Worldwide Water Wars?
Threads - Worldwode Water Wars
On 19/5/2003, David Allen posted:
Water Scarcity Could Affect Billions: Is This the Biggest Crisis of All?
Glug-glug: Not normally a sound of foreboding. But mankind's most serious
challenge in the 21st century might not be war or hunger or disease or even
the collapse of civic order, a UN report says; it may be the lack of fresh
water.
UN warns of future water crisis
A world short of water cannot grow enough food for all It believes the goal
of halving the proportion of hungry people by 2015 may be unattainable. By
2020, the average water supply per person worldwide is expected be a third
smaller than now. The UN says political inaction and a lack of awareness
are worsening the crisis.
Water and Politics in the Fall of Suharto
The privatization of Jakarta’s water is the story of powerful multinationals
that deftly used the World Bank and a compliant dictatorship to grab control
of a major city’s waterworks.
The Water Barons: A Handful of Corporations Seek to Privatize the World's
Water
The explosive growth of three private water utility companies in the last
10 years raises fears that mankind may be losing control of its most vital
resource to a handful of monopolistic corporations. In Europe and North America,
analysts predict that within the next 15 years these companies will control
65 percent to 75 percent of what are now public waterworks. The companies
have worked closely with the World Bank and other international financial
institutions to gain a foothold on every continent. They aggressively lobby
for legislation and trade laws to force cities to privatize their water and
set the agenda for debate on solutions to the world’s increasing water scarcity.
The companies argue they are more efficient and cheaper than public utilities.
Critics say they are predatory capitalists that ultimately plan to control
the world’s water resources and drive up prices even as the gap between rich
and poor widens. The fear is that accountability will vanish, and the world
will lose control of its source of life. ........................
http://wearemichigan.com/WaterWars/World/
c.f.
Iraq
http://www.counterpunch.org/wells05162003.html
Israel/Palestine
http://www.mideastweb.org/water3.htm
Gerald
Cairnes replied:
This is what the push for so called rationalisation is all about. It has
legitimised the activities of what would otherwise be regarded as organised
crime. Now we have megalomaniac Mafia types able to exceed their wildest
dreams legally and all just by making sure that political donations are appropriately
directed. They don't even have to carry guns to do it either.
We no longer have representative government, that died a loooong time ago,
you get to THINK you actually count once every 3-4 years!. You either join
them or get squashed!
I believe that eventually the complacent Aust. electorate will react but
by then the terror police will be in place and such activity will be classed
as terrorism, Soylent Green here we come!
Jay Dessi responded:
I wonder if a self-representative government would work.
The proposal is dreaming, but I thought I'd say it anyway.
Once a day you would swipe a card and receive government proposals on a specialised
computer terminal, and would be asked to respond, accepting the proposal,
refusing the proposal or abstaining from making that decision, and, if you
wish, a reason justifying your selection.
With each proposal, you would have an option of viewing it in a simple or
extended detail. I'll use the recent Iraq War as an example. In simple detail
it would say something along the lines of "Should Australia commit its forces
to a war with Iraq?". In extended it would go into all of the details, such
as how many troops would be deployed, estimated costs, etc. There would
be hyperlinks that would point to extenal data, such as the history of Iraq,
history of Saddam, history of George Bush. All in as much of an multi-sided
perspective as possible, indicating where it may not be and why.
Through this system a President and "government advisors", the only members
of government needed, would be elected. The president would be a figurehead
of our country, representing our elected views and decisions all over the
world. If we were to be unpleased with the performance of such an elected
government official, if enough persons were to make the proposal to remove
him/her from office and replace him, the next morning the nation would be
posed by that as one of the questions.
This systems doesn't need to be limited to government. It could be used to
encompass all currently existing democratic forms of representative government,
including companies. Th board of directors could continue to exist, as a
consultive entity, but the shareholders would make the decisions, and would
be responsible for decisions, like "How much should our President's bonus
be?".
All of this could be accessed by the one terminal at home. Or any of the
specialised computer terminals anywhere. Just swipe the card. And maybe a
fingerprint analysis as well.
The only problem I see of it at the moment would be setting up the terminals
and the related network (and costs).
And that the people in power wouldn't like it one bit.
Zero
Sum answered:
On
Mon, 19 May 2003 23:53, Jay Dessi wrote:
> All of this could be accessed by the one terminal at home. Or any of
the
> specialised computer terminals anywhere. Just swipe the card. And maybe
> a fingerprint analysis as well.
You left out
"Joke, Joyce"...
>
The only problem I see of it at the moment would be setting up the
> terminals and the related network (and costs).
To introduce
a dose of reality...
Do you have any idea how much the basic proposal would cost?
