"Aquifer economics" - deep waters drying up

An economist article allows me to use the term "aquifer economics". I am always on the look out for new varieties of "economics" and this could be a big one.

From a teaching perspective this is yet another good "tragedy of the commons" story especially when aquifers cross national boundaries.

Deep waters, slowly drying up [Economist]

CLEMENT weather and plentiful water mean that Punjab produces an eighth of India’s total food grains. But the water table has dropped by ten metres since 1973 and the rate of decline is accelerating on both the Indian and the Pakistani sides of the region. It is a similar story for the north-western Sahara aquifer system (NWSAS), shared by Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Withdrawals increased ninefold between 1950 and 2008. Springs are drying up and soil salinity has increased.

Such depletion of aquifers is a classic tragedy of the commons. Farmers pump, oblivious of others’ actions or the impact of their own. Scarcity stokes this rather than braking it. Worse, much abstracted water is used in inefficient irrigation; compounding that, underpricing means it is often used for watering low-value crops. Powerful farming lobbies have little interest in changing the status quo.

Aquifers, like fish stocks, are most at risk when they cross national borders, making property rights weaker. Groundwater provides about a fifth of the planet’s water needs and half its drinking water. In arid countries such as Libya or Saudi Arabia, that figure is close to 100%. Almost 96% of the planet’s freshwater resources are stored as groundwater, half of which straddles borders. UNESCO, a United Nations body, estimates that 273 aquifers are shared by two or more countries.

The signing this summer of a treaty between Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay to protect the Guarani aquifer, after a six-year study of the region’s underwater resources, has thus come as a nice surprise. It may even be a trend. Mali, Niger and Nigeria are due to sign a provisional deal early next year to set up a body to run the Iullemeden aquifer, where withdrawals have exceeded recharge ever since 1995, endangering the Niger river in the dry season.

The two deals follow a UN resolution in 2008 on creating a legal regime for aquifers (it may become a full convention next year). Lifting sanctions on Libya has had an effect, too. The Libyans say they may stop growing wheat using water from the NWSAS and the Nubian sandstone aquifer system, the world’s largest fossil aquifer, which they share with Egypt, Chad and Sudan. An agreement in 1992 set up a body to run this but it has stayed largely dormant. Now sampling and monitoring have resumed, under the aegis of the International Atomic Energy Agency (which has a sideline in environmental monitoring).

Such scientific work is crucial because aquifers are still poorly understood. Until a UNESCO inventory in 2008, nobody knew even how many transboundary aquifers existed. Experts are still refining the count: the American-Mexico border may include 8, 10, 18 or 20 aquifers, depending on how you measure them. Defining sustainability vexes hydrologists too, particularly with ancient fossil aquifers that will inevitably run dry eventually. Estimates for the life of the Nubian sandstone aquifer range from a century to a millennium.

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The demise of the Phytoplankton - the beginning of the end?

The Independent are renowned for their environmental front pages. Today they report on the recent Nature paper that shows that phytoplankton levels are down 40% and that this will ultimately lead to the collapse of fish stocks and eventually life on earth as we know it.

The dead sea: Global warming blamed for 40 per cent decline in the ocean's phytoplankton [Independent]

The microscopic plants that support all life in the oceans are dying off at a dramatic rate, according to a study that has documented for the first time a disturbing and unprecedented change at the base of the marine food web.

Scientists have discovered that the phytoplankton of the oceans has declined by about 40 per cent over the past century, with much of the loss occurring since the 1950s. They believe the change is linked with rising sea temperatures and global warming.

If the findings are confirmed by further studies it will represent the single biggest change to the global biosphere in modern times, even bigger than the destruction of the tropical rainforests and coral reefs, the scientists said yesterday.

Phytoplankton are microscopic marine organisms capable of photosynthesis, just like terrestrial plants. They float in the upper layers of the oceans, provide much of the oxygen we breathe and account for about half of the total organic matter on Earth. A 40 per cent decline would represent a massive change to the global biosphere.

"If this holds up, something really serious is underway and has been underway for decades. I've been trying to think of a biological change that's bigger than this and I can't think of one," said marine biologist Boris Worm of Canada's Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He said: "If real, it means that the marine ecosystem today looks very different to what it was a few decades ago and a lot of this change is happening way out in the open, blue ocean where we cannot see it. I'm concerned about this finding."

The researchers studied phytoplankton records going back to 1899 when the measure of how much of the green chlorophyll pigment of phytoplankton was present in the upper ocean was monitored regularly. The scientists analysed about half a million measurements taken over the past century in 10 ocean regions, as well as measurements recorded by satellite.

They found that phytoplankton had declined significantly in all but two of the ocean regions at an average global rate of about 1 per cent per year, most of which since the mid 20th Century. They found that this decline correlated with a corresponding rise in sea-surface temperatures – although they cannot prove that warmer oceans caused the decline.

The study, published in the journal Nature, is the first analysis of its kind and deliberately used data gathered over such a long period of time to eliminate the sort of natural fluctuations in phytoplankton that are known to occur from one decade to the next due to normal oscillations in ocean temperatures, Dr Worm said. "Phytoplankton are a critical part of our planetary life support system. They produce half of the oxygen we breathe, draw down surface CO2 and ultimately support all of our fishes." he said.

But some scientists have warned that the Dalhousie University study may not present a realistic picture of the true state of marine plantlife given that phytoplankton is subject to wide, natural fluctuations.

"Its an important observation and it's consistent with other observations, but the overall trend can be overinterpreted because of the masking effect of natural variations," said Manuel Barange of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory and a phytoplankton expert.

