Mixing water and oil as global resources dwindle

Climate change means droughts are getting longer and floods more severe, throughout Asia. Snowmelt from the Himalaya feeds the areas major rivers - Indus, Brahmaputra, Ganges, Yangtze and Yellow rivers - which in turn supply drinking and irrigation water to 1.4 billion people. These glaciers are retreating due to global warming.

According to the latest thinking, cited in a June 2010 New Scientist report, suggestions that these glaciers will have vanished completely by 2035 are inaccurate - they will probably last a little longer than that. However, according to a recent study, “the five rivers will be able to water crops for almost 60 million fewer mouths by 2050”.

Food scarcity is already a major concern during an ongoing period of extreme weather; in August, the Russian government banned the export of wheat to protect home consumers, following drought.

In addition, China is reportedly “proceeding with plans for nearly 200 miles of canals to divert water from the Himalayan plateau to China’s thirsty central regions” and planning “the world's biggest hydro-electric project on the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra,” which will, of course, be diverting water away from India and Bangladesh. China is running out of water, too. The water table beneath Beijing has dropped by nearly 200 feet in the last two decades, and the city is predicted to completely run out of water in five to 10 years’ time.

Meanwhile, African nations are reportedly drawing up battle lines over the River Nile, in an attempt to overturn colonial-era treaties that promoted Egypt and Sudan at the expense of upstream countries. These two countries were given rights to nearly 75 per cent of the Nile’s annual flow. In May 2010, five upstream countries - Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda - signed a Cooperative Framework Agreement giving themselves equal access to the water.

The Nile flows through 10 nations, and 300 million people depend on its waters. The upstream nations need the water for irrigation, hydro and industrial uses - but the people of Egypt cannot afford to go without it, either.

A July Boston Globe report, headlined “The threat of a water war”, calls for international intervention to “forestall hostilities between the countries,” while an On Line Opinion essay, “Does Egypt own the Nile? A battle over precious water”, looks at the issue of sustainability in more depth. It states:

Yet as the nations of the Nile bicker over its future, nobody is speaking up for the river itself - for the ecosystems that depend on it, or for the physical processes on which its future as a life-giving resource in the world’s largest desert depends. The danger is that efforts to stave off water wars may lead to engineers trying to squeeze yet more water from the river - and doing the Nile still more harm. What is at risk here is not only the Nile, but also the largest wetland in Africa and one of the largest tropical wetlands in the world - the wildlife-rich Sudd.

It continues that the Nile’s “entire annual flood is captured behind the High Aswan dam,” and released as required for agriculture. The river’s silt, which historically kept the Nile delta fertile, is accumulating behind the dam. Egypt’s rapidly eroding farmland is maintained by fertiliser.

Access to the waters of the River Jordan is a source of tension between Israelis and Palestinians. The lower reaches of the Jordan, which flows 251 kilometres (156 miles) between Israel, Syria and Jordan - with water extracted by all three countries - is too polluted for Biblical-style baptisms, according to Israel's health ministry and various environmental groups. According to an AFP report:

In recent years the flow of the river has slowed to a dirty trickle as fresh water running into the river has been replaced with sewage.

"Sadly, the lower Jordan River has long suffered from severe mismanagement with the diversion of 98 percent of its fresh water by Israel, Syria and Jordan and the discharge of untreated sewage, agricultural run-off, saline water and fish pond effluent in its place," the statement said.

But don’t go thinking water scarcity is solely a developing country problem. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) issued a report in July 2010 stating that the western and southwestern United States face urgent water shortages. Civil engineering website publicworks.com, in the article Report: More Than One Out Of Three U.S. Counties Face Water Shortages Due To Climate Change, stated: