me. My goal is $1000.00 that will go to helping people who do not have clean water. Water is vital to our everyday survival, but with freshwater resources dwindling in many areas of the world due to waste, mismanagement, political upheaval, pollution, and climate change which is bringing on drought in many areas of the world it is becoming scarcer for more in the developing world. Please go to my sponsor page and with your heart give what you can to support a wonderful organization committed to bringing water to everyone who needs it.


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World Water Crisis Underlies World Food Crisis

World Water Crisis Underlies World Food Crisis

The world's supplies of clean, fresh water cannot sustain today's "profligate" use and inadequate management, which have brought shrinking food supplies and rising food costs to most countries, WWF Director General James Leape told the opening session of World Water Week in Stockholm today. "Behind the world food crisis is a global freshwater crisis, expected to rapidly worsen as climate change impacts intensify," Leape said. "Irrigation-fed agriculture provides 45 percent of the world's food supplies, and without it, we could not feed our planet's population of six billion people." Leape warns that many of the world's irrigation areas are highly stressed and drawing more water than rivers and groundwater reserves can sustain, especially in view of climate change.

At the same time, he said, freshwater food reserves are declining in the face of the quickening pace of dam construction and unsustainable water extractions from rivers. At a time when billions of people live without access to safe drinking water or suffer ill health due to poor sanitation, when food producers battle biofuel producers for land and water resources, and when global climate change is altering the overall water balance, 2,500 water experts are gathered this week at the Stockholm International Fairs and Congress Center to craft solutions to these problems. World Water Week is an annual event co-ordinated by the Stockholm International Water Institute. This year's conference has the overall theme of Progress and Prospects on Water: For A Clean and Healthy World with Special Focus on Sanitation" in keeping with the UN declaration of 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation.

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According to an announcement here the amount of people without potable water is going down. This is good news, and is in part due to organizations such as Water Partners International, Water Aid, and other organizations coming together in the water justice movement to bring potable water to more areas of the world that need it most. It is an encouraging sign, but the work is far from over. Glaciers worldwide continue to melt threatening the water supplies for millions of people as freshwater lakes and rivers continue to decline due to a combination of climate change/global warming, overusage and pollution.


The measures outlined by the forum need to be seriously instituted instead of just being talk to carry over for the next year. As population rises freshwater resources will become even scarcer due to climate changes, pollution, and corporatization, so conservation and more efficient irrigation practices worldwide must be instituted. It is then ironic to see the water fountains going outside the sign to this forum. I wonder if they realized that. This is the most important environmental issue and crisis we are facing in our world, and the only way people will know about it is for those with the passion to get the message out to persevere in doing so.

Let us hope to see a report from World Water Week that does more than address problems in words but also solves them with actions.