Sub-Saharan Africa: With 17% of the world’s population, this region only has 9% of the world’s fresh water. This is mostly concentrated in central and western Africa. Between 1% to 2.5% of GDP of African countries and $5.5 billion are lost annually due to inadequate sanitation. About 30% of sub-Saharan Africa uses improved sanitation facilities. The African Development Bank manages the African Water Facility to fund efforts to get safe water to over 300 million Africans who lack basic water services. A global rush for farmland is actually a “great water grab,” with a number of African governments signing away water rights for decades — with major implications for local communities. There are huge amounts of groundwater available in Africa — 100 times the amount found on the surface.
The Gibe III Dam under construction will lower water levels at Lake Turkana, possibly affecting more than 500,000 people in Ethiopia. The agreement between Sudan, Ethiopia, and Egypt on sharing Nile River waters is a good step toward solving African challenges. The tripartite agreement signed in March 2015 is meant to pave the way for negotiations relating to the usage of the dam under construction in Ethiopia, as well as the entire Nile waters. The Nile Basin Initiative works with 10 countries along the Nile to facilitate peaceful development of the Nile basin.
Middle East and North Africa: The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will change the Nile, and the Egypt-proposed 15 ideas to keep electricity for Ethiopia and water security for Egypt was rejected by Ethiopia, leaving future conflicts likely. By 2050, an additional 1.5 billion cubic meters of water will be needed in the Middle East, of which about a third will be allocated to the Palestinian Authority and Jordan. Due to advances in desalination, water recycling, and conservation, Israel now has a surplus in water; desalination produces 50% of the water used in Israel in addition to 100 million cubic meters to Jordan with plans to double that amount. Iran’s water per person has fallen 50% since the late 1970s. Sana’a, Yemen may become the first capital city to run out of water. UAE’s renewable water resources have decreased by 42% in the past 15 years, and water salinity is increasing due to salt dumping by desalination plants. Increasing water prices could spark social unrest. Fear of a political and environmental crisis may lead to the collapse of the state and an influx of refugees, especially from Yemen. To prevent this, Saudi Arabia has donated fuel to Yemen and offered to fund water projects. The economic costs of poor-quality water in countries in the Middle East and North Africa range from 0.5% to 2.5% of GDP.
Asia and Oceania: About 48 million Chinese lack sufficient drinking water. Asia has 60% of the world’s population but only 28-30% of its freshwater. China only has 6% of the world’s total freshwater to meet the needs of 22% of the world’s population. A study warns that an additional 1 billion people across Asia could become water-stressed by 2050. “Dry 11,” or 11 water-scarce regions in China, accounts for nearly half of China’s GDP. China’s water situation is expected to continue to get worse for the next five to eight years under the best-case scenario, partly due to geographical mismatches in natural resource distribution. The Tibetan Plateau provides water for 1/3 of the world’s population in East Asia and South Asia; its glaciers are melting faster than anywhere on Earth. The North only has 25% of China’s total renewable water resources but 63% of the farmland and 86% of the coal reserves. China’s wetlands have shrunk nearly by 9% since 2003, and glaciers in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau shrunk by 15% over the last three decades. About 85% of China’s groundwater is unfit for consumption, while half of its aquifers are too polluted to be used for industry and farming. Bottled water consumption in China nearly doubled in the past five years and most still boil their drinking water every day consuming energy. China plans to spend $10 billion to produce 3 million cubic meters per day by 2030. Beijing is already piping desalinated water from the port of Caofeidian in Hebei province through 270-km-long pipelines. The $2.9 billion project meets one-third of Beijing’s water demand today. Forced migration due to water shortages has begun in China, and India should be next. Dubai’s water/capita/day is about 550 liters; the highest in the world and almost 80% higher than the global average. Although the vast majority of the Asia Pacific region discharges its wastewater without treatment, waste treatment plant construction is accelerating. For example, China plans to increase its water treatment by 94% between 2021-2025.
