|
Professor Ron Johnston
Executive Director
Australian Center for Innovation and International Competitiveness
University of Sydney
New South Wales 2006
Australia
| Section 1 |
Introduction |
| Section 2 |
Key Issues and Policy Options in Water Supply
and Management |
| |
1. Key Issues |
| |
2. Some Policy Options |
| Section 3 |
THE SUPPLY, MANAGEMENT AND USE
OF THE WORLD’S WATER RESOURCES |
| |
1. Water Availability |
| |
2. Water Issues |
| |
3. Water Scarcity |
| |
4. Human Induced Stresses |
| |
5. Human Health Risks Due to Water
Problems |
| |
6. Stress on Land Resources |
| |
7. Water Challenges A
Look to the Future |
| Section 4 |
PROSPECTS FOR DESALINATION TECHNOLOGY |
| |
Some Useful Key Web Sites |
KEY ISSUES AND POLICY OPTIONS IN WATER
SUPPLY AND MANAGEMENT
 1 .KEY ISSUES
- Water resources assessment
- Integration of water resources development
into national policy, plans and programs for economic and social development
- Integrated water resources development
and management
- Protection of water resources, water
quality and aquatic ecosystems
- River basin development and management
- Water for sustainable urban development
- Water for sustainable rural development
- Promotion of infrastructure development
and investment for drinking water supply and sanitation
- Water pricing and promotion of private
investment in the water sector
- Water demand management, water saving
and economic use of water
- Promotion of women’s role in water
supply and sanitation
- Mitigation of water-related natural
disasters, particularly flood loss reduction
- Improvement in land-use planning and
practices for disaster reduction and watershed management.
These, together with
further analysis, provide the basis for twelve key issues identified in
Water Supply and Management in the APEC region for the purposes of the
APEC Technology Foresight Expert’s Workshop.
1.Water Quantity
The supply of freshwater
in a region is limited by the dynamics of the hydrological cycle. The
renewable supply of water is determined by the surface runoff from local
precipitation, the inflow from other regions, and the groundwater recharge
that replenishes aquifers. As water can, in principle, be re-used many
times, the availability of water for human use depends as much on how
it is used and how water resources are managed, as on any absolute limits.
Apart from human use, water is also needed to sustain the natural ecosystems
found in wetlands, rivers, and the coastal waters into which they flow.
Based on the data that
about 42,700 cubic kilometres of water that falls on the Earth flows through
river systems, it is estimated that about 9,000 cubic kilometres per year
are readily accessible for human use, plus a further 3,500 cubic kilometres
that is captured and stored by dams and reservoirs.
However fresh water resources
are very unevenly distributed, and subject to substantial cyclic variation.
Thus, within the APEC region, the countries in tropical regions are normally
subject to very high rainfall, and availability is largely determined
by capture. However, the most recent El Nino cycle has demonstrated that
even these countries can be subject to severe limitations of rainfall.
At the other extreme, countries such as the USA (western region), China
(northwest) and Australia (all except southeast), have normally very low
rainfall, and hence have to concentrate on the effective use of the limited
available resource.
What are the prospects for increasing
the total water available for human and environmental use by improved
capture, storage and usage?
2. Water Demand
Despite recent improvements
in the efficiency of water use in many developed countries, the demand
for water has continued to rise as the world’s population and economic
activity has increased. From 1940 to 1990, withdrawals of freshwater have
increased by more than a factor of four, more than double the rate of
population growth. Current total human usage is about half of the total
available water identified above. With a 50% increase of the total world
population forecast for the next twenty-five years, this alone unchanged
would approach the limit of water availability.
One important consequence of the growing
demand is the increasing reliance on essentially non-renewable water resources
in the form of groundwater.
The uneven distribution
of water resources has already led to this stage of scarcity in a number
of regions. There is an accepted benchmark of 1000 cubic metres per capita
per year to avoid chronic water scarcity on a scale sufficient to impede
economic development and harm human health. Twenty countries have already
fallen below this level, mostly in Africa and Western Asia. However it
is worth noting that Israel supports its population, its growing industrial
base and extensive irrigation with less than 500 cubic metres per person
per year.
