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For want

of a drink
A special report on water l May 22nd 2010
The Economist May 22nd 2010 A special report on water 1

For want of a drink


Also in this section
Enough is not enough
It must also be clean. Page 4

Business begins to stir


But many water providers still have a long
way to go. Page 5

Every drop counts


And in Singapore every drop is counted.
Page 7

Making farmers matter


And monitor, budget, manage‹and prosper.
Page 8

China’s peasants look to the


skies
But the science of yields is unyielding.
Page 9 Finite, vital, much wanted, little understood, water looks
unmanageable. But it needn’t be, argues John Grimond
The ups and downs of dams
Small projects often give better returns.
Page 10 W HEN the word water appears in print
these days, crisis is rarely far behind.
Water, it is said, is the new oil: a resource
farming. Then the green revolution, in an
inspired combination of new crop breeds,
fertilisers and water, made possible a huge
long squandered, now growing expensive rise in the population. The number of peo-
Trade and conserve and soon to be overwhelmed by insatiable ple on Earth rose to 6 billion in 2000, near-
How to make tight supplies go further. demand. Aquifers are falling, glaciers van- ly 7 billion today, and is heading for 9 bil-
Page 12 ishing, reservoirs drying up and rivers no lion in 2050. The area under irrigation has
longer ‡owing to the sea. Climate change doubled and the amount of water drawn
To the last drop threatens to make the problems worse. for farming has tripled. The proportion of
Everyone must use less water if famine, people living in countries chronically
How to avoid water wars. Page 13 pestilence and mass migration are not to short of water, which stood at 8% (500m) at
sweep the globe. As it is, wars are about to the turn of the 21st century, is set to rise to
A glass half empty break out between countries squabbling 45% (4 billion) by 2050. And already 1 bil-
It won’t †ll up without lots of changes on the over dams and rivers. If the apocalypse is lion people go to bed hungry each night,
ground‹and much greater restraint by still a little way o…, it is only because the partly for lack of water to grow food.
users. Page 15 four horsemen and their steeds have People in temperate climates where the
stopped to search for something to drink. rain falls moderately all the year round
The language is often overblown, and may not realise how much water is needed
Conversions the remedies sometimes ill conceived, but for farming. In Britain, for example, farm-
1 litre = 0.26 US gallons the basic message is not wrong. Water is in- ing takes only 3% of all water withdrawals.
1 cubic metre = 264 US gallons
1 hectare = 2.47 acres
deed scarce in many places, and will grow In the United States, by contrast, 41% goes
1 km = 0.62 miles scarcer. Bringing supply and demand into for agriculture, almost all of it for irrigation.
equilibrium will be painful, and political In China farming takes nearly 70%, and in
disputes may increase in number and in- India nearer 90%. For the world as a whole,
Achnowledgments
Of the many people who helped in the preparation of this tensify in their capacity to cause trouble. agriculture accounts for almost 70%.
report, the author would like to give special thanks to: To carry on with present practices would Farmers’ increasing demand for water
Julia Bucknall of the World Bank, Chander Parkash of Kheti indeed be to invite disaster. is caused not only by the growing number
Virasat, P. Somasekhar Rao of the Food and Agriculture
Organisation, the Rev V. Paul Raja Rao of the Bharati Why? The diˆculties start with the of mouths to be fed but also by people’s
Integrated Rural Development Society, and Dai Qing. sheer number of people using the stu…. desire for better-tasting, more interesting
When, 60 years ago, the world’s popula- food. Unfortunately, it takes nearly twice
A list of sources is at
tion was about 2.5 billion, worries about as much water to grow a kilo of peanuts as
Economist.com/specialreports water supply a…ected relatively few peo- a kilo of soyabeans, nearly four times as
ple. Both drought and hunger existed, as much to produce a kilo of beef as a kilo of
An audio interview with the author is at
they have throughout history, but most chicken, and nearly †ve times as much to
Economist.com/audiovideo/specialreports people could be fed without irrigated produce a glass of orange juice as a cup of 1
2 A special report on water The Economist May 22nd 2010

2 tea. With 2 billion people around the world and will not soon be reconstituted. But if
Where the water comes from... 1
about to enter the middle class, the agricul- you drain a tank of water for your shower,
tural demands on water would increase have you used it? Yes, in a sense. But could Global water resources, %
even if the population stood still. it not be collected to invigorate the plants
Industry, too, needs water. It takes in your garden? And will some of it not Oceans
97.5
about 22% of the world’s withdrawals. Do- then seep into the ground to re†ll an aqui-
mestic activities take the other 8%. Togeth- fer, or perhaps run into a river, from either
er, the demands of these two categories of which someone else may draw it? This
quadrupled in the second half of the 20th water has been used, but not in the sense
century, growing twice as fast as those of of rendered incapable of further use. Wa-
farming, and forecasters see nothing but ter is not the new oil.
further increases in demand on all fronts. However, there are some Œuses that Fresh water
leave it unusable for anyone else. That is ei- 2.5
That’s your lot ther when it evaporates, from †elds, swim-
Meeting that demand is a di…erent task ming pools, reservoirs or cooling towers,
from meeting the demand for almost any or when it transpires, in the photosyn- Permafrost
other commodity. One reason is that the thetic process whereby water vapour Glaciers and 0.8
ice caps
supply of water is †nite. The world will passes from the leaves of growing plants 68.7
have no more of it in 2025, or 2050, or into the atmosphere. These two processes,
when the cows come home, than it has to- known in combination as evapotranspira-
day, or when it lapped at the sides of tion (ET), tend to be overlooked by water
Noah’s ark. This is because the law of con- policymakers. Yet over 60% of all the rain
servation of mass says, broadly, that how- and snow that hits the ground cannot be Surface and
atmosphere Groundwater
ever you use it, you cannot destroy the captured because it evaporates from the 0.4 30.1
stu…. Neither can you readily make it. If soil or transpires through plants. Like wa-
some of it seems to come from the skies, ter that cannot be recovered for a speci†c
that is because it has evaporated from the use because it has run into the sea or per-
Earth’s surface, condensed and returned. haps a saline aquifer, water lost through ET Soil moisture
12.2
Most of this surface is sea, and the wa- is, at least until nature recycles it, well and Lakes
67.4 Atmosphere
ter below it‹over 97% of the total on truly used‹or, in the language of the water 9.5
Earth‹is salty. In principle the salt can be world, Œconsumed, ie, not returned to the Wetlands
removed to increase the supply of fresh system for possible reuse. 8.5
water, but at present desalination is expen- The problems caused by inexact ter- Rivers
sive and uses lots of energy. Although costs minology do not end here. Concepts like 1.6
have come down, no one expects it to pro- eˆciency, productivity and saving attract Vegetation
vide wide-scale irrigation soon. woolly thinking. Chris Perry, an irrigation 0.8
Of the 2½% of water that is not salty, economist widely considered the high
...and where it goes
about 70% is frozen, either at the poles, in priest of water accounting, points out that
glaciers or in permafrost. So all living Œeˆcient domestic systems involve virtu- Water abstraction from rivers, lakes and
things, except those in the sea, have about ally no escape of water through evapora- groundwater, %
0.75% of the total to survive on. Most of this tion or irrecoverable seepage. ŒEˆcient ir- Agriculture Domestic and
available water is underground, in aqui- rigation, though, is often used to describe 67 other industrial
20
fers or similar formations. The rest is falling systems that result in 85% of the water dis-
as rain, sitting in lakes and reservoirs or appearing in vapour. Similarly, water is
Power
‡owing in rivers where it is, with luck, re- not saved by merely using less of it for a 10
placed by rainfall and melting snow and purpose such as washing or irrigation; it is
ice. There is also, take note, water vapour in saved only if less is rendered irrecoverable.
Evaporation
the atmosphere. from reservoirs
These geophysical facts a…ect the use of Soaked, parched, poached 3
language in discussions about water, and Many of these conceptual diˆculties arise Consumptive use* of abstracted water, %
the ways in which to think about the pro- from other unusual aspects of water. It is a
blems of scarcity. As Julia Bucknall, the commodity whose value varies according Agriculture Domestic and
World Bank’s water supremo, points out, to locality, purpose and circumstance. Take 93 industrial
7
demand and supply are economic con- locality †rst. Water is not evenly distri-
cepts, which the matchmakers of the dis- buted‹just nine countries account for 60%
mal science are constantly trying to bring of all available fresh supplies‹and among
into balance. In the context of water, them only Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Con-
though, supply is also a physical concept go, Indonesia and Russia have an abun-
and its maximum is †xed. dance. America is relatively well o…, but
Use is another awkward word. If your China and India, with over a third of the
car runs out of petrol, you have used a world’s population between them, have Source: World Bank: World *Water unavailable for
Development Report 2010 further use in the system
tankful. The petrol has been broken down less than 10% of its water. 1
The Economist May 22nd 2010 A special report on water 3

