Editorials
CONNONWEAL The big thirst W ater is to survival as blood is to life: So elemental it goes un noticed until it dries up or bursts its arteries; so essential we die fighting for it. In a...
...Elsewhere, new sprinkler designs have achieved reductions of up to 95 percent...
...Water consumption drops from between 3 and 7 percent with a 10 percent increase in water price...
...That doesn't mean all will be affected the same way...
...It will be worth the effort...
...The Senate version of the renewed water act calls not only for the conservation of wetlands but for their restoration...
...That thirst will not be the individual's alone...
...But the consequences are staggering: 80 percent of all diseases in the developing countries are related to tainted water...
...Like most of us, Kaplan is late in realizing not only water's scarcity but its primacy...
...and over a lifetime, they will hope to build better lives for themselves and their families...
...As the price per unit charged for water has increased, there has been a marked improvement in the actual efficiency of its use...
...What will be needed is a vigorous and codified sense of the common good, one that will hold not only individuals but governments and regions accountable for preserving and enhancing water supplies...
...All of this will require water...
...Though both live in areas that have the same annual rainfall, a resident of Phoenix, Arizona, uses twenty-times as much water as someone from Lodwar, Kenya (see Sandra Postel, Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity, Norton...
...This is a recipe for internal disaster and regional tension...
...All are looking not only to quench their thirst, but to eat enough to survive and to grow...
...has called for heavy fines to be assessed on polluters, and also for excise taxes to be included on the sale of various chemicals, pesticides, and fertilizers, all of which seep into the water systems and must eventually be purified...
...Efficiency...
...Since nearly 40 percent of the world's people live along river basins shared by more than one country, international law must be strengthened to guarantee access to clean water for all those along such waterways...
...Thanks to gigantic public water projects and the pumping of subterranean aquifers, residents of Phoenix and other metropolitan areas of the Southwestern United States are generally unaware of their false sense of water security...
...This largess can no longer continue...
...Fortunately, farmers in the United States and worldwide have been developing significant mechanisms for low-tech water conservation...
...By 2030 the amount of water available per person worldwide will have shrunk to less than two-thirds of what it is today...
...It can be done...
...It will impinge on all communal human endeavors: churches, nations, cultures, continents...
...Recall that the earth's population at the beginning of this century was but 1.6 billion...
...No longer can we afford to dry up underground aquifers or whole bodies of water, such as Russia's Aral Sea, for one particular generation's needs...
...Much of this has been achieved through recycling water for multiple uses...
...At the present rate, Egypt—which is totally dependent on the Nile— will exceed its water needs by 60 percent within two decades...
...Numbers matter...
...Perhaps that is because in the developed world water arrives at our tap so ready, fresh, and cheap that we fail to consider its preciousness...
...While some of the richer societies will be able to develop more efficient and cost-effective means of desalinization— an expensive process of last resort—these are not the countries where the largest pop25 March 1994: 3 ulation jumps will occur...
...Equality...
...In Texas, a process called "surge" irrigation has helped some farmers reduce their water use by more than 15 percent...
...so essential we die fighting for it...
...When it comes to water conservation and pollution control, local initiatives will not be enough to accomplish this oceanic task...
...A serious look at population growth and at the earth's ability to sustain life is imperative...
...Since there is almost no money available for such purposes, his suggestion of charging users beforehand deserves serious consideration...
...While no single-factor analysis (such as a simplistic call for population control) will adequately address this challenge, those who ignore population pressures are avoiding reality as well...
...Any solution to our mounting thirst for water, therefore, will have to combine moral candor, political will, careful conservation, and vision...
...Since 1950, industrial use of water in the United States has dropped by 36 percent, even as real industrial output has increased by 3.7 percent...
...Part of this will involve maintaining our wetlands because they replenish the aquifers, a crucial component in water sufficiency for tomorrow...
...According to the United States Bureau of the Census, last year alone 87 million people were added to the earth's population...
...A water ethic geared to enhancing a just sharing of water resources will aim not only at immediate sufficiency for oneself and one's neighbors, but at preserving the water quality for all...
...has been forced to comply with tough discharge standards because of the Clean Water Act of 1972, and while the result has been a marked improvement in water quality nationwide, still, more than one-third of our rivers and almost half of our lakes do not yet meet federal standards...
...In a sobering forecast of life in the tvventyfirst century ("The Coming Anarchy," Atlantic, February 1994), Robert D. Kaplan writes that resource scarcity in the next century will lead to brutal wars, many over what he calls "the most important fluid of the twenty-first century"—water...
...We must begin to take the long view...
...Two-thirds of fresh water is used in agriculture...
...In this country, farmers have been subsidized handsomely by federal and state governments in the form of public works projects and low water rates...
...By the year 2030, the world's population is projected to grow to 8.9 billion...
...As the supply of water will not greatly increase, the most important task is to use the water we have judiciously...
...But the big thirst will be here...
...And in Israel, drip irrigation that "feeds a plant with a teaspoon" by using computers and sensing monitors, has achieved efficiencies of 95 percent...
...While the need for water varies depending on climate, culture, and level of development, the amount of water available worldwide will not be increasing appreciably over present supplies...
...While industry in the U.S...
...The problem then is looming, large, and perilous...
...Just as water "seeks its own level," so whatever is flushed into it affects others downstream, including other species...
...International disputes have arisen between the United States and Mexico over the quality of Colorado River water...
...We must come to live within our means, even to honor them...
...CONNONWEAL The big thirst W ater is to survival as blood is to life: So elemental it goes unnoticed until it dries up or bursts its arteries...
...There are profound political and strategic pressures associated with water distribution and quality...
...So is the poor quality of drinking water...
...Meeting conservation goals is a promising reservoir...
...The causes are many, including massive failures in governance...
...While the developed world can remain oblivious for a short while longer, more than 233 million people in twenty-six countries already live in what the World Resources Institute designates "water-scarce nations...
...Thus, environmentalists such as Postel and her colleagues at the Worldwatch Institute are being prudent when they appeal for a "water ethic" based on efficiency (conservation), equality (the protection and sustainable distribution of resources), and environmental integrity (one that determines the "carrying capacities" of various regions—not to mention the planet itself—and endeavors to live within them...
...The revised Clean Water Act now before Congress rightly stresses the control of other effluents, chiefly from farms and highways, into our water supplies...
...Still, the amount of water saved in such projects has been small compared to the quantities that must be conserved for domestic purposes in the next century...
...Congressman Gerry Studds (D-Mass...
...And these millions are a drop in the bucket compared to those who will face lifelong water shortages in the next century, not to mention those who already suffer a lifetime of disease because they rely on polluted and impure sources of water now...
...Of the earth's present 5.6 billion people, 1.2 billion lack access to potable water...
...Environmental integrity...
...According to Kaplan, 95 percent of such growth will take place in the poorer countries...
...Domestically, last April residents of Milwaukee were forced to boil their water for the better part of a month because farm runoff had fouled the city's water supply...
...reducing irrigation use by onetenth would nearly double the amount of water available for household use...
Vol. 121 • March 1994 • No. 6