However, the Dalhousie scientists behind the three-year study said they have taken the natural oscillations of ocean temperatures into account and the overall conclusion of a 40 per cent decline in phytoplankton over the past century still holds true.

"Phytoplankton are the basis of life in the oceans and are essential in maintaining the health of the oceans so we should be concerned about its decline.

"It's a very robust finding and we're very confident of it," said Daniel Boyce, the lead author of the study.

"Phytoplankton is the fuel on which marine ecosystems run. A decline of phytoplankton affects everything up the food chain, including humans," Dr Boyce said.

Phytoplankton is affected by the amount of nutrients the well up from the bottom of the oceans. In the North Atlantic phytoplankton "blooms" naturally in spring and autumn when ocean storms bring nutrients to the surface.

One effect of rising sea temperatures has been to make the water column of some regions nearer the equator more stratified, with warmer water sitting on colder layers of water, making it more difficult for nutrients to reach the phytoplankton at the sea surface.

Warmer seas in tropical regions are also known to have a direct effect on limiting the growth of phytoplankton.

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Floods and explosive chemicals in China

If floods were not bad enough (the current flood related death toll in China this year is around 1,000 and counting) the leaking of 1,000 barrels containing explosive chemicals into a major river is rather unfortunate.

It is reassuring that officials are testing the water quality which would strike me as a wise precaution.

China Floods Wash Explosive Chemicals Into River

Flooding in northeastern China has washed more than 1,000 barrels containing explosive chemicals into a major river, state media said on Wednesday, as the death toll from flooding nationally this year neared 1,000.

The incident happened along the flood-swollen Songhua River in Jilin city in Jilin province in the late morning, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Residents contacted by telephone said water supplies had been cut off for a time in parts of the city, but were starting to return to normal.

The containers, from a chemical plant, held more than 160,000 kg (352,700 lb) of explosive chemical fluids, Xinhua said, citing local officials.

"Emergency workers have been trying to recover the containers and local environmental protection authorities were closely monitoring the water quality of the river," the report said.

China periodically faces spills into rivers that result in water supplies being cut off, most seriously in 2005 when an explosion at an industrial plant sent toxic chemicals streaming into the Songhua River further upstream, in Harbin.

The incident forced the shut-down of water supplies to nearly 4 million people.

Rains so far this year across large swathes of central and southern China have killed 928 people and left 477 missing, causing around 176.5 billion yuan ($26.04 billion) in damage, Xinhua said.

A total of 875,000 homes have collapsed, 9.61 million people have been evacuated and 8.76 million hectares of crops ruined, it added.

Northeastern China has also been lashed by torrential rains over the past few days.

Tibetan Plateau hopes are melting away

After a recent trip to China and crossing some very large rivers on route it is hard to imagine the potential problems that melting glaciers are storing up.

The Tibetan Plateau problems include flooding,water shortages and desertification. More economics research is needed in this area.

This post from the imaginatively named "Self Destructive B******s" is a good place to start along with the wiki link.

This article is one reason why it is countries such as China that will be hardest hit from the effects of climate change so do not underestimate China's will to get this signed.

The Tibetan Plateau [Self Destructive B******s]

The Tibetan Plateau is a large elevated plateau in Asia, most of which is located in China. It has an average elevation of 4.5 kilometres and has a total area of 2.5 million square kilometres (four times the size of Texas), giving rise to the nickname "The roof of the world". It is the third largest frozen store of freshwater in the world, and is the source for 10 major rivers in Asia. Almost half (47 percent) of the world's population depends on rivers that originate here. Unfortunately, according to a 2007 IPCC report, the ice in these glaciers is melting faster than anywhere else in the world.

Here is the China relevant wording:

China has the world's largest population, with roughly 1.3 billion people, and has often had difficulty trying to feed its people. Over a quarter of China's land is desert, and the country is suffering from increasing desertification. Currently, about 2500 square kilometres are being converted to desert every year, and the rate has been rapidly increasing over the past decades. This has also led to an increase in dust storms, which prevent travel by blocking roads and railways, and cause significant casualties. Around 50 years ago, these occurred only every eight years or so, but now happen annually.

In addition to desertification, which obviously limits where crops can be grown, many existing rivers in China have become unusable because of pollution, and other rivers have begun to run dry. China has a great need for freshwater, and these problems, along with a growing population, are just making this need more acute. In order to meet their demand, China has been building dams and redirecting water from the Tibetan Plateau, and has plans to increase this activity.

Clearly it is too late to stop the melting - how to manage the fallout is what needs to be worked on.

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Glaciers thinning, water levels rising

Shoddy post frequency I know but I promise to improve over the next month.

Let us get back to action with some good old glacier work. I will catch up on all the pre-Copenhagen news soon.

What is interesting here is that it is the speed of the glaciers that is causing the problem. This can only get worse.

Thinning glaciers driving polar ice loss, satellite survey finds [Guardian]

A comprehensive satellite survey of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has revealed an extensive network of rapidly thinning glaciers that is driving ice loss in the regions.

The most profound loss of ice was seen along the continental coastlines, where glaciers speed up as they slip into the sea. In some regions, glaciers flowing into surrounding waters were thinning by nearly 10m a year.

Scientists used data from Nasa's ICESat (Ice, Cloud and and land Elevation Satellite) to piece together a picture of the changing fortunes of glaciers on the ice sheets. The satellite bounces laser light off the ground, allowing researchers to measure the terrain with extraordinary precision.

The survey, compiled from 50m satellite measurements taken between February 2003 and November 2007, shows glaciers thinning at all latitudes in Greenland and along key Antarctic coastlines. Thinning penetrated deep into the interior of the ice sheets and continues to spread as ice shelves melt into the sea.

