As issues like universal healthcare, the fight for the Republican presidential nomination and the shooting of an unarmed teenager in Florida grab attention day by day, it’s important not to forget a more enduring, more crucial issue that faces the U.S. and the world. That issue is water.
Water, the lack of it (and in flood time, the excess of it) is becoming more of a problem all the time. Soon, according to a report commissioned for the State Department, water shortages will be the problem behind many other problems, since water is vital for industrial processes as well as human health and life.
In language that is not hysterical, the report makes a prediction that’s nevertheless ominous: “Between now and 2040, fresh water availability will not keep up with demand absent more effective management of water resources.” And it’s not just talking about third world countries. Citing an estimate from the 2030 Water Resources Group, it predicts that “one-third of the world’s population will live near water basins where the water deficit will be larger than 50 percent by 2030.” First on the list of those basins: “the western United States,” which is “already experiencing high ‘water stress’—when the annual renewable freshwater supplies are below 1,700 cubic meters per person per year.” (Remember the news last year about ranchers selling off their herds in bone-dry Texas?) Other such areas are located in Australia, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and China.
“Population increases, migration, and changing human consumption patterns resulting from economic growth will be key drivers of rising fresh water demand,” says the report, produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency with input from the Department of Energy, the CIA and other agencies. And the fact that more people will be eating meat rather than grain is a problem as well, since it takes much more water to produce meat than grain (15,000 liters of water for one kilogram of beef as opposed to 1,500 for one kilogram of wheat).
The report’s authors are not optimistic about privatization of water supplies as a tool for efficiency in water use; they cite rises in water prices and “lack of proper governance” in situations in which privatization has been tried. They are more optimistic about ways of improving water use in agriculture, which, they find, uses 68 percent of fresh water (homes and industry use 19 percent, 10 percent goes for energy and 3 percent simply evaporates from reservoirs).
Close to home, water-rich Massachusetts is experiencing drought. Over the last few weeks, dry, windy weather had local officials in the Valley warning that outdoor areas could easily catch fire. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration designated Massachusetts an area of “extreme” drought in February, with a narrow strip of Western Massachusetts only a little better off with the designation of “severe” drought.
Soon we may be as conscious of our water footprints as we now are of our carbon footprints. We may be thinking as hard about products and practices (like unnecessary lawn watering and car washing, to start) that are water guzzlers as we’ve learned to think about vehicles that are gas guzzlers.