2 Even within countries the variations


may be huge. The average annual rainfall
in India’s north-east is 110 times that in its
western desert. And many places have
plenty of water, or even far too much, at
some times of year, but not nearly enough
at others. Most of India’s crucial rain is
brought by the summer monsoon, which
falls, with luck, in just a few weeks be-
tween June and September. Flooding is
routine, and may become more frequent
and damaging with climate change.
Scarce or plentiful, water is above all lo-
cal. It is heavy‹one cubic metre weighs a
tonne‹so expensive to move. If you are sult. In Bangkok, Buenos Aires and Jakarta, in rich countries and 10% in the rest. The
trying to manage it, you must †rst divide the aquifers are similarly overdrawn, pol- di…erence in domestic use is much smaller,
your area of concern into drainage basins. luted or contaminated by salt. Just as seri- 11% and 8% respectively. Some of the varia-
Surface water‹mostly rivers, lakes and res- ous is the depletion of the aquifers on tion is explained by capacious baths, pow-
ervoirs‹will not ‡ow from one basin into which farmers depend. In the Hai river ba- er showers and ‡ush lavatories in the rich
another without arti†cial diversion, and sin in China, for example, deep-groundwa- world. All humans, however, need a basic
usually only with pumping. Within a ba- ter tables have dropped by up to 90 metres. minimum of two litres of water in food or
sin, the water upstream may be useful for Part of the beauty of the borehole is drink each day, and for this there is no sub-
irrigation, industrial or domestic use. As it that it requires no elaborate apparatus; a stitute. No one survived in the ruins of
nears the sea, though, the opportunities di- single farmer may be able to sink his own Port-au-Prince for more than a few days
minish to the point where it has no uses ex- tubewell and start pumping. That is why after January’s earthquake unless they had
cept to sustain deltas, wetlands and the es- India and China are now perforated with access to some water-based food or drink.
tuarial ecology, and to carry silt out to sea. millions of irrigation wells, each drawing That is why many people in poor and arid
These should not be overlooked. If riv- on a common resource. Sometimes this re- countries‹usually women or children‹set
ers do not ‡ow, nothing can live in them. source will be huge: the High Plains aqui- o… early each morning to trudge to the
Over a †fth of the world’s freshwater †sh fer, for example, covers 450,000 square ki- nearest well and return †ve or six hours
species of a century ago are now endan- lometres below eight American states and later burdened with precious supplies.
gered or extinct. Half the world’s wetlands the Guaraní aquifer extends across 1.2m That is why many people believe water to
have also disappeared over the past 100 square kilometres below parts of Argenti- be a human right, a necessity more basic
years. The point is, though, that even with- na, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. But even than bread or a roof over the head.
in a basin water is more valuable in some big aquifers are not immune to the laws of From this much follows. One conse-
places than in others. physics. Parts of the High Plains are seri- quence is a widespread belief that no one
Almost anywhere arid, the water un- ously overdrawn. In the United States, Chi- should have to pay for water. The Byzan-
derground, once largely ignored, has come na and many other places, farmers proba- tine emperor Justinian declared in the
to be seen as especially valuable as the de- bly have to pay something for the right to sixth century that Œby natural law air, run-
mands of farmers have outgrown their draw groundwater. But almost nowhere ning water, the sea and seashore were
supplies of rain and surface water. will the price re‡ect scarcity, and often Œcommon to all. Many Indians agree, see-
Groundwater has come to the rescue, and there is no charge at all and no one mea- ing groundwater in particular as a Œdemo-
for a while it seemed a miraculous sol- sures how much water is being taken. cratic resource. In Africa it is said that
ution: drill a borehole, pump the stu… up Œeven the jackal deserves to drink.
from below and in due course it will be re- Liquid asset or human right? A second consequence is that water of-
placed. In some places it is indeed replen- Priced or not, water is certainly valued, and ten has a sacred or mystical quality that is
ished quite quickly if rain or surface water that value depends on the use to which it is invested in deities like Gong Gong and Osi-
is available and the geological and soil con- harnessed. Water is used not just to grow ris and rivers like the Jordan and the
ditions are favourable. In many places, food but to make every kind of product, Ganges. Throughout history, man’s depen-
however, from the United States to India from microchips to steel girders. The larg- dence on water has made him live near it
and China, the quantities being with- est industrial purpose to which it is put is or organise access to it. Water is in his
drawn exceed the annual recharge. This is cooling in thermal power generation, but it body‹it makes up about 60%‹and in his
serious for millions of people not just in is also used in drilling for and extracting soul. It has provided not just life and food
the country but also in many of the oil, the making of petroleum products and but a means of transport, a way of keeping
world’s biggest cities, which often depend ethanol, and the production of hydro-elec- clean, a mechanism for removing sewage,
on aquifers for their drinking water. tricity. Some of the processes involved, a home for †sh and other animals, a medi-
The 20m inhabitants of Mexico City such as hydro power generation, consume um with which to cook, in which to swim,
and its surrounding area, for example, little water (after driving the turbines, most on which to skate and sail, a thing of beau-
draw over 70% of their water from an aqui- is returned to the river), but some, such as ty to provide inspiration, to gaze upon and
fer that will run dry, at current extraction the techniques used to extract oil from to enjoy. No wonder a commodity with so
rates, within 200 years, maybe much sands, are big consumers. many qualities, uses and associations has
sooner. Already the city is sinking as a re- Industrial use takes about 60% of water proved so diˆcult to organise. 7
4 A special report on water The Economist May 22nd 2010

Enough is not enough


It must also be clean

I F WATER has the capacity to enhance life,


its absence has the capacity to make it
miserable. David Gray, a water practitioner
est countries, and dirty water and poor
sanitation kill 5,000 children a day.
Clean water is crucial for children with
Yet there is a shortage of safe water for
drinking and sanitation in many places,
not least in the cities to which so many
who has served the World Bank in almost diarrhoea; they need rehydration and elec- people are now ‡ocking. Africa is urbanis-
every river basin on the globe and is now a trolytes to survive. Even then, they may ing faster than any other continent, and
professor at Oxford, has a technique that still be at risk of malnutrition if they con- most migrants to the towns there †nd
makes the point. Every day he receives e- tinue to su…er from diarrhoea, which will themselves living in slums. In cities like
mails with water stories from newspapers prevent them from absorbing their food Addis Ababa and Lagos a quarter to a half
round the world. By brie‡y displaying to properly. This usually has long-term conse- of the population have no access to decent
an audience just one day’s crop‹including, quences. Malnutrition in the womb and sanitation, and not many more will have
say, drought in Australia, ‡oods in Kenya, during the †rst two years of life is now access to piped water. No Indian city has a
an empty dam in Pakistan, a toxic spill in seen as causing irreversible changes that 24-hour domestic water supply, though ef-
the Yellow river and saltwater contamina- lead to lifelong poor health. forts are under way to provide it in Mysore
tion in Haiti‹he can soon show how water Poor health, bad in itself, translates into and a few other places.
may dominate if not destroy lives, espe- poor economic output. A study in Guate- Delhi’s story is typical. Demand for wa-
cially in poor countries. mala followed the lives of children in four ter there has been rising for years. The local
Some of its most pernicious in‡uences, villages from their earliest years to ages be- utility cannot meet it. The city’s pipes and
though, never make the headlines. This is tween 25 and 42. In two villages the chil- other equipment have been so poorly
how they might read: ŒOver 1.2 billion peo- dren were given a nutritious supplement maintained that 40% of the supply fails to
ple have to defecate in the open. ŒThe big- for their †rst seven years, and in the other reach the customers. So the utility rations it
gest single cause of child deaths is diar- pair a less nutritious one. The boys who by providing water for a limited number of
rhoea or diseases related to it. ŒNearly 1 had had the more nutritious diet in their hours a day and, in some places, by re-
billion people have no access to piped †rst two years were found to have larger stricting the quantity. Householders and
drinking water or safe taps or wells. Each bodies, a greater capacity for physical landlords build tanks, if they can, and †ll
of these statements is linked to water. work, more schooling and better cognitive them when the water is available. Resi-
Surprisingly, some of those who have skills. They also grew up to earn average dents, or their weary employees, set their
to defecate in the open do not mind. Some wages 46% higher than the other groups. alarm clocks to turn on the tap before the
rural men, and even women, quite enjoy a ‡ow dribbles away to nothing. Property
social squat in the bushes. But for many, The cost to health and wealth developers, anxious to take advantage of a
and certainly for those who must live with Studies in Ghana and Pakistan suggest that booming economy and a growing middle
its consequences, it is a disagreeable prac- the long-term impact of malnutrition asso- class, drill boreholes, but these now have
tice. Women and, especially, girls often †nd ciated with diarrhoeal infections costs to go deeper and deeper to reach water.
it embarrassing. Many women in South each country 4-5% of GDP. This can be add- As for the Yamuna river, long the main
Asia contain themselves by day and wait ed to a similar burden for Œenvironmental source of the city’s drinking water, it is clin-
till nightfall before venturing into the shad- risk, which includes malaria and poor ac- ically dead. Quantities of sewage are
ows. Girls at African schools without la- cess to water and sanitation, both water- poured into it daily, 95% of which is un-
trines often drop out rather than risk the related, as well as indoor air pollution. All treated, and it is also a depository for in-
jeers of their male contemporaries. Slum- in all, the World Health Organisation dustrial e‰uents, chemicals from farm
dwellers in Nairobi have to pick their way thinks that half the consequences of mal- runo…s and arsenic and ‡uoride contami-
through streams of sewage and take care to nutrition are caused by inadequate water, nation. The city’s master plan proposes
avoid Œ‡ying toilets, plastic bags †lled sanitation and hygiene. In Ghana and Paki- three new dams, but they will not be †n-
with excrement that are ‡ung with desper- stan the total cost of these shortcomings ished for several years.
ate abandon into the night. may amount to 9% of GDP, and these two Many other cities have problems like
Without piped water to wash their countries are not unique. Delhi’s, though mostly in less extreme
hands with, let alone to drink, the open-air The problem is not strictly a matter of forms. Nearly two-†fths of the United
defecators and another 800m people with water scarcity. Indeed, expanding the States’ 25,000 sewer systems illegally dis-
access only to primitive latrines are inev- availability of water may actually increase charged raw sewage or other nasty stu…
itably carriers of disease. If they could disease, since it may lead to stagnant pools into rivers or lakes in 2007-09, and over
wash their hands with soap and water, in which mosquitoes breed, and then 40% of the country’s waters are considered
they could block one of the main transmis- spread malaria or dengue fever; or perhaps dangerously polluted. Contaminated wa-
sion routes for the spread of both diar- excess water will run through human or ter lays low almost 20m Americans a year.
rhoeal diseases and respiratory infections. toxic waste and thus contaminate the Pollution, however, is not the reason
As it is, patients with water-related dis- ground or a nearby stream. So hygiene and that people in rich countries have taken to
eases †ll half the hospital beds in the poor- protected storage are essential. drinking bottled water. In the developing 1
The Economist May 22nd 2010 A special report on water 5

