The world's freshwater systems are in crisis, beset by everything from global warming to population growth to corruption. Though it doesn't get the media attention that's lavished on energy issues, many experts predict that water will be the central resource issue of the coming century. Water, they say, is the new oil.
To the last drop.
Photo: iStockphoto.
Few know more about water than Peter Gleick, president and cofounder of the Pacific Institute, an environmental think tank. The 2003 MacArthur Genius grant recipient edits The World's Water, a comprehensive biennial report on the state of the world's freshwater.
William K. Reilly -- CEO of Aqua International Partners, a firm that invests in innovative water projects in developing countries -- knows a thing or two about water as well. Head of the U.S. EPA under the first President Bush (and credited with many of the positive environmental accomplishments of that administration), he is now chair of the board of the World Wildlife Fund.
I recently had a chance to sit down with Gleick and Reilly when they came through Seattle for a conference on 21st century water issues -- and our conversation went swimmingly. (Har har.)
Energy and climate issues have recently gripped the popular imagination. But water hasn't caught on. Why is that?
Gleick: There are a couple of reasons. One is, water problems are often local. Another is, some of the worst water problems are not in the United States, but in developing countries, where basic access to water and sanitation doesn't exist. There are a billion people who don't have access to clean drinking water, but they're somewhere else, mostly.
The other thing is, we don't import a lot of water, and so the political issues around water -- there are many -- aren't typically viewed in the same way that political dependence on oil is viewed.
One of the knocks on the energy market is that it's distorted: it offers end users prices that don't reflect the true cost. Is the same true of water?
Peter Gleick.
Photo: Pacific Institute.
Gleick: Yes and no. At home, I probably pay pretty close to the full, true cost of water. Not quite. I'm probably paying $600 to $700 an acre-foot, equivalent. Probably $50 or $60 a month.
But big users, especially big agricultural users, have historically been subsidized, mostly by federal projects and federal government, but sometimes by state projects as well. So the big users -- and 80 percent of the water in the West Coast goes to agriculture -- don't see the full economic cost of the use of that water usually.
Reilly: And the numbers are staggering. I remember years ago hearing that if you reduced by 10 percent the amount of water agriculture took in Arizona, you could increase the urban use by 100 percent.
To give you a sense of the disparity, we use something like 1,430 gallons per capita in the United States. Only 100 gallons of that is household use per person. So you want to affect water volumes, you look to agriculture.
Are there big savings to be had in efficiency of agricultural water use?
Gleick: I would argue there are enormous savings. We could do what we want to do with a lot less water in every sector. But in agriculture especially, there have been fewer improvements in efficiency over the last few years -- the price of water in agriculture is lower, so the economic incentive to put in efficient irrigation technologies is lower.
William K. Reilly.
Photo: EPA.
Reilly: Part of what you're talking about is changing what crops we grow?
Gleick: Yes and no. There are two pieces. One is, how efficiently can we do what we're doing? The other is, can we change what we're doing and save water that way? And we can do both. We can switch from flood irrigation to drip irrigation on the same crop, and produce the same or higher yields, with less water. Or we could grow -- this is especially true in the Western U.S. -- a little less cotton and alfalfa and rice and irrigated pasture, and more vegetables and fruits and nuts and more higher-value, lower-water-using crops. But the agricultural sector is very sensitive about anybody telling them what kind of crops they grow.
Well, we tell them what crops to grow by subsidizing certain crops, don't we?
Gleick: Yes, sure. And in fact, the World Trade Organization just passed a ruling with cotton subsidies worldwide, which could have the effect of quite dramatically changing where it's profitable and appropriate to grow cotton.
Reilly: Water subsidies have been really dysfunctional in many parts of the world. In India, in Maharashtra, they fill up water from 300, 350 feet down and they irrigate lentils with it -- a relatively low-value crop. Why do they do that? Because they have free electricity from their government. So the water tables have been dropping 12, 15 feet a year. They're gradually going over to drip irrigation, but meanwhile they're blaming Coca-Cola for depleting their groundwater. And Coca-Cola has had two of its plants shut down in India. But if you really trace back the problem, the problem is subsidies for electricity there.