"We were surprised to see such a strong pattern of thinning glaciers across such large areas of coastline. It's widespread and in some cases, thinning extends hundreds of kilometres inland," said Hamish Pritchard who led the study at the British Antarctic Survey.

In Greenland, glaciers in the south-east were found to be flowing at speeds of more than 100m per year, during which they thinned by 84cm. More slow-going glaciers lost around 12cm a year.

In a vast region of western Antarctica that drains into the Amundsen Sea, the Pine Island glacier and neighbouring Smith and Thwaites glaciers are thinning by 9m a year, the satellite measurements show. The study is published in the journal Nature.

Previous satellite surveys of polar regions have relied upon radar measurements that cannot map the Earth's surface with the same precision as the ICESat laser rangefinder. The satellite allows scientists to take 65m-wide snapshots of the ground, giving an unprecedented view of glaciers on the steep terrain where ice meets ocean.

This satellite survey helps scientists explore how different aspects of climate change are driving ice loss in polar regions. Higher air temperatures can increase surface melting, but warm ocean currents accelerate ice loss more when glaciers flow into the sea.

"The majority of the thinning we see is not due to increased melting from higher atmospheric temperatures, but because the glaciers are flowing faster thanks to their interaction with the oceans," said Prof David Vaughan, a co-author on the study.
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Dirty Money

Ever wondered where the money in your pocket came from? You will not be surprised to hear that it is a hole in the ground and that this said hole in the ground has its fair share of related environmental problems (with the standard pictures of little children and shanty towns).

Britain's dirty money: How the loose change in our pockets is costing the earth [Mail Online]

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The town has become a ghost town after Codelco, the government company that runs Chuquicamata, used the land to dump waste material from the giant open-pit mine. The company was forced by environmental laws to move the population away from the hazardous emissions of arsenic and sulphur dioxide.

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It's invasive in the extreme, it scars the landscape, it destroys the water table and it pollutes the earth and the local wells. It is destroying one of the most beautiful and unique places on Earth. Look at a photograph of the Atacama before the mines came here and then look at the area now.

'From the air the desert is unrecognisable - the oases are gone, the wildlife is gone, the wells are gone. This is too high a price to pay.'

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Water has become such a problem in this part of the world that even Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, with all their money and resources, can no longer squeeze enough from the ground to feed the demands of the mine. They have recently invested £150 million in a desalination plant at Escondida. The aim is to pump seawater from the Pacific Ocean over a distance of 125 miles and up 10,000ft to satisfy the mine's needs.

Miguel Stutzin, president of Code, Chile's oldest environmental group, says: 'This is the apparent solution to our water crisis and what damage will this do to the coast and to the foothills of the Andes where the pipeline will penetrate, and how will it replace all the regional water these mines have used? Will it replenish the desert towns? Of course not.'

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Waterwars - Bear vrs Dragon

Things could get ugly.

Russia complains about Chinese border river project [PplanetArk]

MOSCOW - Russia complained about a major Chinese river project on Monday which it says will harm the Russian environment, the latest sign of strained relations between the two countries.

In a statement, Russia's Environment Ministry expressed "serious concern on information about the continuation of construction in China of drainage canals, which may make the river Argun shallow on Russian territory."

The Argun runs into the Amur river that acts as the frontier for Russia and China along a long stretch of their vast border.

The environmental complaint came a few days after a Chinese delegation met Russian officials to discuss the June 29 closure of a vast Moscow market which employed tens of thousands of Chinese.

"In light of the development of the Sino-Russian strategic partnership, China urges the Russian side to take a historical perspective, legally resolve the situation and protect Chinese merchants' legal rights," Vice-Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said in a statement after the talks.

Moscow's Foreign Ministry later responded by saying China had agreed that the closure of Cherkizovsky market -- which Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had said was a major focus of contraband goods -- should not be allowed to sour ties.

China and Russia are members, along with Brazil and India, of the BRIC alliance of major developing economies and want closer economic and diplomatic ties. Beijing agreed this year to lend Russian oil firms $25 billion in exchange for 20 years of oil supplies at below market rates.

In the latest grievance, Moscow complained that China's work on widening the Argun River, which had been suspended by a joint agreement in 2006, had restarted, according to satellite images taken between May 17 to July 17.

"According to our data, (the construction) can lead to significant negative consequences for the river Argun, its ecosystem, the life of which is linked to the river, as well as for the economic development of the trans-Baikal region," said Rinat Gizatulin, a ministry department chief.

Environmental organization WWF in May warned that the Chinese project could have a devastating impact.

"Of course, we're happy with the ministry's response. The Chinese plans would have serious consequences for the region on the Russian side of the border," said Evgeny Shvarts, director of conservation policy with WWF in Moscow.

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Water wars - India V Bangladesh round 1

This is the sort of headline I expect to see a lot more of in years to come.

The question is what Bangladesh can really do about it. Wait until this sort of event occurs in the middle east.

Bangladesh Ex-PM Asks India to Scrap River Dam Plan [PlanetArk]

DHAKA - The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) asked India on Saturday to scrap a controversial dam project on a common river which experts say could make two rivers in Bangladesh dry up, affecting millions.

India has approved plans for a 1,500 megawatt project at Tipaimukh on the Barak River, which flows from northeast India into Bangladesh before emptying into the Bay of Bengal.

"We urge upon our neighbor to cancel the dam plan for the sake of millions in both countries who will be adversely affected," BNP chief Begum Khaleda Zia told a meeting of politicians, experts and activists.

Experts warn that the dam could cause two Bangladeshi rivers -- the Surma and Kushiara in northeastern Sylhet -- to dry up.