India is the largest user of groundwater in the world even though it has only 4% of the world’s water supply and has to feed 17.8% of the world’s population. In Delhi, 24 water ATMs have been installed that accept smart cards to give water — a vending machine for water; each ATM holds 500 liters of water and provides water to residents in areas without piped water supply. The Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Ganges, and Indus are among the 10 most polluted rivers in the world. UN-Habitat has declared India’s Yamuna River “dead” — without enough oxygen to support river life. About 19% of India’s population does not have access to a toilet. Inadequate sanitation costs the economies of four Southeast Asian countries (Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam) the equivalent of about 2% of their GDP.
The government of Victoria in Australia has opened private competition to bid for water supply contracts. China is buying increasing amounts of agricultural land in Australia to offset carbon and is increasingly looking to Australia to export “clean food.”
Europe: Global warming threatens water supply and river levels for shipping commerce; e.g., coal, iron, and natural gas barges on the Rhine. It also allows salt water to infiltrate affecting agriculture, especially in the Delta del Po in Italy. Valuing water is a challenging task within any single jurisdiction, hence doing so across borders presents even greater challenges. While increasing significance is being placed on valuing water within the Pan-European region, efforts to value water, especially in a transboundary basin context, remain limited in scope and often use different approaches. The discernable approaches to valuing water quantitatively in transboundary basins are more targeted at flood management, disaster risk reduction, early-warning systems, and ecosystem services. The collective economic benefits of transboundary cooperation on these aspects outweigh the collective investment costs of unilateral action several times. The Netherlands has supported the creation of the Water, Peace, and Security Partnership and its Early Warning System to predict and prevent water-related conflicts.
Much of southern Europe is already in drought, affecting agriculture, drinking water, and sewage. Some 57 million people in Europe do not have a household connection to safe drinking water, 21 million lack basic drinking water access, and more than 16 million lack access to adequate sanitation facilities.
Water utilities in Germany pay farmers to switch to organic operations because it costs less than removing farm chemicals from water supplies. Water losses due to bad infrastructure are less than 5% in Germany but can be as high as 50% in Bulgaria. The EU is conducting a Policy Review for water scarcity and droughts, and the Common Agricultural Policy is exploring how to achieve a more balanced management of water resources. Spain is the first country to use water footprint analysis in policymaking. The world’s largest reserves of freshwater are in Russia, which could export water to China and Middle Asia. Russia plans to improve water efficiency by 2.5 times by 2030.
Latin America and the Caribbean: Global warming is reducing river flows necessary for hydropower which provides 45% of the region’s electricity. Latin America has 26% of the world’s freshwater and 6% of its population. The region’s water demand could increase by 300% by 2050 (future global warming and water efficiencies not included), but two-thirds of the region is arid or semiarid, including large areas of central and northern Mexico, northeastern Brazil, northwestern Argentina, northern Chile, and parts of Bolivia and Peru. About 25% of the population (over 100 million) live in water-stressed areas, mainly in Mexico, Argentina, and the countries along the west coast. About 125 million people in Latin America lack access to sanitation services. Over 70% of the water used returns to rivers without treatment. Meanwhile, countries in the region lose nearly $6 billion every year due to delinquencies, overemployment in the industry, and water loss caused by misused or broken pipes. Brazil wastes nearly 40% of its treated water, according to UNESCO.
Mexico performs 85% below the OECD average for water quality but has increased investments in water systems and the “2030 Water Agenda” for universal water access and wastewater treatment. Suffering from the worst drought in 70 years, Mexican farmers have lost 2.2 million acres of crops. Costa Rica needs to invest $2.4 billion to improve water and sanitation conditions by 2030. Chile plans to build five new municipal desalination plants at an estimated cost of $280 million. El Salvador will be hit hardest by water shortages in Central America. Ice is melting in the Andes, negatively affecting hydroelectric dams, agriculture, and urban water supplies; 68% of the region’s electricity is from hydroelectric sources. Peru will be one of the Latin American countries that will suffer more water shortages, due to over 60% of its population (about 18 million people) living in its coastal desert region, which receives water from the glaciers of mountains that have already lost more than 40% of their volume. It is expected that in 2030 there will be glaciers only at altitudes above 5,000 meters above sea level.