2 world they do it because that is often the


only water †t to drink, and for the poor it is
usually a signi†cant expense. Not only are
their incomes small, but they often pay a
lot more for drinking water than do their
richer compatriots. A litre of bottled water
in India costs about 15 rupees (35 cents).
Bottled water often comes from the
same source as tap water, where that is
available (sometimes at a hundredth of the
price), though it should at least be clean. It
is often indistinguishable from tap water.
In rich countries, it may have come from
exotic sources like Fiji or Lapland, packed
in glass or plastic destined to become rub-
bish, devouring energy on its travels and Not the place for a chat, though
thus making it one of the least green and
least defensible rip-o…s on the market. land they live on, or have much incentive country like India. Kevin McGovern, a self-
A concerted international e…ort is now to improve a site to which they have no le- described pro bono capitalist from New
under way to improve sanitation and the gal rights‹entrepreneurs may help out. York, wants to bring cheaper puri†ers to
supply of drinking water. One of the de- The Peepoo is a personal, single-use bag the poor. His company, the Water Initia-
velopment goals set by the United Nations that the Swedish founder of the company, tive, has developed a †ltering device that
at the millennium was to halve the propor- Anders Wilhelmsen, describes as the hy- takes all the nasties out of water in the
tion of people without basic sanitation gienic version of Nairobi’s ‡ying toilet, in- home and needs to be replaced only once a
and a decent source of fresh water by 2015. tended, to begin with, for the same Kenyan year. Unlike osmosis, it consumes no ener-
Progress is slow, especially for sanitation, users. Sealed by knotting, it acts as a micro gy, and every drop of incoming water can
and particularly in Africa, and increasingly treatment plant to break down the excreta. be used for drinking.
policymakers are †nding that heavily sub- Since the bag is made of degradable bio- The †rst country Mr McGovern has in
sidised projects are failing. plastic, when it has served its primary pur- his sights is Mexico, the second-biggest
pose it can be sold with its contents as fer- consumer of bottled water in the world be-
Sexy loos tiliser. Indeed, the hope is that a market cause of the high incidence of arsenic, ‡uo-
Out†ts like the World Toilet Organisation, will develop in which the same people ride and pathogens in the water. Mr Mc-
based in Singapore, now believe you have will trade in the bags before and after use. Govern hopes to put in place a distribution
to make lavatories Œas sexy as mobile Each will sell for 5-7 cents, about the same system with a commercial interest in pro-
phones if you are to get people to accept as a conventional plastic bag, and though a viding the machines and selling the †lters.
them, and that means literally selling subsidy will be needed at †rst, the opera- Volunteers and NGOs, he says, tend to set
them. Once people have invested some of tion is meant to become self-sustaining, things up and then move on; a local com-
their own money in a loo, they will use it. and indeed pro†table. mercial incentive is needed to sustain the
The World Bank con†rms that the most Private enterprise also has a role in the operation, even if subsidies are required to
successful sanitation projects involve only provision of safe drinking water. A large get it started. Fortunately, two Mexican or-
a small subsidy. market in home water-puri†ers now exists ganisations have already promised grants,
Where building a †xed latrine is not all over the world. But a typical one, using and the project is backed by the country’s
possible‹slum-dwellers seldom own the reverse osmosis, may cost at least $170 in a popular †rst lady, Margarita Zavala. 7

Business begins to stir


But many water providers still have a long way to go

A LTHOUGH water is a universal hu-


man requirement, the use people
make of it varies hugely. The average Mali-
the skies, withdrawals will be small. More-
over, water-blessed countries have much
less reason to be careful with their re-
litre of water as agriculture, which helps to
explain why industry takes the lion’s share
in most rich countries. Yet the ratio of wa-
an draws 4 cubic metres a year for domes- sources than the water-starved. Yet high ter use to GDP has declined dramatically in
tic use, the average American 215. Include use of water is not necessarily bad. It de- many rich and middle-income countries in
all uses, and the †gures range from 20 cu- pends how it is employed, and whether it recent decades, which suggests that indus-
bic metres for the average Ugandan to over is naturally replaced. try can use water much more productively
5,000 for his Turkmenistani counterpart. However essential, farming is not the if it tries.
The statistics can be misleading: in places most lucrative use of water. Industry gen- Unilever, a seller of soaps to soups in
where rain falls copiously and evenly from erates about 70 times as much value from a 170 countries, boasts that its Medusa pro- 1
6 A special report on water The Economist May 22nd 2010

2 ject, formulated in Brazil in 2003, cut its to- tric-power companies surveyed even pro- but they do not usually re‡ect current ener-
tal water use by 8% and reduced the load vided data on total water withdrawals. gy costs or, increasingly, the non-energy
per tonne of production by 15%. SABMiller, Still, companies like Coca-Cola and costs of desalination. When it was mainly
which brews all over the world, has em- Nestlé are being joined by others who are rich Gulf states and ocean liners that re-
barked on a programme to save a quarter worried about being cast as villains. At the moved salt from sea water, ecological and
of the water needed to make a litre of beer same time more and more companies are †nancing concerns were generally over-
by 2015. Nestlé, which aims to be the most bringing forward new products and tech- looked. With desalination now favoured
eˆcient water user among food manufac- nologies designed to save water. These in places like Australia, California and
turers, has cut water withdrawals by a vary from genetically modi†ed crop variet- Spain, those considerations have become
third since 2000 even though the volume ies that are drought-resistant to technol- more important. The city of Sydney, for in-
of the foods and drinks it makes has risen ogies that replace chemicals with eco- stance, has had to install elaborate disposal
by 60%. Cisco, which supplies internet rou- friendly enzymes in the making of knit- systems for the briny waste of its desalina-
ters, switches and the like, uses recycled wear; from low-lather detergents (which tion plant and use wind power in order to
water in its gardens and fountains in Cali- use less water) to dual-‡ush lavatories; reduce CO2. All this is expensive.
fornia and has installed waterless urinals from lasers that detect the amount of mois-
and low-‡ow showers in its buildings. ture in the air above crops to wireless de- A no-briner?
Such measures make good †nancial vices that help reduce the water needed on Even so, several countries are going ahead,
sense and good public relations. Some of golf courses (which account for 0.5% of and Spain, the European Union’s driest
the companies at the forefront of water- America’s annual water use, though some country, uses some desalinated seawater
saving campaigns are also acutely aware must help recharge aquifers). to irrigate high-value crops in its driest
of their vulnerability to the growing scarci- Desalination is the great hope. The con- province, Almería. But its choice of desali-
ty of water, and to charges that they are ventional method involves boiling and nation goes back to 2004, when it aban-
guzzlers. Coca-Cola, for example, has been then distilling water. An alternative works doned a hugely expensive and controver-
†ercely attacked in India for its depen- by reverse osmosis, in which water is sial scheme to divert water from the Ebro
dence on groundwater and the e…ects on forced through a semi-permeable mem- river in the north to the arid south. In gen-
the water table. Yet even if it takes two li- brane. Both methods use quite a lot of en- eral, people go for desalination when they
tres of groundwater to produce a litre of ergy. New membranes now being devel- have few other options and are able to
bottled water, companies like Coca-Cola oped need less power, and new bear the costs. That explains why both
and PepsiCo are hardly signi†cant users techniques require neither evaporation new capacity and investment in desalina-
compared with farmers and even many in- nor membranes nor futuristic nanotubes tion plants have actually fallen since 2007,
dustrial producers (undesirable in your drinking water). though Christopher Gasson of Global Wa-
PepsiCo has nevertheless become the Reverse osmosis is the most favoured ter Intelligence expects them to rise this
†rst big company to declare its support for method, though, and in Israel and Algeria year. The hope is that, in the long run, solar
the human right to water. For its part, Coca- contracts have been signed for salt-free wa- power will make desalination economic.
Cola is one of a consortium of companies ter at about 55 cents a cubic metre. Even In parts of Australia and America irriga-
that in 2008 formed the 2030 Water Re- lower prices have been cited elsewhere, tion is becoming a sophisticated business
sources Group, which strives to deal with in other ways. The gadgets involved may
the issue of water scarcity. Last year it com- be computerised gates that control canal
missioned a consultancy, McKinsey, to pro- water, fancy ‡ow meters or huge machines
duce a report on the economics of a range that sprinkle water sparingly from rotating
of solutions. pipes. And in time farmers and others
In China, where pollution rivals scarci- everywhere should be able to take advan-
ty as a pressing problem, large foreign com- tage of technology that measures evapo-
panies now regularly consult a website transpiration †eld by †eld.
run by the Institute of Public and Environ- This is already used by water-manage-
mental A…airs, an NGO that collects gov- ment agencies in the American West,
ernment facts and statistics and publishes thanks to a system developed by the Idaho
them online. Its maps reveal details of state water department and the University
thousands of incidents in which compa- of Idaho, which calculates the consump-
nies have broken the pollution codes. Mul- tion of water from two Landsat satellites
tinationals like Adidas, General Electric, orbiting the Earth. Indeed, the use of sen-
Nike and Wal-Mart can now see which of sors to take measurements from space is
their suppliers are repeat o…enders, and developing apace. The information they
may put pressure on them to clean up. provide, perhaps conveyed straight to a
Not all big companies are water-con- farmer’s mobile phone, should before long
scious, though, even if they are big users. A enable him to take intelligent decisions
report issued this year by Ceres, a coalition about how, when and where to grow his
of American investors, found that Œthe vast crops, even if he is scarcely literate.
majority of leading companies in water- His urban counterparts, and the utili-
intensive industries have weak manage- ties that serve them, may seem unimpor-
ment and disclosure of water-related risks tant in terms of the amounts of water they
and opportunities. Less than half the elec- With the compliments of Mr Neptune use and lose. But domestic water supplies, 1
The Economist May 22nd 2010 A special report on water 7

