North African Countries Commit to Cooperative Management of Nubian Aquifer read more: http://land-l.iisd.org/news/north-african-countries-commit-to-cooperative-management-of-nubian-aquifer/

18 September 2013: Chad, Egypt, Libya and Sudan signed a Strategic Action Programme to establish a long-term framework for managing the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS), the world's largest known fossil water aquifer system.

The agreement establishes a Joint Authority for the NSAS, with the aim of strengthening regional coordination and optimizing equitable use among the four arid North African countries.

The Aquifer is the main water resource for humans, livestock, irrigation and industry in this region, and is under pressure from increasing populations, agricultural expansion and decreasing water availability from other sources. The agreement seeks to strengthen transboundary water cooperation among the four countries to ensure water removal does not threaten water quality, harm the surrounding desert ecosystem and its biodiversity, or accelerate land degradation. The agreement is based on an ecosystem-based management approach (EBMA) and integrated water resources management (IWRM), and includes transboundary actions and targets that individual countries are expected to translate into national actions.

The agreement resulted from a technical cooperation project among the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The project, which began in 2006, created an aquifer model to assist the countries in optimizing the aquifer's use for human needs and ecosystem protection. The project also improved understanding of the transboundary ecosystem threats and improved data sharing. The Programme will build upon this project by continuing to strengthen the countries' capacity to monitor groundwater quantity and quality, and providing a framework for transboundary cooperation.

UNDP Administrator Helen Clark congratulated the African countries on the agreement, saying cooperative management of their shared sub-surface waters “will help to ensure maintenance of livelihoods and ecosystems dependent upon the aquifer." The agreement was signed at IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria. [UN Press Release] [UNDP Press Release] [GEF Press Release] [Strategic Action Programme Agreement]

More:

---

 

Heat Wave In China

For the entire month of July and the first half of August, eastern China baked in a record-breaking heat wave. Nineteen provinces endured above-normal temperatures.

Shanghai broke its all-time record high three times in as many weeks. The current record—40.8 degrees Celsius (105.4°F)—was set on August 7, 2013. At least 40 people have died during the heat wave, including ten in Shanghai, according to the Xinhua news service.

During a heat wave, ground temperatures soar, particularly in urban areas where there are fewer plants to cool the ground with shade and evapotranspiration. Paved or metallic surfaces can become warm enough to cook food. These images show land surface temperatures as measured by two different satellites.

The image above shows temperature anomalies across China between August 5 and August 12, 2013, as observed by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Red areas are warmer than the long-term average for the week, while cooler-than-average temperatures are blue. While much of China was warm during this period, the worst of the heat wave was concentrated near the coast and in Tibet. This weather pattern is tied to a subtropical high-pressure system parked over southern China, according to the China Meteorological Administration.

Though miserable everywhere, the heat wave was likely worst in China’s cities, where manmade surfaces absorb heat during the day and cool slowly at night. As a result, cities are warmer during the day and slower to cool at night, making an extended heat wave more uncomfortable, and more deadly, in a city. The image below shows this “urban heat island” effect in Shanghai.

The image was made with measurements taken on August 13, 2013 by the Thermal Infrared Sensor on the Landsat 8 satellite. The warmest surfaces are yellow, while cooler surfaces are pink. The image shows pockets of very warm areas, particularly downtown, surrounded by cooler suburban areas. The dark purple dots are cold clouds.

Chinese officials have declared a weather emergency, warning residents to limit time outdoors. It is the first time the country has issued a weather warning for heat. China’s National Meteorological Center expected the heat to break sometime after August 15.

 

As Sea Waters Rise, Costal Communities in Pakistan Suffer

As global warming causes ocean water to creep farther up the Indus Delta, communities in Pakistan's coastal areas are suffering. A recent report from the World Wildlife Fund Pakistan highlights these challenges.

One farmer told WWF Pakistan he had to start fishing:

“Over the last few years, I sowed seeds in over 200 acres. But now my hands are empty. Only 15 acres is still fertile while the rest has become plagued by the problem of water-logging and salinity.”

Dawn.com reports over half of the population's livelihoods are threaten by climate change:

The majority of the people in Pakistan (between 60 to 70 per cent) depend on the eco-system to survive. A shepherd in Balochistan, a farmer in Punjab or a fisherman from Sindh — all rely directly on the environment for their livelihood. Unfortunately, the livelihood of these people is at risk due to climate change. More

Report from WWF Pakistan

 

Entering a resource-shock world

Brace yourself. You may not be able to tell yet, but according to global experts and the US intelligence community, the earth is already shifting under you. Whether you know it or not, you are on a new planet, a resource-shock world of a sort humanity has never before experienced.

