Millennium Project
Global Challenges Facing Humanity
2. Water
How can everyone have sufficient clean water without conflict?

Today some 700 million people face water scarcity (defined as less than 1,000 cubic meters per person per year), which could grow to 3 billion by 2025 due to climate change, population growth, and increasing demand for water per capita. Water stress (1,000–1,700 cubic meters per person per year) could affect half the countries by 2025 and 75% of the world’s population by 2050. Without major interventions, the implications for future migrations and conflicts are enormous. Water tables are falling on every continent; 40% of humanity depends on international watersheds; one in 10 of the world’s major rivers fail to reach the sea for part of each year; agricultural land is becoming brackish; groundwater aquifers are being polluted; and urbanization is increasing water demands on aging water infrastructures faster than many systems can supply.

Water withdrawals from lakes and rivers have doubled in the last 40 years. Agriculture accounts for 70% of human usage of fresh water, which needs even more to feed growing populations. An increase in meat consumption in developing countries further accelerates the demand for water per capita. Nature also needs sufficient water to be viable for all life support. Hence, more fresh water is needed—not just distribution agreements. Breakthroughs in desalination, like pressurization of seawater to produce vapor jets, filtration via carbon nanotubes, and reverse osmosis, are needed along with less costly pollution treatment. There are some 15,000 desalination plants, and 75 more major facilities are in various stages of development.

Future demand for fresh water could be reduced by saltwater agriculture on coastlines, producing meat from stem cells without growing animals, and increasing vegetarianism. Many factors that influence water supply are beyond the control of water managers; nevertheless, we still need an integrated global water strategy and management system to focus knowledge, finances, and political will to address this challenge. It should apply the lessons learned from producing more food with less water via drip irrigation and precision agriculture, rainwater collection and irrigation, watershed management, selective introduction of water pricing, and replication of successful community-scale projects around the world. The plan should also help convert degraded or abandoned farmlands to forest or grasslands; invest in household sanitation, reforestation, water storage, and treatment of industrial effluents in multipurpose water schemes; and construct eco-friendly dams, pipelines, and aqueducts to move water from areas of abundance to scarcity. Access to clean water and basic sanitation should become human rights.

The UN declared that 2008 is the international year of sanitation. The Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council launched the Global Sanitation Fund to increase funding to address this challenge. Meeting the MDG goal on sanitation would cost $38 billion and yield $347 billion worth of benefits—much of it related to higher productivity and improved health. About 80% of diseases in the developing world are water-related. Many are due to poor management of human excreta. Some 1.8 million people die every year due to diarrhea, of whom 90% are children under the age of five. About 2.6 billion people (40% of the world) lack adequate sanitation. Unless major political and technological changes occur, future conflicts over tradeoffs among agricultural, urban, and ecological uses of water are inevitable. Previously, water-sharing agreements have occurred even among people in conflict and have led to cooperation in other areas.

Challenge 2 will be addressed seriously when the number of people without clean water and those suffering from water-borne diseases diminishes by half from their peaks and when the percentage of water used in agriculture drops for five years in a row.

 Regional Considerations

Africa: Up to 250 million Africans could live in water-stressed areas by 2010. Population growth and climate change could cut water per person in Middle East and North Africa in half by 2050. Africa loses about $28 billion annually due to the lack of safe water and basic sanitation. Sub-Saharan Africa would have to triple its freshwater access to meet its MDG target on water by 2015, but few African governments spend more than 0.5% of GDP on water and sanitation. With one-third of the world’s major international water basins, Africa uses less than 6% of its renewable water resources. Since the majority of Africa depends on rain-fed agriculture, upgrading rain-fed systems and improving agricultural productivity will immediately improve millions of lives. Algeria launched the construction of 12 desalination plants to be built by 2010.

Asia and Oceania: More than 70% of China’s waterways and 90% of its groundwater are contaminated; 33% of China’s river and lake water is unfit for even industrial use. The water situation in China is expected to continue to get worse for the next 7–10 years under the best of conditions. The World Bank estimates that China loses 5.8% of its GDP due to air and water pollution. With only 8% of the world’s fresh water, China has to meet the needs of 22% of the world’s population. The northern areas produce 45% of national GDP but contain less than 20% of China’s water; projects are under way to transport water from the south to the north. Forced migration due to water shortages has begun in China, and India should be next. The Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Ganges, and Indus are among the 10 most polluted rivers in the world. India feeds 17% of the world’s people on less than 5% of the world’s water and 3% of its farmland. India’s urban water demand is expected to double and industrial demand to triple by 2025. Diarrhea causes some 450,000 deaths annually in India. Saltwater intrusion into Bangladeshi coastal rivers reaches 100 miles inland. Israel’s Ashkelon plant reduced desalination costs to less than 50¢ per cubic meter of water.

Europe: Cyprus, Bulgaria, Belgium, Spain, Malta, FYR Macedonia, Italy, the UK, and Germany can be considered water-stressed; 14% of the EU population has been affected by water scarcity. Over 80% of the original floodplain area along the Danube and its main tributaries has been lost as a result of dams, pollution, and climate change. The Belgian government recognizes water as a human right, and its development aid will focus on water. Water utilities in Germany pay farmers to switch to organic operations because it costs less than removing farm chemicals from water supplies. Russia could supply fresh water to China and Middle Asia and is seeking new technologies like nanotech to improve water quality. Over 1 million people drink polluted tap water in Ireland.

Latin America: Glaciers in Peru could disappear in 25 years, risking the country’s water security. The World Bank set up a $33-million fund for Andean countries for adaptation to rapid glacier retreat. Although the region has 28% of the world’s water resources, almost 80 million people do not have access to safe drinking water and 120 million lack sewage treatment. Water crises will 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. Water and sanitation problems cost the region an estimated $29 billion a year.

North America: At least 36 states in the U.S. are expected to face water shortages within the next five years. Each kilowatt-hour of electricity in the U.S. requires about 25 gallons of water for cooling, making power plants the second largest water consumer in the country after agriculture. Over the past five years, municipal water rates have increased by an average of 27% in the U.S. and 58% in Canada. Water could become a class problem; poor people will be the first victims in free market distribution. Government agricultural water subsidies should be changed to encourage conservation.


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