Turning water into wine - ooops, sorry, I meant dollars...

Each one of us needs a few litre of water for drinking and cooking. To that we need some 25-50 litres for hygiene and laundry. 3.4 billion people had to do with less than 50 litres per day 1991 and many with much less. I have seen women in Mozambique in the mid 1990s doing their laundry in potholes in the road after a rain. The average American used 350 litres per day and the Australian 570 litres, ironically, as Australia is the driest continent of all (Tansey and Worsley 1995). These figures don’t tell the full truth as countries that import water consuming raw materials are importing ‘embedded’ water from other places. For instance, direct consumption of water in the UK is only half of the quantity that has been used to produce things imported to the UK (BBC 2010). 

At the moment, humans are directly using some 10 percent of all fresh water. Indirect we use almost all of it. We certainly draw benefit from the rainfall on our forests, farms and rangelands. In the Middle East and North Africa 120 percent of all freshwater is used annually. That one can use more than 100 percent is explained by that there is a substantial use of fossil water, water left from earlier epochs, which is not recharged by rain in our times, and that groundwater is depleted quicker than it is re-charged. Agriculture scientists tend to believe that water use by human society, be it for households, industry or farming, of more than forty percent is problematic, while ecologists tend to think that this is already far too much.

The tapping of water from rivers and lakes for irrigation and for city and industrial use was doubled between 1960 and 2000. Seventy percent of all water use is for farming. The irrigated area has increased from 210 million hectares to 277 million hectares between 1979 and 2003 (MEA 2005). The drawing of water leads to rapidly falling ground water tables, in great parts of China and India with 1-3 meters per year (FAO 2003). In Australia, the situation is precarious and the government’s program Water for the Future allocates some AUD12.9 billion to secure water resources for all Australians, but also for the environment. Just in the Murray-Darling basin, AUD3.2 billion will be used to buy back water rights from farmers so that the water can be used for other purposes, mainly to maintain fragile and threatened ecosystems (Australian Government 2008).  

The word “rival” comes from Latin rivalis, meaning a person sharing the same water. Thirty-nine countries are currently getting most of its water from sources outside their territory (UNEP 2009). In many cases there are tensions between countries that share the same resources, and conflicts over water are likely to increase.  

Table countries with high dependency on water from outside

Region	Countries getting 50 %- 75 % of its water from outside	Countries getting more than 75 % of its water from the outside
Middle East and North Africa	Iraq, Israel, Syria	Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait
East Asia and the Pacific	Kampuchea, Vietnam
Latin America and the Caribbean	Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay
South Asia		Bangladesh, Pakistan
Africa south of Sahara	Benin, Chad, Congo, Eritrea, Gambia, Mozambique, Namibia, Somalia, Sudan	Botswana, Mauritanian, Niger
Eastern Europe and Central Asia	Azerbaijan, Croatia, Latvia Slovak republic, Ukraine Uzbekistan	Hungary, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Turkmenistan
The OECD countries	Luxembourg	Netherlands

Source: UNEP 2009

Irrigation plays a big role for our food production. There is probably no single investment in farming that so clearly ‘pays off’ both economically and in increased productivity. In the end of 1990s, irrigated area represented a fifth of all agriculture area, but produced around two fifth of all crops and almost three fifths of all grain. FAO estimates that there is 402 million hectares of land in developing countries which could be irrigated of which only half of it is irrigated today. In Africa south of Sahara, only four percent of the farmland is irrigated and the area has only increased with four percent the last forty years (World Bank 2007). Approximately, two thirds of all rivers in the world are used for irrigation or hydro-electricity; in the USA, only 2 percent of the rivers flow freely. Great rivers like the Colorado, the Nile and the Ganges have almost no water left when the reach the sea. Great lakes such as Lake Chad and the Aral Sea have shrunk tremendously. In the case of the Aral Sea, this affected both the fisheries and the whole climate around the lake with sand storms and disease following (Vitousek 1997). There are several limitations to the expansion of irrigation, however, one is simply access to water; the other one is the loss of biodiversity from the land that can be irrigated, which today mostly are swamps or other wetlands. If wetlands are drained they will normally also be converted from carbon sinks to carbon emitters. In areas of high evaporation, salinization can be an additional problem. So there are reasons to believe that irrigation will not expand as much as theoretically possible. There are also many opportunities to improve water stewardship in existing irrigation schemes or to introduce small-scale technologies such as rainwater harvesting[1] in farming systems.

Be paid to waste

Pricing of water in most countries represent an actual subsidy of farming over other sectors. In the end of last century, the global water subsidies were estimated to 33 billion dollars, a fact that certainly reduces the incentive of farmers to save water (Worldwatch Institute 2000). Only the Netherlands and Austria of twelve OECD-countries priced water at any rate that could be called commercial[2]. Household and industries paid between US$0.5 and US$3 per cubic meter while farmers paid a few cents or even fractions of a cent. Now, irrigation water and drinking water are two different qualities of water, but the difference in price doesn’t represent that quality difference. Even in a dry country like Australia, households paid almost hundred times as much for their water than did farmers (OECD 2001).