Two nightmare scenarios - a global scarcity of vital resources and the onset of extreme climate change - are already beginning to converge and in the coming decades are likely to produce a tidal wave of unrest, rebellion, competition and conflict. Just what this tsunami of disaster will look like may, as yet, be hard to discern, but experts warn of “water wars” over contested river systems, global food riots sparked by soaring prices for life’s basics, mass migrations of climate refugees (with resulting anti-migrant violence) and the breakdown of social order or the collapse of states. At first, such mayhem is likely to arise largely in Africa, Central Asia and other areas of the underdeveloped South, but in time all regions of the planet will be affected.

To appreciate the power of this encroaching catastrophe, it’s necessary to examine each of the forces that are combining to produce this future cataclysm.

Resource shortages

Start with one simple given: the prospect of future scarcities of vital natural resources, including energy, water, land, food and critical minerals. This in itself would guarantee social unrest, geopolitical friction and war.

It is important to note that absolute scarcity does not have to be on the horizon in any given resource category for this scenario to kick in. A lack of adequate supplies to meet the needs of a growing, ever more urbanised and industrialised global population is enough. Given the wave of extinctions that scientists are recording, some resources - particular species of fish, animals and trees, for example - will become less abundant in the decades to come, and may even disappear altogether. But key materials for modern civilisation like oil, uranium and copper will simply prove harder and more costly to acquire, leading to supply bottlenecks and periodic shortages.

Oil - the single most important commodity in the international economy - provides an apt example. Although global oil supplies may actually grow in the coming decades, many experts doubt that they can be expanded sufficiently to meet the needs of a rising global middle class that is, for instance, expected to buy millions of new cars in the near future. In its 2011 World Energy Outlook, the International Energy Agency claimed that an anticipated global oil demand of 104 million barrels per day in 2035 will be satisfied. This, the report suggested, would be thanks in large part to additional supplies of “unconventional oil” (Canadian tar sands, shale oil and so on), as well as 55 million barrels of new oil from fields “yet to be found” and “yet to be developed”.

However, many analysts scoff at this optimistic assessment, arguing that rising production costs (for energy that will be ever more difficult and costly to extract), environmental opposition, warfare, corruption and other impediments will make it extremely difficult to achieve increases of this magnitude. In other words, even if production manages for a time to top the 2010 level of 87 million barrels per day, the goal of 104 million barrels will never be reached and the world’s major consumers will face virtual, if not absolute, scarcity.

Water provides another potent example. On an annual basis, the supply of drinking water provided by natural precipitation remains more or less constant: about 40,000 cubic kilometres. But much of this precipitation lands on Greenland, Antarctica, Siberia and inner Amazonia where there are very few people, so the supply available to major concentrations of humanity is often surprisingly limited. In many regions with high population levels, water supplies are already relatively sparse. This is especially true of North Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East, where the demand for water continues to grow as a result of rising populations, urbanisation and the emergence of new water-intensive industries. The result, even when the supply remains constant, is an environment of increasing scarcity.

Wherever you look, the picture is roughly the same: supplies of critical resources may be rising or falling, but rarely do they appear to be outpacing demand, producing a sense of widespread and systemic scarcity. However generated, a perception of scarcity - or imminent scarcity - regularly leads to anxiety, resentment, hostility and contentiousness. This pattern is very well understood and has been evident throughout human history.

In his book Constant Battles, for example, Steven LeBlanc, director of collections for Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, notes that many ancient civilisations experienced higher levels of warfare when faced with resource shortages brought about by population growth, crop failures, or persistent drought. Jared Diamond, author of the bestseller Collapse, has detected a similar pattern in Mayan civilisation and the Anasazi culture of New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon. More recently, concern over adequate food for the home population was a significant factor in Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and Germany’s invasions of Poland in 1939 and the Soviet Union in 1941, according to Lizzie Collingham, author of The Taste of War.

Resource-related conflict

Although the global supply of most basic commodities has grown enormously since the end of World War II, analysts see the persistence of resource-related conflict in areas where materials remain scarce or there is anxiety about the future reliability of supplies. Many experts believe, for example, that the fighting in Darfur and other war-ravaged areas of North Africa has been driven, at least in part, by competition among desert tribes for access to scarce water supplies, exacerbated in some cases by rising population levels.

