Emerging Asia Hits a Wall of Water

                                                                                                   India's Sardar Sarovar Narmada Dam 

It’s often said that people are a nation’s greatest resource. That can be true, especially with their knowledge and creativity, which can supplement physical resources. But one basic must is hard to think your way around: water.

So it is that the great emerging nations of Asia–China, India, Indonesia–face a wall in their development. All are confronted with either a scarcity of moisture in key regions, or an inability to contain the water that sometimes pours and deliver it in potable form to millions for daily life. The results can be barren fields, destructive floods or sickened populations from exposure to contamination.

Usually the water problem is a natural one of scant rainfall or the absence of topographical means of collection and retention, such as mountains for snowpack or lakes and flowing rivers. Thus you can have monsoons and still be dried out. (Some challenge the notion that this is any longer “natural” by contending that man-made climate change is involved.)

However, even tropical states can be water-constrained when the public infrastructure is so poor that inundation causes bacteria to run off from sewage and other sources and spoil the vital supply. This is the case in booming Indonesia, according to a currently featured article in the country’s fine Strategic Review quarterly.

India has both natural and man-made problems. A recent feature in the licensed edition Forbes India said the country has only 4% of the “total world resource” of water but 18% of the population. It noted: “Deficient monsoons often lead to shortage of drinking and irrigation water. Groundwater is polluted due to poor land practices, atmospheric deposition of pollutants and direct discharge of sewage into water bodies.” Quite a bill of particulars. And then there is controversy when dams have ultimately been attempted.

Forbes India cited a similar predicament in China, with 7% of “resource share” and 19% of global population. The Chinese government, of course, is more proactive on this front, at least in terms of damming and other diversions intended to route precious fluid from the mountainous south to the populous north. What this is doing or will do to areas like the Tibetan Plateau is debated, and it is now difficult for many foreigners to enter that sensitive zone to investigate. China has stumbled on an attempt to dam northern Burma.

(Dams are also a growing issue in the strategic battleground of Central Asia, where the major powers are plying for mineral wealth, whose extraction also takes water.)

So, mere expenditure for mass public works–even if done honestly and efficiently, and not riddled by graft–is not necessarily an easy response to water scarcity. (Few would object to basic water containmentl and purification projects.) There is also, for most nations, the option of the vast sea, if desalination can be afforded. Countries in North Africa and the Middle East have chosen this course as a palliative. It takes a well-stocked Treasury.

A supremely logical approach is to curb waste and misallocation by pricing water. Yet, failure to do so is common, nowhere more egregiously than in India. But this is understandable: where democracy is most rampant, the interests favored by currently free or cheap common water, if numerous, will be most able to keep their booty. Moreover, some who grasp the environmental aspects of water misuse nonetheless have a mental block on invoking the market as a remedy.

So we have a fundamental problem amid rising affluence, one that software code largely cannot solve, especially if politics blocks better allocation. Indonesia should be able to marshal its abundance, given honest government. But unless science somehow can muster rain clouds, much of Asia cannot affordably get “more” of something it needs to grow–and live. At some point, if the policy riddle of unpopular allocation is not solved, this becomes a Malthusian knot. That could trump the wisdom of the “people resource” and sidetrack a very promising growth story.

By Tim Ferguson@forbes.com

Water, water, everywhere…

Water, water, every where/Nor any drop to drink. This is verse from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner seems like a prelude to the water sharing problems dogging the world. The long poem’s reflection, particularly ebbing in the Cauvery issue is now at its peak, like it does every summer.

The Cauvery water sharing dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu is one of the many water disputes in India and the world. The other two parties in this dispute are Kerala and Pondicherry. Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka are caught in a triangle over the sharing of Krishna waters.

The same states along with Madhya Pradesh and Orissa dispute over the Godavari waters. The Ravi-Beas dispute is between Punjab and Haryana, two agricultural surplus states that provide large quantities of grains to the rest of India.

Narmada River is the bone of contention between Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra. Similar water sharing issues bubble at the Mahadayi and Vasandhara rivers too. Dispute settling mechanisms like Acts and Tribunals, methods of resolution including political interference and constitutional provisions applied during negotiations have so far yielded partial or no results in resolving water disputes.

Declaration of water as a national property might settle inter-state water squabbles. What about the same issue of water sharing between countries?

Water systems usually arise in one country and pass through others before reaching the sea or oceans. Rivers and lakes that come off these larger water systems are typically shared by more than one country. The states where these systems originated tend to try and gain the most control over the water, like the Nile and the Jordan River.

