by

Ismail Serageldin

Vice President, Environmentally Sustainable Development

The World Bank

I am honored to have the privilege of sharing my thoughts on water, one of nature’s precious gifts to humankind. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev, President, Green Cross International, and Mr. Claude Haegi, State Councillor, Geneva, for hosting this important meeting.

Water is essential for life, a fact that is frequently forgotten given how widely it is misused. Water is scarce, a fact which too is frequently forgotten given humanity’s misplaced perceptions about its abundance. Therefore, today I would like to begin by first answering a fundamental question: how much water does the world have?

Our planet, the blue planet, is covered with water. But it is almost all (97.5% of it) salt water. Of the remaining 2.5% which is fresh water, so essential for our lives, about two thirds is locked in glaciers and ice caps. The remaining one third (of the 2.5%) is what is in the solar-powered hydrological cycle. It amounts to some 110,300 cubic kms. Of that amount, about 2/3 is "lost" to evapotranspiration, and the remaining third, about 40,700 cubic kms is "runoff" potentially accessible to humans. Of that amount, about 20% is found in areas that are too remote for human use at present, leaving some 32,900 cubic kms of geographically accessible runoff.

We are still not done. About 3/4 of that amount is in the form of floods and only one quarter, or about 8,300 cubic kms is sustainably available to humans. To that amount, major efforts to control floods adds another 4,200 cubic kms, making for a total of 12,500 cubic kms.

Of this amount, made possible by the collaboration of nature and people, humans actually use about 35% (4,430 cubic kms) and another 19% is used "in-stream" to dilute pollution, sustain fisheries, etc. Thus we are using about half of all the 12,500 cubic kms currently available.

Furthermore, these figures do not address the fact that this amount is remarkably inequitably distributed around the planet.

Asia with 60% of the world’s population has access to only 36% of the water, while South America with 6% of the population has 26% of the global supply. Australia, with less than 1% of the population has about 5% of the water, and the Middle East and North Africa with 5% of the population has less than 1% of the water. At the country level, the inequalities are even greater: A citizen in North America has over 10,000 cubic meters/year, whereas one in Egypt has to get by on about one tenth of that (1,100 cubic meters/year), and in Jordan, it is less than a quarter of the Egyptian figure: 260 cubic meters/person/year.

All in all, the renewable supply available to humans is less than one percent of one percent of the total water available on the planet: 0.008% to be exact!

So, as I said at the outset, water, fresh water, is very much a scarce and precious commodity that we must learn to manage and protect.

That, regretfully, is not what we are doing. The parched parts of the world are rapidly depleting their underground water in a manner that is totally unsustainable. In parts of Syria, for example, due to excessive withdrawals that far exceed the aquifer’s recharge rate, the water table has been dropping by about one meter a year for the last 30 years! Parts of India and Africa are also witnessing similar phenomena.

Against this background of scarcity, it is not surprising that a ratcheting effect is occurring on two fronts.

First, population growth is inexorably reducing the available supplies on a per capita basis. Pressure on water supplies due to population growth is going to be enormous, and it will come mostly in the poorer, less well-endowed regions of the world. Even in China, where population is not growing as fast as it is in South Asia or Africa, it is still expected to stabilize at 1.5 or 1.6 billion. That is an increase of 300-400 million persons on the same land and the same water resources that exist today. In India, the situation will be worse, for population stabilization is projected to be further out than in China. The increment of increase in the urban population in India over the next generation will be larger than twice the current populations of France, UK and Germany combined! Similar pressures are going to be felt in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and it is expected that Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) will also feel differential water shortages in many parts of the continent.

Furthermore, the growth in income that is projected means that per capita consumption of food will increase. That is bound to magnify the increase in the amount of water we will need for agricultural purposes. Since 1940, global water withdrawals have risen by an average of 2.5 per cent annually – faster than the rate of population growth.

Second, is pollution. As we transform our economies, there is a tendency to use more water for productive activities, and to pollute a lot more. Water has many qualities, one of which is that it helps wash things away. Thus we have a tendency to use it for that purpose, frequently not realizing that we are polluting precious water that may no longer be available for municipal, or agricultural, or even industrial use as a result. Pollution is the other side of the quantity/quality link in water management issues. The need is for fresh usable water, and that means that the quality and cleanliness of the water is essential. Pollution reduces the available supply, in addition to its other deleterious effects.

We can invest in developing new technologies. Cheap desalination would be an obvious answer. But what if it does not come in time? What if the option of cheap fresh water from the oceans were to remain tantalizingly beyond our reach over the next couple of decades, when the stakes for survival in many parts of the world would have become very acute? Surely, while research is needed and must be supported, it would be irresponsible to pin our hopes on dramatic breakthroughs in this one area. It makes better sense to analyze our current usage and change our behavior, while still supporting research.