“In Darfur,” says a 2009 report from the UN Environment Programme on the role of natural resources in the conflict, “recurrent drought, increasing demographic pressures, and political marginalisation are among the forces that have pushed the region into a spiral of lawlessness and violence that has led to 300,000 deaths and the displacement of more than two million people since 2003.”

Anxiety over future supplies is often also a factor in conflicts that break out over access to oil or control of contested undersea reserves of oil and natural gas. In 1979, for instance, when the Islamic revolution in Iran overthrew the Shah and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Washington began to fear that someday it might be denied access to Persian Gulf oil. At that point, President Jimmy Carter promptly announced what came to be called the Carter Doctrine. In his 1980 State of the Union Address, Carter affirmed that any move to impede the flow of oil from the Gulf would be viewed as a threat to America’s “vital interests” and would be repelled by “any means necessary, including military force”.

In 1990, this principle was invoked by President George HW Bush to justify intervention in the first Persian Gulf War, just as his son would use it, in part, to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Today, it remains the basis for US plans to employ force to stop the Iranians from closing the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean through which about 35 percent of the world’s seaborne oil commerce passes.

Recently, a set of resource conflicts have been rising toward the boiling point between China and its neighbours in Southeast Asia when it comes to control of offshore oil and gas reserves in the South China Sea. Although the resulting naval clashes have yet to result in a loss of life, a strong possibility of military escalation exists. A similar situation has also arisen in the East China Sea, where China and Japan are jousting for control over similarly valuable undersea reserves. Meanwhile, in the South Atlantic Ocean, Argentina and Britain are once again squabbling over the Falkland Islands (called Las Malvinas by the Argentinians) because oil has been discovered in surrounding waters. More

 

Ancient aqueducts [karez] give Iraq a trickle of hope

A millennia-old labyrinth of underground canals may help solve the Middle East's water crisis, say experts.

The ancient karez in Kunaflusa

In the windswept plateaus of northern Iraq, unseen aqueducts which have channelled water to arid settlements for centuries are running dry. Experts say the wide-scale demise of these ancient water systems is an ominous sign of how scarce water in the region will soon become, and the humanitarian disasters that could follow.

For villagers here, tragic consequences have already arrived.

Farez Abdulrahman Ali strides across a muddy field and sweeps a burly arm towards the mountains that loom over Shekh Mamudian village in the wilds of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region. This is the rugged terrain of thepeshmerga, the Kurdish military whose name means "those who face death".

Ali explains that a subterranean canal - known in Iraq as a karez - once brought water to the village, where it gushed from a rock-lined tunnel into a pool just below the entrance to the local mosque. From there, it was channelled to nearby fields of okra, eggplant, onion and tobacco.

"Farmers would use the water," said Ali. "On hot days, children would play in the water. In the evenings, people would gather at the karez to talk about village things."

"The karez dates back to the time when karez were dug," he added, matter-of-factly. "Nobody in the village knows when it was dug. Even my grandfather doesn't know. It is probably 800 or 900 or 1,000 years old."

"There is now not enough water for farming. If the karez runs dry,

we will be forced to leave the village." - Fadel Salah, Kunaflusa villager

Dry county

In autumn 2011, for the first time in the village's collective memory, the karez in Shekh Mamudian went dry. As the village chief, or mukhtar, Ali sees the loss of the karez as catastrophic for the livestock and crops the village depends on for its hard won self-sufficiency. Unless it is restored, he fears for the end of a community that withstood assaults by Saddam Hussein’s army in the 1980s, and survived as a bloody no-man's land in the Kurdish civil war of the mid-1990s.

"The karez was the source of life," Ali said. "The village now feels like a family that has lost its father."

Echoes of Ali’s lament are being heard throughout the arid mountains and plains of Kurdistan, where the widespread demise of karez is becoming a humanitarian nightmare.

Last year, an inventory of karez systems in Kurdistan - believed to be the first such compiled in modern times - found that decades of war and years of grinding drought, combined with neglect and over-pumping from nearby mechanised wells, had brought these vital water lifelines to the edge of extinction.

According to a UNESCO report, just 116 of the 683 karez networks located in northern Iraq were still supplying water as of August 2009. As many as 40 per cent of the region's karez have dried up in the past four years alone.