Chinese efforts to divert water resources of the Brahmaputra away from India, has worsened situations that have remained tense since the 1962 Indo-China war.

Israel and Palestine have a traditional history of fighting over water — conflicts over the Tigris and Euphrates. Some experts believe the only documented case of a ‘water war’ happened about 4,500 years ago, when the city-states of Lagash and Umma went to war in the Tigris-Euphrates basin.

There is tension between India and Pakistan over hydroelectric projects in Leh and Kargil, which will affect the flow of water from the Indus and Suru rivers.

India and Bangladesh share 54 rivers. Despite setting up a Joint River Commission for water management in 1972, tension between the two countries on how to share resources recently came to a head in a dispute over the Teetsa River.Whether in South Asian countries or between Middle East provinces, water issues hold up peace talks and pose graver conflicts.

In March 2012, a classified US report listed India’s three major river basins — Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra — among the top 10 world water conflict zones in ten years from now. “Beyond 2022, use of water as a weapon of war or a tool of terrorism will become more likely, particularly in South Asia (India), the Middle East and North Africa,” the report based on National Intelligence Estimate on Water Security stated.

A new of genre of water journalists address the delicate issue of corruption in the water sector and sustainable practices for water conservation, particularly in countries like West Africa.

“Water too often is treated as a commodity, as an instrument with which one population group can suppress another,” according to Ignacio Saiz, Centre for Economic and

Social Rights.

Solution to water conflict and ultimate co-operation between warring segments is required as water is projected to become scarce and amicable trans-boundary water distribution will also address issues of global warming and climate change at the higher level.

Otherwise, water will remain a powerful weapon of mass conflict to settle other bubbly episodes, outside the purview of environmental issues and the natural resource will never be considered as the world’s water!

Mark Twain’s quote of “Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over,” does not seem to be exaggerated, despite Twain’s biographer debating the authenticity of this scholarly certitude.

By Syed Shoaib@postnoon.com

The Central Asian Water Crisis

The deficit of water resources that may in the future be in greater demand than petroleum and natural gas has already become a reality for many districts of the inner Eurasia. Central Asia has not enjoyed the surplus of water for quite some time. The water problem is getting more and more charged with geopolitical meanings, directly affecting Russian interests.

At the start of 2009, when on the one hand there was in Russia a growth of interest in old Soviet projects of building big hydro power stations in Tajikistan and Kirghizia, on the other activities of Uzbekistan that essentially began forming in the region a sort of the “water bloc” were also evident. Russian diplomacy made attempts to have a balance between the interests of “the water source countries” (Tajikistan, Kirghizia) that control the heads of the biggest water arteries, the Amu Darya and Syr-Darya, and the “downstream” countries (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenia) with their critical dependence on the water flow from the sources, but these attempts were almost futile.

Should the “bloc”-type geopolitical constellation be established in Central Asia, the standoff between the “upstream” and the “downstream” countries in their debate on the expediency of building big hydro power facilities on the trans-border rivers Amu Darya and Syr-Darya will be inevitable.

On April 13 Uzbekistan’s Foreign Ministry posted a press release, whose gist can be summed up by the following two points:

1) Construction of new hydro power stations is a matter of concern for all the states in the region and it would aggravate the already difficult water supply situation to “the downstream regions” resulting in violations of the fragile ecological situation;

2) The problems relating to water and energy supply in Central Asia should be solved without interference of “third” countries (read: the Russian Federation). According to Uzbekistan’s Foreign Ministry developers of large-scale hydro power projects should take into account the interests of all the states in the region and be thoroughly investigated by international experts to assess their technological and environmental safety as well as guarantee maintenance of water balance. Violation of these principles could have “unpredictable environmental, economic, social and political consequences.” In the last several years the problems of water supply faced by “the downstream countries” was aggravated by shortage of water whose level in the Amu Darya and the Syr-Darya is, according to Uzbekistan’s Foreign Ministry, about 70% of the average annual standard.

Uzbekistan’s foreign ministry views the Kambaratinsk hydro power station (HPS) currently under construction in Kirghizia and the planned construction of the Rogunsk HPS in Tajikistan, as the Central Asian environment least friendly. The construction of both power stations was launched in the USSR and is still unfinished. The rated capacity of the Kambaratinsk-1 HPS in the mid-stream Naryn, a tributary of the Syr-Darya, is 1,900 MWt and a rated annual output of electricity at 5.1bln KWt/h. Uzbekistan’s government plans to have the capacity of the Rogunsk HPS in the Vakhsh basin almost twice as high, up to 3,600 MWt with an annual electricity output at up to 13.4bln KWt/h.

Russia is expected to play a decisive role in the construction of both power stations, becoming the principal investor in both projects. In October 2008 during the visit to Bishkek of Russian president Dmitry Medvedev agreements on the participation of Russian companies in the construction of the Kambaratinsk power stations in Kirghizia were signed. In November, the head of the RF Presidential Administration S.Naryshkin pledged assistance in the construction of the Rogunsk power station in Tajikistan.

Uzbekistan has the biggest population among Central Asian countries, about two-thirds of whom reside in rural agricultural areas; it depends more than others on water supply from the “upstream” countries. The Tashkent authorities are concerned over potential usage of water as a tool of political and economic pressure upon its neighbours. The statement president Medvedev made during his visit to Uzbekistan’s capital in January to the effect that implementation of major hydro power projects should meet the interests of all the countries in the region did not allay their fears.

In turn, erection of hydro power stations is essential for the Central Asian “upstream” countries. Unlike Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenia, Kirghizia and Tajikistan do not have significant oil and natural gas resources to provide heating and electricity to its population and economy. The principal suppliers of electricity in Kirghizia and Uzbekistan are hydro power stations. Water in their reservoirs is needed for watering the fields in summer in the “downstream” states, and for the production of electricity in winter – in the “upstream” ones. These contradictions were aggravated after the dismembering of the Soviet Union, when its former republics that were oil- and gas-rich began selling them at market prices, whereas the new independent states that were unable to purchase energy carriers in adequate amounts, had to dramatically increase, electricity production in winter, whose output, nevertheless, is critically inadequate. The only way out for Kirghizia and Tajikistan is erection of new power stations to both overcome the deficit of electricity and sell it to the neighbouring countries.

The interests of “the downstream” countries in the area of water usage coincide and objectively contradict the interests of their “upstream” neighbours to build new hydro power stations. During a telephone conversation in April 2009 the presidents I.Karimov of Uzbekistan and G.Berdymukhammedov of Turkmenia they “noted the significance of joint efforts in working out new approaches to finding solutions to the water problem, common to the countries of the region, as well as that of the Aral Sea.” Earlier I.Karimov discussed the water problem with Kazakhstan’s president N.Nazarbayev. And then Kazakhstan’s prime-minister paid a visit to Tashkent. Analysts say that these negotiations aim at working out a common position of both the “downstream” countries with an eye to construction of new hydro power stations in Kirghizia and Tajikistan.

The difference of interests of the “upstream” and “downstream” Central Asian countries that poses a threat of ending in an inter-state conflict is both a diplomatic and geopolitical challenge to Russia. Refusing to build power stations in Kirghizia and Tajikistan and ignoring their interests would be tantamount to inviting other state s, primarily China and Iran that have energy-related interests in Central Asia. However, it is not less significant for Russia to maintain close ties with Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in the oil-and-gas area. In a word, the Central Asian “water problem” has questions for the Russian diplomacy that need to be addressed without delay.

By Aleksandr Shustov@globalresearch.ca

Evolve Regional Strategy on Drinking Water Supply, Sanitation

As unclean water and sanitation is the world´s second biggest killer of children, the World Bank official on Wednesday urged countries in South Asia to evolve out a common strategy to tackle this problem in the region.

"Policy priority, insufficient funding, rapid urbanization and lack of public awareness have mainly impeded attainment of long-term sustainability of water supply and sanitation in South Asia," said Tahseen Sayed, World Bank country manager for Nepal. 

"Weak institutional capacities are other problems for us in the region to attain our goal of reducing number of people who do not have access to drinking water and sanitation," she stated 

Sayed was speaking at the South Asian regional conference on drinking water and sanitation, which kicked off in Kathmandu on Wednesday.

The three-day conference is being attended by more than 100 experts and officials from the different countries of the region. Through the conference, they hope to identify a common strategy to mitigate challenges seen in access to drinking water and sanitation in rural areas and also identify the workable institutional models for the region. 

According to the World Bank, more than 500 million people do not have access to sanitation and 250 million people to drinking water in South Asia, which is home to 1.6 billion people. 

"Despite its economic success, South Asia, now, represents the largest concentration of the world´s poor, as well as those lacking access to safe water and sanitation," said its statement.