Khaleda, a former prime minister, urged the Awami League government to change its "kneel-down policy toward India."

"Take a bold step against the dam, we will assist you. Don't think that you are alone," she said, adding that the planned dam was likely to become "another Farakka-like death-trap for Bangladesh."

Speakers at another seminar on Saturday called on Bangladeshis to forge a national consensus and seek international assistance to stop India from building the dam.

India commissioned the Farakka Barrage in 1974 on the river Ganges along Bangladesh's northern border to divert water to the river Hoogly to keep Kolkata port navigable.

As a result, Bangladesh faced severe water shortages during winter until a 30-year agreement was signed in 1996 to share the flow.

Critics of the new project cite environmental experts as predicting similar results this time.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assured his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina last week that he would make sure the dam did not harm her country.

They met at Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, on the sidelines of a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement on Wednesday to discuss bilateral issues, including the dam.

Former water resources minister Abdur Razzak will head a Bangladesh parliamentary team due to visit the site of the planned dam at India's invitation from July 29.

"We will oppose the construction of the dam through diplomatic and political channels, if the dam poses a threat to our environment and ecology," Razzak, also a senior leader of the ruling Awami League, told reporters.

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Waterworld and the growing crisis

The Economist does water. Some interesting statistics for those of us that like that sort of thing.

There are stormy waters ahead that is for sure.

What is the difference between a brownout and a blackout?

It does seem remarkable that a growing number of the worlds great rivers never reach the sea. That must be bad right?

The world's meat eating frenzy is also costly. This quote is also impressive:

So the shift from vegetarian diets to meaty ones—which contributed to the food-price rise of 2007-08—has big implications for water, too. In 1985 Chinese people ate, on average, 20kg of meat; this year, they will eat around 50kg. This difference translates into 390km3 (1km3 is 1 trillion litres) of water—almost as much as total water use in Europe.

Things will only get worse.

Sin aqua non [Economist]

THE overthrow of Madagascar’s president in mid-March was partly caused by water problems—in South Korea. Worried by the difficulties of increasing food supplies in its water-stressed homeland, Daewoo, a South Korean conglomerate, signed a deal to lease no less than half Madagascar’s arable land to grow grain for South Koreans. Widespread anger at the terms of the deal (the island’s people would have received practically nothing) contributed to the president’s unpopularity. One of the new leader’s first acts was to scrap the agreement.

Three weeks before that, on the other side of the world, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California declared a state of emergency. Not for the first time, he threatened water rationing in the state. “It is clear,” says a recent report by the United Nations World Water Assessment Programme, “that urgent action is needed if we are to avoid a global water crisis.”

Local water shortages are multiplying. Australia has suffered a decade-long drought. Brazil and South Africa, which depend on hydroelectric power, have suffered repeated brownouts because there is not enough water to drive the turbines properly. So much has been pumped out of the rivers that feed the Aral Sea in Central Asia that it collapsed in the 1980s and has barely begun to recover.

Yet local shortages, caused by individual acts of mismanagement or regional problems, are one thing. A global water crisis, which impinges on supplies of food and other goods, or affects rivers and lakes everywhere, is quite another. Does the world really face a global problem?



Not on the face of it. There is plenty of water to go around and human beings are not using all that much. Every year, thousands of cubic kilometres (km3) of fresh water fall as rain or snow or come from melting ice. According to a study in 2007, most nations outside the Gulf were using a fifth or less of the water they receive—at least in 2000, the only year for which figures are available. The global average withdrawal of fresh water was 9% of the amount that flowed through the world’s hydrologic cycle. Both Latin America and Africa used less than 6% (see table). On this evidence, it would seem that all water problems are local.

The trouble with this conclusion is that no one knows how much water people can safely use. It is certainly not 100% (the amount taken in Gulf states) because the rest of creation also has to live off the water. In many places the maximum may well be less than one fifth, the average for Asia as a whole. It depends on how water is returned to the system, how much is taken from underground aquifers, and so on.

But there is some admittedly patchy evidence that, given current patterns of use and abuse, the amount now being withdrawn is moving dangerously close to the limit of safety—and in some places beyond it. An alarming number of the world’s great rivers no longer reach the sea. They include the Indus, Rio Grande, Colorado, Murray-Darling and Yellow rivers. These are the arteries of the world’s main grain-growing areas.

Freshwater fish populations are in precipitous decline. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, fish stocks in lakes and rivers have fallen roughly 30% since 1970. This is a bigger population fall than that suffered by animals in jungles, temperate forests, savannahs and any other large ecosystem. Half the world’s wetlands, on one estimate, were drained, damaged or destroyed in the 20th century, mainly because, as the volume of fresh water in rivers falls, salt water invades the delta, changing the balance between fresh and salt water. On this evidence, there may be systemic water problems, as well as local disruptions.

Two global trends have added to the pressure on water. Both are likely to accelerate over coming decades.

The first is demography. Over the past 50 years, as the world’s population rose from 3 billion to 6.5 billion, water use roughly trebled. On current estimates, the population is likely to rise by a further 2 billion by 2025 and by 3 billion by 2050. Demand for water will rise accordingly.

Or rather, by more. Possibly a lot more. It is not the absolute number of people that makes the biggest difference to water use but changing habits and diet. Diet matters more than any single factor because agriculture is the modern Agasthya, the mythical Indian giant who drank the seas dry. Farmers use about three-quarters of the world’s water; industry uses less than a fifth and domestic or municipal use accounts for a mere tenth.

