Will there be a private drain
from public water?

By Maude Barlow, The Council of Canadians

Worldwide, the consumption of fresh water is doubling every 20 years ­ more than twice the rate of the increase in human population. This consumption is placing enormous pressures on aquatic ecosystems. Today, 31 countries are facing water stress and scarcity and over a billion people lack adequate access to clean drinking water. By the year 2025, as much as two-thirds of the world's population ­ predicted to have expanded by an additional 2.6 billion people ­ will be living in conditions of serious water shortage and one-third will be living in conditions of absolute water scarcity. The UN and the World Bank predict that if we do not change our pattern of water waste, by 2025 the demand for fresh water will rise by 56 percent more than is currently available.

Canada's water has been described as 'liquid gold' ­ but should a renewable resource be hoarded or sold? Photo - Tom Davey

Groundwater overpumping and aquifer depletion are now a serious problem in the world's most intensive agricultural areas and water is being depleted many times faster than nature can replenish it. In Mexico City, pumping exceeds natural recharge by almost 80 percent every year; at the current rate of extraction, Saudi Arabia will run out of water in 50 years; current depletion of Africa's nonrecharging aquifers is estimated at 10 billion cubic metres a year; water tables are falling everywhere throughout India; the water table beneath Beijing, the Chinese capital, has dropped 37 metres over the last four decades; and land beneath Bangkok has sunk with the massive overpumping of underground systems.

This means that, instead of living on water income, we are irreversibly diminishing water capital. At some time in the near future, water bankruptcy will result. In addition to depleting supplies, groundwater mining causes salt water to invade freshwater aquifers, destroying them. In some cases, groundwater mining actually permanently reduces the earth's capacity to store water through compaction. In 1998, California's Department of Water Resources announced that by 2020, if more supplies are not found, the state will face a shortfall of water nearly as great as all its towns and cities together use today.

Further, the global expansion in mining and manufacturing is increasing the threat of pollution of these underground water supplies. As developing countries are undergoing rapid industrialization, heavy metals, acids and persistent organic pollutants are contaminating the aquifers which provide more than 50 percent of domestic supplies in most Asian countries.

At the same time, overexploitation of the planet's major river systems is threatening another finite source of water. The Nile in Egypt, the Ganges in South Asia, the Yellow River in China, and the Colorado River in America are just some of the major rivers that are so dammed, diverted, or overtapped that little or no fresh water reaches its final destination for significant stretches of time. In fact, the Colorado is so oversubscribed on its journey through seven US states that there is virtually nothing left to go out to sea.

As well as creating major environmental problems, including salinization, overtapping of groundwater and rivers is exacerbating another potential crisis ­ world food security. Irrigation for crop production claims 65 percent of all water used by humans; the annual rise in population means that more water is needed every year for grain production, a highly water intensive activity. But the world's burgeoning cities and industries are demanding and taking more and more of the water earmarked for agriculture every year. Eventually, some dry areas will not be able to serve both the needs of farming and those of the ballooning cities.

All through Latin America and Asia, massive industrialization is affecting the balance between humans and nature in rural communities. Agribusiness growing crops for export is claiming more and more of the water once used by family and peasant farmers for food self-sufficiency, and industry is creeping up the major water systems, drinking them dry as they go. There are over 500 free trade zones operating in the developing world, claiming local water sources for the assembly lines that produce goods for the world's consumer elite.

This article has been abridged.