FACED WITH "inertia at the leadership level", the global water crisis will reach unprecedented levels in the years ahead with "growing per capita scarcity of water in many parts of the developing world", according to a United Nations report made public this week.
Water resources will steadily decline because of population growth, pollution and expected climate change, said a press release on the document coming out of Paris.
Presented on the eve of the Third World Water Forum scheduled for Kyoto, Japan, March 16-23, the 'World Water Development Report Water for People, Water for Life' is the most comprehensive, up-to-date overview of the state of the resource.
To compile the report, every UN agency and commission dealing with water, worked jointly to monitor progress against water-related targets in such fields as health, food, ecosystems, cities, industry, energy, risk management, economic evaluation, resource sharing and governance. The 23 UN partners constitute the World Water Assessment Pro-gramme, whose secretariat is hosted by UNESCO.
"Of all the social and natural crises we humans face, the water crisis is the one that lies at the heart of our survival and that of our planet Earth," said UNESCO director-general, Kochiro Matsuura.
"Water supplies are falling while the demand is dramatically growing at an unsustainable rate."
Despite widely available evidence of the crisis, political commitment to reverse these trends has been lacking. A string of international conferences over the past 25 years has focused on the great variety of water issues including ways to provide the basic water supply and sanitation services required in the years to come. Several targets have been set to improve water management but "hardly any", says the report, "have been met".
Many countries and territories are already in a state of crisis. The report ranks over 180 countries and territories in terms of the amount of renewable water resources available per capita, meaning all of the water circulating on the surface, in the soil or deeper underground.
By the middle of this century, at worst seven billion people in 60 countries will be faced with water scarcity; at best, only two billion in 48 countries, depending on factors like population growth and policy-making. The water crisis "is set to worsen despite continuing debate over the very existence of such a crisis," says the report. About two million tonnes of waste are dumped everyday into rivers, lakes and streams. One litre of wastewater pollutes about eight litres of freshwater.
According to calculations in the report, there is an estimated 12,000 km of polluted water worldwide, which is more than the total amount contained in the world's 10 largest river basins at any given moment.
"If pollution keeps pace with population growth, the world will effectively lose 18,000 km of freshwater by year 2050 - almost nine times the total amount countries currently use each year for irrigation, which is by far the largest consumer of the resource," the release said. Irrigation currently accounts for 70 per cent of all water withdrawals worldwide.
The report ranks 122 countries according to the quality of their water as well as their ability and commitment to improve the situation. Belgium is considered the worst basically because of the low quantity and quality of its groundwater combined with heavy industrial pollution and poor treatment of wastewater, followed by Morocco, India, Jordan, Sudan, Niger, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic and Rwanda.
The list of countries with the best water quality is headed by Finland, followed by Canada, New Zealand, United King-dom, Japan, Norway, Russia, the Republic of Korea, Sweden and France.
"The poor continue to be the worst affected, with 50 per cent of the population in developing countries exposed to polluted water sources," says the report.
Asian rivers are the most polluted in the world, with three times as many bacteria from human waste as the global average. Moreover, these rivers have 20 times more lead than those of the industrialised countries.
"The future of many parts of the world looks bleak," says the report, in reference to projected population growth, which will continue to be a driving factor in the water crisis. Per capita water supplies decreased by a third between 1970 and 1990, according to the report.
Even though birth rates are slowing down, the world's population should still reach about 9.3 billion by 2050 compared to 6.1 billion in 2001.
"Water consumption has almost doubled in the last 50 years. A child born in the developed world consumes 30 to 50 times the water resources of one in the developing world. Meanwhile water quality continues to worsen," says the report. "Every day, 6,000 people, mostly children under the age of five, die from diarrhoeal diseases."
Against this background, the report takes an in-depth look at every major dimension of water use and management from the growth of cities to the threat of looming water wars between countries. "Globally, the challenge lies in raising the political will to implement water-related commitments," says the report. "Water professionals need a better understanding of the broader social, economic and political context, while politicians need to be better informed about water resource issues. Otherwise, water will continue to be an area for political rhetoric and lofty promises instead of sorely needed actions."
The document will be formally presented to the international community on March 22, World Water Day, in Kyoto.
