WaterBuoy,
Your water project may get bigger than you ever imagined. <g><ng>
See the following article.
Let me know if you need someone to lick envelopes.
Seriously, if there is anything I can do to help you let me
know. I'd be glad to help sort or collate or do what ever
type of stuff that is needed to keep your organization
flying.
Besides, I have cheap manual laborers to help. Just don't
report me and my kids to the child labor board. <vbg>
=====
March 13, 2003-2
Copyright © 2003 Earth Policy Institute
World Creating Food Bubble Economy Based on Unsustainable
Use of Water
Lester R. Brown
On March 16, 2003, some 10,000 participants will meet in
Japan for the third World Water Forum to discuss the world
water prospect. Although they will be officially focusing
on water scarcity, they will indirectly be focusing on food
scarcity because 70 percent of the water we divert from
rivers or pump from underground is used for irrigation.
As world water demand has tripled over the last half-
century, it has exceeded the sustainable yield of aquifers
in scores of countries, leading to falling water tables. In
effect, governments are satisfying the growing demand for
food by overpumping groundwater, a measure that virtually
assures a drop in food production when the aquifer is
depleted. Knowingly or not, governments are creating
a "food bubble" economy.
As water use climbs, the world is incurring a vast water
deficit, one that is largely invisible, historically
recent, and growing fast. Because the impending water
crunch typically takes the form of falling water tables, it
is not visible. Falling water tables are often discovered
only when wells go dry.
Once the growing demand for water rises above the
sustainable yield of an aquifer, the gap between the two
widens each year. The first year after the line is crossed,
the water table falls very little, with the drop often
being scarcely perceptible. Each year thereafter, however,
the annual drop is larger than the year before.
The diesel-driven or electrically powered pumps that make
overpumping possible have become available throughout the
entire world at essentially the same time. The near-
simultaneous depletion of aquifers means that cutbacks in
grain harvests will be occurring in many countries at more
or less the same time. And they will be occurring at a time
when world population is growing by more than 70 million a
year.
Aquifers are being depleted in scores of countries,
including China, India, and the United States, which
collectively account for half of the world grain harvest.
Under the North China Plain, which produces more than half
of China's wheat and a third of its corn, the annual drop
in the water table has increased from an average of 1.5
meters a decade ago to up to 3 meters today. Overpumping
has largely depleted the shallow aquifer, so the amount of
water that can be pumped from it each year is restricted to
the annual recharge from precipitation. This is forcing
well drillers to go down to the region's deep aquifer,
which, unfortunately, is not replenishable.
He Quincheng, head of the Geological Environmental
Monitoring Institute in Beijing, notes that as the deep
aquifer under the North China Plain is depleted, the region
is losing its last water reserve—its only safety cushion.
His concerns are mirrored in a World Bank
report: "Anecdotal evidence suggest that deep wells
[drilled] around Beijing now have to reach 1,000 meters
[more than half a mile] to tap fresh water, adding
dramatically to the cost of supply." In unusually strong
language for the Bank, the report forecasts "catastrophic
consequences for future generations" unless water use and
supply can quickly be brought back into balance.
India, which now has a billion people, is overdrawing
aquifers in several states, including the Punjab (the
country's breadbasket), Haryana, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Andhra
Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu. The latest data indicate that
under the Punjab and Haryana, water tables are falling by
up to 1 meter per year. David Seckler, former head of the
International Water Management Institute, estimates that
aquifer depletion could reduce India's grain harvest by one
fifth.
In the United States, the underground water table has
dropped by more than 30 meters (100 feet) in parts of
Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas—three key grain-producing
states. As a result, wells have gone dry on thousands of
farms in the southern Great Plains.
Pakistan, a country with 140 million people and still
growing by 4 million per year, is also overpumping its
aquifers. In the Pakistani part of the fertile Punjab
plain, the drop in the water table appears to be similar to
that in India. In the province of Baluchistan, a more arid
region, the water table around the provincial capital of
Quetta is falling by 3.5 meters per year. Richard Garstang,
a water expert with the World Wildlife Fund, says
that "within 15 years Quetta will run out of water if the
current consumption rate continues."
In Yemen, the water table is falling by roughly 2 meters a
year. In its search for relief, the Yemeni government has
drilled test wells in the Sana'a basin, where the capital
is located, that are 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) deep—depths
normally associated with the oil industry—yet it has failed
to find water. With a population of 19 million growing at
3.3 percent a year, one of the highest rates in the world,
and with water tables falling everywhere, Yemen is fast
becoming a hydrological basket case. World Bank official
Christopher Ward observes that "groundwater is being mined
at such a rate that parts of the rural economy could
disappear within a generation."
In Mexico—home to a population of 104 million that is
projected to reach 150 million by 2050—the demand for water
is outstripping supply. In the agricultural state of
Guanajuato, for example, the water table is falling by 2
meters or more a year. At the national level, 52 percent of
all the water extracted from underground is coming from
aquifers that are being overpumped.
Water scarcity, once a local issue, is now crossing
international boundaries via the international grain trade.
Because it takes a thousand tons of water to produce a ton
of grain, importing grain is the most efficient way to
import water. Countries that are pressing against the
limits of their water supply typically satisfy the growing
need of cities and industry by diverting irrigation water
from agriculture, and then they import grain to offset the
loss of productive capacity. As water shortages intensify,
so too will the competition for grain in world markets. In
a sense, trading in grain futures is the same as trading in
water futures.
In China, a combination of aquifer depletion, the diversion
of irrigation water to cities, and lower grain support
prices are shrinking the grain harvest. After peaking at
392 million tons in 1998, the harvest dropped to 346
million tons in 2002. China's food bubble may be about to
burst. It has covered its grain shortfall for three years
by drawing down its stocks, but it will soon have to turn
to the world market to fill this deficit. When it does, it
could destabilize world grain markets.
Although some countries have already made impressive gains
in raising irrigation efficiency and recycling urban
wastewater, the general response to water scarcity has been
to build more dams or drill more wells. But now expanding
supply is becoming more difficult. The only other option is
to reduce demand by stabilizing population and raising
water productivity. With nearly all the 3 billion people to
be added by 2050 being born in developing countries where
water is already scarce, achieving an acceptable balance
between water and people may now depend more on stabilizing
population than on any other single action.
The second step in stabilizing the water situation is to
raise water productivity, not unlike the way we have raised
land productivity. After World War II, with population
projected to double by 2000 and with little new land to
bring under the plow, the world launched a major effort to
raise cropland productivity. As a result, land productivity
nearly tripled between 1950 and 2000. Now it is time to see
what we can do with water.
Copyright © 2003 Earth Policy Institute
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