And in Singapore every drop is


Every drop counts counted

N O COUNTRY manages its water as


well as Singapore. Admittedly, it has
high rainfall and it is a tiny country, but
ter is treated and then either safely dis-
posed of, reused for industrial purposes
or air-conditioning, or mixed with reser-
campaigns, Singaporeans are obliged to
install low-use taps and loos, and expect-
ed to be equally thrifty with their showers
that is exactly the trouble. As an island- voir water for drinking. Together, recycled and washing-machines. As a result, do-
city-state, it has little land on which to col- waste and desalinated water are expected mestic water use per person has fallen
lect enough water for its 4.8m people, and soon to meet 25-30% of demand, and local from 165 litres a day in 2003 to 155 today.
not much room to store it. To supplement industries, many of them with a need for The pricing system also encourages vir-
its bounty from above, it takes the salt out the cleanest supplies, are more than hap- tue. Both the tari… and the water-conser-
of sea water and imports supplies from py to use it. Most of the discarded sewage, vation tax rise for domestic users after the
Malaysia. But relations with its big neigh- once treated, is carried 5km out to sea. †rst 40 cubic metres a month, and there is
bour are often strained; the two treaties Demand is also being contained. Sub- a fee for various sanitary appliances. In-
under which the water is provided, both jected to constant water-consciousness dustry faces much higher charges.
about 50 years old, will expire in 2011 and How is all this achieved? The most im-
2061 respectively; and Lee Kuan Yew, the portant ingredient is a sense of serious-
father of the nation, has never forgotten ness about water at the highest levels of
that the invading Japanese blew up the government and a society that is generally
water pipeline when they seized Singa- regarded as pretty free of corruption. Then
pore in 1942. comes an autonomous water authority,
The †rst measure taken to escape for- professionally run by excellent, highly
eign dependency in the years after inde- paid professionals (the boss is said to re-
pendence in 1965 was a general tidy-up. In- ceive $700,000 a year). They are not afraid
dustry and commerce were shifted into to bring in private-sector partners, and do
estates and messy pig and duck farms what they believe needs doing, not what
closed down. That made it easier to purify politicians want done. So money is invest-
the rainwater that in Singapore is fastidi- ed in everything from dams and drains to
ously collected wherever it can be‹in membranes and bioreactors.
streets and ponds, even on tall buildings Singapore’s water industry‹over 50
and bridges‹before being taken by drains companies, both local and foreign‹is
to reservoirs, and thence to treatment now thriving. Nanyang Technological
plants where it is cleaned to drinking- University has three water-related units,
water standards. The catchment area is and Singaporean companies are winning
being increased by the creation of a pair of contracts in such countries as Qatar and
reservoirs, the †rst of which, due to be †n- Algeria. Singaporeans still import 40% of
ished next year, will mean the rainfall- their needs. Even so, they have a supply of
catchment acreage will extend to two- water that is clean, predictably delivered
thirds of the island’s total land area. and reasonably secure. Sixty years ago
Little is wasted in Singapore. Used wa- Ready for drinking‹over and over again they had ‡oods, pollution and rationing.

2 though relatively small in volume, are ex- both Senegal and Uganda are judged to companies on a large scale, many of them
pensive both to treat and to deliver. Water have well-run utilities, but Senegal’s is foreign, and they have prospered there. In
losses therefore matter, even if they help to private-sector whereas Uganda’s is public. other places they have not always been a
replenish aquifers. And †nancial losses In general, Africa’s utilities work better success. Some have su…ered because the
matter, too, because they discourage in- than, say, India’s, largely because in Africa incoming company has accepted responsi-
vestment and encourage subsidies, which central governments are ready to give au- bility for the utility’s foreign-currency
tend to bene†t the better o…, not the poor. tonomy to professionals. In India water debt, and then su…ered exchange-rate
The utilities’ reaction to water scarcity power lies with the states, often in huge, losses that it had little choice but to pass on
has been mixed. Many, including the torpid, oversta…ed and under†nanced bu- to customers. This happened in Cocha-
World Bank, once believed that privatisa- reaucracies. Vast quantities of water es- bamba, a Bolivian town riven by water ri-
tion was the solution to the ineˆcient pro- cape through leaking pipes; prices are un- ots in 2000. It also happened to a company
vision of water, but the new consensus, related to costs; meters are broken; and no that took on one of two concessions in Ma-
certainly in the bank, is that the crucial fea- e…ort is made to collect revenues. Accord- nila, which duly foundered. The company
ture of any system is that it should be sensi- ingly, no money is available for repairs. that won the other concession, however,
tive to its customers’ needs. Thus, in Africa, China has brought in private water was largely free of exchange-rate liabilities 1
8 A special report on water The Economist May 22nd 2010

2 and has proved expansively successful. tised. Thus the better o… sink wells or †ll atory of sorts; and in Indonesia a range of
Often the provision of water ranks too their cisterns with deliveries from tankers, sanitary †xtures sell for $18-90, and may
low among politicians’ interests to make and the poor drink water bought in bottles even come with a warranty.
them do much. They would rather keep and wash with whatever they can †nd. To get service from bad utilities, though,
charges low or, in some places, non-exis- Luckily, there are exceptions in places it is sometimes necessary to shame them.
tent than spend money on new pipes or like Brazil, where simple sewers built One way of doing this is to publicise their
treatment plants. They also see no votes in cheaply in some favelas are proving highly position in the rankings of the Internation-
cutting the ribbon outside a new public e…ective. Entrepreneurs are also coming al Benchmarking Network for Water and
lavatory. The result is that many utilities, into the market with low-tech products. In Sanitation, published online. This is now
especially in India, have spent so little on Tanzania, masons will provide a concrete causing several city governments some
maintenance and new investment that the slab to install above a pit latrine for $5. In embarrassment‹and at the same time giv-
provision of water is, faute de mieux, priva- Cambodia $30 should buy you a ‡ush lav- ing hope to their ill-served customers. 7

Making farmers matter


And monitor, budget, manage‹and prosper

O F ALL the activities that need water,


far and away the thirstiest is farming.
Cut the use of irrigation water by 10%, it is
ate tubewell. By 2001 India had about 17m
of these (and Pakistan 930,000 and Ban-
gladesh 1.2m). The pumps for the wells are
Though part of the Sangrur district su…ers
from a falling water table, the other part
su…ers from waterlogging. This is a com-
said, and you would save more than is lost usually cheap to run because electricity is mon problem when poorly drained soil is
in evaporation by all other consumers. Yet subsidised in most places, and in some it is over-irrigated, which results in plants’
farming is crucial. Not only does it provide free, though at times it is not provided at roots being starved of oxygen, knocking
the food that all mankind requires, but it is all; that is how water is rationed. perhaps 20% o… a †eld’s productivity.
also a great engine of economic growth for The proliferation has brought prosper- Sometimes standing water will evaporate,
the three-quarters of the world’s poor who ity and an almost lush landscape to places leaving the soil salty as well as saturated.
live in the countryside. Without water they like Punjab, which grows over half of In- Tushaar Shah, in ŒTaming the Anar-
may return to pastoralism‹as some peo- dia’s rice and wheat. But out of sight, un- chy, his book on water in South Asia, says
ple already have in parts of the Sahel in Af- derground, there is trouble. Water is being the groundwater irrigation boom in India
rica‹or migrate, or starve. With water, they extracted faster than it is replaced and lev- is Œsilently recon†guring entire river ba-
may †ght their way out of poverty. els are falling, often by two or three times sins. But of more immediate concern to the
Surface water, though, is not enough to the oˆcially reported rate, according to farmers are the economic and social conse-
meet farmers’ needs. In the United States Upmanu Lall, of Columbia University. quences of overdrawing groundwater: fall-
total withdrawals of water remained The World Bank says the groundwater in ing yields, higher electricity costs, ever
steady between 1985 and 2000 but ground- 75% of the blocks into which Punjab is di- greater debts, even rising crime among the
water withdrawals rose by 14%, mainly for vided is overdrawn. Over half the blocks unemployed. Increasingly, say the farmers,
agriculture, and in the period 1950-2000 of †ve other states‹Gujarat, Haryana, Ma- they must look to other, part-time jobs, like
they more than doubled. This was not all harashtra, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu‹are driving a taxi. Or they must sell their land.
for the arid West. Midwestern Nebraska judged to be in a critical or semi-critical Usually it will go to a village bigwig, per-
now ranks above California and Texas as condition, or are similarly over-exploited. haps with a little help from local oˆcials.
America’s most irrigated state. Europe, too, The main winners, though, are the arh-
increasingly relies on groundwater, as does Up comes the poison tiyas, the commission agents who act as
the Middle East. In a network of pipes that One consequence is that the water now middlemen between farmers and whole-
Colonel Muammar Qadda† has called the being pumped is often salty and some- sale buyers and at the same time moon-
eighth wonder of the world, Libya is draw- times high in concentrations of naturally light, sometimes extortionately, as money-
ing fossil water that has lain undisturbed occurring poisons like arsenic, ‡uorides lenders. Few farmers, big or small, are free
for centuries. Many hydrologists think it and uranium. In the village of Bhutal Kalan of debt, and worries about interest pay-
will be all but exhausted in 40 years. in Sangrur district, for instance, the farmers ments have driven thousands of Indian
It is India, though, that draws more complain not just of water levels dropping farmers to suicide in recent years, many
groundwater than any other country. The by two metres after each of the two har- more than the oˆcial †gures suggest, says
230 cubic kilometres that it pumps each vests a year but also of ‡uorosis, which Chander Parkash, an academic who helps
year account for over a quarter of the may cause mottling of the teeth and skin, to run a local NGO for farmers.
world total. The tripling of Indian ground- or, in its skeletal form, arthritic pain and Back in Delhi, Himanshu Thakkar, of
water use since 1965 has been stimulated bone deformities. Cancer is also rising, the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers
not just by growing demand for food but which the farmers blame on the natural and People, casts a more dispassionate eye
also by the lamentable public service pro- poisons and on pesticides, which they ap- over the Indian water scene. In Punjab he
vided by state governments and the rela- ply specially heavily if they grow cotton. discerns a state hooked on irrigation. Re-
tive cheapness and convenience of a priv- The farmers’ woes do not end there. luctant to share its river waters with other 1
The Economist May 22nd 2010 A special report on water 9