According to the Bank, the conference will discuss on identifying sustainable ways of water supply, increasing sanitation access and reducing challenges -- challenges of declining water quality and quantity. "It will also focus on developing partnership between public and private sector to advance rural water and sanitation," Sayed said.

Janak Raj Shah, member of the National Planning Commission (NPC) said that the inadequate coordination among major players in the field of water supply and sanitation, weak implementation of the program and lack of proper approach to handle the projects were major hurdles of water supply and sanitation in Nepal. “

"We are lagging behind to achieve our targets under millennium development goals on sanitation and water supply," Shah said. The government has targeted to increase access to water supply and sanitation to 53 percent of the total population by 2015.



myrepublica.com

Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Women in Sindh

Lakshmi Puri, Deputy Executive Director of UN for Women, said at the closing session of the 2012 World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden, on Aug 31 last that globally it was estimated that women spent more than 200 million hours a day collecting water. She added that development could neither be sustainable nor inclusive if it did not free women and girls from carrying heavy water buckets every day.

Her statement is correct when seen in the context of rural Sindh, where it is common sight to see rural women fetching water from a one-way distance of as long as seven kilometre.

This is equivalent to walking from Clifton to Gulshan-i-Iqbal in Karachi.

The water they get and drink is dirty. There is no choice. Animals also drink from the same source. On drinking, women and their children face waterborne and diarrhoeal diseases.

These women spend six hours daily fetching water for their families.

Over 80 per cent of rural households do not have water supply on their premises. Malnutrition in common among rural women. There is a strong link between diarrhoea and malnutrition.

A Stanford University research paper (Pickering and Davis, 2012) shows that a 15 minutes’ decrease in one-way walk time to water source is associated with a 41 per cent average relative reduction in diarrhoea prevalence, improved anthropometric indicators of child nutritional status, and a 11 per cent relative reduction in under-five child mortality.

Another related study undertaken in four countries (Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, and Yemen), estimated that reducing the time it takes to fetch water by just one hour could increase girls’ enrollment in schools by over 30 per cent.

A WHO report says that almost one-tenth of the global disease burden could be prevented by improving water supply, sanitation, hygiene and management of water resources. Another estimate reports that four per cent of all deaths can be attributed to water, sanitation, and hygiene.

Interesting findings were reported in the WHO bulletin (Esrey et al, 1985). The authors studied impact of various interventions on average reductions in
diarrhoeal diseases. They found that water and sanitation achieved 30 per cent reduction in diarrhoeal diseases; sanitation achieved 36 per cent; water quality 15 per cent; water quantity 20 per cent and hygiene 33 per cent.

Based on this study, the authors concluded that sanitation and hygiene are major causes of diarrhoeal diseases. A recent survey conducted by the British Medical Journal identified sanitation as the greatest medical invention in the last 150 years.

Poor water, sanitation and hygiene have a strong connection with women’s health. When these sectors fail, women and girls are disproportionately affected. An issue, which is neglected in Sindh is the menstrual hygiene management (MHM). The issue has reached high on the international agenda during the last five years. The MHM requires access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene sectors, in order for the women and girls in rural Sindh to live healthy, productive and dignified lives.

Women in rural Sindh have the right to safe water and sanitation. The UN Assembly “declares the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights.”

F. H. MUGHAL@dawn.com

2011 Reed Elsevier Environmental Challenge 1st Prize Winner

Recipient of the $50,000 first prize, the Tagore-SenGupta Foundation installed an arsenic groundwater removal system using locally available chemical compounds and reusable sand filters in remote villages and schools in Cambodia.

In Jakarta Water Comes From a Bottle, Not From the Tap

                                                         Many residents of Muara Baru depend on vendors for clean water even in the midst of floods and tidal waves

More and more Jakartans are buying drinking water in galon (19-liter plastic containers) and ditching the old way of boiling and filtering tap water. Some do it for convenience reasons, while others do it for health reasons.

Herlina, a 30-year-old housewife in Palmerah, West Jakarta, for example, said that she had been buying drinking water in galon for six years because it was more practical than boiling tap water.

“The tap water in my house smells like bleach,” she said. “I have to store it for two to three days to get rid of the smell before boiling it. This is too much of a hassle.”

Meanwhile, Meilina, a 40-year-old resident of Harapan Mulya in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, said that she did not mind shelling out the extra money for a galon every two days for her family of four because she could not stand the taste of tap water.

“Even after I boil it, I can still taste the bleach,” said Meilina, who has been buying drinking water in galon for four years.

