The New York Times With a Push From the U.N., Water Reveals Its Secrets
[requires 'free' registration]

"Today, more than a billion people lack access to safe drinking water. Polluted water contributes, each year, to the death of about 15 million children under age 5. By midcentury, between two billion and seven billion people will face water shortages.

"No region will be spared from the impact of this crisis," Koichiro Matsuura, director general of Unesco, recently warned. "Water supplies are falling while the demand is dramatically growing."

He estimated that in the next two decades the average amount of water available per person on the planet will shrink by a third."

redux [03.21.03]
Nature How to slake a planet's thirst
[requires 'free' registration]

"By this time next year, some 1.75 million people will have died before their time for the simple reason that they must scratch out their existence without access to safe drinking water. This is the toll from cholera, dysentery and other diarrhoeal diseases that the World Health Organization attributes to unsafe drinking supplies."

"Whatever transpires in the Iraqi desert over the next few weeks, the water crisis will still be with us, quietly exacting its devastating toll (see page 251). As the world's population continues to expand, and climate change alters the hydrology of river basins, as many as 7 billion people in 60 countries could face water scarcity by 2050, if action isn't taken."

redux [11.12.02]
Reason Online Water, Water Nowhere?

"One thousand Arkansas rice farmers have just about pumped away all their ground water. Naturally, they are looking to taxpayers for relief."

"The Arkansas rice farmers' situation is a microcosm of a problem affecting much of the world. A new report from the International Food Policy Research Institute, "World Water and Food to 2025," addresses the global freshwater crisis. "Unless we change policies and priorities, in twenty years, there won't be enough water for cities, households, the environment, or growing food," Mark Rosegrant, lead author of the report and a senior research fellow at the IFPRI, warned in a press release. "Water is not like oil. There is no substitute. If we continue to take it for granted, much of the earth is going to run short of water or food--or both.""

The New York Times Editorial/Op-ed One Subsidy Too Many
[requires 'free' registration]

"Americans are depleting their water supplies, especially their once-vast underground aquifers, at a rapid pace. Yet this alarming fact has failed to register with influential segments of the population, including developers who keep building unsustainable subdivisions and farmers who keep growing unsustainable crops. A case in point are the rice growers of Arkansas, who are on the brink of pumping one of the state's biggest aquifers dry and are now imploring the federal government to bail them out."

"The White River ecosystem, which includes two important wildlife refuges, will inevitably suffer. What's most irritating about the scheme, however, is that it further enriches an industry that is already extravagantly subsidized."

Mother Jones Water for Profit

"Instead of ushering in a new era of trouble-free drinking water, Atlanta's experiment with privatization has brought a host of new problems. This year there have been five boil-water alerts, indicating unsafe contaminants might be present. Fire hydrants have been useless for months. Leaking water mains have gone unrepaired for weeks. Despite all of this, the city's contractor -- United Water, a subsidiary of French-based multinational Suez -- has lobbied the City Council to add millions more to its $21-million-a-year contract.

Atlanta's experience has become Exhibit A in a heated controversy over the push by a rapidly growing global water industry to take over public water systems. At the heart of the debate are two questions: Should water, a basic necessity for human survival, be controlled by for-profit interests? And can multinational companies actually deliver on what they promise -- better service and safe, affordable water?"

Paul Simon Excerpts from Tapped Out: The Coming World Water Crisis and What We Can Do About It

"Buried in all the daily news trivia, the careful reader can find strong warnings about our future. The Financial Times of London begins a story: "Water, like energy in the late 1970s, will probably become the most critical natural resource issue facing most parts of the world by the start of the next century."8 The British publication, People and the Planet, predicts that by the year 2025 at least sixty-five nations will experience serious water shortages.9 Another British journal, Worldlink, the magazine of the World Economic Forum, has a cover article titled "Water: The Next Source of Trouble."10 A scholarly journal on international law calls the shortage of fresh water "the national security issue of the twenty-first century."11 "Water Crisis Looms, World Bank Says" is the heading of a story on an inside page of the Washington Post of August 3, 1995. The Associated Press story accompanying that heading quotes World Bank Vice President for Environmentally Sustainable Development Ismail Serageldin: "We are warning the world that there is a huge problem looming out there.....The experts all agree on the need to do something fast. The main problem is the lack of political will to carry out these recommendations."

That is the crux of the matter: political will. That is not going to be generated by World Bank reports. It must come from aroused citizens who understand the severity of the problem and demand action. Almost four centuries ago, a British writer noted: "Water is a very good servant, but it is a cruel master.""