2 states, it has passed laws to cancel earlier are displayed on a wall in the village and
inter-state agreements. Its depletion of the updated over the year with information
aquifer also robs its neighbours in the In- about rain, harvests and even revenues.
dus basin. Yet Punjab’s farmers bene†t No one is compelled to take part; the en-
from (state or central) government spend- terprise is voluntary and collaborative. But
ing on dams and canals; on help with in- so far most farmers, and their families,
puts such as new seeds and fertilisers; on seem pleased. The local diet has become
the security of a guaranteed support price more varied, since 13 crops are now grown
for their produce; and on subsidies for elec- in the area, compared with eight in the
tricity (which is in e…ect free). Lastly, in past. Those that need most water‹
Punjab at least, the water pumped is not bananas, rice and cotton‹have yielded to
even metered, let alone paid for. others that need less, such as peanuts and
Down in the south-east, Andhra Pra- a locally bred variety of green lentils.
desh also sees its groundwater disappear- Chemical fertilisers have been replaced by
ing. But unlike Punjab, whose alluvial compost, a change welcomed for both
aquifers in equilibrium are recharged by health and †nancial reasons. Mulch, ma-
monsoonal rain and leakage from irriga- Hydrological budgeting in Andhra Pradesh nure and organic weedkillers are also
tion canals, Andhra Pradesh relies entirely used. The upshot is that although incomes
on the monsoon for its groundwater re- which also runs a clinic, an orphanage and have not risen‹most of the crop is eaten,
plenishment. Moreover, since it sits on a microcredit organisation. One of the †rst not sold for cash‹the cost of inputs has
hard rock, only about 12% of the annual water-management tasks for an organisa- fallen and those involved feel they are en-
rainfall goes to recharge the aquifers, com- tion such as this is to map the locality and gaged in a sustainable activity.
pared with perhaps 30% in Punjab, and de†ne its hydrological units, each of which That is because the scheme puts the
subterranean water tends to run away into is an area drained by a single stream with people who invest the money, grow the
rivers after a month or two, so under- one inlet and one outlet. The region en- crops and live or die by their e…orts in
ground storage is limited. compasses 11 hydrological units, one con- charge of their most crucial resource; they
Out in the arid west of the state, taining 41 villages. Some are much smaller. are all barefoot hydrogeologists. The re-
drought is almost the normal condition The farmers taking part in the project lentless drilling of wells has abated: in two
and, for the †rst time in India, a large num- measure and record rainfall, the water ta- units near Mutyalapadu no new wells
ber of farmers are starting to deal with it by ble, withdrawals and other data for their were bored over two recent seasons, and
reducing their demand rather than by land. They calculate how much water will in the wider region only eight out of 58 un-
pumping more and more from deeper and be available if the table is not to fall, decide its showed no reduction in pumping. Over-
deeper. The idea behind a project that now which crops to grow and estimate how drawing is judged to be under control,
involves nearly 1m people in 650 villages is much water they will use, bearing in mind partly because everyone knows what is
to monitor, demystify and thus manage that about half will go in evapotranspira- happening. And the idea is catching on.
groundwater. The nine NGOs that run the tion. They then sit down together in a The entire water department of Andhra
scheme o…er no subsidies, just knowledge. group‹there are several of these for each Pradesh has been trained in the basic prin-
At Mutyalapadu and round about, this hydrological unit‹and draw up a water ciples; Maharashtra has three similar pro-
comes from the Rev V. Paul Raja Rao’s Bha- budget. Details of the eventual agreement, jects under way; and Gujarat, Orissa and
rati Integrated Rural Development Society, showing who should grow what and how, Tamil Nadu are keen to follow suit. 7

China’s peasants look to the skies


But the science of yields is unyielding

I F THE Andhra Pradesh principles point


the way to a reasonably equable future,
they will have to be adopted not only
years, but the use of groundwater is. In the
1950s this was virtually unknown in the
north. Today there are more wells there
Grand Canal, started in 486BC, was built
chie‡y to move grain to the capital, but will
now become part of the great South-North
throughout South Asia but also in China, than anywhere else in the world, and they Water-Transfer Project, intended to slake
where the water available to each person is are relentlessly pumped, with alarming re- the thirst of China’s arid regions. Dams
only a quarter of the world average. In the sults. For instance, in the Hai river basin, in and canals appeal to the engineers who
rain-starved north, the availability per per- which both Beijing and Tianjin lie, shallow are disproportionately represented in Chi-
son is only a quarter of that in the south. water tables have dropped by up to 50 me- na’s government. And the country’s engi-
Yet this is where almost half China’s popu- tres, deep ones by up to 90. These will not neers are still taught that the way to Œsave
lation lives, and where most of its maize, quickly be put right. water is to improve the way it is deliv-
wheat and vegetables are grown. Chinese governments have usually re- ered‹by lining irrigation canals, for in-
Water scarcity is hardly new in China, sponded to shortages with canals, dykes, stance, or laying pipes‹to reduce the water
whose irrigation records go back 4,000 storage ponds and so on. The 1,800km that is Œlost by seeping into the soil. 1
10 A special report on water The Economist May 22nd 2010

water conservation. Elements of the ap-


proach are similar to that in Andhra Pra-
desh: farmers gather in water-users’ associ-
ations to plan and operate irrigation
services, for example. But the aim here is
speci†cally to reduce ET, at the same time
increasing farmers’ incomes without de-
pleting the groundwater.
This is high-tech stu… that involves not
just drip irrigation and condensation-trap-
ping greenhouses, but remote sensing by
satellites which provide ET readings for ar-
eas of 30 by 30 metres. This tells farmers
how much water they can consume with-
out adversely a…ecting the ecosystems in
their river basin. If the project is successful,
Another mineshaft as a pilot has been, it will also establish the
use of an internet-based management sys-
2 In truth, though, such water is not all ares, allowing food production to increase tem, mitigate losses from ‡ooding and in-
lost: much of it returns to the aquifers be- even though the amount of pumped water crease the supply of water to industry.
low, from where it can be pumped up has remained much the same. But ET has If such practices were extended across
again. There is a cost to this, in energy and risen, so aquifer depletion has continued. Asia, groundwater depletions might well
therefore cash, but not in water. The only Sometimes, say Frank Ward, of New be arrested. With luck, farmers too would
water truly lost in a hydrologic system is Mexico State University, and Manuel Pu- be better o…. But would they produce
through evapotranspiration, since no one lido-Velázquez, of the Technical University enough food for the extra 2.5 billion people
can make further use of it once it is in the of Valencia, policies aimed at reducing wa- expected by 2050 in today’s developing
atmosphere. If genuine savings are to be ter use can actually increase groundwater countries? The constraints seem to be set
made, either evaporation must be cut (for depletion. This has happened in the Upper by science, and they are tight.
example, by storing water underground, or Rio Grande basin shared by the United Growing more crops over a wider area
by delivering it to plants’ roots under the States and Mexico, where measures de- leads to more ET. The yield of a crop can be
surface of the soil); or food must be pro- signed to achieve more eˆcient irrigation increased a bit by giving plants only as
duced with less transpiration. have led to an increase in yields upstream; much water as they need and no more; but,
this in turn has increased ET, leaving less says Dr Perry, the water accountant, the
The trouble with eˆciency savings water available for aquifer recharge. productivity gains are unlikely to exceed
Almost all China’s (and others’) attempts Such discoveries increase the attractive- 10%. Increases in biomass‹total vegetative
at using groundwater more eˆciently so ness of demand management, and that is matter‹are matched almost proportion-
far have foundered on a failure to grasp being tried in China as well as in Andhra ately by increases in transpiration, unless
these facts. The water Œsaved by sprin- Pradesh. In a project that covers several humidity or nutrients are changed or the
klers, lined canals and other forms of seep- parts of arid and semi-arid China‹Beijing, plant is modi†ed genetically. But so far, he
age control has simply been used to ex- Hebei, Qingdao and Shenyang, as well as notes, Œthe fundamental relationship be-
pand the area under irrigation. Over the the Hai basin and the smaller Turpan ba- tween biomass and transpiration has not
past 30 years this has gone up by 8m hect- sin‹the World Bank has been promoting been changed. 7