Since 2005, more than 100,000 people have been forced to abandon their homes because their karez stopped flowing, and a further 36,000 are at immediate risk of evacuating their villages, according to the UN agency.

Parched land

In Kunaflusa, a rocky 90-minute drive north of Erbil, the village karez was last year producing only a trickle. Village mukhtar Fadel Abdullah Salah said families were allotted one-hour time slots to fill up enough water jugs to last a week.

"There is not enough water now for farming," said Salah. "If the karez runs dry, we will be forced to leave the village."

Water brought in tanker trucks by the Kurdistan Regional Government has helped the people of Kunaflusa. But experts say quick fixes such as hauling in water or drilling new, gas-fuelled wells are expensive band-aids that will ultimately prove unsustainable.

Salah said the village had some 200 houses in 1984, but today only 13 remain occupied. The UN report found that, on average, 70 per cent of residents moved away from their villages after the local karez went dry. More

 

World Water Day 2012 official video

World Water Day 2012 official video, focusing on the theme of the campaign "Water and Food Security".

Produced by kf@kantfish.com and featuring a soundtrack by DDG Project. Animations by antiestatico.com
Download your animation on: http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday

India, Bangladesh very short of water, among Asia's worst - report

NEW DELHI (AlertNet) - Three out of four countries in Asia and the Pacific are facing a serious lack of water, and some are in danger of a crisis unless steps are taken to improve water management, a report by the Asian Development Bank and the Asia-Pacific Water Forum has said.

A private vehicle crosses a bridge as excavators work at the dam site of Kishanganga power project in Gurez, 160 km north of Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir. Picture June 21, 2012, REUTERS/Fayaz Kabli

The Asian Water Development Outlook 2013 , the first study of the degree of water security of every country in the region, found that 37 out of 49 nations do not have enough water, the worst being India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Cambodia, Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu.

"South Asia and parts of Central and West Asia are faring the worst with rivers under immense strain, while many Pacific islands suffer from a lack of access to safe piped water and decent sanitation and are highly vulnerable to increasingly severe water disasters," said an ADB statement.

"By contrast East Asia, which has the highest frequency of hazards in the region, is relatively better off due to higher levels of investment in disaster defences, but urban water security remains poor in many cities and towns."

Water security has become an increasing concern across the world in recent years.

More frequent floods and droughts caused by climate change, pollution of rivers and lakes, urbanisation, over-extraction of ground water and expanding populations mean that many Asia-Pacific nations face serious water shortages.

In addition, the demand for more power by countries like India to fuel their economic growth has resulted in a need to harness more water for hydropower dams.

The study examined water security in countries at five different levels, including access to clean drinking water and sanitation, water availability for industry and agriculture, and water supply systems in urban areas.

"Much progress has been made in terms of providing drinking water, but when we look at the number of households that have piped water, it is much less," said Wouter T. Lincklaen, lead water resources specialist at the ADB.

Only 35 percent of the region's population have a secure water supply. Even worse, only 23 percent of South Asians and 21 percent of those living in the Pacific have piped water, he said.

ADB experts cited China as a good example of improved water management, in which the government not only promised to double annual investment in the water sector to $608 billion by 2020, but also set performance targets for industry, irrigation and water quality. More

 

Rains or Not, India Is Falling Short on Drinkable Water

CHERRAPUNJI, India — Almost no place on Earth gets more rain than this small hill town. Nearly 40 feet falls every year — more than 12 times what Seattle gets. Storms often drop more than a foot a day. The monsoon is epic.

But during the dry season from November through March, many in this corner of India struggle to find water. Some are forced to walk long distances to fill jugs in springs or streams. Taps in Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya State, spout water for just a few hours a day. And when it arrives, the water is often not drinkable.

That people in one of the rainiest places on the planet struggle to get potable water is emblematic of the profound water challenges that India faces. Every year, about 600,000 Indian children die because of diarrhea or pneumonia, often caused by toxic water and poor hygiene, according to Unicef.

Half of the water supply in rural areas, where 70 percent of India’s population lives, is routinely contaminated with toxic bacteria. Employment in manufacturing in India has declined in recent years, and a prime reason may be the difficulty companies face getting water.

And India’s water problems are likely to worsen. A report that McKinsey & Company helped to write predicted that India would need to double its water-generation capacity by the year 2030 to meet the demands of its surging population.

