Water, Water everywhere, not a drop to drink ! 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. Whey 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 have 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
acceleration 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.q