Irrigated agriculture
takes about 70% of water withdrawals, rising to 90% in the dry tropics.
In total, agriculture consumes 87% of total water. Industry is also a
growing user of water. Traditional manufacturing industries such as textiles,
food production, and chemicals, as well as power production and mining,
consume large quantities of water, but largely in localised operations.
The newer industries, such as electronics, much of the production of which
has been established in developing and emerging economies, are also critically
dependent on a reliable water supply.
What are the prospects for limiting
the growth in the demand on water resources through demand management
of general water consumption, and significantly increased efficiencies
in agricultural and industrial use?
3.Water Quality
Contamination
by pollutants has seriously degraded water quality in many rivers, lakes
and groundwater sources, effectively reducing the supply of freshwater
for human use. While the increase in population alone has increased the
challenges to water management, particularly in the area of sanitation,
the greatest threats are from a wide variety of industrial, municipal
and agricultural sources. While there has been significant progress in
developed nations over the past 30 years in controlling water pollution,
it has continued to rise in most developing nations and in transition
economies.
One important factor
is the rapidly growing and industrialising cities of the developing world,
where pollution control is still in its infancy and domestic sewage and
industrial effluence have left many urban rivers and groundwater sources
heavily contaminated. This widening penumbra of pollution around the ‘mega-cities’
exacerbates the problem of extending minimal freshwater and sanitation
services to the residents, many of whom live in considerable poverty.
The nature of pollution
problems vary by region, but include bacterial pollution, largely through
inadequate sanitation (it is estimated that 90% of wastewater is discharged
without treatment in the developing countries), algal blooms fertilised
by the phosphorus and nitrogen contained in human and animal wastes, detergents
and fertilisers, chemicals, heavy metals, salinity caused by widespread
and inefficient irrigation, and high sediment loads resulting from upstream
erosion resulting from deforestation.
What range of measures, technologies,
and management regimes are in prospect to improve water quality?
4. Current Water Technologies
A range of technologies
is currently available for water supply and management. They include:
- detection and access - largely drilling
supply bores into groundwater
- capture and storage - dams, etc.;
loss reduction, quality management of stored water
- distribution infrastructure - pipeline
construction and maintenance, leakage detection and control
- wastewater treatment - biological,
chemical, recycling
- irrigation - supply, application,
monitoring
- sanitation - variety of filtration
and purification techniques and processes, centralised and decentralised
What are the potential and likely
incremental and radical innovations in these technologies?
5. Water and Economic
Development
Water is an essential input
or infrastructure resource to much agriculture, energy production, industrial
manufacture, mining, water transport, and water recreation industries.
The increasing pressures of international competition, and the emergence
of newly industrialising economies, are producing ever increasing demands
for the supply and management of this commodity. The availability of this
commodity is a very real limit-to-growth upon economies.
This is leading to conflict
over usage priorities for human direct consumption and sanitation needs,
agricultural (particularly irrigation) and industrial demands, and the
environmental requirements of a healthy functioning of water-reliant ecosystems.
It is now recognised that this is not important only for ethical or ‘visual
amenity’ reasons, but also because ecosystem health underpins the production
of food, the reduction of flood risk, and ‘natural’ filtration of contaminants.
In addition, inappropriate
or inefficient use and management of water is having directly deleterious
effects upon these systems of production. Thus excessive or inappropriate
irrigation is a primary cause of salination, leading to enormous degradation
of land resources. Polluted runoff can have a very damaging effect on
marine resources, including fishing, both directly and through producing
the conditions for algal blooms and ‘red tide’. Contaminants can render
water unusable for manufacturing use, as in for example the food industry,
and in extreme circumstances, even for cooling purposes.
What advances are in prospect to
substantially improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and output quality
and recycling of water in economic usage?