A separate analysis concluded that groundwater supplies in many of India’s cities — including Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai — are declining at such a rapid rate that they may run dry within a few years.

The water situation in Gurgaon, the new mega-city south of Delhi, became so acute last year that a judge ordered a halt to new construction until projects could prove they were using recycled water instead of groundwater.

On Feb. 28, India’s finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, proposed providing $2.8 billion to the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation in the coming fiscal year, a 17 percent increase.

But water experts describe this as very little in a country where more than 100 million people scrounge for water from unimproved sources.

Some water problems stem from India’s difficult geography. Vast parts of the country are arid, and India has just 4 percent of the world’s fresh water shared among 16 percent of its people.

But the country’s struggle to provide water security to the 2.6 million residents of Meghalaya, blessed with more rain than almost any place, shows that the problems are not all environmental.

Arphisha lives in Sohrarim, a village in Meghalaya, and she must walk a mile during the dry season to the local spring, a trip she makes four to five times a day. Sometimes her husband fetches water in the morning, but mostly the task is left to her. Indeed, fetching water is mostly women’s work in India.

On a recent day, Arphisha, who has only one name, took the family laundry to the spring, which is a pipe set in a cement abutment. While her 2-year-old son, Kevinson, played nearby, Arphisha beat clothes on a cement and stone platform in front of the spring. Her home has electricity several hours a day and heat from a coal stove. But there is no running water. When it rains, she uses a barrel to capture runoff from her roof.

“It’s nice having the sunshine now, but my life is much easier during the monsoon,” she said.

Kevinson interrupted her work by bringing her an empty plastic bottle. “Water,” he said. Arphisha bent down, filled the bottle and gave it back to him. “Say, ‘Thank you,’ ” she said. “Say, ‘Thank you.’ ” When he silently drank, turned and went back to playing, Arphisha laughed and shrugged her shoulders. More

 

Climate change and water mismanagement parch Egypt

Climate change, a fast growing population, ill-designed infrastructure, high levels of pollution and lack of law enforcement have made Egypt a country thirsty for water — both in terms of quantity and quality.

The River Nile, which is considered poor by many experts and hydrologists, lies at lower altitude than the rest of the country. Massive electric pumps extract the water from the river’s bed and canals and direct it to industry, agriculture and for individual water use.

A significant portion of the water contained in Lake Nasser’s 5,000 square kilometer basin is lost to evaporation, while old networks of leaking pipes also deprive the country of satisfactory access to its most important resource: water.

In order to debate water scarcity in Egypt, its causes, and how climate change makes the issue more pressing than ever, as well as looking to solutions, a panel of experts were invited to participate in the 13th Cairo Climate Talk last week entitled “Growing Thirst: Sustainable Water Solutions for Egypt.”

Tarek Kotb, the First Assistant Minister in the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, and a member of the panel discussion, talked about the dwindling water share per capita with a sense of urgency. “Every year, the Egyptian population grows by 1.8 million, while the annual quota of Nile water allocated to Egypt, 55 billion cubic meters, has remained unchanged since the 1959 Nile Water Agreement,” he says.

While Egyptians in the 1960s could enjoy a water share per capita of 2800 cubic meters for all purposes, the current share has dropped to 660 cubic meters today—below the international standard defining water poverty of 1000 cubic meters.

Kotb estimates that Egypt is gradually going to leave the stage of water scarcity and enter a phase of drastic water stress in the next 40 years, if no sustainable water management is put in place.

“By 2050, there will be about 160 million Egyptians and only 370 cubic meters of water per capita,” he says. While Egypt has other options for its water needs, such as tapping into groundwater basins and desalinating sea-water, the bulk of water is still extracted from the Nile, leading to longstanding tensions with the other Nile basin countries.

The treaty signed under colonial rule in 1959 granted Egypt and Sudan most of the Nile water share, while upstream countries were given access to a very small allocation of water. Lama al-Hatow, a hydrologist and one of the founders of the Water Institute for the Nile (WIN) condemns Egypt’s historical and ongoing hydro hegemony, by which the country claims its entitlement to benefit from most of the Nile water.

“A lot of science has been published on how not to lose water if the Ethiopian Millennium Dam is built, but it is not given much attention by the politicians,” Hatow says. “The upstream countries have the right to develop,” she says, “and there are ways to make it happen without Egypt losing water.”

