Asia's water crisis is at the heart of the world's water challenges,
where the degradation of surface and subterranean water resources threatens the
ecosystem.
With Asia facing the world's
lowest per capita access to fresh water, the continent's ever-deeper search for
water is sucking groundwater reserves dry with millions of pump-operated wells
even as it confronts river depletion.
Groundwater is recklessly exploited
because it is not visible to the human eye. What is out of sight tends to be
out of mind, as people drill ever deeper into the receding water table.
At least seven factors have
contributed to the rising economic and security risks linked with the Asian
water crisis.
One is Asia's dramatic economic
rise. With economic activity such as industry and food production consuming 92
percent of the world's annual water use, Asia's rapid economic growth has been
the key driver of its growing water stress.
Asia already has the world's
largest number of people without basic or adequate access to water. Asians are
experiencing very high water-distribution losses, a lack of 24/7 supply in many
cities, and drinking water contamination due to unregulated industrial and
agricultural practices.
A second factor is consumption
growth from rising prosperity. While Asia's population growth has slowed, its
consumption growth has taken off as Asians consume more resources like water,
food and energy.
A growing Asian middle class, for
example, uses water-guzzling, energy-hogging comforts such as washing machines
and dishwashers. What were once luxuries have become necessities today. In
China, daily household water use increased 21/2 times between 1980 and 2000
alone.
The broader consumption growth is
best illustrated by changing Asian diets, especially the greater intake of
meat, which is notoriously water-intensive to produce.
Asia actually accounts for the
world's fastest growth in meat consumption. China, Vietnam and Thailand almost
doubled their production of pigs and poultry during the 1990s alone.
Growing biomass to feed animals
takes far more water, energy and land than growing biomass for direct human
consumption. Much of the world's corn and soya bean production and a growing
share of wheat now go to feed cattle, pigs and chickens.
Third is the role of irrigation.
Irrigation has proven both a boon and a curse in Asia. Once a continent of
serious food shortages and recurrent famines, Asia's dramatic economic rise as
a net food exporter came on the back of an unparalleled irrigation expansion.
Between 1961 and 2003, Asia doubled its total irrigated acreage.
Extending agriculture to
semi-arid and arid areas that stretch from northern China to Uzbekistan and
beyond has required intensive irrigation. But this has created serious
water-logging and soil salinity problems, and undercut crop-yield growth.
Even in Asia's fertile valleys
drained by major rivers, irrigation is often necessary in the dry season
because the rains are usually restricted to the three- or four-month monsoon
season. This is in stark contrast to Europe's rain-fed crops producing most of
its food.
With its vast irrigation systems,
Asia now boasts most of the world's land under irrigation, where 70.2 percent
of the world's 301 million hectares is irrigated.
Asia's channelling of 82 percent
of its water for food production is not the only startling statistic. Consider
another astonishing figure: almost 74 per cent of the total global fresh water
used for agriculture is in Asia alone. With so much water diverted to
agriculture, water literally is food in Asia. Yet in the long term, such water
use by Asia's agricultural sector is simply unsustainable.
A fourth factor is the
fast-rising water demand from Asian industry and urban households, as this
continent becomes the world's fastest industrialization and urbanization
region.
With the international shift of
manufacturing to Asia continuing, this continent's industry water usage is
merely 9 percent of the total, with another 9 percent used for municipal
supply. However, in East Asia - where Asia's heavy manufacturing is
concentrated - industrial water use already accounts for 22 percent of total
supply, with municipal supply making up another 14 percent.
However, water shortages are
looming as industrial activities rapidly expand, even as the fast pace of
urbanization has left many cities struggling to meet the household water
demands.
A fifth factor in Asia's water
crisis is the large-scale sequestration of river resources through dams,
barrages, reservoirs and other human-made structures. This has been done
without factoring in long-term environmental considerations and, in a number of
cases, even the interests of countries downstream.
Projects designed to offer
structural solutions in the form of dams, reservoirs, irrigation canals and
levees are often at the root of intrastate and interstate disputes.
Asia is the world's most
dam-dotted continent, yet such over-damming has only compounded its water
challenges. China alone boasts slightly more than half of the approximately
50,000 large dams on the planet.
Yet another factor is the
environmental impact of Asia's economic growth story, including on watersheds,
riparian ecology and water quality. Rising prosperity in Asia, by aggravating
the environmental impact of human activities, is deepening the water crisis.
State policies have unwittingly
contributed to environmental degradation. State subsidies, for example, have
helped weaken price signals, encouraging farmers to over-pump groundwater.
Provision of subsidized electricity and diesel fuel to farmers in several Asian
countries has promoted the uncontrolled exploitation of groundwater.
Water abstraction in excess of
the natural hydrological cycle's renewable capacity is affecting ecosystems and
degrading water quality in large parts of Asia.
The over-exploitation of
groundwater, for example, results not only in the depletion of a vital
resource. It also leads to the drying up of wetlands, lakes and streams that
depend on the same source. The human alteration of ecosystems is an invitation
to accelerated global warming.
A final factor is the lack of
institutionalized cooperation over most of Asia's transnational river basins.
This reality has to be seen in the context of strained relations between states
sharing river basins and the broader absence of an Asian security architecture.
Asia is the only continent other
than Africa where regional integration has yet to take hold, largely because
Asian political and cultural diversity has hindered institution building. As a
result, managing the water competition in Asia has become increasingly
challenging.
Brahma Chellaney
Straits Times
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