While both Herlina and Meilina do not use tap water for drinking, they said that they still used it for cooking.

Herlina, however, said that she still stored the water before using it for cooking.

“I also look at the color of the tap water first. If it is dirty, like it has been for the past few days, I use galon water to cook,” she said.

While Herlina stores tap water first to make it safe for cooking purpose, Rendy Chang, 39, uses a water purifier.

“I don’t drink tap water because it is too dirty, unlike Japan’s tap water, which is safe for drinking,” said Rendy, who lived in Japan for 10 years.

Not all Jakartans, however, are afraid to drink tap water.

“There’s nothing wrong with drinking tap water. I’ve never gotten sick from drinking tap water. Even today, I use it to make tea,” said Sofyan Sulaeman, 67, who lives in Bungur, Senen, Central Jakarta.

According to the Indonesian Association of Bottled Drinking Water Companies, Greater Jakarta and environs consumes a lot of bottled water, including galon, compared to other cities: 20.5 million liters per day. 

That’s more than a million galon, and 39 percent of the total national consumption.



thejakartapost.com

Himalayan Glaciers: Climate Change, Water Resources, and Water Security

Scientific evidence shows that most glaciers in South Asia's Hindu Kush Himalayan region are retreating, but the consequences for the region's water supply are unclear, this report finds. The Hindu Kush Himalayan region is the location of several of Asia’s great river systems, which provide water for drinking, irrigation, and other uses for about 1.5 billion people. Recent studies show that at lower elevations, glacial retreat is unlikely to cause significant changes in water availability over the next several decades, but other factors, including groundwater depletion and increasing human water use, could have a greater impact. Higher elevation areas could experience altered water flow in some river basins if current rates of glacial retreat continue, but shifts in the location, intensity, and variability of rain and snow due to climate change will likely have a greater impact on regional water supplies.

Key Findings

• The meltwater from glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, which covers eight countries across Asia, supplements several great river systems such as the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra. Scientific evidence shows that most glaciers in the Himalayan region are retreating, leading to concerns that, over time, normal glacier melt will not be able to contribute to the region's water supply each year.
• Glaciers in the eastern and central regions of the Himalayas appear to be retreating at rates comparable to glaciers in other parts of the world. In the western Himalayas, glaciers are more stable and may even be increasing in size. There is uncertainty in projections of future changes in precipitation, but shifts in the location and intensity of snow and rain could also impact the rate of glacial retreat.
• Variations in climate; in the timing, amount, and type of precipitation; and in glacial behavior and dynamics across the vast Hindu Kush Himalayan region mean that it is challenging to determine exactly how retreating glaciers will affect water supply in each location. It is likely that the contribution of glacier meltwater to water supply in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region may have been overestimated in the past, for example by not differentiating between the contributions to water supply of meltwater from glaciers and meltwater from snow.
• Overall, retreating glaciers over the next several decades are unlikely to cause significant changes in water availability at lower elevations, which depend primarily on monsoon rains. However, for high elevation areas, current glacier retreat rates, if they continue, could alter streamflow in some basins. Assuming annual precipitation in the form of snow and freezing rain remains the same, the loss of water stored as glacial ice will likely not change the amount of meltwater that supplements rivers and streams each summer.
• Glacial meltwater can act as a buffer against the hydrologic impacts of a changing climate, such as drought. Thus, water stored as glacial ice could serve as the Himalayan region's hydrologic insurance. Although retreating glaciers would provide more meltwater in the shorter term as the glacier shrinks, the loss of glacier "insurance" could become problematic over the longer term.
• Groundwater is an integral part of the Hindu Kush Himalayan region's hydrology, although uncertainties about its contributions to water supply are great. It is clear that groundwater is already being depleted in many areas, with evidence that in the central Ganges Basin, overdraft of groundwater is likely to have an earlier and larger impact on water supplies than foreseeable changes in the supply of glacial meltwater.
• Social changes such as changing patterns of water use and water management decisions, are likely to have at least as much of an impact on water demand as environmental factors do on water supply. Many of the region's river basins are already water stressed, and this water stress could intensify as populations grow. Water scarcity will likely affect the rural and urban poor most severely, as these groups have the least capacity to move to new locations as needed.
• It is predicted that the region will become increasingly urbanized as cities expand to absorb migrants in search of economic opportunities. As living standards and populations rise, water use will likely increase—for example, as more people eat diets rich in meat, more water will be needed for agricultural use. The effects of future climate change could further exacerbate water stress.
• Water resources management and the provision of clean water and sanitation is already a challenge in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region. The adequacy and effectiveness of existing water management institutions, which focus on natural hazards and disaster reduction, provides an indicator of how the region will likely cope with changes in water supply.
• Although the history of international river disputes suggests that cooperation is more likely than violent conflict, current political disputes in the region could complicate the process of reaching agreements on resource disputes. Changes in the availability of water resources could play an increasing role in political tensions, especially if existing water management institutions do not better account for the social, economic, and ecological complexities of the region.
• To effectively respond to the effects of climate change, water management systems will need to take account of the social, economic, and ecological complexities of the region. This means it will be important to expand research and monitoring programs to gather more detailed, consistent, and accurate data on demographics, water supply, demand, and scarcity.

