The looming source of world conflict

World Water Day seeks this year to encourage awareness of "simple but inexpensive" measures to improve the cleanliness of water in the developing world. The Jakarta Post brings this special page to our readers to commence this year's commemoration.

GENEVA (AFP): Demand for clean water, caused by surging population growth, environment abuse and poor water management, is becoming a dangerous source of friction in many parts of the world, especially the Middle East, experts say.

The peril is being spelt out for World Water Day, a UN- sponsored event on Thursday that is appealing for better international cooperation and smarter use of a precious and declining resource.

"Just as war over fire sparked conflict among early prehistoric tribes, wars over water may result from current tensions over this resource in the next few years," says a report by the consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers.

"The Near and Middle East are the zones where there is the greatest threat," it said.

"Two-thirds of the water consumed in Israel comes from the occupied territories, while nearly half of the Israeli water installations are located in areas that were not part of its pre- 1967."

Friction between Lebanon and Israel rose sharply last week after the Jewish state accused its northern neighbor of seeking to divert water from a river that feeds the Sea of Galilee, Israel's prime source of fresh water.

Other big flash points in the region are Turkey's plan to build dams to store the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a scheme that is strongly opposed by Syria and Iraq; the Iraq-Iran row over the Shatt al-Arab waterway; and disputes over the use of water from the Nile, embroiling Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia.

UN figures suggest there are around 300 potential conflicts over water around the world, arising from squabbles over river borders and the drawing of water from shared lakes and aquifers.

In southern Asia, the biggest problem is the India-Pakistan dispute over the Indus, while in central Asia "there are high risks of conflict" between Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan over the Amu Daria and Syr Daria rivers and the already depleted Aral Sea, the PricewaterhouseCooper study said.

In Africa, the Chobe, a tributary of the Zambesi, has become a cause of tension between Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe, while there have been border incidents between Mauritania and Senegal over control of the Senegal River.

The forces behind such disputes are clear, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which pinpoints fast-growing population in poorer countries and water resources that are often squandered or polluted.

"Around one-sixth of the 6.1 billion people in the world lack access to improved sources of water, while 40 percent are without access to improved sanitation services," it says.

Each year, 3.4 million people, mostly children, die from water-related diseases.

A UN-backed panel, the World Commission on Water, estimated last year that investment in water would have to double to 180 billion dollars a year to meet targets. Only the private sector can muster capital on this scale, it said.

World Water Day seeks this year to encourage awareness of "simple but inexpensive" measures to improve the cleanliness of water in the developing world.

One of its focuses is the tragic problem of water contamination in Bangladesh, where shallow wells have been tainted by naturally-occurring arsenic.

In Singapore, experts said at a global conference here on Wednesday that desalination holds the solution to a looming shortage of clean water identified as a potential source of conflict in many parts of the world.

While 70 percent of the Earth's surface is covered with water, only 3 percent is fresh, and only 0.3 percent of the fresh water supply is accessible for human consumption, the conference was told.

But rapid advances in desalination technology, such as the use of membranes to convert sea as well as waste water into clean water, hold the solution for many countries, experts at the International Desalination Conference said.

Singapore's Acting Minister for the Environment Lim Swee Say, in an opening speech, cited projections that in the next 25 years three billion people in 48 countries would face a shortage of fresh water.

By 2050, this will have increased to four billion people in 54 countries, meaning more than 40 percent of an expected world population of 9.4 billion will not have enough clean water, he said.

"These projections point clearly to the need for the global community to pay urgent and immediate attention to the global issue of fresh water supply," he added.

"There is a lot we can do to turn the abundant supply of seawater around us into fresh and potable water.

"We can do so with the use of membrane technology, a nontraditional water treatment method," he told the conference organized by the International Desalination Association (IDA) and timed to coincide with the UN-sponsored World Water Day on Thursday.

IDA technical program chairman Leon Awerbuch said that through desalination, purified water could be sold at lower prices to more people around the world.

The cost of purified water is seen to drop to 50 US cents per cubic meter in the next five years, from the current 70 US cents to 80 US cents as more private enterprises build state-of-the art plants, he said.

Middle East countries Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates have almost total dependence on desalinated water, making the region a potential flash point in case of a water crisis.

These countries "cannot live without desalination anymore," he told reporters. "They have no choice. There are no rivers, no pipelines."

Without purified water, "they will have a major crisis and obviously they are all concerned about continuing supply of desalinated water and continuous growth in demand".

"So really, it is a critical issue to many countries in the world today," he said.