WaterFormer world leaders say global water crisis must be addressed

In March 2008, the U.K. intelligence services, in a report to then-prime minister Gordon Brown, warned that the deteriorating fresh water situation around the world would soon lead not only to tensions over water between states, but to “water wars.”

Among the conditions contributing to an impending water crisis:

• More than 97 percent of the Earth’s water is salty, while 2 percent remains frozen in ice and snow. This leaves less than 1 percent to meet the increasing demand for freshwater.
• There is an annual expenditure of more than ten million person-years of time and effort by women and children carrying water from distant sources.
• One billion people never get a glass of clean water and more than two billion people lack basic sanitation.
• As global energy demands rise, the energy sector is being placed into greater competition with other water users. This will impact regional energy reliability and energy security
• A growing number of rivers do not make it to the sea and surface and groundwater contamination make valuable water supplies unfit for use

World leaders, at least former world leaders, agree that the global water situation is dire. Twenty former leaders, including former president Bill Clinton, warned Tuesday of an impending “water crisis” and agreed to establish a panel that will tackle a worldwide leadership gap on the issue.

The retired leaders, among them former Mexican president Vicente Fox and former Japanese prime minister Yasuo Fukuda, said the panel would work to raise the issue’s political prominence in order to avert looming problems with worldwide water supply.

Yahoo! News reports that members of the InterAction Council attending this year’s 3-day annual meeting in Quebec City also included former Mexican leader Ernesto Zedillo and and Gro Brundtland of Norway.

The group urged a new international water ethic and offered twenty-one recommendations for world water management.

At the top of the list: “placing water at the forefront of the global political agenda.”

Others items included linking climate change research and water problems, creating a legal right to water, and raising the price of water to reflect its economic value.

In areas where water is rationed, the priority should be for food crops and not bio-fuels, said the group, whose co-chairs were former Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien and one-time Austrian chancellor Franz Vranitzky.

Among the InterAction Council’s recommendations:

• Placing water at the forefront of the global political agenda and linking climate change research and adaptation programs to water issues.
• Urging national governments to price water sources to appropriately reflect its economic value, while making provisions for those in poverty.
• Urging national governments to stimulate private and public sector innovation to address the global water crisis and capitalize on the economic opportunities that arise from finding solutions to these complex challenges.
• Asserting that where water supplies are threatened, water used to grow food should not be substituted for water to grow crops for biofuel production.
• Encouraging increased investment in urgently needed sanitation coverage and improved access to safe water supply globally.
• Welcoming the work done by the Clinton/Bush Haiti Fund, which aims to rebuild housing in Haiti with adequate sanitation to avoid public health disasters through water contamination.
• Supporting ratification of the UN Watercourses Convention and the development of the draft articles on transboundary acquifers.
• Supporting and advancing the UN international water protocols.
• Encouraging a discussion on water security at the UN Security Council.
• Linking of agricultural and water policy with energy policy locally, nationally, and globally.
• Encouraging the development of materials and water treatment approaches to enable non-traditional water use in domestic, industrial, and in energy generation and refining applications and in particular research on more cost-effective desalinization integrated with renewable energy resources.
• Renewing local, national, and international focus on monitoring hydrological processes and increased attention to mapping and monitoring of groundwater.
• Urging national governments and multi-national companies to improve water availability assessment, energy and water systems analysis, and decision tools
• Urging national governments to reduce the loss of water in public networks through adequate monitoring and infrastructure development, as well as the per capita consumption in municipal use.
• Supporting the conservation of the world’s intact freshwater ecosystems, the establishment of ecological sustainability boundaries, and investment in ecosystem restoration.
• Encouraging high-level dialogue and cooperation on water-allocation in major transboundary rivers such as discussions between Indochina states on the Mekong River.
• Welcoming the role of NGOs in the further development of water governance solutions and particularly emphasizing the role of women, given their special responsibility for water.