She adds that preventing water evaporation in Lake Nasser could even increase Egypt’s water share.

Kotb responding to her remarks, saying that Egypt is investing millions of dollars in Sudan, South Sudan and Ethiopia to overcome losses due to evaporation in marshes and basins. “We don’t deny these countries’ right to development; actually, we help them,” he said.

Claudia Bürkin, the Water Sector Coordinator for the German Development Cooperation and Senior Programme Manager at KfW Development Bank, explains that Egypt’s water resources face two main challenges: water loss and bad quality.

“Egypt loses about 50% of its freshwater through poor maintenance of supplies and distribution problems, and the water is polluted,” she says, stressing that a significant number of diseases are water borne. Polluted water also affects the ecosystems’ balance, the soil quality, and seeps into the aquifers. “Egypt needs to set up strong standards for water quality and control the drainage nutrients, pesticides and waste found in the water.”

Kotb admits that while most of the issues and potential solutions have been identified by the government, much needs to be done in terms of implementation of existing laws and stronger cooperation between ministries.

“Water management is not the mandate of the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation exclusively, which makes the implementation process so much harder,” he says.

A National Water Resource Plan was established a few years ago, Kotb says, to curb the amount of pollution in the Nile emanating from cruise boats, factories, industries and villagers deprived of a waste management system. As part of this, he explains, factories located close to the Nile or the canals have been moved further away from the water streams, and new industries will be prevented from setting up a plant within 20km from the water.

“Law 48 on pollution has been reviewed and the penalties will be tougher,” he says. Meanwhile, Hatow argues that enforcing stronger penalties is not the solution to prevent farmers from polluting.

“Instead of punishing them, we should give farmers incentives to make better use of water, and provide them with premium crops,” she says.

The conversation then shifted to the effects of climate change, which can already be felt in the Northern part of the Delta and in the Mediterranean coastal cities of Damietta and Rosetta. The gradual rise in sea levels taking place turns fields into barren land unfit for agriculture, and the sea water that infiltrates the Nile is reaching further and further away from the coast.

“In order to keep a good yield and maintain agricultural production,” says Kotb, “we need to use more fresh water to combat rising temperatures.”

Lama’s take on how to combat climate change is quite different from this. “We need to study community based resilience techniques to figure out how local and indigenous knowledge can provide answers and climate resilience.”

- See more at: http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/climate-change-and-water-mismanagement-parch-egypt#sthash.NavKkkxR.dpuf

 

Corporations Grabbing Land and Water Overseas

As a growing population stresses the world's food and water supplies, corporations and investors in wealthy countries are buying up foreign farmland and the freshwater perks that come with it.

From Sudan to Indonesia, most of the land lies in poverty-stricken regions, so experts warn that this widespread purchasing could expand the gap between developed and developing countries.

The “water grabbing” by corporations amounts to 454 billion cubic meters per year globally, according to a new study by environmental scientists. That’s about 5 percent of the water the world uses annually.

Investors from seven countries – the United States, United Arab Emirates, India, United Kingdom, Egypt, China and Israel – accounted for 60 percent of the water acquired under these deals.

Most purchasers are agricultural, biofuel and timber investors. Some of the more active buyers in the United States, which leads the pack in number of deals, include multinational investors Nile Trading and Development, BHP Billiton, Unitech and media magnate Ted Turner, according to the study published last month.

Wendy Wolford, a professor at Cornell University who studies political and social impacts of international land deals, said while it is difficult to tease out investor motives, they “don’t grab land in places without access to water.” Some countries – including Indonesia, the Philippines and the Democratic Republic of Congo – had large amounts of water rights grabbed because they’re countries with a lot of rainfall.

Since 2000, 1,217 deals have taken place, which transferred over 205 million acres of land, according to the public database Land Matrix. About 62 percent of these deals were in Africa – totaling about 138 million acres, roughly the size of two Arizonas.

For countries reliant on farming and already suffering from poverty, the potential impacts are huge, said Paolo D’Odorico, a University of Virginia professor and co-author of the new report that estimates the water supplies at stake. About 66 percent of the total deals are in countries with high hunger rates.

“In many of these countries, the sum of the water being grabbed would be enough to eliminate malnourishment,” said D’Odorico, who collaborated with scientists from Italy’s Polytechnic University of Milan.

Wolford said there is danger that local people – especially in places like sub-Saharan Africa – are not aware of land purchases and how it could affect their way of life.

