CSU Hayward Dept. Geography and Environmental Studies GEOG 4350 Winter 2003 Class 10

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CSU HaywardDept. Geography and Environmental
StudiesGEOG 4350 Winter 2003 Class 10

• Water and Our Future
• Challenges for the 21st Century

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World Water Forum Declaration

• The Hague Ministerial Declaration of March 2000
  adopted seven challenges as the basis for future
  action.
• 1. Meeting basic needs for safe and sufficient
  water and sanitation
• 2. Securing the food supply especially for the
  poor and vulnerable through the more effective
  use of water
• 3. Protecting ecosystems ensuring their
  integrity via sustainable water resource
  management
• 4. Sharing water resources promoting peaceful
  cooperation between different uses of water and
  between concerned states, through approaches such
  as sustainable river basin management
• 5. Managing risks to provide security from
  water related hazards
• 6. Valuing water to manage water in the light
  of its different values (economic, social,
  environmental, cultural) and to move towards
  pricing water to recover the costs of service
  provision, taking account of equity and the needs
  of the poor and vulnerable
• 7. Governing water wisely involving the public
  and the interests of all stakeholders.

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Distribution of worlds water versus worlds
population (UNESCO, 2003)
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Distribution of the worlds unserved millions
(UNESCO 2003)
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Challenges to Life and Well-Beingin the Water
Sector

• Challenge 1 Basic Needs and the Right to Health
• Challenge 2 Protecting Ecosystems for People and
  Planet
• Challenge 3 Cities Competing Needs in an Urban
  Environment
• Challenge 4 Securing Food for a Growing World
  Population
• Challenge 5 Promoting Cleaner Industry for
  Everyones Benefit
• Challenge 6 Developing Energy to Meet
  Development Needs
• Challenge 7 Mitigating Risk and Coping with
  Uncertainty
• Challenge 8 Sharing Water Defining a Common
  Interest
• Challenge 9 Recognizing and Valuing the Many
  Faces of Water
• Challenge 10 Ensuring the Knowledge Base a
  Collective Responsibility
• Challenge 11 Governing Water Wisely for
  Sustainable Development

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Basic Needs and the Right to Health

• In 2000, the estimated global mortality rate due
  to water-related disease was 2,213,000 and some 2
  billion of the worlds people have water-borne
  parasites.
• There is a massive need for expansion of piped
  water, provision of sanitation, education on
  hygiene and practice of point-of-use
  disinfection.
• Universal piped water and sanitation would
  probably reduce water-related mortality and
  morbidity worldwide by more than 70.

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Protecting Ecosystems for People and Planet

• Not only to aquatic ecosystems have intrinsic
  value, they also provide humankind with important
  services.
• Some 60 of the worlds rivers are heavily dammed
  and interrupted.
• Globally, some 24 of mammals, 12 of birds and
  10 of fishes found in and around aquatic
  ecosystems are threatened with extinction.
• Flooding risk and water quality degradation from
  elimination of wetlands, 50 of which have been
  lost this last century, is accelerating.

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Competing Needs in an Urban Environment

• By 2030, 60 of the worlds population will live
  in towns, up from 48 today.
• Urbanization requires adequate quantities of
  water if the poor are not to be marginalized and
  must be accompanied by sanitation if
  environmental degradation is to be avoided.
• Shanty towns in the developing world
  megalopolises are usually unserved by piped
  systems, requiring water vendors to meet needs,
  often at vastly inflated prices.
• Reliability and regularity of supplies will
  depend on adequate infrastructure expansion and
  maintenance.
• Privatization of service is a growing trend but
  many believe it is unable to meet the above
  challenges.

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Securing Food for a Growing World Population

• Providing the 2,800 kcal needed per person per
  day for healthy living is estimated to require
  1,000 m3 of water each year.
• Irrigation already uses some 70 of water
  worldwide and this is expected to grow by 14 as
  irrigated land expands by 20 by 2030.
• This will require some 30 billion in
  investments.
• Irrigation demands in many developing countries
  will stretch already scarce water and require
  even greater fragmentation of rivers.
• Pressures will increase to irrigate with
  wastewater on urban fringes, increasing the need
  for treatment systems.

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Promoting Cleaner Industry for Everyones Benefit

• Industrial water demand is expected to increase
  globally by about 50 by 2030.
• Obsolete and inefficient technologies and a lack
  of awareness by industry managers leads to
  excessive waste worldwide and rampant pollution
  by untreated toxic wastes.
• Greater effort is needed in outreach to industry
  and in effective demand management practices.