This huge imbalance -- agriculture using most of the water -- is that true worldwide, or is it in the Western U.S. in particular?
Gleick: It's especially the West, which of course is very dry. West of the 100th meridian is the classic description: where there's not enough natural rainfall to grow agricultural crops the way we grow them. And so the federal government offered billions of dollars in bribes -- dams, reservoirs, aqueducts, irrigation systems -- as a way of encouraging the settlement of the West.
The vast majority of the water in China goes to agriculture, in India goes to agriculture. In Europe it's different. They don't have irrigated agriculture, so it's much more heavily weighted for industrial, commercial uses than irrigation. But in general, worldwide, agriculture's a big user. And you know, we have a lot of people to feed.
What will be the effect of global warming on water?
Gleick: First of all, the climate issue is in many ways a water issue. The hydrologic cycle, which we learned about in third grade -- evaporation from the oceans, clouds, rainfall on land, runoff into the oceans -- that is the climate cycle as well. And so as the climate changes (and it is changing), we're going to see more and more effects on water resources. Storm frequency and intensity is going to change. And that's critical for the West Coast of the U.S., for example. Higher temperatures are going to have very significant effects on snowpack in the Western U.S. We're going to see less snow; what does fall is going to melt earlier and faster. It's a big worry.
The worry being that there will be shortages?
Gleick: I think the worry is both shortages and floods -- maybe in different places at different times. But I think in the Western U.S., for example, we're going to see more of both. We're going to see more floods as the snowpack melts faster in the winter. We'll see more droughts as it runs off sooner and disappears earlier in the year. And a lot depends on things we still don't fully understand. In California, for example, the difference between a really wet year and a really dry year is whether one or two storms go north and hit Washington instead of California. If they go north into Washington, we're dry. If they go south into California, Washington's dry.
You write about the "soft path" to water. What is that?
Gleick: The hard path to water is what we pursued in the 20th century. That involved mostly building big infrastructure -- dams, reservoirs, centralized wastewater-treatment systems -- to deal with our water problems. That infrastructure brought enormous benefits to us, but it also brought some unexpectedly high costs: environmental damage, social and economic problems. And it hasn't solved all of our water problems.
I think it's pretty clear in the 21st century that a new approach is needed, something that uses large infrastructure where necessary, maybe building large infrastructure to a different standard, but also uses decentralized infrastructure, smart economics, new institutions that pay attention to what communities need. The idea of applying drip irrigation in India is an example of smart technology applied to a large-scale water problem, rather than large technology applied in the old way.
What do you think about water privatization?
Gleick: [Bill and I] maybe have different perceptions on this, but I think it works in some places and not in others, and it depends on how you do it. Water privatization is a very controversial issue in the water area for a variety of reasons, and positions have become quite polarized. There's been private participation in one form or another for centuries in the water area. And at the same time, water's a public good, and there are certain aspects of water that I would argue we have to make sure we protect. That's part of the reason we have regulatory agencies over public or private water companies, because water service delivery is ultimately a monopoly.
Reilly: I don't really disagree with that. What strikes me is, whenever I go to World Water Congress, or conferences on water, there's always some activist, angry group of environmentalists, or Indians, protesting privatization somewhere. And that's fine. But we're probably not gonna see much more classic privatization, the way that Mrs. Thatcher did it in England. We've gotta improve the public systems.
I deal with public water systems in the Latin American world in particular. They're a disaster. They're a disaster almost in every developing country: they're overstaffed; they have a huge amount of leakage; they don't put money back into improving the system; they are corrupt.
It's not enough to drive out Bechtel, if the water's just as bad as it ever was. And the attitude seems to be, the World Bank should provide it. Well, the World Bank can't provide water to everybody. So there are a lot of reforms necessary in publicly provided water. That's where I'd focus for the future, because I don't think privatization is that much of a threat anymore.
Do you think water is a human right?
Gleick: I think water is a human right, and I think it's been so declared by the United Nations. The United States doesn't recognize that officially, though in the long run I don't know how important that is. The question is: if there's a human right to water, what does it mean practically? What does it mean for providing water and water services for the vast numbers of people whose basic human needs for water aren't being met? I don't think the human right to water means water should be free. I'm willing to pay for water; I ought to pay for the water services I get. Most people around the world are willing and able to pay for water. Often they pay far more for bad-quality water now than they would if there were a good, reliable system. They buy water from private vendors of dubious quality.
