The fight for water

WATER is the source of life. Yet, around the world, especially in the Asia Pacific region, this precious resource is becoming a battleground. As more and more people combat droughts and floods, finding ways to use water sustainably becomes a riptide issue for many countries.

Sri Lanka has experienced this issue firsthand over the past few days due to cyclone ‘Mahasen’ that has killed at least seven people and affected thousands. The same storm is reported to be affecting people as far away as Myanmar where people in refugee camps have to be shifted to higher ground.

It is in this backdrop that 3,000 delegates from 50 Asia Pacific countries will gather in Thailand this week to attend the Asia Pacific Water Summit. The aim of the conference is to work out sustainable policies jointly since water is a common problem.

But this is not easy. Activists often point out that governments opt for short-term policies to win public approval and spend unnecessarily large amounts of money on projects that have limited results or even worsen situations. A good example for this is dam building, which has been enthusiastically taken up by large and small countries alike, but could be harbinger of bigger environmental problems in the future. Dams also cause cross border tension, with countries that are downstream being left out of the benefits and robbed on their trade into the bargain.      

The Asia Pacific Defence Forum points out that such water woes make predictions by the World Bank and other experts seem increasingly plausible that the next wars in Asia and elsewhere may well be over water — and erupt as early as 2020.

In coming decades, “the use of water as a weapon or to further terrorist objectives also will become more likely,” according to a March 2012 report by the office of the US Director of National Intelligence. The report pointed out that vulnerable water infrastructures make viable targets for terrorists, Reuters said. As it is, the Pakistan-based extremist group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba has repeatedly threatened to blow up dams in India, according to local media reports.

Competition over water resources continues to grow worldwide due to increasing populations, urbanisation, irrigation and demand for new sources of power, including hydroelectricity. In Africa, nations squabble over rights to the Nile. In the Middle East, countries vie for control of the Tigris, Euphrates and Jordan rivers. By 2015, about 120 countries will be water stressed, according to a report on the world water crisis by the London-based Foreign Policy Centre.

Nowhere are pressures on freshwater resources more palpable than in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the UN World Water Development Report issued in March 2012. “The ecological carrying capacity of the region is increasingly affected by the deteriorating water quality of water bodies,” the report said. “Of all wastewater generated in the region, only 15 to 20% receives some level of treatment before [being] discharged into water resources; the remainder is discharged with its full load of pollution and toxic compounds.”

Meanwhile, demand only grows. In South Asia, for example, availability of water has declined 70% on a per capita basis since 1950, according to the Asian Development Bank. At the same time, South Asia’s population is growing by about 25 million mouths a year, the World Bank reported.

It is clear that Sri Lanka also has to value water more and find sustainable ways to manage it, but it is likely to remain in the shadows as a resource taken for granted.