water wars

Sitka, Alaska, is home to one of the world’s most spectacular lakes named Blue Lake for its deep blue hues. It holds trillions of gallons of water so pure it requires no treatment. The city’s tiny population—fewer than 10,000 people spread across 5,000 square miles—makes this an embarrassment of riches. If all goes according to plan, 80 million gallons of Blue Lake water will be siphoned into the kind of tankers normally reserved for oil—and shipped to a bulk bottling facility near Mumbai. From there it will be dispersed among several drought-plagued cities throughout the Middle East. True Alaska Bottling has purchased the rights to transfer 3 billion gallons of water a year from Sitka’s bountiful reserves.

Goldman Sachs estimates that global water consumption is doubling every 20 years, and the United Nations expects demand to outstrip supply by more than 30 percent come 2040. According to a 2009 report by the World Bank, private investment in the water industry is set to double in the next five years; the water-supply market alone will increase by 20 percent. Dwindling water supplies in Asia are hurting rice production causing widespread food security concern. As much as 30 percent of the world's fresh water is used to irrigate rice.Rice is a key food source for more than half of the people in the world. Asia grows 90 percent of the world's rice.

A commodity is sold to the highest bidder, not the customer with the most compelling moral claim or need. As the crisis worsens, companies like True Alaska that own the rights to vast stores of water (and have the capacity to move it in bulk) won’t necessarily weigh the needs of wealthy water-guzzling companies like Coca-Cola or Nestlé against those of water-starved communities in Phoenix or Ghana; privately owned water utilities will charge what the market can bear, and spend as little as they can get away with on maintenance and environmental protection. With energy, or food, customers have options: they can switch from oil to natural gas, or eat more chicken and less beef. There is no substitute for water. No matter what water costs, we still need it to survive. So beyond trimming non-essential uses like lawn maintenance, car washing, and swimming pools, consumers really can’t reduce water consumption in proportion to rate increases.

“Water has been a public resource under public domain for more than 2,000 years,” says James Olson, an attorney who specializes in water rights. “Ceding it to private entities feels both morally wrong and dangerous...Markets don’t care about the environment.” Olson added “And they don’t care about human rights. They care about profit.”

In July , the UN general assembly declared that access to clean water and sanitation is a human right. Every day 2,000 African children die from diarrhoea.
But the African Development Bank argues that it is a "misconception that rights entitle people to free water; instead, water and sanitation should be clean, accessible and affordable for all. People are expected to contribute financially or otherwise to the extent that they can do so" and urging governments and water sector professionals to make their countries and their programmes more attractive to other investors. For them the issue is getting the prices right, not about whether or not a price should be charged.

"Those who cannot afford to pay for water in advance from communal meters or have been cut off from services for not paying rising water bills are forced to seek sources in polluted puddles, rivers and canals that carry disease," reported the New York Times upon the South African experience with the privatisation of water services. In 2000, a cholera epidemic broke out in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province, infecting some 120,000 people and claiming the lives of 265. Local authorities in the province had previously set up a system of prepaid water meters to collect user fees. But the institution of the meters and the fees meant that many went elsewhere in search of water, with tragic results. "Privatisation is a new kind of apartheid," explained Richard Maholo, leader of the South African Crisis Water Committee. "Apartheid separated whites from blacks. Privatisation separates the rich from the poor."

Russian entrepreneurs want to sell Siberian water to China; Canadian and American ones are vying to sell Canadian water to the Southwestern U.S. So far, such bulk transfers have been impeded by the high cost of tanker ships. Now, thanks to the global recession, the tankers’ rates have dropped significantly.
The world will find itself divided along a new set of boundaries: water haves on one side, water have-nots on the other. The winners (Canada, Alaska, Russia) and losers (India, Syria, Jordan) will be different from those of the oil conflicts of the 20th century, but the bottom line will be much the same: countries that have the means to exploit large reserves will prosper. The rest will be left to fight over ever-shrinking reserves. Some will go to war. In fact, if there’s one thing water has in common with oil, it’s that people will go to war over it. Already, Pakistan has accused India of diverting too much water from rivers running off the Himalayas; India, in turn, is complaining that China’s colossal diversion of rivers and aquifers near the countries’ shared border will deprive it of its fair share; and Jordan and Syria are bickering over access to flows from a dam the two countries built together. In the Arab regions limited resources mean water in the region plays a strategic role in national security, foreign policy and domestic stability. Agriculture is a major drain on renewable water supplies because of irrigation and that could lead to states going to war over water resources in a region where sectarian and ethnic conflict as well as intrastate tensions are rife. Yemen, the Arab world's poorest state is expected to run out of water in the next few years.

Mark Twain decreed "whisky is for drinking, water is for fighting over".