How could such a right be enforced?
Reilly: People who think we ought to get water free -- it's because they've been getting water that they're not paying for in many parts of the world. But there's no money going into improvement. That was true in Mexico City; no money went into improving the pipes for seven years. So they had a disaster system and were buying water, especially the poor, from truck vendors at 10 times what you would pay for reasonable public-system-provided water. So the human-right part of it means different things to different people.
I think there's also a human right to housing. In the United States we have a national housing law, from 1949: we are all entitled to a decent house and a suitable living environment. Well, who can you sue to enforce that right? What did it mean to declare it? It's an important milestone, a metric of progress in civilized society, but don't misunderstand how far it gets you.
Gleick: The question is not, who can I sue if I don't have water? The question is, is there a way to pressure governments who are not fulfilling their responsibilities to their citizens? They're not intentionally depriving their citizens of water, but they're failing to provide the infrastructure and the institutions and the systems required to provide that water. There's still a billion people without access to clean drinking water, and 2.5 billion without access to sanitation services. And it's because governments haven't met their responsibilities, I would argue.
Do you think that end-user conservation is a particularly significant piece of the water puzzle? Not running water while you brush your teeth, stuff like that?
Gleick: There's conservation where you cut back on what you're doing -- you let your lawns go brown, you take shorter showers. A classic perception, Jimmy Carter in front of the fireplace with a sweater. That's not what I think of when I think of water conservation and efficiency. What I think of is doing what you want to do with less water. And the potential for that kind of conservation is enormous. Even in areas where, like the Western United States, we've put some effort into this for a long time, there's still enormous potential to do what we want to do with less water. There's a lot more potential for cutting back on the demand for water without cutting back on the benefits that water use provides.
We're already moving in the direction of more efficient use. We use less water in the United States today for everything than we used 20 years ago, despite a bigger economy and a bigger population.
Is it public policy that's driven those changes, or private entrepreneurship?
Gleick: It's both. A big change came when the U.S. Congress passed the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act, which required industries to clean up wastewater in the '70s. It turned out one of the cheapest ways to clean up wastewater is not to dump wastewater in the first place, not to generate it. That, it turns out, made a number of industries much more efficient in their water use. It used to take 200 tons of water to make a ton of steel in the U.S. Now it takes five or six tons. That's an improvement in efficiency, and it wasn't driven by a desire to save water. So sometimes laws are required, sometimes education, sometimes economic incentives.
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Comments
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bookerly Posted 2:12 pm
05 Jul 2006
Dear David, that was interesting and informative. Questions that pop up in my mind. Are they optimistic or pessimistic about solving the world's water problems? (They sounded optimistic in the interview, but I would like to hear your take.)
It also sounded like most of the issues they see are related to infastructure investment. Am I reading that right?
If so, this is good news, I suspect governments will find the money for water when push comes to shove...
Or did I get it wrong?
thanks,
patrick
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ffletcher Posted 4:42 pm
05 Jul 2006
Ag is key to the USA water future. Treatment is key to the world's water future. For most of the world treating water and bottling it is the most practical option. To supplement bottling, there needs to be means to refill clean containers for immediate use.
There is a lot of water in the world, but much of it is not fit for long term human consumption. However, water is a wonderful molecule, with unique character that makes it ideal for isolation. Salt is a difficult one to seperate, but it can be done. $600 an acre foot is a good estimate of the general cost to produce water, but the not to exceed cost is on the order of $5000 an acre for highly filtered RO water using $.10/kWh power.
Water for ag uses is an issue, but if one starts with good land, rather than flooding land to remove dissolved salts and increasing its salt and dissolved solids, it is surprising how little water is needed. For example the farmers north of the Salton Sea in California get by with a fraction, like a tenth, of the water used by the farmers south of the Salton Sea. The difference is water allocation. If they are allocated less, they use less.
We have to get over our adversion to recycled water. Recycled water is great for many non-potable applications.
