Efforts to meet freshwater demand by harnessing "fossil" groundwater
contributes more to rising sea levels than melting glaciers.
Deep tube-well irrigation can
result in hand-dug wells (pictured above) going dry. This can affect
access to drinking water, as hand-dug wells and hand pumps are often the
primary source for drinking water in many communities.
Earlier this week, The Guardian reported on a study that
looked at rising sea levels from a new angle. The study found that
efforts to meet increasing freshwater demand by harnessing “fossil”
groundwater [groundwater that cannot be replenished for millennia under
current climate conditions] contributes more to rising sea levels than
melting glaciers. Since there it cannot be replenished, tapping
groundwater results in land subsidence (downward-shifting of ground
surface) and a one-way transfer of water into the oceans. Researchers
involved concluded that the deep tube-well drilling for water has
contributed to sea level increases by an average of a millimeter every
year since 1961. Neither the climate community nor the water community
had paid attention to this aspect of tube-well drilling before.
In 2009, an IATP report referred
to several other problems of deep tube-well drilling—a technology
adapted from the oil industry—focusing on its role in industrial
agricultural production. It pointed out that the tube-well “enabled
industrial agriculture to expand to areas where such massive water
transfers for irrigation were not feasible. Unlike traditional wells,
tube-wells give access to “fossil” water in large quantities by driving a
tube into deep aquifers and using a pump to suck water up,” that is
said to have resulted in an environmental catastrophe in Asia.
Withdrawals exceeding natural recharge rates of aquifers are leading to
the lowering of water tables and land subsidence in many other parts of
the world. For example, in the United States, where 45 percent of
irrigation water comes from underground, in the High Plains aquifer
(which includes the Ogallala aquifer), water levels have declined more
than 100 feet in some areas.
Yet,
faced with multiple environmental crises, many countries in Africa are
looking at groundwater as the last resort to help deal with their food
and water security challenges.
Over the last decade, in several African
countries the use of treadle pumps (most
commonly used by farmers on small plots of land) has been promoted as
an affordable option for withdrawing water from shallow aquifers. So
far, groundwater bore wells have been confined to a few areas where commercial farming is its primary beneficiary. But it may no longer be confined to small pockets. A recent study by
British Geological Survey estimated the total groundwater storage in
Africa to be 0.66 million km (0.36–1.75 million km).3 Even though they
warn that all of this water is not available for abstraction, it seems
to suggest that there is plenty of water to meet the “growth” needs of
Africa. This study comes out at a time when many international agencies
are calling for investment in groundwater development as a way for meet
the Millennium Development Goals (MDGS).
However,
the temptation to promote groundwater development needs to be tempered
with caution, as we know from the Asian experience. Our report argued
that the “the easy access to state-subsidized energy services and
equipment” enabled the expansion of industrial farming to otherwise
water-stressed areas of Asian countries such as China, India and
Pakistan. As is well known, the World Bank and other multilateral
agencies played a major role in the spread of this technology in South
Asia. Initiatives such asGW-MATE, which look at approaches to reconciling groundwater demand with resources,
indicate that the World Bank and other similar organizations recognize
the mistakes of the past. This new caution on groundwater development
doesn’t appear to be matched by other new initiatives.
There has been growing attention to
land grabs, but perhaps less on how they serve to appropriate the
natural resources under the land. Speakers at a recent workshop at
the alternative water forum in Marseilles, such as Henk Hobbelink from
GRAIN and Rutgerd Boelens from Wageningen University, explained how in
many ways land grabbing is about water grabbing. Information gleaned
from theBritish Geological Survey that
looked at groundwater resources in Africa might help answer questions
around the extent of water grabbing in Africa. Given that these
investments are in the context of raising export crops, investors can
use the survey to ensure plentiful water for irrigation; deep-well
drilling may be adopted as a way to access water from deep aquifers or
to deal with depleting water tables.
Second, there is the global focus on African food security. At the G-8 summit on
May 18–19, President Obama announced a plan to boost food security and
farm productivity in Africa. Responding to the plan, “New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition,”an
IATP blog pointed out that for the African peasantry, the call to
“refine policies in order to improve investment opportunities,” “sounds
hauntingly like the conditionalities of old (and current,
much-criticized, bilateral investment agreements).” G-8’s reliance on
corporations—“accountable to their shareholders, obliged to make a
profit […] bound by law, but not by the public interest”—in the name of
African food security is a way of bringing in farms that have so far
been beyond the reach of corporations and industrial agricultural
sector. Once again, it is likely that the expansion of industrial
agriculture will be through the expansion of tube-well irrigation.
The
third point may be extrapolated on the basis of the Asian experience.
In addition to the environmental costs listed earlier, there are also
social costs to deep well drilling of groundwater. In Asia, deep
tube-well irrigation has resulted in most of the hand-dug wells and
shallower bore-wells going dry, as ever-deeper wells get dug. Large
scale extraction of groundwater is also used for water intensive
industries, and that too results in similar experiences. This can affect
poorer people’s access to drinking water, as hand-dug wells and hand
pumps (shallow tube-wells) are often the primary source for drinking
water for many communities. For inland regions, deep drilling can result
in land subsidence. In coastal areas it can cause salinity ingress
(seepage of sea water inland through underground water flows) resulting
in the salinization of groundwater. Often, over-drafting of groundwater
for industrial agriculture comes at the cost of basic water needs of the
poor and traditional farming systems.
It is in this context that the new report on how global fresh water demand is driving sea-level rise faster than glacier melt becomes
important. The researchers at the British Geological Survey have said
that the estimated volume of available groundwater is more than 100
times estimates of annual renewable freshwater resources on Africa. This
should be taken as a word of caution, so that Africa does not repeat
Asia’s folly when it comes to groundwater use. With the available data,
groundwater depletion can be monitored and regulations and incentives
can be put in place to ensure that replenishment equals water
withdrawals from the aquifer.
Whether Africa is able to do this or not depends on the agricultural development path they
are able to adopt towards reaching food security goals. But at the
moment they do not have a space to make that choice. Those decisions
about their path are being made in the G-8, G-20, Rio+20 and other
similar international and regional forums. And not only are these forums
influenced by International Financial Institutions like World Bank,
they are also under threat from corporate capture, as has been said in a
recent joint civil society statement.
This is why many African civil society organizations are seeking greater local control. In a recent letter anticipating the G-8 announcement,
the West African farm network ROPPA reiterated that, “food security and
sovereignty are the basis of our general development, as all of the
African governments underline. It is a strategic challenge. This is why
we must build our food policy on our own resources as is done in the
other regions of the world. The G8 and the G20 can in no way be
considered the appropriate fora for decisions of this nature.”
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