Water crises might occur in megacities within a generation unless new water supplies are generated, lessons from both successful and unsuccessful approaches to privatization are applied, and legislation is updated for more reliable, transparent, and consistent integrated water resources management for more efficient and effective water use. Water stress in the region has fueled a number of conflicts, as various sectors, including agriculture, hydroelectricity, mining, and even drinking water and sanitation, are competing over scarce resources. The costs of water use or maintenance (once the concession or right of use is granted), are usually nil or insignificant for hydroelectric plants, mining companies, and even farmers; and sometimes these costs are not even included in their economic balances. The latter represents an implicit subsidy that does not reflect the strategic value of water in the multiple production processes and under the context of climate change. Most countries in the region have not assigned sufficient funds for proper law enforcement in cases of pollution or overexploitation. While legal precepts are of extreme relevance, regulation and monitoring as well as well-aligned incentives are essential in the region, not only to ensure a better appreciation of the role and value of water but also to prevent its overexploitation and pollution, particularly given the increasing climate instability.
North America: The U.S. White House has committed to a global long-range water plan. It is time to start taking about proposals to build water pipes from the East to the West of the U.S.; Global Warming will continue to get worse for far more years than it will take to build water pipelines. We did it for oil, next for water. California’s record droughts are likely to return after record rains. Competition for water among usage for agriculture, cities, and power plants is heightened due to several years of continuous droughts in much of the Southwest. Fracking, agriculture, and other private interests are buying water rights, threatening water as a public trust. Additional water withdrawals in the dry Southwest of the U.S. are being accelerated by new oil and gas extractions. According to the Ceres investor network, nearly 40,000 oil and gas wells were drilled since 2011 in this region — three-quarters where water is scarce and 55% in the drought areas. The water demand for fracking in these dry areas is expected to double over the next year or two. Each kilowatt-hour of electricity in the U.S. requires withdrawals of about 25 gallons of water for cooling, which makes power plants the second largest water consumer in the country (39% of all water withdrawals) after agriculture. U.S. thermoelectric power plants withdrew as much water as farms did, and more than four times as much as all U.S. residents. The growth of AI data centers (currently use about 5% of U.S. electricity demand), Crypto currency and blockchain (currently using 0.6-2.3%), cannabis (over 1% today), and electric cars are expect to increase electricity demand by 4.7% or 38 gigawatts over the next five years, and hence water for cooling. Over the past 50 years, groundwater withdrawals has tripled, while precipitation has decreased due to global warming.
The U.S. EPA issued a new “Clean Water Rule” to curb pollution in the streams and wetlands in the country; the new rule covers about 60% of U.S. water bodies and protects water sources for 117 million Americans. EPA also issued a proposed pre-treatment rule for hydraulic fracturing wastewaters. While the water infrastructure is aging (there are over 225,000 water-line-related breaks each year in the U.S.), federal funding for such improvements has fallen substantially. About 20% of drinking water is lost from plant to user. According to the EPA, $384 billion is needed for drinking water infrastructure between 2011 and 2030.
The U.S. may have passed its “peak water” level in the 1970s. More than 30 states are in litigation with their neighbors over water. About 30% of U.S. cities are vulnerable to water shortages. Some 13% of Native American households have no access to safe water and/or wastewater disposal, compared with 0.6% in non-native households. Mayors in the U.S. Great Lakes regions made “Sister Waters” Partnerships with mayors of the Middle East to share information and technologies for managing water.
Canada has 20% of the world’s freshwater, 7% of which is renewable. The 2013 Transboundary Waters Protection Act bans bulk water exports from transboundary basins, although it allows bottled water export of up to 50,000 liters per day. Tapping Western Canada’s tar sands consumes an estimated 20-45 cubic meters of water per megawatt-hour, nearly 10 times that for conventional oil extraction. Canada is mapping its underground water supplies to help policymakers prevent water shortages. Government agricultural water subsidies should be changed to encourage conservation. North Americans use 2.5 times more water than Europeans per person.
Read more on millennium-project.org