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Developing Energy to Meet Development Needs

• Water is vital in all thermal power plants and
  for hydroelectric production.
• Energy provision, especially electricity, is a
  key step in alleviating poverty and improving
  quality of lives around the world.
• Hydropower will be increasingly tapped as a means
  of energy provision and as an effort to avoid or
  offset global warming.
• This will not be without its environmental
  consequences.
• Of great interest worldwide is the move away from
  big dams to mini-hydro, especially for small
  towns.

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Mitigating Risk and Coping with Uncertainty

• Water-related natural disasters are expected to
  rise due to the effects of global warming on
  climatic stability.
• Some 200 million people each year are affected by
  floods, water-related disease and drought 97
  of these in the less developed world.
• Economic losses from natural disasters now cost
  over 70 billion per year.
• Flood and drought prediction and emergency
  preparedness is vital and inadequate in most
  areas.

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Sharing Water Defining a Common Interest

• Upstream and downstream users are increasingly in
  conflict and greater cooperation is required.
• There are 261 international river basins and 145
  nations share river systems.
• Over the last 50 years, some 500 conflicts have
  occurred over shared water systems from verbal
  hostility to extensive military activity,
  although no formal war has been fought over
  water.
• Systems need to be put into place within and
  between nations to allocate water between
  competing uses and users to promote efficiency,
  maximize public benefits and minimize the risk of
  conflict.

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Recognizing and Valuing the Many Faces of Water

• Water has an economic, social, religious,
  cultural and environmental value.
• The value of water (benefits it brings), price of
  water (how much we charge for it) and the cost of
  water (how much it costs to develop and supply
  it) need to be brought into line because in many
  areas, one or more are heavily out of balance.
• The water sector needs some 20-60 billion
  invested in developing new and improved systems,
  and this kind of financing is not available, in
  part because the value is under-appreciated and
  prices are inadequate to recover investments.

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Ensuring the Knowledge Base A Collective
Responsibility

• The huge body of information necessary to create
  informed decision-makers and consumers is
  fragmented and poorly communicated, especially to
  the non-English speaking world.
• Education is needed from the primary level up to
  the tertiary, where new water agency officials
  must be prepared to deal with the challenges
  ahead in management, engineering and science.
• Capacity building, at the community level for the
  development of water systems to the institutional
  level, for the creation of effective management
  structures, is required.

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Governing Water Wisely for Sustainable Development

• Fragmented institutions has led to the water
  sector being marginalized in national planning
  and to many instances in which other sectors have
  created negative impacts on water quality and
  reliability.
• Corruption diverts many public resources away
  from water projects to personal gains.
• Laws, regulations and procedures are overly
  complex, contradictory or inadequate to promote
  effective water management.
• Greater involvement of stakeholders/beneficiaries
  is required in governance along with greater
  oversight and accountability.
• Policy and legal reform is necessary in many
  nations.

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Cechs Big Issues for the New Millennium

• Dealing with the water requirements of an
  exponentially growing population (requires
  population control and/or massive infrastructure
  investment).
• Tackling the problem of the lack of effective
  wastewater treatment (according to UNESCO, the
  world produces some 1,500 km3 of wastewater, the
  majority of which is not treated).
• Halting the degradation of aquatic ecosystems due
  to increased urbanization and the spread of crop
  production (impacts fish, wildlife and water
  quality).

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Scenarios for the Future

• Cech paints pictures of future scenarios and asks
  you to rank the probability of them occurring
• Business as Usual (p430)
• Technology Saves the Day (p431)
• Global Warming Floods the World (p433)
• Space is the Answer (p439)
• Have you read them? Do they seem plausible? What
  do your predictions look like?

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Tools to Meet the Challenges

• Cech, the ESA, and UNESCO/UN, each indicate that,
  though the challenges are great, we have many
  solutions to the worlds present and future
  problems in the water sector.
• Cech (2003) provides the following summary
• Better pricing of water and administration of
  water agencies (through privatization?)
• Better management of groundwater through
  management of the surface-aquifer interface and
  artificial recharge.
• Effective conservation to eliminate waste and
  unnecessary extravagance.
• Selective dam construction and enlargement, while
  mitigating adverse economic effects (important
  for energy sector also)
• More effective education of decision makers and
  water users with respect to the value and use of
  water.
• Cooperation between regions and nations over
  shared water resources.

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Points to Remember

• Fresh water is an essential but finite and
  vulnerable resource.
• Water will become increasingly scarce as
  populations rise and concentrate in large
  megalopolises.
• Water will be under increasing threat from
  pollution and global climate change.
• We will likely see increasing frequencies of
  floods and droughts and water shortages.
• Competition between different, exclusive uses for
  water will intensify.
• Aging infrastructure will become increasingly
  fragile if not rehabilitated on a timely basis.
• Safe, affordable and adequate water supplies for
  all the worlds peoples should be our collective
  responsibility.
• Education to inform the public concerning these
  issues and adequate funding to address them will
  be critical.