Different foods require radically different amounts of water. To grow a kilogram of wheat requires around 1,000 litres. But it takes as much as 15,000 litres of water to produce a kilo of beef. The meaty diet of Americans and Europeans requires around 5,000 litres of water a day to produce. The vegetarian diets of Africa and Asia use about 2,000 litres a day (for comparison, Westerners use just 100-250 litres a day in drinking and washing).

So the shift from vegetarian diets to meaty ones—which contributed to the food-price rise of 2007-08—has big implications for water, too. In 1985 Chinese people ate, on average, 20kg of meat; this year, they will eat around 50kg. This difference translates into 390km3 (1km3 is 1 trillion litres) of water—almost as much as total water use in Europe.

The shift of diet will be impossible to reverse since it is a product of rising wealth and urbanisation. In general, “water intensity” in food increases fastest as people begin to climb out of poverty, because that is when they start eating more meat. So if living standards in the poorest countries start to rise again, water use is likely to soar. Moreover, almost all the 2 billion people who will be added to the world’s population between now and 2030 are going to be third-world city dwellers—and city people use more water than rural folk. The Food and Agriculture Organisation reckons that, without changes in efficiency, the world will need as much as 60% more water for agriculture to feed those 2 billion extra mouths. That is roughly 1,500km3 of the stuff—as much as is currently used for all purposes in the world outside Asia.

The other long-term trend affecting water is climate change. There is growing evidence that global warming is speeding up the hydrologic cycle—that is, the rate at which water evaporates and falls again as rain or snow. This higher rate seems to make wet regions more sodden, and arid ones drier. It brings longer droughts between more intense periods of rain.

Climate change has three big implications for water use. First, it changes the way plants grow. Trees, for example, react to downpours with a spurt of growth. During the longer droughts that follow, the extra biomass then dries up so that if lightning strikes, forests burn more spectacularly. Similarly crops grow too fast, then wilt.

Second, climate change increases problems of water management. Larger floods overwhelm existing controls. Reservoirs do not store enough to get people or plants through longer droughts. In addition, global warming melts glaciers and causes snow to fall as rain. Since snow and ice are natural regulators, storing water in winter and releasing it in summer, countries are swinging more violently between flood and drought. That is one big reason why dams, once a dirty word in development, have been making a comeback, especially in African countries with plenty of water but no storage capacity. The number of large dams (more than 15 metres high) has been increasing and the order books of dam builders are bulging.

Third, climate change has persuaded western governments to subsidise biofuels, which could prove as big a disaster for water as they already have been for food. At the moment, about 2% of irrigated water is used to grow crops for energy, or 44km3. But if all the national plans and policies to increase biofuels were to be implemented, reckons the UN, they would require an extra 180km3 of water. Though small compared with the increase required to feed the additional 2 billion people, the biofuels’ premium is still substantial.

In short, more water will be needed to feed and heat a world that is already showing signs of using too much. How to square that circle? The answer is by improving the efficiency with which water is used. The good news is that this is possible: vast inefficiencies exist which can be wrung out. The bad news is it will be difficult both because it will require people to change their habits and because governments, which might cajole them to make the changes, are peculiarly bad at water policy.



Improving efficiency is doable and industrial users have done it, cutting the amount of water needed to make each tonne of steel and each extra unit of GDP in most rich countries (see first chart). This can make a difference. The Pacific Institute reckons that, merely by using current water-saving practices (ie, no technological breakthroughs) California, a water-poor state, could meet all its needs for decades to come without using a drop more.

Still, industry consumes less than a fifth of the world’s water and the big question is how to get farmers, who use 70-80%, to follow suit. It takes at least three times as much water to grow maize in India, for example, as it does in America or China (see second chart). In some countries, you need 1,500 litres of water to produce a kilo of wheat; in others, only 750 litres. It does not necessarily follow that water is being used unsustainably in the one place and not the other; perhaps the high-usage places have plenty of water to spare. But it does suggest that better management could reduce the amount of water used in farming, and that the world could be better off if farmers did so. Changing irrigation practices can improve water efficiency by 30%, says Chandra Madramootoo, of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage. One can, for example, ensure water evaporates from the leaves of the plant, rather than from the soil. Or one can genetically modify crops so they stop growing when water runs dry, but do not die—they simply resume growth later when the rains return.



The world might also be better off, at least in terms of water, if trade patterns more closely reflected the amount of water embedded in traded goods (a concept called “virtual water” invented by Tony Allan of King’s College London). Some benign effects happen already: Mexico imports cereals from America which use 7 billion cubic metres (m3) of water. If it grew these cereals itself, it would use 16 billion m3, so trade “saves” 9 billion m3 of water. But such beneficial exchanges occur more by chance than design. Because most water use is not measured, let alone priced, trade rarely reflects water scarcities.

To make water use more efficient, says Koichiro Matsuura, the head of UNESCO, the main UN agency dealing with water, will require fundamental changes of behaviour. That means changing incentives, improving information flows, and improving the way water use is governed. All that will be hard.

Water is rarely priced in ways that reflect supply and demand. Usually, water pricing simply means that city dwellers pay for the cost of the pipes that transport it and the sewerage plants that clean it.

Basic information about who uses how much water is lacking. Rainwater and river flows can be measured with some accuracy. But the amount pumped out of lakes is a matter of guesswork and information on how much is taken from underground aquifers is almost completely lacking.

The governance of water is also a mess. Until recently, few poor countries treated it as a scarce resource, nor did they think about how it would affect their development projects. They took it for granted.

Alongside this insouciance goes a Balkanised decision-making process, with numerous overlapping authorities responsible for different watersheds, sanitation plants and irrigation. To take a small example, the modest town of Charlottesville in Virginia has 13 water authorities.