“That’s probably the biggest problem – people could have gathered timber from the woods or lived downstream of the land grabbed,” Wolford said. “These things could be taken away without them knowing what happened.”

Food crisis, biofuels spur “grabbing”

Such land deals are often derisively dubbed “land grabbing,” which D’Odorico defines as a deal for about 500 acres or more that converts an environmentally important area currently used by local people to commercial production. More

 

 

Satellite Tracking of Middle East Aquifers Points to the End of ‘Data Denial’

Jay Famiglietti, one of the authors of an important new study on the rapid depletion of aquifers under the Tigris and Euphrates river basins, has posted an excellent overview of the work and its context for policy, and noted that he and other authors are preparing for a two-week “water diplomacy” tour to discuss their findings in the affected region.

The project shows how improving systems for observing and analyzing environmental trends are brightening prospects for better management of resources and risks in struggling regions — even when governments might not want the information revealed. This is as true for forests as it is here for water supplies.

Here are some notable excerpts from Famiglietti’s post, which is particularly notable given President Obama’s planned visit to the Middle East this spring:

Worse to come:

Our team’s expectation is that the water situation in the Middle East will only degrade with time, primarily due to climate change. The best available science indicates that the arid and semi-arid regions of the world will become even more so: the dry areas of the world will become drier (while conversely, the wet areas will become wetter). Consequences for the Middle East include more prolonged drought, which means that the underground aquifers that store the region’s groundwater will not be replenished during our lifetimes, nor during those of future generations.

Management and transparency:

We cannot reverse climate change and its impact on water availability, but we can and must do a far better job with water management, including the modernization of national and international water policy. Our research and its implications point to the following critical needs, not only for the Middle East, but in all regions of the world where groundwater resources are in decline.

First, it’s high time for groundwater to be included under the water management umbrella. In most of the world, groundwater pumping is unmonitored and unregulated.

It is as true in much of the U. S. as it is in the Middle East. That’s no different than making withdrawals from a savings account without keeping track of the amount or the remaining balance: irresponsible without question, and a recipe for disaster when multiple account holders are acting independently.

Second, since nearly 80% of the world’s water resources are used to support agriculture, continued improvements in agricultural and irrigation conservation and efficiency should be an important focus for research, development, investment and cooperation. In the Middle East, some countries, notably Israel, are pioneers of efficiency, while others are less advanced. Much of the technology is in place. It just needs to be disseminated and embraced across the entire region.

Third, our report and others that have preceded it clearly demonstrate that satellite technology has advanced to the point where a reliable assessment of regional hydrology can be produced with little access to observations on the ground. Our 2009 study of groundwater depletion in India is yet another example of current capabilities. My point is that data denial policies amongst nations will ultimately be rendered obsolete. It will be far better to share key measurements now, to enhance and fully utilize the satellite picture for mutually beneficial water management in the long term.

For more on efficient water use in agriculture in dry regions, click back to my post on the pioneering work on drip irrigation by Daniel Hillel and read about how solar-powered pumping systems and drip irrigation are improving incomes and lives in sub-Saharan Africa.

Another relevant resource is this 2009 World Bank publication: “Water in the Arab World: Management Perspectives and Innovations.” More

 

18 FEBRUARY 2013 Food Security in the Age of “Water Grabbing”

Water grabbing or the large-scale, rapid privatization of water is happening worldwide, affecting global food security because local farmers are losing access to both land and water resources.

Gaining control of water is often a motive behind land grabs, and according to a 2013 report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, up to 57 million hectares of land and 454 billion cubic meters of water are grabbed each year. Africa accounts for 47 percent of global grabbed land while Asia accounts for and 33 percent. Both of these continents are home to some of the world’s hungriest people.

According to Citigroup’s chief economist, Willem Buiter, “Water as an asset class will, in my view, become eventually the single most important physical-commodity based asset class, dwarfing oil, copper, agricultural commodities and precious metals.”Companies such as General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Dow Chemical, Talisman Energy, and Coca-Cola have already acquired many land and water resources and are all members of Aqueduct Alliance, a water mapping project that helps investors identify and assess water risks. While this technology can help companies use water resources responsibly, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy notes that it can also contribute to more water grabbing because companies will have greater knowledge of water resources.

