Taps to go dry in 20 years

Water demand in India and China - the world’s two most populous countries - will exceed supply in less than 20 years, according to a report, The Global Water Crisis: Addressing an Urgent Security Issue.

The report to be released on September 11 jointly by the InterAction Council (IAC), a group of 40 prominent former government leaders and heads of State, together with the United Nations University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health, and Canada’s Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation, attributes the water scarcity to population growth, increasing irrigation for food production and growth in GDP.

“The strain on the world’s agricultural and industrial sectors will be substantial, as India and China’s populations move towards middle-class diets and consumption patterns. The lack of available water will be compounded by issues of water quality,” the study states.

About 3,800 cubic km of fresh water is extracted from aquatic ecosystems globally every year. “With about 1 billion more mouths to feed worldwide by 2025, global agriculture alone will require another 1,000 cubic km (1 trillion cubic meters) of water per year — equal to the annual flow of 20 Niles or 100 Colorado Rivers,” the report says.

Stating water will be the oil of the future, the report states that 145 countries and 40 per cent of global population fall within 263 international river basins that account for 60 per cent of global river flow. As such, the chances for violent conflict are abundant; yet tensions over water seem to stimulate cooperation rather than promote conflict. The report predicts that revenues from the world’s water-related businesses would rise from $522 billion in 2007 to nearly $1 trillion by 2020. Rising water demands present myriad challenges in many key areas, including upgrading current water infrastructure and rethinking the infrastructure of the future; maximising water efficiency of industrial processes; treating waste water as a resource; enhancing water productivity in agriculture; and using information technology for effective water management.