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Greater Global Risks of Water Pollution and Scarcity

In discussing the risks of water scarcity and quality over the past year (here, here and here), our attention has mostly focused on the developed world. By and large, we have talked about the risks that companies will have to deal with as these realities become more dire in the future.

The United Nations, however, naturally sees water risks through a different prism, particularly during its World Water Week, which started yesterday with a mission to increase awareness of a growing global water crisis affecting billions of people. Much of its advocacy and fundraising to provide better — and just more — water to children who lack access is being done by its UNICEF Tap Project.

In 2007, the UNICEF Tap Project was born in New York City based on a simple concept: restaurants would ask their patrons to donate $1 or more for the tap water they usually enjoy for free, and all funds raised would support UNICEF’s efforts to bring clean and accessible water to millions of children around the world.

Growing from just 300 New York City restaurants in 2007 to thousands across the country today, the UNICEF Tap Project has quickly become a powerful national movement.

During World Water Week, March 21-27, 2010, the UNICEF Tap Project will once again raise awareness of the world water crisis and vital funds to help the millions of children it impacts daily. All funds raised support UNICEF’s water, sanitation and hygiene programs, and the effort to bring clean and accessible water to millions of children around the world.

For more on the Tap Project, check out his video, which manages to be both very depressing and very uplifting all in the span of five minutes.

Another great video comes to us from National Geographic and details the trek that many Africans must make just to find water. Better still, this is just one small piece of Nat Geo’s new issue dedicated to water, which offers stories about the Jordan River, the Tibetan Plateau and desalination technology, among others.

The whole thing is a must read.

In other news, IRIN highlights the lowlights of a new UN report in an article called “Unsafe Water, the Silent Killer.”

Every 20 seconds a child dies from a water-related disease – 1.8 million children younger than five years each year. This alarming figure is from a new report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which says millions of tonnes of solid waste are being flushed into water systems every day, spreading disease.

“More than two billion tonnes of wastewater are being flushed into our fresh water and oceans every day, every year,” Christian Nelleman, the lead author of the report, Sick Water?, told IRIN.

The wastewater, a cocktail of agricultural and industrial runoffs and sewage, was seeping into groundwater and polluting drinking sources, like wells, in low-lying areas where the bulk of the world’s population live.

Countries should not only invest in infrastructure to manage wastewater but also in ecosystems, for instance by replanting mangroves, which acted as natural filters in coastal areas, said Nelleman.

And IPS reports on another study showing that more people die from water-related issues than from war.

The devastating earthquake in Haiti last January claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people, making it one of the biggest single natural disasters this year.

But in contrast, some 3.6 million people — including 1.5 million children — are estimated to die each year from water-related diseases, including diarrhoea, typhoid, cholera and dysentery.

As the United Nations commemorates World Water Day next week, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says clean water has become scarce and will become even scarcer with the onset of climate change.

“More people die from unsafe water than all forms of violence, including war,” he said in a statement released Thursday.

Troubling stuff.

And something we all need to work to remedy — both for the sake of our economy and our humanity. (h/t to Ideas for Africa for the links. Follow them for more interesting water stories throughout the week.)

Water Woes: A Toxic (and Dwindling) Water Supply

The nation’s vast network of underground water pipes is hitting its retirement, and in some areas sooner than others.

In Washington, D.C., alone, there is a water pipe break every day on average, according to a recent article in the New York Times. But it’s not just the nation’s capital that struggles with the infrastructure of a aging sewer system that was built around the time of the Civil War — cities such as Los Angeles, Indianapolis, Sacramento and many others are also facing an uphill sewer system battle.

This weekend’s heavy rains in Washington “overwhelmed the city’s system, causing untreated sewage to flow into the Potomac and Rivers.” Unfortunately, it’s not only untreated sewage that sometimes pollutes the nation’s drinking water — there’s also pharmaceuticals, lead, nickel, arsenic and a slew of other dangerous heavy metals.

In fact, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found 315 pollutants in the tap water American’s drink.

More than half of the chemicals detected are not subject to health or safety regulations and can legally be present in any amount. The federal government does have health guidelines for others, but 49 of these contaminants have been found in one place or another at levels above those guidelines, polluting the tap water for 53.6 million Americans. The government has not set a single new drinking water standard since 2001.