When companies grab land and water resources, local farmers have to find ways to still grow enough food to feed themselves and earn a living. Small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa have recently increased their use of affordable, sustainable irrigation techniques to overcome challenges created by water scarcity, but water grabbing may damage this progress. According to a National Geographic article, “the best opportunity in decades for societal advancement in the region will be squandered” if African governments and foreign investors fail to support local farmers’ initiatives in favor of large-scale water deals that mainly benefit corporations. More

Indian monsoons may fail more often due to climate change - study

(Reuters) - The Indian monsoon is likely to fail more often in the next 200 years threatening food supplies, unless governments agree how to limit climate change, a study showed on Tuesday.

The monsoon rains could collapse about every fifth year between 2150 and 2200 with continued global warming, blamed mainly on human burning of fossil fuels, and related shifts in tropical air flows, it said.

“Monsoon failure becomes much more frequent” as temperatures rise, Anders Levermann, a professor of dynamics of the climate system and one of the authors at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told Reuters.

India’s monsoon, which lasts from June to September, is vital for India’s 1.2 billion people to grow crops such as rice, wheat and corn. India last faced a severe widespread drought in 2009 and had to import sugar, pushing global prices to 30-year highs.

The researchers defined monsoon “failure” as a fall in rainfall of between 40 and 70 percent below normal levels. Such a drastic decline has not happened any year in records dating back to 1870 by the India Meteorological Department, they said.

CATASTROPHE

“In the past century the Indian monsoon has been very stable. It is already a catastrophe with 10 percent less rain than the average,” Levermann told Reuters.

The study, in the journal Environmental Research Letters, projected a temperature rise of 4.6 degrees C (8.3 F) over pre-industrial times by 2200. U.N. scenarios indicate a gain of between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees C (2.9-11.5F) by 2100. More

 

Use 'hydro-diplomacy' to avert future water conflict - experts

BANGKOK (AlertNet) - Population growth, urbanisation, industrialisation and climate change are putting pressure on the world’s river basins, and “hydro-diplomacy” is essential if water-related conflicts are to be avoided, experts said on Wednesday.

Cooperation between countries and between different groups within countries, as well as improved political will and the larger participation of societies could help defuse tensions over water and improve governance of water resources, the experts said at a conference in Chiang Rai in Thailand, a nation that shares the waters of the Mekong River with Myanmar and Laos.

“Water is, let us face it, going to be humanity’s crisis number one,” said Ambassador Gopalkrishna Gandhi, a former governor of West Bengal in India, which shares borders and rivers with Bangladesh.

“With global warming, population spikes and water-extraction intensification, river water and ground water are going to come under unprecedented strain,” he added.

Rapid population growth and increased industrial demand mean water withdrawals have tripled over the last 50 years, according to figures from the United Nations.

U.N. studies project that at least 30 nations will be "water scarce" in 2025, up from 20 in 1990. Eighteen of them are in the Middle East and North Africa but parts of India, China and Pakistan are also expected to face water shortages.

A country is judged to be “water scarce” when each person has access to 1,000 or fewer cubic meters of water a year.

“Allocation and sharing of water resources crosses political, spatial, cultural and economic boundaries,” said Aban Marker Kabraji, Asia regional director for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which organised the conference.

Diverse users, from farmers to industry and urban developers, are all competing for a limited resource, she said.

“Many technical water infrastructure solutions of the past are now seen to be unsustainable, and we need new ways to meet the demands of human growth while ensuring a sustainable future,” Kabraji said.

ENERGY-FOOD-WATER NEXUS

Because water, energy and food needs are increasingly inter-related, increasing transboundary cooperation on water – or the lack of it - will have wide ranging impacts, experts said.

For Torkil Jønch Clausen, the conference’s keynote speaker, it is increasingly clear that water issues must be tackled from a wider perspective and by a wide range of people, not just water experts.

"Water's a human right. We need 50 litres per day for our basic needs. That is not a political problem. No country does not have that,” said Clausen, a senior advisor to the Global Water Partnership and chair of the scientific programme of World Water Week in Stockholm.

“But every day the food we eat takes 50, 60 times that much water to produce,” he said, and “in many cases in the world, the environment has paid the price for our production of food and energy.”

Agriculture is responsible for two-thirds of global water withdrawals, he said. It takes 1,500 litres of water to produce one kilo of cereals and 10 times that to produce a kilo of meat, a significant problem as demand for meat continues to rise, particularly in developing nations such as China. More