Not surprisingly, investment in water has been patchy and neglected. Aid to developing countries for water was flat in real terms between 1990 and 2005. Within that period, there was a big shift from irrigation to drinking water and sanitation—understandable no doubt, but this meant less aid was going to the main users of water, farmers in poor countries. Aid for irrigation projects in 2002-05 was less than half what it had been in 1978-81. Angel Gurría, the head of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, talks of “a crisis in water financing”.

As is often the way, business is ahead of governments in getting to grips with waste. Big drinks companies such as Coca Cola have set themselves targets to reduce the amount of water they use in making their products (in Coke’s case, by 20% by 2012). The Nature Conservancy, an ecologically-minded NGO, is working on a certification plan which aims to give companies and businesses seals of approval (a bit like the Fairtrade symbol) according to how efficiently they use water. The plan is supposed to get going in 2010. That sort of thing is a good start, but just one step in a long process that has barely begun.

Resources, population growth and conflict

The extent to which resources are the cause of political conflict has long been debated.

With increasing populations and decreasing natural resources exacerbated by climate change means the potential for future conflict increases every year.

Lester Brown over at Grist provides an history perspective much more eloquently than I could. Whilst I am probably on the more dismal side of the economics profession this article offers little hope for the future ;-)

When population growth and resource availability collide [Gristmill]

As land and water become scarce, competition for these vital resources intensifies within societies, particularly between the wealthy and those who are poor and dispossessed. The shrinkage of life-supporting resources per person that comes with population growth is threatening to drop the living standards of millions of people below the survival level, leading to potentially unmanageable social tensions.

Access to land is a prime source of social tension. Expanding world population has cut the grainland per person in half, from 0.23 hectares in 1950 to 0.10 hectares in 2007. One-tenth of a hectare is half of a building lot in an affluent U.S. suburb. This ongoing shrinkage of grainland per person makes it difficult for the world's farmers to feed the 70 million people added to world population each year. The shrinkage in cropland per person not only threatens livelihoods, but in largely subsistence societies, it also threatens survival itself. Tensions within communities begin to build as landholdings shrink below that needed for survival.

The Sahelian zone of Africa, with one of the world's fastest-growing populations, is an area of spreading conflict. In troubled Sudan, 2 million people have died and over 4 million have been displaced in the long-standing conflict of more than 20 years between the Muslim north and the Christian south. The more recent conflict in the Darfur region in western Sudan that began in 2003 illustrates the mounting tensions between two Muslim groups -- camel herders and subsistence farmers. Government troops are backing Arab militias, who are engaging in the wholesale slaughter of black Sudanese in an effort to drive them off their land, sending them into refugee camps in neighboring Chad. At least some 200,000 people have been killed in the conflict and another 250,000 have died of hunger and disease in the refugee camps.

The story of Darfur is that of the Sahel, the semiarid region of grassland and dryland farming that stretches across Africa from Senegal in the west to Somalia in the east. In the northern Sahel, grassland is turning to desert, forcing herders southward into the farming areas. Declining rainfall and overgrazing are combining to destroy the grasslands.

Well before the rainfall decline the seeds for the conflict were being sown as Sudan's population climbed from 9 million in 1950 to 39 million in 2007, more than a fourfold rise. Meanwhile, the cattle population increased from fewer than 7 million to 40 million, an increase of nearly sixfold. The number of sheep and goats together increased from fewer than 14 million to 113 million, an eightfold increase. No grasslands can survive such rapid continuous growth in livestock populations.

In Nigeria, where 148 million people are crammed into an area not much larger than Texas, overgrazing and overplowing are converting grassland and cropland into desert, putting farmers and herders in a war for survival. Unfortunately, the division between herders and farmers is also often the division between Muslims and Christians. The competition for land, amplified by religious differences and combined with a large number of frustrated young men with guns, has created a volatile and violent situation where finally, in mid-2004, the government imposed emergency rule.

Rwanda has become a classic case study in how mounting population pressure can translate into political tension, conflict, and social tragedy. James Gasana, who was Rwanda's Minister of Agriculture and Environment in 1990-92, warned in 1990 that without "profound transformations in its agriculture, [Rwanda] will not be capable of feeding adequately its population under the present growth rate." Although the country's demographers projected major future gains in population, Gasana said that he did not see how Rwanda would reach 10 million inhabitants without social disorder "unless important progress in agriculture, as well as other sectors of the economy, were achieved."

In 1950, Rwanda's population was 2.4 million. By 1993, it had tripled to 7.5 million, making it the most densely populated country in Africa. As population grew, so did the demand for firewood. By 1991, the demand was more than double the sustainable yield of local forests. As trees disappeared, straw and other crop residues were used for cooking fuel. With less organic matter in the soil, land fertility declined.

As the health of the land deteriorated, so did that of the people dependent on it. Eventually there was simply not enough food to go around. A quiet desperation developed. Like a drought-afflicted countryside, it could be ignited with a single match. That ignition came with the crash of a plane on April 6, 1994, shot down as it approached the capital Kigali, killing President Juvenal Habyarimana. The crash unleashed an organized attack by Hutus, leading to an estimated 800,000 deaths of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days.

Many other African countries, largely rural in nature, are on a demographic track similar to Rwanda's. Tanzania's population of 40 million in 2007 is projected to increase to 85 million by 2050. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the population is projected to triple from 63 million to 187 million.