6. Water and Economic
Policy
Water is often wasted because
it is under-priced. There is a need for a widespread understanding of
water as an economic as well as a social good. The cost of using or miss-using
water is paid either by the user, by the community at large, or, commonly,
by a depletion of the existing ‘natural capital’. As water demand continues
to increase, it becomes ever more important to see that it is directed
to high-valued economic or social uses.
Thus, a removal of the
direct and indirect subsidies, especially for agricultural use, currently
operating in many countries, would provide an incentive for more effective
use, for conservation, and for the investment in and diffusion of more
effective technologies and systems. Allocation of water rights not on
a historical basis, but amore transparent market or administrative system
based on full cost accounting and benefit analyses, can substantially
reduce distortions and inefficiencies.
This points the way for
governments at national, provincial and municipal levels to shift progressively
away from being a provider of water services to being the creator and
regulator of an environment that allows communities, the private sector,
and non-governmental organisations to engage in the supply of water and
sanitation services. The introduction of water pricing and market mechanisms
can encourage the private sector to apply financial and management resources
towards more effective water supply and management service delivery.
What are the most appropriate economic
mechanisms to encourage more effective and efficient water supply and
management?
7. Water and Environment
As indicated in the section
on water quality, there is an increasing need, demand, and drive to develop
policies and mechanisms to improve both the availability and quality of
water supply through control of pollution, and the harmful effects of
water mis-use and -management on land resources.
The importance of maintaining
an adequate supply of water to maintain the health of rivers has already
been mentioned. In addition, there is a growing concern about the negative
consequences and economic balance of dam construction and river impedance
as a mechanism to increase water supply. Strong opposition, largely on
environmental and, to some extent, wilderness protection grounds, have
emerged in a number of, particularly industrialised, countries.
Wastewater disposal is
another major environmental issue, with different considerations being
applied to urban, rural, industrial and mining outputs. The problem is
at its greatest, and most visible, in the environment, where the consequences
of inadequate treatment and disposal systems have become increasingly
obvious. However, some more far-reaching and ultimately more damaging
consequences may be associated with a long history of inattention to rural
waste disposal.
Substantial progress
has been made in recent years in dramatically improving best practice
in waste disposal levels in both manufacturing industry and mining, particularly
through the concept of ‘total containment’. These have been achieved by
a mix of regulation and market competition. However there is enormous
scope for the diffusion and further development of these waste-reducing
practices.
What are the technologies, practices
and procedures that can be developed and applied to most effectively improve
the environmental quality of water supply and use?
8. Water and Human
Health
Water represents an enormous
potential threat to human health. It was only about 150 years ago that
the crucial role of the provision of clean water and effective sanitation
was recognised as the basis for effective public health. Since then there
have been great advances, and the industrialised countries have largely
enjoyed a century of freedom from the threat of water-borne diseases.
However that situation
is changing, with population growth, and the decline of public investment
in infrastructure. It was never the case in the economically less-developed
countries. WHO estimates (see Section 3 for more detail) that more than
five million people die each year from diseases caused by unsafe drinking
water and a lack of sanitation, and water for hygiene. An estimated one-half
of the population of developing countries suffers from water-associated
diseases caused either directly by infection through the consumption of
contaminated water, or indirectly, by water dependent disease carrying
organisms. Improved water and sanitation can reduce morbidity and mortality
rates of some of the most serious of these diseases by 20-80%.
Global progress has been
poor since 1990. Approximately one billion people lack safe water and
more than two billion do not have adequate sanitation. Rapid population
growth and lagging investment have left more people without access to
basic sanitation today than in 1990. It is estimated that to achieve the
objective of ‘universal coverage’ by the year 2000 would require an investment
of US$50 billion per year, five times the current level.
What are the prospects for, and
the most appropriate mechanisms to achieve dramatic improvements in water-dependent
aspects of human health?