That water subsidies are neither sustainable for the environment nor for financial reasons is shown again and again. In the 1970s, Saudi Arabia supported massive expansion of grain production based on subsidized irrigation. It was, by and large, very successful. In the 1990s, it became clear that it wasn’t sustainable. In some areas, ground water table dropped 5 meters per year and some farmers were drilling at 1000 meters to reach water. In response to this production of wheat was reduced from 4.5 million tons 1992 to 1.8 million tons 1993 and the production of barley dropped from 2.2 million tons to just 100,000 tons by year 2002. In 2002 the ministry of agriculture announced that it would cease feed production altogether because of its negative effect on water resources. (USDA 2002). In Santa Fe, New Mexico, the local government recently began requiring home builders to retrofit six existing houses to offset the added water use for each new house built (Ruddiman 2005). Las Vegans are paid to rip out their lawns and opt for (chic) desert landscaping (The Economist 2011a).

While a human need a few litre of water to drink, at least thousand times as much water is used for production of our food (Kijne and others 2009). The water need for foods vary tremendously and they vary for the same product under different conditions. From Australia, the following quantity of water is reported to be needed to produce a kg of a product.

1 kg of wheat, 715-750 litre of water

1 kg of corn, 540-630 litre of water

1 kg soy, 1,650-2,200 litre of water

1 kg rice, 1,550 litre of water

1 kg beef, 50,000-100,000 litre of water

1 kg wool, 170,000 litre of water[3]

(Meyer 1997)

Other figures are reported elsewhere; from the UK, a kg of beef is said to embed 15,000 litres of water (BBC 2010). The fact that a certain food needs a lot of water is as little as with energy an absolute reason to avoid a certain food. Nevertheless, a discussion on embedded water, or virtual water as it is also called, is obviously more and more relevant the more scarce water resources are seen to be. One weakness in water discussions and the concept of embedded water is that it equals all sorts of water. There is ‘blue’ water – water in rivers and lakes; there is ‘green’ water – water in rainfall and in the soil; there is ‘grey’ water – i.e. waste water and there is also fossil water in aquifers. Concentrated water in a lake is a more useful resource than rain[4]. All in all global water supply is strained and locally water is already now a very limiting factor for development. There are many ways to improve water management and the efficiency of water use, ranging from simple solutions such as rainwater harvesting to high-tech recirculation of irrigation water in green houses. To reduce wasteful consumption, subsidies should be abolished and perhaps water use itself should have a price tag.

Turning water into property and money

“The fluid nature of water has always made it difficult to turn into private property” writes Radkau (2008), but then what increasingly are turned into property is water rights. The oil tycoon and investor T Boone Pickens has bought up water rights of the Ogallala aquifer in the USA for some US$100 million and expects to sell water for some US$165 million per year once the thirst of Dallas is big enough (Bloomberg 2008). Not surprisingly, this has triggered public outrage, regulatory responses and lawsuits. Parallel to private encroachment on water rights. Maintaining the water catchment areas is rapidly turned into a commodity by means of "watershed service payments". In 2008 there were some 300 schemes with payments of a total of  US$ 10 billion (Ecosystem Market Place 2010). 

(Extract from Garden Earth).  

In additon, the waterworks have increasingly been privatized last decades

Currently there is a rush to privatize water services around the world. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) are pushing for the privatization of water services by European and U.S.-based companies. They are pushing privatization through stipulations in trade agreements and loan conditions to developing countries. These privatization programs started in the early 1990’s and have since emerged in India, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Nigeria, Mexico, Malaysia, Australia, and the Philippines, to name a few. In Chile, the World Bank imposed a loan condition to guarantee a 33 percent profit margin to the French company Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux while the company insisted on a margin of 35 percent.

writes Water is life, which also have a lot of useful resources about water.  A complication in the discussion is that public utilities in many developing countries have grossly mismanaged their task and failed to deliver, similar as many of the public telecom and elecrticity utilities:

The truth is that many of the world’s poorest people are, perversely, already paying three to 10 times the global average price for water, due to the failure of public utilities to provide any access at all, says Caroline Boin, a director at London think tank the International Policy Network. In Kibera, a sprawling Nairobi slum—the biggest in Africa—the only way to get water is through a network of porters that provide water to 500,000 people a day, hauling it in canisters on their backs or by donkey. By some estimates, more than half the population of cities in the developing world get their water this way.

writes McLeans Canada
 
Another aspect is that water pricing, or lack of pricing has not promoted a sustainable use, and lack of pricing also means that faucets can stand running for day. I have often been struck by this phenomenon. In Sweden which is blessed with water resources (and where the public sector runs the utilities) you very rarely hear the constantly dripping faucet or the noise from a constantly flowing WC. But in many poor countries that is a very common situation. Water is a badly managed commons. I don't think privatisation is the cure, and I don't think we should cling to corrupt utilities. Where the public sector isn't doing its job properly, I think the local communities can take care of it instead. They will most likely also ensure better and wiser use. But, in addition, we need to set some kind of "price" on water itself to encourage responsible use.

some eartlier posts: Why Free is the wrong price for water

Water footrpint: how much water is there in a 0.5l soda?

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[1]       Rainwater harvesting is the collection of rainwater to provide drinking water, water for livestock or water for irrigation.

[2]       Which still in this case only means that the costs for extraction and distribution is recovered, not that a price has been allocated to water itself.

[3]       Notably the figures for meat and wool also include water that is falling as rain on the grazing areas and the feed producing areas for the animals. Most of the grazing areas are far too dry to be used for any farming.

[4]       A bit similar like discussions about energy where one can’t equal heat energy with electricity.