Africa is not alone. In India, tension between Hindus and Muslims is never far below the surface. As each successive generation further subdivides already small plots, pressure on the land is intense. The pressure on water resources is even greater. With India's population projected to grow from 1.2 billion in 2007 to 1.7 billion in 2050, a collision between rising human numbers and shrinking water supplies seems inevitable. The risk is that India could face social conflicts that would dwarf those in Rwanda. The relationship between population and natural systems is a national security issue, one that can spawn conflicts along geographic, tribal, ethnic, or religious lines.

Disagreements over the allocation of water among countries that share river systems is a common source of international political conflict, especially where populations are outgrowing the flow of the river. Nowhere is this potential conflict more stark than among Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia in the Nile River valley. Agriculture in Egypt, where it rarely rains, is wholly dependent on water from the Nile. Egypt now gets the lion's share of the Nile's water, but its population of 75 million is projected to reach 121 million by 2050, thus greatly expanding the demand for grain and water. Sudan, whose 39 million people also depend heavily on food produced with Nile water, is expected to have 73 million by 2050. And the number of Ethiopians, in the country that controls 85 percent of the river's headwaters, is projected to expand from 83 million to 183 million.

Since there is already little water left in the Nile when it reaches the Mediterranean, if either Sudan or Ethiopia takes more water, then Egypt will get less, making it increasingly difficult to feed an additional 46 million people. Although there is an existing water rights agreement among the three countries, Ethiopia receives only a minuscule share of water. Given its aspirations for a better life, and with the Nile being one of its few natural resources, Ethiopia will undoubtedly want to take more.

In the Aral Sea basin in Central Asia, there is an uneasy arrangement among five countries over the sharing of the two rivers, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, that drain into the sea. The demand for water in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan already exceeds the flow of the two rivers by 25 percent. Turkmenistan, which is upstream on the Amu Darya, is planning to develop another half-million hectares of irrigated agriculture. Racked by insurgencies, the region lacks the cooperation needed to manage its scarce water resources. Geographer Sarah O'Hara of the University of Nottingham who studies the region's water problems, says, "We talk about the developing world and the developed world, but this is the deteriorating world."

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Water Economics Conference

17th Annual Conference of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists
24-27 June 2009, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

PRECONFERENCE ON WATER ECONOMICS
24 June 2009, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

www.eaere2009.org

The "Preconference on Water Economics" will take place in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, on the 24th of June, immediately before the 17th EAERE Annual Conference and in the same venue. The workshop is organized with the support of EAERE. This one-day meeting will be organized with the aim to present and discuss recent developments in and state-of-the art of European Water Economics. Water has important economic characteristics. Policy demand for information about the economic value of water and the economic consequences of water policy has grown exponentially over the past decades. Since 2000, the Water Framework Directive (WFD) is an important driving force behind the current European Water Economics research agenda. Please find below more information on the Water Framework Directive. During the pre-conference, progress and state-of-the-art of different methodological approaches will be highlighted, addressing a wide variety of surface and groundwater resource management problems, including water pollution, water scarcity, water allocation, ecological restoration of water bodies, and flooding.

The pre-conference meeting is sponsored by the European Commission’s DG Research project AquaMoney and the Dutch Government funded program ‘Leven met Water’ (www.levenmetwater.nl).

ORGANISER AND SCIENTIFIC COORDINATOR
Dr. Roy Brouwer, IVM, Department of Environmental Economics, VU University Amsterdam

RELEVANT TOPICS
Relevant topics include:
- integrated hydro-economic river basin modeling
- climate change and flood damage modeling
- non-market water resource valuation
- water pricing, water markets and market based instruments
- payments for watershed ecosystem services
- cost recovery of water services
- international river basin games, cooperation and conflict resolution

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Prof. Ian Bateman, University of East Anglia, UK - Water Resource Valuation
Dr. Ines Dombrowsky, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Germany - The Economics of International River Basin Conflict and Cooperation
Prof. John Rolfe, Central Queensland University, Australia - Water Pricing and Water Markets
Prof. Richard Tol, VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands - Climate Change Economics and Integrated Hydro-Economic Modelling
During the pre-conference, also the AquaMoney guidelines will be presented. These guidelines have been developed for the WFD by a European research consortium of water economics experts, focusing on a variety of water resource valuation issues in different European river basins (www.aquamoney.org).

PAPER SUBMISSIONS AND REGISTRATIONS
Information on how to submit and register can be found on www.eaere2009.org .


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Water Wars: China and India square up

In a world of uncertainty and increasing temperatures it is almost certain that military conflict will erupt over the one commodity that really matters. Not gold or oil but water.

From an environmental economics perspective the externalities of river diversion are all too clear. Those downstream of a river are at the mercy of those upstream.

When the upstream country is China and the downstream country is India it is not hard to see tensions in the region rising.

There are a number of telling quotes:

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has said that water scarcity threatened the very "survival of the Chinese nation".

and

Increasing consumption of water, rapid industrialization and pollution have rendered the waters of many of China's rivers unusable.

So what is the story. Read on:

India quakes over China's water plan [Asia Timess]

BANGALORE - Even as India and China are yet to resolve their decades-old territorial dispute, another conflict is looming. China's diversion of the waters of a river originating in Tibet to its water-scarce areas could leave India's northeast parched. This is expected to trigger new tensions in the already difficult relations between the two Asian giants.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is reported during his recent Beijing visit to have raised the issue of international rivers flowing out of Tibet. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has said that water scarcity threatened the very "survival of the Chinese nation".

The river in question is the Brahmaputra, which begins in southwestern Tibet where it is known as the Yalong Tsangpo River. It flows eastwards through southern Tibet for a distance of about 1,600 kilometers and at its easternmost point makes a spectacular U-turn, known as the Shuomatan Point, or the “Great Bend”. This is just before the river enters India, where it is joined by two other major rivers; from this point of confluence it is known as the Brahmaputra. It then snakes into Bangladesh, where it is joined by the Ganges River to create the world's largest delta before emptying into the Bay of Bengal.

