Water Worries Start to Gain Attention
Expect to hear a lot more talk about water -- or, as the cognoscenti call it these days, "the oil of the 21st century."
As the world population has tripled during the past century, the use of water has increased sevenfold. The Aral Sea in Central Asia, tapped relentlessly for agriculture, has 60% less water than it did 30 years ago. Lake Chad in West Africa is 1/20th its 1970s size. The Colorado River, the Rio Grande, the Indus in India and Pakistan and the Yellow River in China no longer consistently reach the sea.
The World Commission on Water predicts water use will increase 50% during the next 30 years and bemoans "the gloomy arithmetic of water." Others project that a decade from now 40% of the world's population -- three billion people -- will live in countries that hydrologists classify as "water stressed."
CAPITAL EXCHANGE
Reader comments -- and David Wessel's answers -- about the Capital column. Published Tuesday mornings.
RESOURCES
? Recent Center for Strategic and International Studies conference
? World Bank
? World Water Council
? Global population projections (Adobe Acrobat required)
Even though more than 2.4 billion people got access to safe drinking water for the first time during the past 20 years, an estimated 1.7 billion people still lack it, and perhaps 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation. Two million tons of human waste is released into rivers and streams around the world annually. About 1.8 million people, mostly young children, die from diarrhea and related diseases each year; many of those deaths could be prevented with clean water and sanitation.
Conferences and commissions abound. There is even a Global Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing with Soap. Just this month, there is the Women for Water conference in the Netherlands, the Biennial Ground Water Conference in Pretoria, South Africa, the International Workshop on the Value of Water in Germany, the International Conference on the Problems of Water Resources, Geothermy and Geoecology in Belarus, the Conference Euro-Africaine "Eau et Territoires" in Paris, the Global Water Management workshop at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the 2nd Annual Alternative Water Forum in Geneva convened by a self-proclaimed "water militant."
The Republican and Democratic leaders of the U.S. Senate, who agree on almost nothing these days, are jointly backing a bill to make access to safe water and sanitation a higher priority for U.S. foreign aid and to authorize -- no money allocated yet -- a pilot project to help countries with lots of water-borne illness.
Worrying about water isn't new. In 1993, the United Nations designated March 22 each year as World Water Day. But there is a new intensity. Foreign aid, maligned for a while as well-intentioned but wasteful, has regained some of its luster. "Water has come to the top of things that we can do something measurable about," says Steven Radelet , an economist at the Center for Global Development, a Washington think tank that focuses on global poverty.
Among foreign-aid thinkers, there is a growing consensus that improving health isn't just a byproduct of wealth, it is a vital factor in fostering economic growth, and that water is key to health. "Water," the World Bank's Claudia Sadoff noted the other day at CSIS, "was an early and large priority in the development of this country's economy, yet we seem to place very little emphasis on water in our foreign aid relative to what it deserves."
Recently, though, there has been increasing attention from U.S. politicians and diplomats about the potential for conflict, even wars, over water, and the potential for cooperative efforts to address water to be a catalyst for peace and improving the standing of the U.S. in the world. "The need for clean water knows no borders, and proper management can be a currency for peace and international cooperation," says Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.
Some of this talk echoes the 1972 "Limits to Growth" report that became a manifesto for those who fear population growth will outstrip the Earth's resources. Extrapolations are always suspect. But much of the conversation is -- encouragingly -- focused on perfecting technologies to increase the supply of water, making its use more efficient (drip irrigation, for instance), strengthening the institutions that manage water resources and relying more on market mechanisms to encourage wise use. Water is, in short, best viewed as a challenge -- but a manageable one.
It won't be easy, though. Yemen is a poor country with near 20 million people, close to half of whom live in poverty. Its population is growing rapidly; by 2045, projections show it will have nearly as many people as Germany will. Most of its populace lives too far from the coast to make transport of desalinated water practical; most of its water is drawn from an underground aquifer that is likely to be depleted within a couple of decades.
But -- and here's the sad part -- Yemen uses fully half the water it draws from that reservoir to grow qat, a habituating stimulant.