9. Water Resource
Assessment
A critical element in more
effective water supply and management is more effective policy and planning,
based on accurate information on the state (quantity and quality, stocks
and flows, usage patterns, hydrological and demographic data, information
on forestry and land management, etc.) of water resources.
The capability
to provide accurate water quantity and quality data, and to interpret
it, is lacking in many countries. Few, if any developing countries have
a significant capability in water quality monitoring, which would provide
important health-related information. Data on water resource management,
irrigation, land degradation, and environmental quality are generally
sparse and poor.
Moreover, there is evidence
that this capability is in decline. In many industrialised nations, the
pressures of competitiveness policies, privatisation, and shrinking public
sector budgets, have seen a cutback in what are perceived ‘public good’
activities such as hydrological measurement, observing networks, and consequently
in expert staffing. In the developing countries, the pressures of economic
development have reduced such long-term approaches to the lowest priority.
What range of measures and techniques
might be developed and put in place to maintain and improve water resource
assessment?
10. Integrated
Water Resource Management
A crucial component of
an effective approach to addressing the challenges identified above, and
to improve water supply and management is through an approach based on
integrated water resource management. Such an approach rests on integrating,
and effectively coordination, policies, programs and practices addressing
the issues identified above.
Such an approach will
need to include issues such as the efficiency of water use, long-term
resource protection, the economic effects of deterioration in water quality,
national, or where appropriate, river basin-based management of groundwater
and wastewater, and data collection and model development.
In addition, it needs
to be recognised that it is no longer adequate to treat water problems
as, essentially, a local issue. Even when comprehensive water management
plans have been devised, many developing countries lack the financial,
managerial and political capacity to implement them. In developed countries,
it is not uncommon that interest-based opposition to ending subsidies
or implementing a regime, which includes wider considerations, undermines
the political will for change.
What are, and will be, the essential
elements in the development and implementation of integrated water resource
management?
11. Geopolitics
and International Law of Water
About 300 major river basins,
and many groundwater aquifers cross national boundaries. The potential
for conflict, as scarcity, and the economic value of water grows, is considerable.
While regional and international legal mechanisms can reduce water-related
tensions these mechanisms have never received much support. Indeed existing
international water law may be unable to handle the strain of future problems.
Under conditions of conflict
water resources may become economic or military goals in the same way
that oil has been in the past. Water resource systems could be military
targets; in addition water resources can in fact be used as military means
given the ability to control the flow of water to another nation.
Riparian countries will
need to develop mechanisms for cooperation over the development and management
of trans-boundary water sources. It would seem appropriate to develop
processes for negotiation and non-violent resolution of these differences.
What are possible scenarios
for water based conflict and how might they best be avoided or resolved?
12. New Technologies
There is a considerable
range of new technologies either presently under development, or that
could emerge over the next ten years, which could make a substantial contribution
to the many challenges to effective water supply and management. While
a comprehensive list would be impossible to generate, prominent candidates
might include:
- greater use and re-use of waste water
for appropriate domestic, rural and industrial applications more efficient
delivery and application of irrigation water
- lower water requirement crops
- reduced evaporation
- non-water based sanitation disposal
- desalination
- technologies of demand management
- new plant nutrition systems
- new cropping patterns
- water harvesting
- inland valley swamp development
- low-lift pump schemes
- peri-urban irrigation with treated
urban wastewater
- bio-solid management and disposal
- application of smart technologies
and intelligent systems to urban and domestic water use
- closed cycle industrial water usage
systems.
What is the potential for the development,
refinement and enhancement of new and improved technologies to address
the major issues of water supply and management?
2.SOME POLICY OPTIONS
A useful approach to distinguish the
different needs and policy options of different countries is offered by
this analysis according to the following four broad categories:
1. High-income
countries with low water stress
The main problem of these
countries is water pollution rather than supply, although some large countries
contain water-poor regions. They have the financial resources to deal
with regional water supply problems, often using water diversions.
