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A call to address problem of water
A new report on global water warns that governments must address booming water demand or face grave human, environmental and economic consequences. ''Water needs to rise up the totem pole of political discourse,'' Giulio Boccaletti of McKinsey, the consulting firm that wrote the report, said during a news conference Monday. ''We need to stop flying blind in making decisions about water without a map on the table.'' The report, Charting Our Water Future, says that in 20 years, water demand will be 40 percent higher than it is today, and more than 50 percent higher in the most rapidly developing countries. Historic rates of supply expansion and efficiency improvement will close only a fraction of this gap. Closing the future ''water gap'' will require annual investments of $50 billion to $60 billion, and involve expanding measures already being taken in some communities to bolster efficiency, augmenting supply or lessening the water-intensity of the economy. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, the chairman of Nestlé, said he expected the report to ''de-emotionalize'' the issue of water management by laying out facts in clear terms. Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe said that water's value was not adequately reflected in its cost. He emphasized that access to clean water was a human right, but that ''it's not a human right to wash your car, fill up your swimming pool and water your golf course.'' He said South Africa had an example of a sustainable water policy in which households are entitled to 6,000 liters, or about 1,500 gallons, of free water a month. Beyond this amount, they must pay. He also pointed to what he clearly considered an absurdity: that it takes 9,100 liters of water to make one liter of biodiesel fuel. ''We don't give value to the most precious resource we have on earth,'' Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe said. The report said that under an average economic growth outlook and if no efficiency gains were assumed, global water requirements would grow to 6,900 billion cubic kilometers, or 1,655 cubic miles, by 2030 from 4,500 billion cubic kilometers today. The challenge to reduce use is closely tied to agriculture, which accounts for 71 percent of global water withdrawals today. Centers of agricultural demand - also where some of the poorest subsistence farmers live - are primarily in India, Sub-Saharan Africa and China. Industrial water withdrawals account for 16 percent of today's global demand, with growth primarily from China, which alone accounts for 40 percent of the additional industrial demand worldwide, the report said. Much of the world's growing demand comes from the developing world. The study was sponsored by the companies Coca-Cola, Barilla, New Holland Agriculture, Nestlé, SABMiller, Standard Chartered Bank and Syngenta, with backing from the World Bank. November 24, 2009 Terms and Conditions Privacy Policy
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