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caniscandida Posted 6:36 pm
05 Jul 2006
It is interesting that they seemed not quite on the same page, regarding the water issues that are closest to their respective hearts. Gleick seemed to focus more on the use of water in agriculture, Reilly more on availability to urban dwellers in developing countries. (I wish I knew more about what Reilly was saying about Mexico City.)
The question about a "right" to fresh water is huge. I am glad everyone agrees in recognizing such a right, but it is not clear what good can be done about it at present. The desertification of north-central Africa, as the Sahara expands southward, for example, is a terrific problem, affecting millions of people, in countries whose governments are ill-equipped to do much for them. Would anything change, right now, if we appealed to the "right" of those people to fresh water?
Water is an issue, not often recognized in the MSM, in the Israeli-Palestinian difficulties, which are already quite full of intractable issues. Several months ago, a Grist InterActivist was an Israeli (American Jewish) environmentalist who discussed water problems in the Jordan valley at some length.
Thanks to Ffletcher for the chemistry lesson, and for the reference to south-eastern California agriculture. My husband grew up on a farm in Imperial Valley, and has bitter memories of having to clean out irrigation ditches in 110-degree heat. Right enough, the water-allocation system was in place, and managed carefully. And those farmers were indeed getting lots and lots of the Colorado River sent their way. I shall ask him about efficiency and waste. Whether farmers north of the Salton Sea, closer to Death Valley, were just as productive with less water, I would not know.
Crop selection apparently matters a lot. And that is a subject that appears in the interview. I am not quite sure what is wrong with lentils in Maharashtra, and would not mind knowing more. David subtly suggested the very important problem, which Gleick did not do too much with, that farmers are not free to decide which crops their land is naturally capable of bearing, given its relative aridity, etc.; rather they are overly pressured by market considerations, and coaxed by unnatural government subsidies.
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ffletcher Posted 1:21 am
06 Jul 2006
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David Roberts Posted 1:29 am
06 Jul 2006
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DR: With water shortages everywhere, and so many big players jostling for water, why hasn't desalination taken off?PG:The short answer is, up until now it's been too expensive for all but the highest-value uses in places that are truly, truly water short -- the Persian Gulf, certain islands, Kurasao -- that have no other options and are willing to pay the price. That's the reason it hasn't taken off. There is some belief that it's going to take off soon because the price is coming down.DR: Are there technological advances? Or just faith?PG: There are technological advances. There are two ways of desalinating water. One is distillation, where you effectively boil water. Another is membrane reverse osmosis, where you have membranes that selectively pass salts, and so you push water with salt against the membrane and either fresh water goes through and leaves salts behind or salts go through and leave the fresh water behind, depending on the membrane. And membranes have gotten more efficient and cheaper and more reliable and more productive, and so the price partly has come down. DR: Do you personally think it will ever reach the point where it will make a real impact on the world water situation?PG: It's viable now in some places. It will be viable in more places over time. But it's never going to provide huge amounts of water for irrigation, for example, because it's just far too expensive for irrigation.It will slowly become more cost-effective for municipal and industrial use, but that's a thousandth of a percent of the total water use worldwide now.The problem's not technology; the problem's economics. Fifty percent of the cost of desalination is energy. It takes energy to take salt out of water. And so as long as we're paying for high prices for energy, we're going to pay high prices for desalinated water.
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danielbarker123 Posted 2:14 am
06 Jul 2006
Second, we can practice family planning and reduce the demand for water. I have no children and plan on having one.
Daniel Barker
Lakeland, Florida 33809
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bookerly Posted 9:37 pm
06 Jul 2006
Here is an article from the New York Times (free, but registration required).
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/us/07border.html?hp&ex=1152331200&en=63b5e3ec65107c52&
ei=5094&partner=homepage
International issues also will figure in water usage.
Not sure where this fits in terms of the overall issue, but it sounds pretty desperate for the folks along the border.
patrick
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wateradvocate Posted 4:48 am
10 Jul 2006
The most we can do in the developed world will always be a small but hopefully catalytic piece of the puzzle.
