World Savvy Monitor

1) Actions must be taken to address water stress on both sides of the equation:  demand and supply.

Demand side responses include:

• Conservation – using less water.  Technological advances can significantly increase the efficiency of water use by both minimizing waste, and then making the water we do have go further.  Getting individuals, farms, and industries to use these technologies usually requires incentives in the form of prices, laws, and community norms in order affect behavioral change.
• Reallocation – distributing water differently.  This is accomplished using similar tactics as conservation (i.e., technology combined with incentives) with the added task of managing competition.
• Attention to demographics – managing population growth, both in terms of overall numbers and location.  That the biggest anticipated population growth in this century will take place in water-stressed areas is concerning.  Water for 6 billion is proving tricky; water for 9 billion may not be possible.

Supply side responses include:

• Finding new sources of freshwater – from technological advances in desalinating ocean water to new ways of harvesting rainwater.
  
• Getting more freshwater out of existing stores – improving equipment and knowledge required to extract renewable water where it exists.  Much water scarcity is not due to the lack of water, but is instead due to nonexistent and decaying and/or damaged infrastructure (such as pipes and storage facilities).
• Addressing climate change to preserve and protect the water cycle that produces freshwater – attending to the health of the planet and the systems that sustain it.
• Facilitating virtual water flows – managing trade policies among countries as well as agricultural policies within countries to encourage transfers of water through tradable goods.

2) The best solutions will incorporate micro and macro responses to water stress.

Like any solution related to human behavior, large-scale change is the result of cumulative personal choices.  Individual and household decisions matter a great deal for their own sake (a gallon is a gallon), and for the tipping points to which they contribute.  Conserving water in personal hygiene, in cooking, in landscaping will help to alleviate water stress.

The macro or systemic side is no less important.  This means attention to governance, finance, technology, investment, trade, and energy policy.  

3) Efficiency and equity must be balanced.

Often, the most efficient ways of managing water supplies are not the fairest.  Markets may do a good job of making efficient use of natural resources, but water is not only a natural resource; most also consider it to be a human right.  

• This means figuring out ways to get water to those who need it most, even though it may be expensive and inconvenient.  
• This means that when prioritizing the uses of water, all constituencies must be represented.

4) The best solutions will take into account both short-term and long-term water needs.

A 2006 UN Development Program water report notes that current global water use is “analogous to a reckless and unsustainable credit-financed spending spree.”  Many attempts to augment current water supplies quite literally take water from future generations in terms of the environmental damage they inflict.  Living within our means requires that we withdraw freshwater at rates commensurate with rates of natural replenishment.  

5) Technology can be a double-edged sword.

The application of science and engineering technology to the hydrologic sector has yielded enormous benefits.  

• Water treatment practices have saved hundreds of millions of lives over the last century.
• In-home delivery of clean water and sanitation has revolutionized the quality of human life in many parts of the world.
• Crops and irrigation techniques have made it possible to grow food in the desert.
• Information and communication innovations make water management on a large scale possible, in real time.

However, better technology has also made it easier to use water in unsustainable ways and volumes.

• Convenience often encourages wasteful practices and water-intensive lifestyles.
• Rural electrification subsidized by states has led to over-drilling and unmonitored drilling.
• Green Revolution technologies have resulted in poor crop per drop ratios.  Many crops use massive amounts of freshwater that end up wasted as evaporation or pesticide-polluted run-off.
• Desalination plants disrupt ocean ecosystems, produce environmentally-costly residues, and require massive amounts of energy.

6) It is difficult to balance the needs and demands of all stakeholders.

Consider some of the tensions that must be accommodated in a world of hydrologic stress:

• Urban populations versus rural populations
• Current populations versus future populations
• Upstream versus downstream populations
• Industry versus agriculture
• Small farmers versus commercial agriculture
• Human activity versus environmental preservation
• Business interests versus social interests
• States versus states
• Nations versus nations

7) It is going to take a lot of money to address global water stress.  

Just to meet the Millennium Development Goals of safe drinking water and adequate sanitation for all by 2015 is expected to require $10 billion per year.

This money may be in the form of:

• Investments by individuals, hedge funds, tax-payers, and others.
• Aid in the form of cash or special projects, from one nation to another, and from the international community and aid organizations to individual nations and localities.
• Loans, ranging from microfinance to the World Bank and IMF to everything in between.
• Reallocation of existing budgets.  The recommended target for national spending on water investment is currently 1% of GDP, but most countries average around half this amount.  

The evidence is mounting that water is a good investment.  The UN estimates that $10 billion per year in investment to achieve the water access targets in MDG # 7 could yield $38 billion per year in economic benefits. 

8) Good intentions are not always sufficient.

It is ironic that many of our most pressing water challenges have been exacerbated, or even created, by attempts to solve other water challenges.  Dams are a great example.  Dams have been a hugely successful innovation in managing naturally occurring variability in water flows; they balance out droughts and floods by allowing for the storage and control of natural freshwater.  Yet we are increasingly finding that dams can be harmful to the natural environment, contributing to other stresses in the water cycle and harming fragile ecosystems.  Some dams that provide critical water for people along a natural river system deprive others along that same system.    

Another example of the irony of good intentions concerns the trade-offs that sometimes exists between water access and water quality.  Simply getting adequate and convenient water to people is an important goal.  But when that water is dirty, getting it to more people can have tragic results.  This illustrates the importance of considering the consequences all along the hydrological spectrum when attempting to address discrete problems.

9) Good water management requires good information.  Planning is impossible without accurate data.

Experts agree that current data on water usage and quality is pretty abysmal.  

• Monitoring can be non-existent or fragmented, from broken water meters to no water meters to unlicensed wells and uncounted pumps.
• Corruption is a factor in many places where data on water quality is compromised or undisclosed.  
• Many, many places in the world lack capacity to measure and monitor water supplies.

Moreover, climate change throws a wrench into even the most careful modeling on the most diligently collected numbers.  We simply do not know with sufficient accuracy how global warming will affect future water supplies.  This lack of information adds enormous risk into any calculations.

10) The news is not all bad.  

Any UN or private sector report on water is replete with examples of places where water management is being done right.  It is often noted that Singapore naturally possesses 5% of the water it needs, yet it thrives due to careful planning and the creative importing of water-intensive goods.

If history is any guide, water wars between countries, while frightening to contemplate and certainly a real possibility as water stress increases, are not likely.  Most water conflicts are successfully resolved.  Furthermore, cooperation over this issue could lead to broader cooperation on other contentious issues between neighboring countries.

Next:  Water Stewardship:  Knowledge to Action:  What You Can Do