dels.nas.edu

Little Consolation for Central Java's Rain-Starved Farmers

A villager traversing a dry dam that came about as a result of a long drought period in the Bojonegoro district of Indonesia's East Java province earlier this month. Asia's channelling of 82 percent of its water for food production is not the only startling statistic. Consider another astonishing figure: almost 74 percent of the total global fresh water used for agriculture is in Asia alone.

The rain hasn’t fallen here in three months,” says Sofyan Ansori, sweeping his arm over a vast expanse of dried-out rice fields. 

“The irrigation canals have been dry for almost as long, and the rice crops aren’t getting enough water. Even the rivers have gone dry.” 

Sofyan, the head of Tabah Terunjam village in Central Bengkulu district, says the crop is already two months old and just a few weeks away from harvest. 

But that won’t happen this year. 

“The drought has killed nearly the entire crop, so most of the farmers have just abandoned their fields,” he says. 

Forty-five hectares of rice paddies across the village have been destroyed by the long dry season. A few patches continue to grow, but will yield a negligible amount of the grain — assuming the rains begin sometime in the next few days, Sofyan points out. 

Nasron, a farmer, has already begun clearing the dead rice stalks from his fields in preparation for sowing a new crop with the advent of the rainy season. 

“There would be no point in planting anything now because there’s still no water in the irrigation canal,” he says. 

The district agriculture office has promised to give the farmers free seed crop to plant once the rains begin, and is currently gauging their losses to determine how much to distribute to each farmer. 

The offer is small consolation for the farmers in Tabah Terunjam, whose livelihoods depend on a successful harvest. 

But they are not the only ones affected by the unusually intense dry season this year. Farmers all over the country have seen their crops die before they can be harvested, as the aquifers and rivers feeding the irrigation canals run dry amid the lack of rain. 

In Sragen, Central Java, officials are calling on the central government to seed rain clouds to prevent the failure of at least 405 hectares of rice paddies. 

“We hope that the plan to induce artificial rain to fill up the empty reservoirs will be done soon because this is currently a crucial stage for the rice, which is 70 to 80 days old,” says Budiharjo, the head of the district agriculture office. 

“At this stage the crops need a lot of water, but there’s virtually no supply.” 

He warns that without any rains in the next two weeks, the amount of failed farmland in the area will expand rapidly. 

In neighboring Sukoharjo district, farmers are urging the company managing water supplies from the Bengawan Solo River not to cut off supplies for their irrigation network. 

Subari, one of the farmers calling on the district legislature to support their cause, says the water company is planning to shut down the water supply next month because of the dwindling water level in the river. 

He says that in Sukoharjo’s Weru subdistrict alone, 907 hectares of rice crop are dependent on the irrigation network. Some fields have already failed because of the decreasing amount of water. 

“Sixty hectares of rice paddies there have failed,” Subari says. 

The situation has become so dire that some farmers have taken extreme measures to highlight their plight. On Tuesday, farmers in Weru held three river water management officials hostage for two hours to demand answers on why their area was not getting any water. 

“We just want clarity on the issue,” said Sugeng Darmawan, the head of the local farmers’ association. 

“Will Weru get any water, yes or no? The farmers are really worked up about this because they stand to lose their crops if there’s still no water.” 

The standoff was resolved after district legislators got the water company to promise to increase their supply to the farmers from the Colo Barat Dam. 

However, the solution may be too little, too late. The company said it could only provide water at a rate of 5 cubic meters per second, less than the 7 cubic meters per second that the farmers wanted. 

In addition, the supply will only be available until the end of the month, after which it will be throttled down again. 


thejakartaglobe.com

Today is World Water Monitorning Day

World Water Monitoring Day was established in 2003 by America's Clean Water Foundation as a global educational outreach program that aims to build public awareness and involvement in protecting water resources.