Of the many competing uses for water today, by far the largest is agriculture, accounting for almost two thirds of total withdrawals globally. In many of the Less Developed Countries (LDCs) it amounts to some 80-90%. Industry is important and is growing, nevertheless, agriculture remains the most important user of water by far. So far, we have been using water in agriculture without much attention to the effectiveness with which we use it. It generally takes 1,000 tons of water to produce a ton of grain (2,000 tons for rice).

Table 1. Global water use (millions of cubic kms)

Source: Postel, op. cit.

Yet, yields are almost always reported in terms of tons per hectare of land. It is about time that we changed that and reported yields in terms of tons per unit of water and unit of energy used. That would change a lot the way we approach agriculture in many parts of the world and would rectify many of the impressions we have about efficiency of agriculture. Thus, in a study done by the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), Aleppo, Syria, lesser water use through supplemental irrigation techniques outperformed both rainfed and irrigated agriculture. In Syria, grain yields measured in kgs/ton of water, showed a sevenfold difference between rainfed (at 0.3 kgs/ton of water) compared to supplemental irrigation (at 2.2 kgs/ton of water), while irrigated agriculture was barely twice as productive as rainfed (at 0.8 kgs/ton of water).

Table 2. Grain yields in Syria (kg/ton of water)

Yield	Type
0.3	Rainfed
0.8	Irrigated
2.2	Supplemental irrigation

Source: ICARDA

Undoubtedly there are many who would argue that we should be investing in research and development to increase the supply of fresh water, through desalination, for example. Cheap desalination would indeed be a major breakthrough, especially if it can be done in an energy efficient fashion (through renewable solar or wind energy, for example). Yet, the prices of such technology are still high today, and the underground aquifers are being drawn down faster than their recharge rate. Other actions are promising and must be pursued.

Table 3. Costs of various options to increase supply of water

Source: Postel, op. cit.

Thus desalination of brackish water, treatment and reuse of waste water for irrigation, and conservation and efficiency measures, are all viable options today. They compete favorably with development of marginal resources, not to mention the possible desalination projects that current technology can provide. Therefore, demand side management is essential to deploy along with any efforts at increasing supply.

So far we have been talking only of global balances and uses. Yet, we know that the availability of water is not only location specific, but also that the manner in which it runs, mainly through the hydrological watersheds of rivers and the underground water reservoirs, do not recognize political boundaries. It is estimated that 40% of the people of the world live off shared rivers. The sharing of the waters between nations and groups within nations is going to be as demanding as the sharing of waters between the competing uses.

Given the constellation of issues we face in the water sector, their complexity, coupled with the need to act on multiple fronts, one can ask the question: how can we manage the world’s precious and dwindling water resources? The answer lies in better balancing:

• human use vs. environmental needs
• economic concerns and ecological considerations
• regulations and incentives
• quantity and quality
• short term and long term

The response that we bring to this set of demands and objectives must be placed within a framework governed by the imperative of human solidarity. To see entire regions strangled by drought and shortages, while others reel under the onslaught of floods and monsoons, surely calls for us to reach out to the victims of both extremes. To reach out to the poor, the destitute and the vulnerable, and especially the women who carry the burden of inequity and uncertainty.

So we all agree that we must act, but how? That is the question.

Surprisingly, there is a consensus on how we should act. There is widespread agreement among all the experts on what needs to be done and how to do it. The Dublin Principles, reaffirmed at the Rio Earth Summit, and spelled out in Chapter 18 of Agenda 21, are all agreed among us. So why do we not reflect these principles in our everyday lives, why is decision-making not holistic? One can summarize a number of areas of agreement not just in principle but on the approach to action:

First is the holistic approach. The obstacle there is the fragmentation that governs the management of water. Fragmentation occurs at the international and national and regional levels, as well as the sectoral level: irrigation, water supply, hydro-power and environmental concerns. We need institutional arrangements that can help overcome this fragmentation, not to create a new centrally managed system but to bring coherence, a broader framework and a holistic approach to the individual actions taken by the different actors.

Sectoral fragmentation is inevitably the corollary of professionalism in certain sectors. It does not need to be harmful, if the top practitioners have the holistic perspective in their minds. Essential, of course, is also the need to link questions of water with the questions of land.

Second, treat water as a scarce commodity and as a basic human need. To recognize the economic value of water is a key to action on rational use and allocation. It is clearly not a trivial question, and we should all recognize that many conceptual and technical problems exist in estimating the economic value of water.