Individuals and organizations in the developed and developing world need to lobby/advocate foreign governments to meet this need, and to make requests to the international aid community (bilateral and multilateral) to prime the pump.
John
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bookerly Posted 8:16 am
10 Jul 2006
Actually, the developed world plays a key role in what the developing world does about water.
In order to deal with water problems, the developing world requires money. One prime source of that money is the World Bank, and various other agencies (such as the Asian Developement Bank).
The developed world governments need to make proper water usage and conservation one of the factors in projects they promote.
They could also put more money into sewage projects (which are expensive) in urban areas throughout the developing world.
One of the pressures on local water supplies is their use in the extraction of raw materials to ship to the developed world. Another is their use in the production of consumer goods for the developed world.
Developed world companies making purchases can play a key role in the developing world companies attitudes towards water management if they choose.
And they will choose to do so, if pressured by governments and consumers.
patrick
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anvaya Posted 6:46 am
12 Jul 2006
I was astonished that William K. Reilly found it appropriate to compare the water withdrawal by Coca Cola in some regions (Kerala in South India or UP in North India, where the factories are closed) with water withdrawal done by farmers in an entirely different region (Maharashtra in western India).
More importantly this water withdrawal is for growing basic food crops that provide us with vegetable based protein (not to grow cheap grains for industrial animal production - that become our protein source through more water intensive processes). As danielbarker123 has pointed out below, vegetarian diet is much less water consuming as opposed to meat-based diet.
There is certainly scope for farmers and (trade, agricultural and energy policies) to pay more attention to the issue of sustainable water use, not only in Maharashtra but also in other parts of India, or as Peter Gleick points out, in the United States too, particularly in the Western States.
But this does not justify Coca Cola's operations such as extracting beyond the carrying capacity of the region, or polluting the surrounding land with their waste (that contained cadmium). As a result local wells have gone dry, and people in Plachimada, and sorrounding villages (who have been on a strike for the last four years), have no water to meet their domestic needs, let alone agriculture. The resultant social and economic disruption in the community is yet another story.
Water problems are very much localised in nature; and water-intensive investments such as that of Coca-Cola's too needs to meet environmental sustainability criteria, not just agricultural sector. As the Chair of the Board of World Wildlife Fund I would have expected Mr. Reilly to have a more informed understanding of the issues involved.
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bookerly Posted 10:25 am
12 Jul 2006
The problem for Coke is that they need to take a lot of water from one place in order to meet their industrial needs. So far, they haven't found a place in India that wants to give up all it's water and accept pollution in return.
It is of course, silly, for Mr. Reilly to blame farmers for using as much water as they can get, but excuse Coke for wanting to do the same thing.
And weren't the local Coke folks in India trying to cover up the the cadmium problem? My memory is that was what really got them in trouble.
Shiney Varghese is correct. But we should also suspect that the WWF gets large sums of money from somewhere other than from poor farmers in India.
patrick
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caniscandida Posted 4:33 pm
12 Jul 2006
(OK, so the northern-latitude hunters out there will insist on their exceptional status. Fine, go for it, you guys with guns, just be nice and easy and respectful at the end.)
Thanks, Patrick, for the NYTimes piece on the Calexico/Mexicali border. I had already seen it; and yes, it is a very good illustration of water issues in society and politics. And it is quite compatible with the prevailing attitude of the white folk in those parts, as my husband relates: "Whatever's left over, we can leave for the Messkins to get."
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David Roberts Posted 2:33 am
13 Jul 2006
And there's no reason to think he was trashing lentils as such, much less a vegetarian diet overall. The point was just that lentils require a lot of water, and it would be better to grow crops that can get by with less.
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bookerly Posted 7:29 am
13 Jul 2006
If Reilly was quoted correctly, he certainly seemed to be exculpating Coca-Cola by suggesting that Coca-cola is not to blame for depleting their groundwater.
When you compare two parties, and suggest that one is to blame, you are, in fact, exculpating the other.
The problem is that when water supplies are tight, if someone comes along and requires a lot of water, then that entity is a problem. Coca-cola, by it's nature, is a heavy water user.
If lentils are inappropriate, then Coca-cola is also inappropriate for that area, since both require a lot of water.
patrick
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