The ups and downs of dams


Small projects often give better returns

T HE trouble with water is that it is all


politics, no economics. The costs of
poor management are large: groundwater
ceptions, notably China, †nd large projects
much more diˆcult. But at least large pro-
jects give politicians a monument to boast
of need and helped make rulers like the ni-
zams of Hyderabad some of the richest
men in the world. Now they are often
depletion takes 2.1% o… Jordan’s GDP; wa- about. Small projects‹weirs and wells and silted up, polluted with pesticides, metals
ter pollution and scarcity knock 2.3% o… waterworks‹have no allure for big-head- and phosphorus, or built on. In Kenya, by
China’s; 11% of Kenya’s was lost to ‡ooding ed politicians. contrast, small dams are coming into fash-
in 1997-98, and 16% to drought in the next That is a pity. A small dam is relatively ion. Rainwater is channelled into sand
two years. Rich countries build sewers, cheap to construct: modest reservoirs catchments, which serve both to †lter it
drains, dams, reservoirs, ‡ood defences, ir- known in India as tanks used to be built and to protect it from evaporation. Some
rigation canals and barrages to avoid such and maintained by local villagers. For a goes into nearby soil, for crops, some into
problems. Poor countries, with some ex- millennium they provided water in times groundwater from which it can later be re- 1
The Economist May 22nd 2010 A special report on water 11

few of the 200 or so large dams built in the small ponds, dams and suchlike. But India,
past †ve years, but that is mainly because says Mr Thakkar, is still obsessed with big
dam-builders‹of which China is much the projects like the Bhakhra dam that the
biggest‹do not care for the bank’s time- country’s †rst prime minister, Jawaharlal
and money-consuming regulations, de- Nehru, saw as one of the Œtemples of Indi-
signed to ensure decent technical, social an modernity. Only when the small tem-
and environmental standards. Their strict- ples can no longer provide solutions does
ness partly re‡ects greater knowledge he see a need for big ones.
about the consequences of building dams, Not all the big temples are dams. India
partly the related political controversies of has a dormant but not dead $120 billion
the 1980s. Even so, the bank was involved scheme to bring Œsurplus water from
in 101 dam and hydro projects in 2007, up north to south by linking up the country’s
from 89 in 1997 and 76 in 2003; and it ap- main rivers. China has its south-north
proved over $800m in hydro lending in equivalent, which, if it comes to pass, may
2008, up from $250m in 2002. involve spending $62 billion and shifting
The politician’s delight Suspicions of big dams still run high‹ 250,000 people. Spain had its Ebro
and with some reason. Mr Thakkar, scruti- scheme, involving 830km of waterways,
2 covered. In Niger a 15-year project involv- neer of the Indian water scene, says that al- now abandoned, though some Spaniards
ing dams and reclamation has restored though the installed capacity of India’s hy- remain wistful. Each of these has, or had,
nearly 20,000 hectares of unproductive dro projects increased at a compound rate beguiling attractions, but vast costs.
land to forestry or agricultural use. of 4.4% a year between 1991 and 2005, the
Everyone loves projects like these, es- amount of energy generated actually fell. Big can also be beautiful
pecially if they can be given a romantic Some of the projects, poorly sited or poorly Dams and reservoirs certainly need con-
name like water harvesting. Some, per- designed, were doomed to be uneconomic stant repairs and careful maintenance and
haps, may simply be intercepting water for from the start. Others have been badly do not always get them, usually because
one user that would otherwise have gone maintained or have simply silted up. But the necessary institutions are not in place.
to another, but almost every country could though 89% of the country’s hydro projects But when they are, a well-sited dam or em-
reduce its evaporation losses by capturing operate below design capacity, the build- bankment can transform lives for the bet-
water and delivering it more e…ectively to ing continues wastefully apace. ter. In the late 1970s John Briscoe, an old
the farmer, bather, drinker or manufactur- Mr Thakkar argues that small projects water hand at the World Bank who is now
er‹and then, ideally, using it again. The o…er much better returns, even for the cru- at Harvard, spent a year in a Bangladeshi
harder question is whether that is enough. cial task of re†lling aquifers by capturing village and predicted terrible conse-
Many believe it is not. Throughout his- monsoon rainfall. He points to the success quences if a proposed ‡ood-control and ir-
tory, man has made e…orts to control wa- of micro-irrigation in semi-arid Gujarat, rigation scheme were to go ahead. It did,
ter, divert it by means of canals, carry it via whose agriculture has grown at an average but on his return 22 years later he found the
aqueducts, store it in reservoirs, harness it of 9.6% a year since the turn of the century, new embankment had vastly improved
with water wheels and so on. The costs of partly thanks to the creation of 500,000 every aspect of the villagers’ lives. He be- 1
these endeavours have been huge: valleys
‡ooded, villages and habitats destroyed,
wetlands drained and inland seas reduced
to mere puddles. But the bene†ts have also
been enormous.
The Aswan high dam, for example, is of-
ten cited as a cautionary example, a quix-
otic construction that now reduces the
mighty Nile to a dribble before it trickles to
the sea, leaving behind an explosion of
water hyacinth, outbreaks of bilharzia,
polluted irrigation channels and a
build-up of sediment inland that would
otherwise compensate for coastal erosion
from Egypt to Lebanon. Yet, according to
the World Bank, it has provided a bulwark
against ‡ooding for buildings and crops, a
huge expansion of farming and Nile navi-
gation (lots of tourism) and enough elec-
tricity for the whole of Egypt‹all of which
amounts to the equivalent each year of 2%
of GDP in net bene†ts.
So would the World Bank today lend
money for an Aswan dam if it did not al-
ready exist? The bank has been involved in Overdammed Colorado
12 A special report on water The Economist May 22nd 2010

2 came an advocate of large projects. in near synch with their rainfall, which va- more from climate change than other con-
In the rich world these are now largely ries wildly from year to year. If they had tinents. As it is, it contains 35 of the 45 most
unnecessary; the damage has been done more storage, they could use it to get Œwater-stressed countries.
and the bene†ts are being reaped. South- through the country’s frequent droughts, Hydro generation uses a known and
ern California is an example, a region that but their man-made storage amounts to tested technology that neither adds di-
gets all its water expensively from either only 30 cubic metres per person, com- rectly to greenhouse gases nor produces
the north of the state or the Colorado, a riv- pared with 6,000 in the United States. Ethi- nuclear waste. Last month the World Bank
er so dammed and drained that it dies long opia’s electricity consumption per person announced a controversial $3.75 billion
before it reaches its delta‹7,500 square ki- is among the lowest in the world, whereas loan for a coal-†red plant in South Africa.
lometres of wetlands formerly crammed its potential for hydro power is one of the Some hydro projects might be no more un-
with wildlife, now invaded by the salty Pa- highest. Indeed, electricity could be a valu- popular. Congo’s Inga dams, for example,
ci†c. But Hollywood survives, and in it able export. have the potential to provide the equiva-
such environmentalists as James Camer- Africa as a whole stands to bene†t from lent of South Africa’s existing capacity.
on, the director of ŒAvatar and new cham- more hydro projects, large and small. Cli- The South African authorities would be
pion of the Amazonian opponents of the mate change seems likely to shorten the pleased to have it today. Their †ngers are
planned Belo Monte dam in Brazil. rainy seasons and intensify variability, crossed that the hydro power from Mo-
Many Ethiopians would be happy to making storage even more important. zambique will not cut out during the foot-
have a few dams. Their GDP rises and falls Moreover, Africa seems likely to su…er ball World Cup next month. 7

Trade and conserve


How to make tight supplies go further

I F MOST governments are bad at making


wise investment decisions about water,
that is largely because they are bad at eval-
pricing, o…ers the best hope.
In the long run it is hard to see sustain-
able arrangements that do not involve
water centrally among di…erent sectors,
and controls use within sectors by permits
and pricing. Rights provide quotas, but Is-
uating the costs and bene†ts, and that in property rights. These can be traded be- raeli farmers do not want to see them
turn is at least partly because they †nd it tween willing buyers and willing sellers to traded‹and the water table drops.
hard to price water. Many †nd it hard even reallocate water from low-value to high- Above all, it is diˆcult to include small
to measure. Yet you cannot manage what value uses, and they have proved their groundwater-users in a tradable-rights
you cannot measure. worth in the American West, Chile and scheme. Nebraska neglects small users, as
No country uses water pricing to South Africa. Their most fashionable ex- does Australia. But to do so in India would
achieve a balance between supply and de- emplar is the Murray-Darling basin in Aus- exclude 95% of the people pumping water.
mand, but countries with sustainable sys- tralia, where they have enabled farmers to This reinforces the argument for collabora-
tems all use water rights of some kind that withstand a fearsome drought without tive self-policing of withdrawals by farm-
involve the allocation of supply by vol- much impact on agricultural production. ers themselves.
ume. In a country such as India, which has Yet water rights do not provide an easy
over 20m well-users, even the registration or quick †x to water shortages. For a start, Comparative advantage
of wells would be a long and diˆcult task, they usually require tested institutions and Plainly, however, that is not going to hap-
as the World Bank points out, never mind the ability to ensure fair trading that may pen fast, so other solutions are needed.
measuring the water drawn from each of take years to establish. Then the scheme, One would be trade. Just as an eˆcient lo-
them. Moreover, introducing a system in and particularly the assignment of rights, cal trading system should direct water to
which price re‡ected some sort of cost must be carefully designed. Experience in high-value uses, so an eˆcient internation-
would often be politically impossible ex- Australia and Chile shows this can be diˆ- al one should encourage the manufacture
cept over time. cult; indeed, the Organisation for Eco- of water-heavy products in wet countries
Dr Perry, the irrigation economist, says nomic Co-operation and Development and their export to drier ones.
water is typically priced at 10-50% of the says there is now widespread recognition It is not, of course, instantly obvious
costs of operating and maintaining the sys- that the Murray-Darling system is over- that some products are lighter or heavier
tem, and that in turn is only 10-50% of what allocated. Spain, which after 20 years has than others in terms of the water embed-
water is worth in terms of agricultural pro- registered less than a quarter of its ground- ded in them, yet the amount of this Œvirtu-
ductivity. So to bring supply and demand water structures, shows that this can take a al water can be calculated and a water
into equilibrium the price would have to long time. And Yemen shows that trading Œfootprint sketched for almost any pro-
rise by 4-100 times. In most countries that in the absence of proper regulation can ac- duct, person, industry or country.
would spell electoral suicide, or revolu- tually add to groundwater depletion, as On the back of the business card hand-
tion. That is why community management has happened around the city of Ta’iz. ed out by Tony Allan, the father of the con-
of the Andhra Pradesh or Chinese kind, Lastly, farmers may be resistant to tradable cept, are the virtual-water values of va-
which may involve a mix of instruments rights. Even Israel, hyper-conservation- rious products: 70 litres for an apple, 1,000
including regulation, property rights and conscious in water matters, still allocates for a litre of milk, 11,000 for a kilo of cotton, 1
The Economist May 22nd 2010 A special report on water 13