On Sept. 18, thousands of people around the world will get their hands wet testing the condition of their local water bodies in observance of World Water Monitoring Day. The Water Environment Federation (WEF) and the International Water Association (IWA) urge individuals and organizations worldwide to participate and help raise awareness of the importance of water quality.

In 2011, approximately 340,000 people in 80 countries monitored their local waterways. The World Water Monitoring Day is challenging us to test the quality of your waterways, share your findings, and protect our most precious resource World Water Monitoring Day takes place each year as a component of the broader World

Getting involved is easy. Program participants use a simple, low-cost monitoring kit to learn about some of the most common indicators of watershed health. Then they log their results in an online database and share their stories with others around the world through the program website. Citizens are invited to “take the Challenge” anytime from March 22 until December 31.

Asia's Water Crisis Needs Urgent Fixing

Asia's water crisis is at the heart of the world's water challenges, where the degradation of surface and subterranean water resources threatens the ecosystem.

With Asia facing the world's lowest per capita access to fresh water, the continent's ever-deeper search for water is sucking groundwater reserves dry with millions of pump-operated wells even as it confronts river depletion.

Groundwater is recklessly exploited because it is not visible to the human eye. What is out of sight tends to be out of mind, as people drill ever deeper into the receding water table.

At least seven factors have contributed to the rising economic and security risks linked with the Asian water crisis.

One is Asia's dramatic economic rise. With economic activity such as industry and food production consuming 92 percent of the world's annual water use, Asia's rapid economic growth has been the key driver of its growing water stress.

Asia already has the world's largest number of people without basic or adequate access to water. Asians are experiencing very high water-distribution losses, a lack of 24/7 supply in many cities, and drinking water contamination due to unregulated industrial and agricultural practices.

A second factor is consumption growth from rising prosperity. While Asia's population growth has slowed, its consumption growth has taken off as Asians consume more resources like water, food and energy.

A growing Asian middle class, for example, uses water-guzzling, energy-hogging comforts such as washing machines and dishwashers. What were once luxuries have become necessities today. In China, daily household water use increased 21/2 times between 1980 and 2000 alone.

The broader consumption growth is best illustrated by changing Asian diets, especially the greater intake of meat, which is notoriously water-intensive to produce.

Asia actually accounts for the world's fastest growth in meat consumption. China, Vietnam and Thailand almost doubled their production of pigs and poultry during the 1990s alone.

Growing biomass to feed animals takes far more water, energy and land than growing biomass for direct human consumption. Much of the world's corn and soya bean production and a growing share of wheat now go to feed cattle, pigs and chickens.

Third is the role of irrigation. Irrigation has proven both a boon and a curse in Asia. Once a continent of serious food shortages and recurrent famines, Asia's dramatic economic rise as a net food exporter came on the back of an unparalleled irrigation expansion. Between 1961 and 2003, Asia doubled its total irrigated acreage.

Extending agriculture to semi-arid and arid areas that stretch from northern China to Uzbekistan and beyond has required intensive irrigation. But this has created serious water-logging and soil salinity problems, and undercut crop-yield growth.

Even in Asia's fertile valleys drained by major rivers, irrigation is often necessary in the dry season because the rains are usually restricted to the three- or four-month monsoon season. This is in stark contrast to Europe's rain-fed crops producing most of its food.

With its vast irrigation systems, Asia now boasts most of the world's land under irrigation, where 70.2 percent of the world's 301 million hectares is irrigated.

Asia's channelling of 82 percent of its water for food production is not the only startling statistic. Consider another astonishing figure: almost 74 per cent of the total global fresh water used for agriculture is in Asia alone. With so much water diverted to agriculture, water literally is food in Asia. Yet in the long term, such water use by Asia's agricultural sector is simply unsustainable.

A fourth factor is the fast-rising water demand from Asian industry and urban households, as this continent becomes the world's fastest industrialization and urbanization region.

With the international shift of manufacturing to Asia continuing, this continent's industry water usage is merely 9 percent of the total, with another 9 percent used for municipal supply. However, in East Asia - where Asia's heavy manufacturing is concentrated - industrial water use already accounts for 22 percent of total supply, with municipal supply making up another 14 percent.

However, water shortages are looming as industrial activities rapidly expand, even as the fast pace of urbanization has left many cities struggling to meet the household water demands.

A fifth factor in Asia's water crisis is the large-scale sequestration of river resources through dams, barrages, reservoirs and other human-made structures. This has been done without factoring in long-term environmental considerations and, in a number of cases, even the interests of countries downstream.

