The Hydrological Cycle Is Broken: The World Wide Water Crisis

The world is in a water crisis resulting from pollution, climate change, population growth and wasteful use of fresh water. Close to two million people live in water-stressed regions. Scientists call these areas “hot stains” that now include northern China, large parts of Asia and Africa, the Middle East, Australia, the midwesterm United States and sections of South American and Mexico.

Politicians and the news media treat localities or regions as is they were droughts, a cyclical situation that would eventually remedy itself. The hydrological cycle is broken by dams, pollution, wasteful practices and concreting land. Every year, a new desert the size of Rhode Island is created in China. The US national Center for Atmosphere Research reports that the percentage of the earth’s land area stricken by serious drought has more than doubled between the 1970s and 2005.

As global warming raises the temperature of the earth, the soil water to sustain the freshwater cycle will evaporate more quickly in lakes and rivers. Snowpacks and ice cover that replenish these systems will become rarer.

Maude Barlow in Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water describes conditions throughout the world, the effects of water’s wasteful use, the growing power of the world’s water cartel, some non-solutions and the outline for a world water covenant.

Urbanization and massive paving is breaking the hydrological cycle. Due to impervious surfaces, water can reach fewer fields, meadows, wetlands and streams, leaving less in the soil and local water systems, and, therefore less water to evaporate from the land. The fast runoff causes less precipitation to be left in rivers and watersheds. This leaves less water in the hydrological cycle.

Water works as a thermal regulator that moderates temperature extremes. The more water the atmosphere has, the stronger the moderating effects on temperature and weather becomes. Where forests are cut or paving takes place, water vapor is lost in the local watershed and the hydrological cycle. This is the reason for urban heat islands. When water runs off concrete, there is less water left to absorb heat, evaporate and cool the atmosphere. This break in the hydrological cycle is a cause in global warming.

Overpumping of aquifers and contamination of the world’s water is widespread. In a rare moment of candor in 2006, the Chinese government noted that more than two-thirds of the cities faced water shortages due to pollution. The Chinese Daily reported that the society dumps 45 billion tons of untreated water into lakes and rivers every year. The World Health Organization reports that 700 million of China’s 1.3 billion people drink water that does not meet minimum safety standards.

Seventy five percent of India’s rivers are so polluted that they should not be used for drinking or bathing. The sacred Ganges is an open sewer. Seventy five percent of Russia’s inland surface water is polluted and approximately 30% of groundwater is highly polluted. Forty percent of US rivers and streams are too dangerous for fishing, swimming or drinking. This is a result of massive toxic runoff from industrial farms, intensive livestock operations and more than one billion pounds of industrial weed killer applied every year.

Groundwater aquifers are also polluted with chemical runoff from industrial farming and mine tailings. Due to dams and the overuse of river water, some major rivers no longer reach the sea: the Colorado and Rio Grande in the US; the Nile in Egypt; the Yellow River in China; the Indus in Pakistan; the Murray in Australia; the Jordan in the Middle East; and the Oxus in Central Asia.

One non-solution is the idea of desalination plants. Since most of these plants are small, designed to meet localized or top-dollar industrial needs, it is no surprise that they are terribly expensive, well beyond the reach on middle- or low-income countries. They are energy intensive, placing a heavy burden on local power grids. A dirty secret is that for every liter of water obtained, the plants release one liter of poison back into the sea. “…all desalination plants generate a lethal by-product – a poisonous combination of concentrated brine mixed with the chemicals and heavy metals used in the production of freshwater to prevent salt erosion and clear and maintain the reverse osmosis membranes.” The desalination plants are huge, noisy, obstruct the ocean view and generate a foul odor.

A world-wide water cartel, consisting of Suez, Vivendi, T. Boone Pickens and others, are buying access to water. With $700 billion in annual income, these people have political power. For Maude Barlow, competitive water is a non-starter because it is not available to the poor. Corporations do not make money by providing services to people who cannot pay.

Documented cases for nearly two decades have shown the failure of privatization – “a legacy of corruption, sky-high water rates, cutoffs of water to millions, reduced water quality, pollution, worker layoffs and broken promises.”

Maude Barlow calls for a global covenant on water, a Blue Covenant with three components: “…a water conservation covenant from people and their governments that recognizes the right of the Earth and of other species to clean water, and pledges to protect and conserve the world’s water supplies, a water justice covenant between those in the global North who have water and resources and those in the global South who do not, to work in solidarity for water justice, water for all and local control of water; and a water democracy covenant among all governments acknowledging that water is a fundamental human right for all. Therefore, governments are required not only to provide clean water to citizens as a public service, but they must also recognize that citizens of other countries have the right to water as well and to find peaceful solutions to water disputes between states.”

“What many of the corporations are doing in the global South is criminal, imposing a new form of colonial conquest dressed up as the one and only economic model available. In many countries, North American and European companies receive multiyear tax breaks and treat both the population and environment with contempt.”

The solution is conservation, protection of watersheds, replenishing water systems, and cleaning up toxic waster dumps. This would mean:

• installing roof gardens on homes, office building and shopping malls;

• requiring permeable sidewalks for sidewalks, patios, tennis courts and driveways;

• installing cisterns in office building and shopping malls;
• setting aside 10-25% of all development (new or old) for greenspace;

• prohibiting drainage of aquifers faster than their natural recharge rate, and,

• sharply limiting herbicides and pesticide production.

• using native plants (xeriscape) for lawns and landscape.

Water justice groups are lobbying for a change in international law to no longer classify water as commercial good but as a human right and public trust.

The capitalist economic model of unlimited consumer growth, expanding markets, and disregard for the environment achieved much in poverty reduction and enhancing well being. Now it is time to say goodbye to an old friend and look for a new one. The new economic model without a name will recognize the earth’s limits and put social justice ahead of mindless generation of products and services.

Ed O’Rourke is an environmental accountant in Houston, Texas.

Main source: Maude Barlow, Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water, The New Press, 2007, 196 pages.