2 and so on. The value for a copy of The Econ-


omist is not included, but it has been calcu-
lated by the Green Press Initiative at about
11½ litres. That is little more than the 10 litres
Mr Allan has for a single sheet of A4 paper,
which suggests the exercise is inexact.
It can also be misleading. The oft-
quoted †gures of 2,400 litres for a ham-
burger and 15,500 for a kilo of beef lead to
the conclusion that eating cows must be
unconscionable. Yet some cows valued
primarily for their milk may still end up on
a plate, and others may be well suited to
graze on grassland that would be useless
for growing cash crops. In Africa a kilo of
beef can be produced with as little as 146 li-
tres of water. Moreover, virtual-water con- The price is not right
tent will vary according to climate and ag-
ricultural practice. SABMiller uses 45 litres and importers would pay a price that re- transpiration in the American Midwest
of water to make a litre of beer in the Czech ‡ected all the costs. But water is every- and then exported to the Middle East.
Republic, but 155 litres in South Africa. In where hugely subsidised, and protection- Unfortunately, Henry Kissinger once
other words, the merit of virtual water is ism often stops an eˆcient allocation of raised the thought that America might use
not to give precise †gures but to alert peo- resources. State laws in America, for in- its food aid as a weapon. More recently,
ple that they might be better o… growing stance, usually restrict foreign investment when food prices shot up in 2008, some
di…erent crops, or moving their manufac- in agricultural land. The upshot, at its most countries started to impose export bans or
turing to another country. absurd, has been Saudi Arabia’s decision taxes, leading importers to hanker for self-
Or trading. If the virtual water in traded to use its †nite fossil fuel and fossil water to suˆciency. Virtual water seems destined
goods were properly valued and priced, irrigate the desert for wheat that could be to remain an indicator of distorted alloca-
exporters would be fully compensated grown with less energy and less evapo- tion for some time to come. 7

To the last drop


How to avoid water wars

S INCE men †ght over land and oil and


plenty of other things, it would be odd if
they did not also †ght over a commodity as
grave. One example is the competition for
water in Bharatpur, a district of the Indian
state of Rajasthan, which has led local
Danjiangkou dam.
Similar disgruntlement can be seen in
India, where over 40 tribunals and other
precious and scarce as water. And they do. farmers to cut o… water supplies to the Ke- panels have been set up to deal with dis-
The Paci†c Institute in California has oladeo national park. This was, until a few putes, mostly without success. The bone of
drawn up a list of con‡icts in which water years ago, a wonderful wetland, teeming contention is often a river, such as the Cau-
has played a part. It starts with a legendary, with waders and wildfowl. Thousands of very, whose waters must be shared by sev-
Noah-and-the-‡ood-like episode about rare birds would winter there, endangered eral states. Strikes and violent protests are
3000BC in which the Sumerian god Ea Siberian cranes among them. Now it is a common. Indians, however, have yet to
punished the Earth with a storm, and ends, cattle pasture. reach the levels of outrage that led Arizona
202 incidents later, with clashes in Mum- China abounds with instances of wa- to call out its National Guard in 1935 and
bai prompted by water rationing last year. ter-induced disputation. The people of He- station militia units on its border with Cali-
Pundits delight in predicting the outbreak bei province, which surrounds Beijing, are fornia in protest at diversions from the Col-
of water wars, and certainly water has far from happy that their water is now tak- orado river. To this day, American states re-
sometimes been involved in military en to supply the capital in a canal that will gard each other with suspicion where
rows. But so far there have been no true eventually form part of the South-North water is concerned. Indian states are equal-
water wars. Water-Transfer Project. So are others a…ect- ly mistrustful, often refusing to share such
Could that change as populations grow, ed by that grandiose scheme. Dai Qing, an water information as they have lest it be
climates change and water becomes ever investigative journalist who is an outspo- used to their disadvantage.
scarcer? Since 61 of the 203 incidents have ken critic of the Three Gorges dam and oth- Violent incidents over wells and
taken place in the past ten years, a trend er Chinese water projects, draws attention, springs take place periodically in Yemen,
might seem to be in the making‹especially for example, to the complaints of those liv- and the long-running civil war in Darfur is
as some recent water disputes fail to make ing along the Han river, who will lose wa- at least partly attributable to the chronic
the list even though their results look ter to the huge reservoir formed by the scarcity of water in western Sudan. That is 1
14 A special report on water The Economist May 22nd 2010

2 probably the nearest thing to a real water Pakistani wars in 1965, 1971 and 1999, it is make it possible to build dams that were
war being fought today, and may perhaps usually cited as a notable example of dur- not foreseen when the deal was signed.
be a portent of others to come. If so, they ability in adversity, but it is now threat- Third, Pakistan badly needs more reser-
will be dangerous, because so many water ened by three developments. voirs. Storage is essential to provide sup-
disagreements are not internal but interna- First, India proposes to build a water- plies in winter (two-†fths of the Indus’s
tional a…airs. diversion scheme in Indian Kashmir that ‡ow comes from the summer melting of
would take water from the Kishanganga glaciers) but Pakistan’s two big dams are
Arid disputes river to the Jhelum river before it could silting up. It would like to build a new one
The world has already had a taste of some. reach Pakistani Kashmir. Second, India, in Pakistani Kashmir, but India has object-
The six-day war in the Middle East in 1967, which already has more than 20 hydro ed, and the money is not forthcoming.
for example, was partly prompted by Jor- projects on the three western rivers allocat- Another example, the Nile, looks more
dan’s proposal to divert the Jordan river, ed to Pakistan in its part of Kashmir, is now worrying but is perhaps more hopeful.
and water remains a divisive issue be- building at least another ten and has more The Blue Nile rises in Lake Tana in the Ethi-
tween Israel and its neighbours to this day. planned. Each of these conforms to the let- opian highlands, the White Nile in Lake
Israel extracts about 65% of the upper Jor- ter of the treaty, since it does not involve Victoria in Uganda (into which ‡ow rivers
dan, leaving the occupied West Bank de- storage but merely run-of-the-river dams, from Rwanda and Tanzania). The two
pendent on a brackish trickle and a moun- in which water is returned downstream Niles meet in Sudan and ‡ow through
tain aquifer, access to which Israel also after it has been used to generate power. Egypt, which gets almost no water from
controls. In 2004 the average Israeli had a However, Pakistan is worried about the anywhere else. For years most of the terri-
daily allowance of 290 litres of domestic cumulative e…ects. When, in 2005, it com- tories that now form the riparian countries
water, the average Palestinian 70. plained about another Indian hydro pro- were under the direct or indirect control of
Turkey’s South-Eastern Anatolia Pro- ject, the dispute went to arbitration. That Britain, which was †xated on Egypt. Brit-
ject, intended to double the country’s irri- resulted in a ruling broadly favourable to ain stopped any development upstream
gated farmland, involves the building of a India which left Pakistan unhappy. It feels that would reduce the ‡ow of water to
series of dams on the Tigris and Euphrates that the spirit of the agreement has been Egypt and, in 1929, allotted 96% of the wa-
rivers; one of them, the Ataturk dam, †n- breached and the treaty needs revision, ter ‡owing north from Sudan to the Egyp-
ished in 1990, ranks among the biggest in partly because advances in technology tians and only 4% to the Sudanese.
the world. Iraq and Syria downstream are Thirty years later Gamal Abdel Nasser
dismayed. Similarly, Uzbekistan views had to make a new treaty with Sudan in or-
with alarm Tajikistan’s plan to go ahead der to build the Aswan high dam. It would
with an old Soviet project to build a huge have made more sense to build a dam in
barrage across the River Vakhsh. This, the the Ethiopian mountains: not only would
Rogun dam, will be the highest in the the ‡ow have then been easier to control
world, at least for a while, and was expect- but it would also have been cheaper and
ed in 2008 to cost about $2.2 billion, or 43% environmentally less damaging‹and with
of the country’s national income. The dam less evaporation. But demagogues like
will, it is hoped, generate enough power their own dams. The waters were split 75%
for all Tajikistan’s needs and have plenty to Egypt and 25% to Sudan.
over to export as far a†eld as Afghanistan The other riparian states have been un-
and Pakistan. But since it may take 18 years happy ever since, Kenya and Ethiopia par-
to †ll the dam (compared with 18 days, in ticularly so, and all e…orts to draw up a
principle, for China’s Three Gorges), there new treaty, fairer to all, have failed. They
may be no water left over, or at any rate not have not, however, failed to achieve any-
enough for Uzbekistan’s cotton-growers. thing. On the contrary, for the past 11 years
International river basins extend across the ten riparians have been amicably
the borders of 145 countries, and some riv- meeting in an organisation called the Nile
ers ‡ow through several countries. The Basin Initiative, and since 2001 have had a
Congo, Niger, Nile, Rhine and Zambezi are secretariat that deals with technical mat-
each shared among 9-11 countries, the Da- ters and holds ministerial gatherings.
nube among 19. Adding to the complica- In this group, irrigation and other pro-
tions is the fact that some countries, espe- jects are agreed on, many with World Bank
cially in Africa, rely on several rivers; 22, for support. Ethiopia is building three dams,
instance, rise in Guinea. And about 280 two of them large and one controversial,
aquifers also cross borders. Yet a multiplic- for environmental reasons; and Egypt will
ity of countries, though it makes river man- take some of the electricity generated, via
agement complicated, does not necessar- Sudan. In this way will two old antagonists
ily add to the intractability of a dispute. yoke themselves together with water, the
One arrangement now under strain is very commodity that has so long driven
the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty between In- them apart. No one would say that a new
dia and Pakistan. This agreement was the agreement among all the interested parties
basis for the division of rivers after India’s is imminent, but, after more than 100 trips
partition in 1947. Having withstood Indo- Too quiet ‡ows the Mekong to Egypt and Ethiopia to help promote har- 1
The Economist May 22nd 2010 A special report on water 15