Pollution reduction and control are the major water-related challenge
facing most countries in this category. Many of them also need to look
at the issue of water pricing, because the fact that water might be plentiful
does not mean that it should be free. Development and distribution costs
need to be covered by either public or private utilities. Some countries
in this group, with favourable land and climate conditions, may have a
significant potential for increased food production from irrigation and
rain-fed agriculture, and could play a significant role in providing food
to world markets.
2. High-income
countries with high water stress
This category includes
a number of countries that have fairly large amounts of water, but are
facing stress conditions as a result of continuing overuse and pollution
of their water resources which will be causing problems, such as groundwater
depletion, in the near future. Other countries, however, have already
used most of their accessible water resources. They have little if any
scope for increasing the amount of water supplied to human uses through
conventional means without inflicting damage on aquatic ecosystems, or
seriously depleting groundwater aquifers.
For those countries with
low per capita water availability, the allocation of water to the highest-value
uses is a necessity. Demand management and water allocation policies designed
to maximise the socio-economic value of water are of paramount importance,
as is pollution control. Water markets with tradeable water rights and
permits are already beginning to play an important role in the allocation
of water, and will need to continue to play an increasingly important
role. With increased allocation efficiency, it is likely that irrigated
agriculture will decrease in importance, and it appears that more countries
in this category will become increasingly dependent on the world market
for agricultural products.
3. Low-income countries
with low water stress
There are several different
types of countries within this grouping - low-income countries that have
low water stress because of abundant water resources (primarily tropically
humid countries) and large countries that have a tropical region. Most
of these countries or their humid regions suffer from too much water in
the form of floods that occur during a short rainy or monsoon season,
causing damage to buildings, structures and agriculture. Since these countries
are poor, they often suffer from inadequate drinking water supply and
sanitation.
Overall, this grouping
of countries suffers from inadequate access to its water resources owing
to insufficient financial resources, technical expertise and institutional
support. Because of these constraints, there is a lack of adequate water
supply, sanitation and wastewater treatment. In cases where there is high
population growth or economic development, there is likely to be an increase
in water demand. If that demand is not well managed, it could drive the
country into a high vulnerability situation.
Countries in this group
that are well endowed with land and water resources may have the opportunity
to increase agricultural production and exports into the world market
from either irrigated or rain-fed agriculture. For those countries with
relative water scarcity, and high levels of evaporation, agricultural
production is probably best directed into high-value, low-water-intensive
products. Some poor countries lack adequate access to what little water
they have, and development assistance could help them in using that water
wisely.
Both water-rich
and water-poor countries with low incomes generally suffer from a lack
of sanitation and wastewater treatment. Water pollution from human or
animal wastes is often already a problem, and steps are now needed to
improve pollution control and treatment so as to protect human and ecosystem
health. The acceptance of highly polluting industries with little or no
control on their discharges may be tempting on the basis of short-term
economic growth considerations. However, the overall long-term costs to
redress environmental damages resulting from such decisions have often
been shown to be more expensive than the creating of low-polluting industries
in the first place.
4. Low-income countries
with high water stress
This category is made up
of low-income countries that are using their water resources heavily now,
often for farm irrigation. They also suffer from a lack of pollution controls.
A number of countries in the arid or semi-arid regions of Africa and Asia
fall within this category. These countries are the most constrained with
respect to future development because they have neither the extra water
nor the financial resources to shift development away from intensive irrigation
and into other sectors that would create employment and generate the income
with which to buy food from water-rich countries.
Given the high ratio
of water use to availability, population growth and future economic development
will require shifts in the utilisation of water towards the production
of high-value products.
Countries in this category
are urged to give the highest priority to the formulation of economic
and regulatory measures designed to increase irrigation efficiency and
optimise water allocation among various uses. In particular, they need
to pay attention to the generation of foreign exchange that might be needed
for food imports. These countries should increase wastewater treatment
and reuse, and should control pollution from agricultural chemicals through
land management and integrated pest management measures.
|