Do you have any idea how insecure this would be with current technology?
Do you have any idea how results would be verified?
Do you have any idea how disputes might be resolved?
Do you have any idea how fair and impartial information may be guaranteed?
Do you have any idea how mutual trust can be ensured?
>
And that the people in power wouldn't like it one bit.
You are right
about that. Not without preparation. But the people out of power
would not like it either.
Jim Edwards posted:
There is hope . . . compare this story from John Pilger's "The New Rulers
of the World":
In Bolivia's third city, Cochabamba,
ordinary people took back their water from a corporate conglomerate,
after the World Bank had pressured the Bolivian government into privatising
the public water supply. Having refused credit to the public water
company, the bank demanded that a monopoly be given to Aguas del Tunari,
part of International Water Limited, a British-based company half-owned by
the American engineering giant Bechtel.
Granted a forty-year concession, the company immediately raised the price
of water. In a country where the minimum wage is less than $100 a month,
people faced increases in their water bills of $20 a month - more than water
users pay each month in the wealthy suburbs od Washington, home to many World
Bank economists. In Cochabamba, even collecting rainwater without a
permit was now illegal.
So they organised; young and old, activists and those who, as Marcela
Lopez Levy wrote, had previously been 'too busy surviving to get involved'.
She spoke to Marcelo Rojas, who became one of the leaders. 'I had never
taken an interest in politics before,' he said. 'My father is a politician,
and I thought it was all about cutting deals. But to see people fighting
for
their water, their rights, made me realise there was a common good to defend,
that the country can't be left in the hands of the politicians.' He
was arrested and tortured by the police, as were many young people who built
barricades and protected the old when the authorities attacked. They
took over their city and they won. The government tore up the contract,
and the company cleared its desks.
(From Marcela Lopez Levy, 'The damn water is ours!', New Internationalist,
September, 2001)
and in a later post:
P.S. I checked on Bolivia in the above URL to find that as a result
of the actions of the people of Cochabamba Bechtel is suing the Bolivian
government for $25 million!
Peter
Macinnis posted:
I am afraid that some people have been saying this for quite a while.
Readers of a reliable encyclopedia (in spite of the spelling :-) will already
be aware of this problem.
First, a January 1999 comment:
A cause for war
Humans fight wars over the strangest things, or so it seems on the surface.
Such strange causes for war include the War of Jenkins' Ear, the eruption
of World War I over the assassination of an Archduke and wars that began
because newspaper proprietors wanted something to write about - like the
Crimean war and the Spanish-American War. Below the surface though, most
wars are about possession of resources, scarce resources such as raw materials
or oil, or even farming land.
Now a new scarcity has introduced a new cause for war in the future, according
to Klaus Toepfer, director-general of the United Nations Environment Program.
Writing in the scientific journal 'Environmental Science & Technology'
in January, Toepfer argues that the lack of potable water, good quality drinking
water, will lead to future conflicts. This view, he says, is also that of
former U. N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros -Ghali.
The solution, he suggests, is to manage existing water stocks better, to
share them equitably, and to seek new ways of managing and promoting water
conservation. Toepfer took up his current position with the UN in February
1998. He is a former minister of the environment for Germany.
Again in December 1999:
The world's stressed freshwater supply
(December 1999)
The fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco was reminded
during December that the supply of clean fresh water for use by humans and
natural ecosystems is shrinking by the year. The invited speaker, Associate
Professor Kenneth Strzepek, has been working with colleagues, using sophisticated
computer models and geographical information systems, and their aim has been
to identify those river basins around the world that are the most stressed.
Strzepek and his co-workers have been doing their research as part of a background
analysis for the World Water Commission's "World Water Vision for the 21st
Century" report. The commission is an organization with government and private
funding which seeks global solutions to water problems. Right now, a third
of the world's population is currently living in regions that are classified
as water stressed. The accepted estimate now is that by the year 2025, almost
one-half of the population will be living in water-stressed regions, as the
demands for water for irrigation, livestock, industry and to sustain natural
ecosystems grow. The only way of easing this will be if the "business as
usual" scenario is dropped, said Strzepek. And as we have previously reported
(A cause for war, January 1999), battles in the 21st century are likely to
be fought over water supplies.
The projected "hot spots" include China's Yellow River basin, Africa's Zambezi
River basin, the Syr Darya and Amu Darya River basins which lead to Russia's
Aral Sea, and the Colorado River basin in north America. Their models have
studied the vegetation, soils and climate from the headwaters to the mouths
of the world's major river systems in 40 km (25 mile) square chunks to model
run-off and stream flow, taking into account past temperature and precipitation
(rainfall and snowfall) data to reconstruct run-off and stream flow data
for major river basins going back 100 years.
