Frogs in a limo
October 15th, 2010
Click to enlarge image: Areas around the globe suffering from depleted water sources: (Jonathan Chenoweth, “Looming water crisis simply a management problem,” New Scientist (8, 2008): 28-32. )
Benjamin Franklin once said “when the well is dry, we know the worth of water.” He was an insightful man. But how very unfortunate it is that man only appreciates the true value of something once he has lost it. Such a trait hardly bodes well for the future of our planet. We are the proverbial frog in the pot; if dropped in boiling water we would jump out immediately, but on being placed in cold water that is slowly heated we do not perceive the danger and fail to make a wise escape. Instead, we allow ourselves to be slowly cooked to death.
Charming analogies aside, in honour of Blog Action Day, I press my fingers to the keyboard today to blog about something that 884 million people worldwide do not have access to; safe water. Perhaps this is not a topic you consider sufficiently riveting. I expect that the subject of impending death would also seem somewhat passé to the blissfully ignorant frog. Nevertheless I persist. When it comes to the water crisis we are fast approaching boiling point. There is every likelihood that the major wars of the future will be fought over this blue gold.
Contrary to popular belief, our world’s usable water supply is neither vast nor infinite. 97.5% of the earth’s water is saltwater and of the rest, less than one percent is accessible to humans. For those of you who prefer the visual analogy, if the world’s water fitted into a bucket, only one teaspoonful would be drinkable. 1.4 million children die every year from diarrhoea caused by unclean water and poor sanitation. That is one child dying every 20 seconds. Contemplate the real lives behind that figure for a moment. Now add into this mix the fact that over the next two decades our water usage is estimated to increase by about 40%. The boiling frog analogy doesn’t sound quite so alarmist anymore.
The grim reality is that our water supply is finite whilst our population keeps steadily increasing.
And crucially, this population growth is all expected to occur in today’s developing countries. Of the 2.6 billion rise we expect to see by 2050, 1 billion will be in Africa and 1.3 billion in Asia. In short, population is set to soar in exactly those parts of the world that most struggle with violence, disease, famine, extreme poverty and of course, water shortage. Pressure is being applied where it can least be managed. Last week the Asian development Bank noted that “by 2030, estimates suggest that there will be a shortfall of 40 percent between water supplies and demand in the region, with food production under threat and rising cross-border tensions over shared water resources in river basins”. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that by 2020, yields from African crops could drop by up to 50 per cent due to increased desertification, depleted water tables and poor rainfalls.
The pot is certainly getting warmer, particularly in our part of the world.
And therein lies the problem I think. To stretch the metaphor a little, we are heating at quite different rates. I have observed that ‘the population optimists’ (those who dismiss fears about future sustainability and continue to insist that there are no limits to human growth) tend to write from a Western, industrialised perspective. From this privileged, rather cooler position, a lower growth rate in productivity is not so obvious a problem. Since their populations are either stagnating or decreasing, their region’s demand for food (and therefore water) is expected to rise only slowly. With capable governments and full coffers they seem disturbingly blind to the realisation that although Americans may not face Malthusian ‘positive checks’ (famine, disease, conflict) in the near future, unless drastic advances are made in the developing world, Africans will. Robert Kaplan highlights the dilemma;
“We are entering a bifurcated world. Part of the globe is inhabited by Hegel’s and Fukuyama’s Last Man, healthy, well fed, and pampered by technology. The other, larger, part is inhabited by Hobbes’s First Man, condemned to a life that is “poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Although both parts will be threatened by environmental stress, the Last Man will be able to master it; the First Man will not.”
When optimists suggest that decreasing water supplies will eventually be solved with desalination (the process of converting salt water to fresh water so it is suitable for human consumption or irrigation), I can’t help but wonder whether they are considering the costs of such technology from a Western or a developing world perspective. How likely is it that countries which currently fail to meet their basic infrastructure needs, will afford prohibitively expensive additional technologies? Likewise, when optimists insist that there is exciting new GM research that may increase agricultural productivity, they are referring to research on crops prized by the industrialised world, not those that are essential to an African diet. They forget that the ‘green revolution’ largely passed Africa by. Without the water sources for necessary irrigation or funds necessary for sustained research and development in specifically African crops, the green revolution ultimately failed to fit an African context. The optimists also insist that population growth need not lead to increased conflict, but it is clear that they are imagining countries with largely homogenous peoples and strong, democratic governments. They think not of Zimbabwe or the Democratic Republic of Congo. In already overcrowded regions like the Nile Delta, Nairobi and Bangladesh, the political and strategic impact of surging populations, spreading disease, deforestation and soil erosion, water depletion and air pollution are already prompting mass migrations and inciting group conflicts. In a context of deep-seated ethnic divides, increased desertification, porous borders and weak governments, clashes like those recently witnessed in Darfur become virtually inevitable. Thomas Homer-Dixon challenges the optimists apparent myopia;
“Think of a stretch limo in the potholed streets of New York City, where homeless beggars live. Inside the limo are the air-conditioned post-industrial regions of North America, Europe, the emerging Pacific Rim, and a few other isolated places, with their trade summitry and computer-information highways. Outside is the rest of mankind, going in a completely different direction.”
Speaking from outside the limo then, we clearly have a problem. Combating the water crisis will require incredible political will, collective international action and a great mobilisation of resources. But as the United Nations Environment Programme stated in 1999 “the environment remains largely outside the mainstream of everyday human consciousness, and is still considered an add-on to the fabric of life.” Increasingly, governments have sought to solve their water problems by turning away from reliance on rainfall and surface water, and using subterranean supplies of groundwater instead. But that is rather like making constant withdrawals from a bank account without ever paying anything into it. It’s hardly a longterm solution. And of course, those inside the limo would do well to remember that we’re all sitting in the same pot in the end. Africa may well boil first, but the industrialised world will only be able to avoid the same fate for so long; 9/11 has taught us all that instability in one part of the world ultimately affects everyone in a globalised, interdependent age.
I realise that this all sounds very doom-laden. Despite the cheerless analogies and doomsday rhetoric, I am in fact a cautious optimist. Our froggy fate is not yet sealed. To remain with my smörgåsbord of mixed metaphors I should conclude with the warning that now is the time to step out of the limo, wake up our fellow frogs and acknowledge the worth of the well before it dries up. But I imagine you want something a tad more decipherable. Well the message is this; water is a global issue that ultimately affects us all and unless we begin the necessary conversations NOW, we are unlikely to achieve the collective action needed to stave off disaster. Since we are heating up the fastest, we are best placed to sound the alarm. The water-rich parts of the world will be the last to realise the necessity of action. Africa must not wait to be saved.
This blog is a tiny part of a conversation that has been a long time coming. We can each have a role in spreading the word. Now is the time to jump.