2 mony, Mr Grey, World Banker turned Ox- the drop in the Mekong seems under con- The co-operative approach has also
ford professor, is hopeful. He believes that, trol. At a meeting of the Mekong River been successful elsewhere. Thailand, for
in time, Ethiopia could be an exporter of Commission last month‹all the riparian instance, has helped pay for a hydro
electricity to Europe. states except China and Myanmar are scheme in Laos in return for power; South
A third neuralgic dispute concerns the members‹China sent a vice-minister of Africa has done the same with Lesotho, in
Mekong, one of at least eight rivers that rise foreign a…airs, who was fairly forthcoming return for drinking water in its industrial
on the Tibetan plateau, fed partly by melt- about hydrological data. This was some- province of Gauteng; and, in the Syr Darya
ing glaciers in Tibet. The Mekong then runs thing of a breakthrough, even if he did not grouping, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan
through China’s Yunnan province, Myan- o…er compensation to †shermen. The compensate Kyrgyzstan in return for sup-
mar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Viet- neighbours’ resentment has not disap- plies of excess power.
nam. Recently, though, it has been running peared, and China will not stop building The way such organisations work,
thinly. Sandbanks have appeared, naviga- dams. But a water war seems unlikely. when they work, is to look for the bene†ts
tion has slowed, †shermen complain of The most hopeful development is the that can be gained from organising water
derisory catches, and the 60m people success of other river-basin organisations better, and then to share them. An arrange-
whose livelihoods directly or indirectly like the Nile and the Mekong groups. Such ment can usually, though not always, be
depend on the river are worried. The worst out†ts now exist for various rivers, includ- found that bene†ts each state. It may be
drought in southern China for 50 years is ing the Danube, the Niger, the Okavango, hard to achieve in a group that includes a
partly, perhaps mainly, to blame, but the the Red, the Sava and so on. In the Senegal dominant member, such as Egypt. And it
downstream users also blame the Chinese river group, Mali, Senegal, Guinea and will also be more diˆcult in groups that
government, and in particular the three Mauritania have agreed to disagree about bring together oˆcials appointed political-
dams it has built and its blasting of rapids who is entitled to how much water, and in- ly rather than competitively, on their tech-
to ease navigation. stead concentrate on sharing out various nical quali†cations. In the case of the In-
China has plans for more dams. It is hy- projects, so that a dam may go to one but dus the two sides’ representatives get
peractive in the world of water, not only at the electricity generated, or a part of it, to along well. The reason the treaty is under
home but abroad‹building dams in Africa another. This has worked so well that the strain is that it starts with the water and
and Pakistan, looking for land in Mozam- president of the group has established con- then tries to divide it equitably. The secret
bique and the Philippines, diverting rivers siderable authority, enough to enable him is to look for bene†ts and then try to share
for its own purposes. Neighbouring states, to broker unrelated agreements among them. If that is done, water can bring com-
notably India, are uneasy. Yet the row over squabbling tribesmen. petitors together. 7

A glass half empty


It won’t †ll up without lots of changes on the ground‹and much greater restraint by users

C AN the world solve its water pro-


blems? There is no reason in logic,
physics or hydrogeology why it should not
tively. To make progress on this front re-
quires education, not least of politicians.
Then policies must be drawn up and im-
For their part, smallholders in many
places will have to reconcile themselves to
selling their land to allow the creation of
be able to do so. Most of the obstacles are plemented. All this requires money‹for larger, more eˆcient farms. Some farmers
political, although some are cultural, and meters, pipes, sewers, satellites, irrigation, must grow more high-value, not-too-
none is helped by water’s astonishing abil- low-‡ow taps and umpteen other things. thirsty crops like nuts or strawberries or
ity to repel or defy economic analysis. Some policies apparently unconnected blueberries. And consumers will have to
Many of the small solutions are to water must change too. Trade and in- accept genetically modi†ed varieties.
known. Some involve physical remedies. vestment must be unfettered if water- Personal habits, too, will have to
Flood protection demands embankments, short countries are to be encouraged to im- change. Meat-eaters may have to hold back
or dams, or protected ‡ood plains, or port water-heavy goods and services, rath- on hamburgers and learn to love soya.
houses that rise and fall with the waters. er than relying on their own production. Golfers may have to take up basketball.
Short rainy seasons demand water storage, Using crops like sugarbeet to make bio- The horizontally mobile may have to stop
ideally in places where evaporation is low. fuels in dry regions must be abandoned. washing their cars. And everyone will
Human health demands clean water, and Governments must overcome their love of have to become accustomed to paying
perhaps mosquito nets, and soap. Flour- secrecy and reveal all the information they more for food. At present the only water
ishing ecosystems require pollution con- have about river ‡ows, water tables, costs usually passed on to consumers con-
trol. And so on. weather forecasts, likely ‡oods. They must cern transport or treatment. The scarcity of
Some of the remedies require changes also look to non-water policies to solve water is seldom re‡ected in its price, or in
in behaviour, and policies to bring them water problems. For example, building a that of the farm products that consume so
about. If people are to use water with more road passable in all weather all year round much of it. That cannot go on for long.
care, they must know how much they to let farmers get their produce to market None of these changes will necessarily
draw and what it costs. They must also will enable them to move from subsis- be easy to achieve. Most cost money, and
know how to use it, and reuse it, produc- tence to commercial agriculture. politicians are often reluctant to †nd it. The 1
16 A special report on water The Economist May 22nd 2010

tween the measures that could be adopted


cheaply in a country like India and those
that would be more expensive, some of
them vastly more. Yet it hardly constitutes
the discovery of an aqueous elixir.
The diˆcult problem that still awaits an
answer is how to get higher yields from
food crops without a commensurate rise in
the loss of water through evapotranspira-
tion. This is the crucial issue if water is to
be used sustainably by farmers, the biggest
consumers in the thirstiest activity in the
most populous parts of the world. Plenty
of gains can be made by adopting no-till
farming, drip irrigation, genetically modi-
†ed crops and so on, but they all come to
But transpiration is harder to deal with than perspiration an end after a while, leaving any gain in
yields matched by gains in ET. No one has
2 market would help, if it were allowed to. sequences of climate change provide yet found a convincing way of producing
But it will take decades to introduce a sys- enough to be gloomy about. The wise con- dramatically more food with less water.
tem of tradable water rights, let alone mar- clusion to be drawn may be that all plan- Genetic modi†cation can help by produc-
ket pricing, in most poor countries. ning should allow for greater uncertainty, ing drought-resistant breeds, but not, it
Meanwhile, investment is badly need- and probably also greater variability, so ev- seems, by altering the fundamentals of
ed almost everywhere. In the developed ery plan will need to have a greater degree transpiration.
markets of the United States, where water of resilience built into it than in the past. Unless some breakthrough occurs in
rights are traded, prices have been rising getting the salt out of sea water, the best
fast. But since water in most places is usual- The art of the possible hope of a happy marriage between supply
ly priced so low, if at all, the revenue gener- But, setting aside the possibility of a run- and demand comes from much greater re-
ated is seldom enough to maintain or re- away greenhouse e…ect, would the mea- straint among water-users. This is what the
place even existing infrastructure. Even in sures outlined above be enough to bring farmers of Andhra Pradesh and parts of
America the bills will be dauntingly large. supply and demand for water harmoni- China are already doing. It is also what
Analysts at Booz Allen Hamilton tried in ously into balance by 2050, when the they, and many others, will be forced into
2007 to estimate how much investment world’s population is presumed to stop if they do not do it of their own accord‹un-
would be needed in water infrastructure to growing? The McKinsey report published less, that is, they leave the land altogether.
modernise obsolescent systems and meet last year by the 2030 Water Resources For, one way or another, supply and de-
expanding demand between 2005 and Group believes that such an outcome is in- mand will †nd an equilibrium. The great-
2030. Their †gure for the United States and deed possible, and at Œreasonable cost, if est chance of it being a stable and fairly
Canada was $6.5 trillion. For the world as a the right actions were taken. Adopting an harmonious one is the spread of demo-
whole, they reckoned $22.6 trillion. economic approach, the report develops cratic self-management among informed
Such calculations are made more diˆ- what it calls a water availability cost curve. farmers. That would not solve all water
cult by the uncertainty surrounding cli- This has the merit of distinguishing be- problems, but it would solve the biggest. 7
mate change. The Intergovernmental Pan-
el on Climate Change said in 2008 that
O…er to readers Future special reports
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Few people have dwelt on the worst The Rights and Syndication Department
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