In response to the government’s failure to set new safety standards and priorities for pollution prevention, the EWG launched a three-year project “to create the largest drinking water quality database in existence.” They rated water from big cities (those with a population more than 250,000) based on three factors:

(1) total number of chemicals detected since 2004
(2) percentage of chemicals found of those tested
(3) highest average level for an individual pollutant

And the group’s research found the following results, broken down here in an infographic from Good magazine (via I Love Charts):

dirtiest-municipal-water-systems

And in looking at the number of people served by this polluted water, we see that the clean water in the Boston area is enjoyed by millions while any negative health effects of the dirty water in Las Vegas could be widespread:

dirtiest_water_systems_2

But it is not only the issue of water quality that has been making headlines in recent years. Communities and corporations are using (and also wasting) massive amounts of water every year.

I tackled the topic of water scarcity for Risk Management last June:

In the United States, several of the fastest-growing cities are already struggling to manage water use. Years of drought in the Southeast have severely drained Lake Lanier, one of the largest lakes in the region and the major freshwater source for the majority of those living in the urban sprawl surrounding Atlanta. Las Vegas has long faced water shortage problems due to the fact that it is a city within a desert and years of astounding urbanization and population growth have placed unprecedented strain on the already-low water availability in the region. In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in March and threatened, not for the first time, to implement statewide water rationing.
Globally, the problem is even more dire. The world population has already surpassed 6.6 billion and is expected to reach nearly 9 billion by 2050. With this unbridled growth, demand for freshwater is increasing by 64 billion cubic meters per year, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Looking back, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that global freshwater consumption rose six-fold-more than twice the rate of population growth-between 1900 and 1995. A similar rate of increased water consumption over the next half century would be unsustainable, meaning that the current path of overuse and mismanagement cannot continue.

In the United States, several of the fastest-growing cities are already struggling to manage water use. Years of drought in the Southeast have severely drained Lake Lanier, one of the largest lakes in the region and the major freshwater source for the majority of those living in the urban sprawl surrounding Atlanta. Las Vegas has long faced water shortage problems due to the fact that it is a city within a desert and years of astounding urbanization and population growth have placed unprecedented strain on the already-low water availability in the region. In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in March and threatened, not for the first time, to implement statewide water rationing.

Globally, the problem is even more dire. The world population has already surpassed 6.6 billion and is expected to reach nearly 9 billion by 2050. With this unbridled growth, demand for freshwater is increasing by 64 billion cubic meters per year, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Looking back, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that global freshwater consumption rose six-fold-more than twice the rate of population growth-between 1900 and 1995. A similar rate of increased water consumption over the next half century would be unsustainable, meaning that the current path of overuse and mismanagement cannot continue.

Not helping the water scarcity issue are water-intensive industries such as agriculture, energy/oil, mining, food and beverage manufacturing, semiconductors and apparel. Agricultural processes alone account for a whopping 70% of all fresh water used.

This water usage has not gone unnoticed. Recent criticisms of such industries has prompted some corporations to initiate new, less water-intensive processes.

One such company is Anheuser-Busch InBev.

By the end of 2012, the company plans to whittle down its worldwide water use by 30% to 3.5 hectoliters for each hectoliter of production compared with 5.03 hectoliters in 2007. Each hectoliter is about 26.4 gallons. Water use last year was roughly 113.6 gallons, or 4.3 hectoliters, for each hectoliter of beer produced. The company’s brewery in Cartersville, Ga., has already reached the 3.1-hectoliter mark.

Reaching the goal would be the equivalent of saving enough water to fill 25,000 Olympic-size swimming pools, Anheuser-Busch InBev said. Since 2000, the brewer has already decreased water use by nearly 37%, it said.

The LA Times coverage naturally focuses on the “green” aspect, lauding the bottling company for its efforts to help Mother Nature and also discussing its plans to cut carbon dioxide emissions. But you have to think that pure altruism isn’t the sole motivation here. The company is certainly aware that, in the future, water will be a scarcer — and more expensive — commodity and is starting to adjust now by increasing its efficiency.

And Anheuser-Busch isn’t the only company working to waste less water. Texas Instruments, who, along with Intel, used more than 11 billion gallons of ultra-pure water for silicon chip production in 2007, has taken steps to reuse and recycle the vast amount of water it uses on a daily basis. But industries are still a far cry away from realizing in full the impact their water usage has on the earth.

And even if for those that do realize it, many times, revenue means more than waste.

Do you think there should be a cap on the maximum amount of water a company can use per year?

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