{"id":4501,"date":"2019-11-21T07:18:04","date_gmt":"2019-11-21T07:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euromenaenergy.com\/?p=4501"},"modified":"2019-11-21T07:18:04","modified_gmt":"2019-11-21T07:18:04","slug":"4501-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/?p=4501","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

By Laurie Goering\/London<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

Population growth and climate change are putting increasingly intense pressure on the planet\u2019s limited water supplies, with worsening shortages emerging from the Middle East to Asia and Latin America, researchers and bankers said on Monday.
\n\u201cAll the local crises around the world are building up to a global crisis,\u201d Torgny Holmgren, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute, told a conference on the issue at London-based think-tank Chatham House.
\nBut easing the threat and ensuring more people have access to a stable, safe water supply will be hugely challenging because water access and distribution are tied up in politics, cultural views and entrenched systems, conference speakers said.
\nIn Jordan, the third most water-scarce country, raising water prices to reflect the shortage would make economic sense \u2014 but not when nearly 1.5mn Syrian refugees, on top of 9mn citizens, depend on it, said Craig Davies of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
\n\u201cIt\u2019s potentially a powder keg,\u201d said Davies, who heads climate resilience investments for the bank. \u201cFrom a political point of view, it\u2019s imperative to keep water tariffs very low.\u201d
\nUzbekistan, meanwhile, has built its economy on exports of thirsty cotton, something that might not make sense as water becomes more scarce.
\nBut \u201cyou can\u2019t adjust that very easily\u201d without upsetting farmers and the economy, Davies added.
\nIn North Africa, newly available solar-powered water pumps are giving drought-hit farmers crucial access to irrigation \u2014 but also removing incentives to use water sparingly as farmers no longer have to buy fuel for diesel-powered irrigation pumps.
\n\u201cThere is literally no control,\u201d said Annabelle Houdret, a senior researcher at the German Development Institute who works in the region.
\nAquifers there could be depleted, she warned.
\nIn many Islamic countries, water is seen as a human right and a gift from God, so asking governments to charge people for better water services can be complicated, Davies said.
\nIn most places the EBRD works, the price users pay for water is far below the actual cost of bringing it to them, he said, meaning there is often too little money to invest in treating and delivering water, and maintaining and expanding networks.
\n\u201cIf you\u2019re not paying a rational price for the water, the incentive is to use the water irrationally,\u201d he added.
\nGetting water use right in an increasingly parched world is crucial, said Olcay Unver, vice-chair of UN-Water, a co-ordinating agency on water issues for the United Nations.
\nThree out of every four jobs globally depend on water in some way, including small-scale farmers who produce 80% of the world\u2019s food, said Unver, who is also a water advisor for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
\nBy 2050, FAO estimates food demand globally will rise by 50% but \u201cwe don\u2019t have 50% more water to allocate to agriculture\u201d, he noted, adding it is already the dominant water user.
\nDemand for water is also surging in fast-growing cities, where more than half of people live now and over two-thirds are expected to live by 2050, Unver said.
\nGetting enough water to everyone is particularly difficult as climate change brings more erratic rainfall, with many places hit by floods and droughts in turn, conference speakers said.
\nBut some countries are coming up with innovative ways to protect or expand supplies.
\nIn India\u2019s Gujarat state, for instance, much of the year\u2019s rain comes in monsoon season \u2014 and then rapidly evaporates, said Gareth Price, a Chatham House senior research fellow who works on South Asia.
\nBut some farmers have begun gathering leftover straw after harvest and piling it in low-lying spots in their fields to absorb and hold excess rain, allowing it to slowly filter into the groundwater, he said.
\nThe innovation \u2014 which also helps cut down on burning of field stubble, a major source of air pollution in the region \u2014 has won World Bank funding for its expansion, he said.
\nIn Brazil, meanwhile, farmers and ranchers who preserve and plant more forests along rivers to protect water supplies are paid by downstream users under a \u201cwater producers\u201d programme, said Paulo Salles, director of a Brazilian water regulatory agency.
\nDaanish Mustafa, a geography professor at King\u2019s College London, said growing water scarcity would unlikely drive a surge in wars, but instead lead to more \u201cunjust co-operation\u201d \u2014 cross-border sharing pacts where the stronger party gets the better deal.
\nWater access is already hugely unequal, speakers said, with US residents using 700-900 litres a day, Europeans about 200 litres and many of the world\u2019s poorest just 10-15 litres.
\nReliable access to water is crucial to achieving many of the global sustainable development goals (SDGs) \u2014 from ending poverty and hunger, to reducing inequality \u2014 they added.
\nYet climate change threatens to put secure water access ever further out of reach.
\n\u201cWith the SDGs, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel \u2014 but the problem is it\u2019s almost certainly a climate change train coming,\u201d said Christopher Hurst, director general of projects for the European Investment Bank. \u2014 Thomson Reuters Foundation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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