Evaporation can draw off 25% of a river's annual flow in bad years. As we
face the new century, 70% of the world's fresh water is drawn off by humans
to irrigate crops, and this is where the trouble really begins. Much of the
irrigation water takes up pesticides, herbicides and salts from the croplands
it passes over and through, and these are carried into the rivers, polluting
them.
According to Strzepek, "In the Nile Delta in Egypt, water quality is a major
problem for human and agricultural use due to upstream pollution from agricultural,
industrial and municipal uses," and he adds "Similar situations are found
in other river systems like the Indus River in Pakistan and the Yellow River
in China."
As soon as humans begin drawing more than a sustainable supply from a river,
the problems get worse, but while we could work this out from the name "sustainable
supply", how do we work out what this is? According to Strzepek, it is a
mix of the nature of a river basin's hydrology and storage capacity, but
while dams provide more water for humans, they also cause environmental impacts.
As a rule of thumb, researchers agree that no more than 40% of a river basin's
water should be diverted for human use, if the environment is to be adequately
protected. Yet in the Colorado basin, 100% of the water is used. The average
flow in the Colorado River is 15 million acre-feet per year, only 1.5 million
acre feet is delivered annually
to Mexico, and barely a trickle makes it into the Gulf of California in Mexico.
Again in May 2002:
The impact of declining glaciers
As we have warned in the past (see A cause for war, January 1999;
Indian rivers threatened, September 1999; The world's stressed
freshwater supply, December 1999), the wars of the 21st century are likely
to be fought over water resources. We have also pointed out in a number of
articles that the world's glaciers are fast disappearing (World's glaciers
still melting, May 1998; and Himalayan ice reveals climate warming,
September 2000).
In several analyses, we have also pointed directly at one of the most serious
problems facing humanity: there are more than a billion people on the Indian
sub-continent, and these people rely on glaciers for summer water that they
drink, with which they water their crops, and that they use to generate hydroelectricity.
This is not entirely a problem for the sub-continent, because glaciers are
shrinking everywhere, but the sub-continent will be the hardest hit.
<snip>
Other information on, or references to, water wars: August 1999, June
2000, January 2001, September 2002, March 2003.
Zero Sum replied:
On Mon, 19 May 2003
08:42, Peter Macinnis wrote:
> I am afraid that some people have been saying this for quite a while.
> Readers of a reliable encyclopedia (in spite of the spelling :-) will
> already be aware of this problem.
Does that same Encyclopaedia contain
a definition of the term "Water Empire" ?
We have to do somehing about our government...
Instead of protcting Australians they seem to be conspiring to wipe us out.
Now we are going to lose susidised prescriptions because the WTO and
the pharmacology giants don't like them...
We are not to be allowed to be Australians, just second (or worse) grade
Americans.
And revolution will be "terrorism". Shoot on sight, no trial...
Toby
Fiander responded:
I am suing for peace in the water wars. Here a couple of steps that
might be of interest.
THE RESOURCE
For anyone with a global perspective - there are several festivals of water
current - here is site that might be of interest. It advertises a CD,
but a some of the information is available on the site:
http://www.iucn.org/themes/wani/eatlas/
BIBLIOGRAPHY
To mark World Water Day and the International Year of Freshwater, the United
Nations Environment Programme has compiled a bibliography of more than 600
water publications, from a wide range of UN bodies and specialized agencies,
featuring material in three languages (English, French and Spanish). The
bibliography is organized thematically by subjects such as: drinking water;
freshwater resources; water and sustainable development; water and health;
marine resources; water treatment; water in agriculture; and water in urban
areas. Most of the publications listed include abstracts:
http://www.unep.org/Documents/Default.asp?DocumentID=67&ArticleID=3594
WATER QUALITY GUIDELINES
There is to be an Australian Runoff Quality Symposium, 16-17 June in Albury.
"Ho-hum," you say, "so what? There has been a lot of discussion about
water quality over a long time."
Well, you might want to get to this symposium, because the first complete
draft of the Engineers Australia's new Australian Runoff Quality Design Guideline
will be released. It will overview best practice management of urban
stormwater. Australian Rainfall and Runoff is the guideline used by
every engineer for estimating the flow of water anywhere/everywhere.
It is a remarkable achievement and has been around for nearly half a century
- there is nothing quite like it any other country of the world. Australians
might shortly lead the world with adopted water quality design guidelines,
too. Information and registration details at:
www.necma.vic.gov.au/conferences/index.html
BTW, for those with an interest, the Australian Water Association is advertising
a "primer on desalinisation of water". You need to ring or email the
bookshop (Artarmon, NSW), but it is quite cheap relative to other
engineering books ($50 compared to the usual $300 for engineering books).
