Water, Water
Everywhere? a kingdom for a drop
Ashok Khosla
Mankind
might well appear to be winning its battle with nature but, if the
conflict continues for much longer, it is certain to lose the war.
Long before we have managed to extinguish the other species that
share this planet, the destruction of its fragile life support
systems will surely have wiped out whatever we would consider as
civilisation today.
More and
more persons, each wanting more and more things is hardly a
sustainable proposition in the face of a finite resource base. Human
ingenuity and technology can only buy us a little time – they cannot
solve the underlying, fundamental problem. Only slowing the growth
of demand for the services our environment provides can do that.
Over the
past 30 years, the limits set by nature have become increasingly
apparent to some of us, though admittedly not to many. The main
reason is, of course, that for most people – as for most ostriches —
it is easier to deny the impending danger than to make the
inconvenient changes needed to deal with it. For them, such limits
exist only after they have already been transgressed. The trouble
with that is, given the exponential mathematics of natural
processes and the long lag times between cause and effect, it is
already too late when the proof becomes available.
But how
much proof do we need? Fossil fuels may well appear to be plentiful
today, but it will not take many decades for them to become quite
scarce, particularly if everyone starts using them as cavalierly as
in the industrialised countries today. Why else would well informed
nations go to war with others to protect the supplies of such
resources?
The
threats to other life support systems – the stratospheric ozone
shield, global climate, biodiversity – have already reached stages
where these issues have, within a decade of being recognised, raced
their way up to the top of the international agenda.
Of all
the resources and natural processes, water is the one over which
major conflict is most likely within the next few decades. Not only
among nations, but also between provinces and within communities.
The signs
of such conflict are already with us, often camouflaged by uneasy
truces and agreements: in the American South-west, in the Danube
basin, in the Sub-continent. Civil strife over water resources has
already occurred between states in South India, and led to tensions
between metropolitan cities and their neighbouring countrysides.
Water is
the lifeline of most human activities: agricultural, industrial,
domestic. Nearly 70 per cent of all living tissue and more than 50
per cent of all raw materials in industrial production consists of
water. Not only civilisation but life itself and water go
hand-in-hand together.
The
reason water has been taken so much for granted, and never
explicitly treated as a resource is that for most of history, and in
most parts of the inhabited world, it was freely and plentifully
available. But, all of a sudden, it no longer is. Population growth
and economic activity has, within the space of a few decades, taken
it from worldwide abundance to local scarcity.
The
primary reason for this is that, by tradition, water has been an
"open access" resource. It has been available, on a first come first
served basis, freely and free. This meant that it was used, and
misused, without concern for its intrinsic cost or for its
contribution to value addition. Or for the impact on its long term
availability. And, of course, as it becomes increasingly scarce, it
goes mainly to those who have the political power or economic
capital to appropriate it by controlling the sources.
Recent
studies have shown that water, more perhaps than any other resource,
is grossly underpriced. Many users in agriculture, industry and
homes get it at a price that is one-hundredth that of the cost of
delivering it. And one-thousandth that of the value it adds to the
products or services it makes possible.
No wonder
our agriculture and industry depend on technologies that waste this
precious resource with so much profligacy. And result in such
rapidly accelerating scarcity.
Water,
like other scarce resources, needs to be priced. Neither too high,
nor too low but graded so as to make it accessible, yet not used
wastefully, by all segments of a community. It also needs to be
placed within the local control of communities that can decide on
its distribution among the different uses and users who need it.
Only thus
will it be conserved and sustained — and also be available to
everyone, rich and poor, equitably and fairly.
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