Third, is demand management. It is not enough just to seek to increase the available and usable supplies, it is essential to reduce the demand for water by enacting conservation measures, recognizing that water is a scarce resource and should be priced accordingly, thereby encouraging the adoption of water-saving technologies in agriculture and industry.

In this regard it is essential to recognize that the pollution of water, the reduction of its quality, is tantamount to reducing its availability. The quality/quantity link is insufficiently highlighted in the public discussion, and we must redouble our efforts to increase public awareness of these issues.

Fourth, instrumentation. The key natural unit that we must work on is the river basin. These watersheds seldom match political or administrative boundaries, and therefore require a special effort on our part to match the need for coherence and overcoming the fragmentation with the need to respect the existing decision-making units. The principle of subsidiarity, that decisions should be made at the lowest possible level, that has worked so well in the effective river basin management schemes from the Murray Darling Basin in Australia to the French and German experiences, gives indications of how to successfully address this issue.

The key in implementing this is also to philosophically focus on the need to economize on administrative and regulatory effort and rely as much as possible on incentives. They are more likely to produce the desired results than any amount of policing. The involvement of the local communities and civil society, in a truly participatory manner, is key to any effective implementation.

Fifth, need the contributions of all the stakeholders. There is no doubt that no single set of actors holds the key to effectively addressing the challenge of effective management of our precious water resources. Governments, both national and local obviously have a key role. The private sector, both international and national, can play a major role both as investor and as manager of utilities. Non-governmental organizations can have a major impact on addressing the issues of water, precious water, in even the most difficult of areas.

Research organizations are essential in getting the public and the decision-makers to understand the problem correctly, get the facts right and understand the means and policies to address the problem. Finally, international organizations are essential. Not only is water a truly global problem, but many parts of it transcend the boundaries of the nation state.

Economists talk of getting the prices right. I believe that it is just as important to get the roles right. That is essential so that all these actors generate the requisite synergies so that the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

Sixth: matching short- and long-term actions: The issues we are addressing will require investing in the long term as well as the short term. Behavior is learned, and we must learn to modify our behavior towards water. The investments in education are an essential part of that.

Offsetting and complementing these six themes we were challenged by the realities of population, pollution, and nature to strive for boldness and imagination. Biotechnology offers considerable promise to produce less thirsty crops and desalination could address the challenge of desertification. Realizing the full potential of all sources, and using them sustainably, will require us to go beyond conventional thinking. We must indeed do so. But we cannot allow that to turn into a search for a technological fix, a "magic bullet" that would address the needs of the future. We must rely on changing our own bad behavior now.

I believe that it is time for us to move forward vigorously with an agenda for action, that can be summarized in the following areas:

First: Engage in a learning process. We must continuously monitor and learn as we act, in order to promote a real revolution in thinking, not just a change in emphasis of existing technical activities.

Second: Tireless efforts at education and public awareness. Schools, universities, and the mass media must be the locus of this ongoing educational effort.

Third: International collaboration. With or without a convention, it is essential that increased regional and international action proceed forthwith. The proper management of shared water resources cannot wait.

Fourth: The systematic sharing of knowledge. My abiding concern is that we enhance our knowledge, and share it in order to better understand the phenomena we are studying and addressing, and to learn from practitioners so that the best practices of the few become the standard practices of all.

Fifth: Partnerships. Water management is about bringing together many stakeholders and working in partnership. It is an easy thing to say but a difficult thing to practice. The World Water Council and the Global Water Partnership are efforts at the international level, but we must do much more. We must involve many other organizations so that our efforts are mutually reinforcing rather than scattered.

Above all, it is the values that we bring to the tasks that will make all the difference. We must live the faith! At the recently-concluded World Water Forum, Minister Kader Asmal of South Africa eloquently spoke about the need for partnerships, based on the values of mutual respect, equality and common concerns. He was right. More importantly, he spoke eloquently of water as a metaphor for governance, and the cleansing role of water in our lives. He inspired us with the knowledge that sustainable development is now enshrined as a constitutional right in South Africa, and he challenged us to observe the miracle of the transition to democracy in South Africa, and to reach out to create a new miracle to address the problems of water and life today.

It is these values that must guide our actions. They are values rooted in our common humanity, in the respect of all living things, in our determination to give voice tot he voiceless and to think of future generations and act as true stewards of the earth. This earth, which we did not inherit from our parents but borrowed from our children.

Strong in the affirmation of our consensus, inspired by the values of solidarity and equity, we must now move on to action. If we act in this fashion, then indeed there will be enough water for our children and grandchildren in the 21st century. There is no time for complacency. The time for action is now.

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