Projects designed to offer structural solutions in the form of dams, reservoirs, irrigation canals and levees are often at the root of intrastate and interstate disputes.

Asia is the world's most dam-dotted continent, yet such over-damming has only compounded its water challenges. China alone boasts slightly more than half of the approximately 50,000 large dams on the planet.

Yet another factor is the environmental impact of Asia's economic growth story, including on watersheds, riparian ecology and water quality. Rising prosperity in Asia, by aggravating the environmental impact of human activities, is deepening the water crisis.

State policies have unwittingly contributed to environmental degradation. State subsidies, for example, have helped weaken price signals, encouraging farmers to over-pump groundwater. Provision of subsidized electricity and diesel fuel to farmers in several Asian countries has promoted the uncontrolled exploitation of groundwater.

Water abstraction in excess of the natural hydrological cycle's renewable capacity is affecting ecosystems and degrading water quality in large parts of Asia.

The over-exploitation of groundwater, for example, results not only in the depletion of a vital resource. It also leads to the drying up of wetlands, lakes and streams that depend on the same source. The human alteration of ecosystems is an invitation to accelerated global warming.

A final factor is the lack of institutionalized cooperation over most of Asia's transnational river basins. This reality has to be seen in the context of strained relations between states sharing river basins and the broader absence of an Asian security architecture.

Asia is the only continent other than Africa where regional integration has yet to take hold, largely because Asian political and cultural diversity has hindered institution building. As a result, managing the water competition in Asia has become increasingly challenging.



By Brahma Chellaney@thejakartaglobe.com

World Water Crisis Must be Top UN Priority

File photo shows Egyptian women waiting to fill their containers with drinking water at al-Rahawe village. A rapidly worsening water shortage threatens to destabilize the planet and should be a top priority for the UN Security Council and world leaders, a panel of experts said in a report Monday.

The world's diminishing water supply carries serious security, development and social risks, and could adversely affect global health, energy stores and food supplies, said the report titled "The Global Water Crisis: Addressing an Urgent Security Issue."

The study was released by the InterAction Council (IAC), a group of 40 prominent former government leaders and heads of state, along with the United Nations University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health, and Canada's Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation.

"As some of these nations are already politically unstable, such crises may have regional repercussions that extend well beyond their political boundaries," said Norway's former Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, a member of the group.

File photo shows Egyptian women waiting to fill their containers with drinking water at al-Rahawe village. A rapidly worsening water shortage threatens to destabilize the planet and should be a top priority for the UN Security Council and world leaders, a panel of experts said in a report Monday.

The Norwegian leader underscored that the danger is particularly acute in sub-Saharan Africa, western Asia and North Africa, where critical water shortages already exist.

She added that water insecurity could wreak havoc "even in politically stable regions."

Canada's former prime minister Jean Chretien meanwhile said it was impossible overstate the magnitude of the crisis.

"The future political impact of water scarcity may be devastating," he told reporters in a telephone press conference.

The report found that water demand in the world's two most populous countries, India and China, will exceed supplies in less than two decades.

Experts said that some 3,800 cubic kilometers of fresh water are extracted from aquatic ecosystems around the world each year, largely as a result of global warming.

Population growth meanwhile has worsened the strain on water resources.

With about one billion more mouths to feed worldwide by 2025, global agriculture alone will require another 1,000 cubic kilometers (one trillion cubic meters) of water per year.

"Using water the way we have in the past simply will not sustain humanity in future," Chretien said.

"The IAC is calling on the United Nations Security Council to recognize water as one of the top security concerns facing the global community," he said.

"Starting to manage water resources more effectively and efficiently now will enable humanity to better respond to today's problems and to the surprises and troubles we can expect in a warming world."

The report is being released as foreign ministers of several countries prepare for a scheduled special discussion of the topic later this month on the margins of the UN General Assembly.

UN-Water, a coordinating body for water-related efforts by all UN groups, also will told a meeting of experts in New York on September 25 to discuss ways to tackle the problem.


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The worlds water crisis is an on going problem and social injustice that is affecting millions of people in developing nations around the world. The lack of resources, government aid and help from nations and organizations from around the world is compounding this issue. This current world issue has been going on for hundreds and hundreds of years, yet millions of people around the world have never heard anything of it. I am just one person, but together we can make a difference to the future of millions of lives. Please pass this on, spread the word and keep this circulating in all social networks.