水资源问题引起更多关注
预计人们会更多谈论到水──这种被有识之士称作“21世纪石油”的东西。
世界人口在过去100年中增长了两倍，而用水量却增长了6倍。由于流入中亚地区咸海的河水被大量用于农业，咸海的水量在过去30年中已减少了60%。西非乍得湖的水量目前只相当于上世纪70年代的1/20。科罗拉多河、格兰德河、流经印度和巴基斯坦的印度河以及中国的黄河已经出现断流现象。
据世界水务委员会(World Commission on Water)预计，今后30年世界用水量将增长50%，该机构对供水前景做出了悲观的预期。其他人士则预计，未来10年内全球40%的人口（30亿人）将生活在被水文学者归类为“严重缺水”的国家。
尽管过去20年中有24亿人首次得以饮用净水，但估计全球仍有17亿人喝不到净水，大约有26亿人缺乏基本的卫生设施。全球每年有200万吨人类粪便被排放进河流中。每年约有180万人死于腹泻和相关疾病，其中多数是幼儿；如果能够获得足够的净水和卫生设施，很多人本来是不会死的。
为此全球成立的机构和召开的会议多如牛毛，甚至还成立了一个名为“全球用肥皂洗手公私合作机构”的组织。仅本月举行的相关会议就有在荷兰召开的“妇女与水”大会，在南非比勒陀利亚召开的“地下水问题双年会”，在德国举办的“水之价值国际培训班”，在白俄罗斯召开的“水资源、地热和地质生态学问题国际会议”，在巴黎召开的欧-非水资源会议，华盛顿战略和国际研究中心(Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS)举办的“全球水管理培训班”，以及民间人士在日内瓦举行的节水问题年会。
虽然美国参议院的共和党和民主党领袖们近来几乎在所有问题上都意见相左，但他们却一致支持一项议案，要求将使受援国获得净水和必要卫生设施摆上美国对外援助的更重要议事日程，并授权政府实施一项对那些水污染疾病多发国家提供援助的实验性项目，不过国会尚未下拨该项目的资金。
国际社会对水问题的担心并非始于今日，联合国早在1993年就将每年的3月22日定为国际水日。但人们现在对这一问题更加关注了。外国援助在解决水问题方面曾一度被指责为费而不惠，但现在又重新被人们寄予希望。全球发展中心(Center for Global Development)是华盛顿一家关注全球贫困问题的智库，其经济学家史蒂文?拉德勒特（Steven Radelet）说，水问题已经成了通过对外援助可以有效解决的问题之一。
越来越多研究对外援助的人士认识到，健康状况的改善不只是生活富裕的副产品，也是实现经济增长的重要先决条件，而水对保证人类健康至关重要。世界银行(World Bank)的克劳迪娅?萨多夫(Claudia Sadoff)指出，水问题是一个国家在实现经济增长方面需要优先解决的问题，但美国在提供对外援助方面似乎远未给予水问题应有的重视。
不过美国的政客和外交家们最近越来越认识到，围绕水问题有可能产生冲突甚至爆发战争，而通过国际合作来解决水问题不仅可以促进和平还能提高美国在世界上的形象。美国参议院多数党领袖比尔?弗斯特（Bill Frist）说，对净水的需求不存在国界，正确处理这一问题可以促进和平和国际合作。
这类言论表达了与1972年“增长极限”报告相同的观点，而那些担心人口增长将超过地球资源供应能力的人士则将这份报告当作了他们的宣言书。令人欣喜的是，这类言论多数都强调要通过技术进步来增加水资源供应，提高水资源利用率(例如采用滴灌法)，进一步完善水资源管理制度，更多依靠市场机制来鼓励节水。简而言之，水资源问题虽然十分严峻，但不是不可以解决的。
不过要解决这一问题也并不容易。也门是一个人口近2,000万的穷国，将近半数人口生活在贫困线以下。也门人口增长迅速，预计到2045年将赶上德国。也门多数国民都居住在远离海岸的内陆地区，因此无法向他们提供淡化海水。也门人的用水主要依赖地下水，而那里的地下水资源有可能在20年内枯竭。
但更加可悲的是，也门从地下抽取的水有一半被用来种植含麻醉剂咖特的植物。