It is at the Great Bend that China plans to divert water, in addition to its hydroelectric power project that is expected to generate 40,000 megawatts of power. The diversion of the waters is part of a larger hydro-engineering project, the South-North water diversion scheme, which involves three man-made rivers carrying water from the icy Tibetan plateau to the arid north.

This water diversion scheme will draw from the waters of the Yalong, Dadu and Jinsha rivers, which rise in the Tibetan plateau, and channel them to the Yellow River. The aim of the project is to provide water for human use, including farming and industry in China's water-scarce areas in the north and northwest. This water diversion project involves three diversion routes - the eastern, central and western routes. The diversion of the Yalong Tsangpo at the Great Bend is the western route of the project - the most technologically challenging and controversial of the three routes.

For Beijing, the argument in favor of the water diversion project is simple. More than a quarter of China is classified as desert. Its north and northwest areas are water scarce. Increasing consumption of water, rapid industrialization and pollution have rendered the waters of many of China's rivers unusable. Besides, sections of the Yellow River run dry. In contrast, rivers that rise in the Tibetan plateau's glaciers have much water. Once completed, the water diversion scheme is expected to transfer over 40 billion cubic meters of water annually to China's water scarce areas, relieving China's thirst to a significant extent.

It is true the Tibetan plateau is a source of much water. It is Asia's principal watershed and the source of 10 of its major rivers, including the Yalong Tsangpo/Brahmaputra, the Sutlej and the Indus. China, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, indeed 47% of the world's population, are dependent on water rising in the Tibetan plateau.

But while rivers with sources in the icy Tibetan plateau are rich in water, critics of the water diversion project say they are not inexhaustible, as Chinese officials claim. The Tibetan plateau is ice-covered but it is an arid desert with very little rainfall. The source of much of its water bodies and rivers is glaciers, which are melting due to global warming. If, alongside the impact of rising temperatures on glaciers, China diverts water from its natural course, Tibet will be a water-scarce region in a few decades. Critics also point to the environmental and ecological destruction it is likely to cause.

The water diversion project at the Great Bend spells disaster not only for the Tibetan plateau but also for the lower riparian countries - India and Bangladesh. These countries view the project with some concern as it represents a direct threat to the lives and livelihoods of millions of people living downstream.

With the Yalong Tsangpo's waters being diverted, the amount of water in the Brahmaputra will fall significantly, affecting India's northeast and Bangladesh. It will severely impact agriculture and fishing there as the salinity of water will increase, as will silting in the downstream area.

A shortage of water in the Ganges has already affected the lives and livelihoods of millions in Bangladesh, pushing them to migrate to India, especially to its northeast. This migration of Bangladeshis has changed the demographic composition of vast tracts in the northeast (especially in Assam) and triggered serious ethnic conflicts there. A shortage of water in the Brahmaputra will accentuate these problems to dangerous levels.

There is concern too that with the water diversion project taking off, China will acquire great power and leverage over India, worsening tensions between these two countries.

../

It seems that India can only watch helplessly as China steams ahead with its water diversion ambitions.

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What is the value of water? The debate

From the inbox:

Given the increasing scarcity of water in certain regions I remain confident that this will lead to future armed conflict and indeed it could be argued that is already has done.

The Economist debate is therefore timely. I have voted "pro" at this early stage.

This house believes that water, as a scarce resource, should be priced according to its market value.”

September 30th The Economist will start a two-week long Oxford-style online debate on the value of water. The proposition is “This house believes that water, as a scarce resource, should be priced according to its market value.”

Some of the issues the debate will cover include: Would water supplies be better managed if it were treated as a commodity, and priced accordingly? Or is water a basic human right that governments should secure for their citizens? As both an industrial input and a prerequisite of life, water has become extremely scarce for roughly a billion people who do not have a constant supply of clean and safe water, so the issue is of extreme importance.

Debate Schedule
• September 30th. Opening statements and comments and voting open to the public
• October 1st. Guest Participant post by Dr. Michael W. Hanemann, chancellor's professor, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, University of California
• October 2nd. Guest Participant post by Anup Jacob, partner, Virgin Green Fund
• October 3rd. Rebuttal statements and Guest Participant post by Colin Chartres, director general, International Water Management Institute
• October 6th. Guest Participant post by Dr. Peter Gleick, president and co-founder, Pacific Institute
• October 7th. Guest Participant post by Peter L. Cook, executive director, National Association of Water Companies
• October 8th. Closing statements
• October 9th. Guest Participant post by Dr. Ashok Gadgil, senior scientist and deputy director, Environmental Energy Technologies Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
• October 10th. Winner announced

Pro and Con Opening Statements

Pro Opening Statement
Stephen J. Hoffmann, Managing Director, WaterTech Capital & co-founder, Palisades Water Index Associates

The severe spatial and temporal imbalances in the supply of and demand for water—and safe drinking water in particular—dictate that water be priced at the true market value in order to resolve our global water challenges.

The notion of sustainability is gaining momentum with respect to the use of water and is likely to permeate virtually every aspect of water-resource management in the 21st century. While the hydrologic cycle is a closed biogeochemical process, the fact that the aggregate amount of water on Earth, in its various forms, is virtually constant on a human time scale does not mean that we do not face enormous challenges with respect to its spatial and temporal distribution.

Water is a critical factor in poverty, has a fundamental impact on human health, and is increasingly crucial in economic development. The World Health Organisation reports that 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water and 2.7 billion people lack basic sanitation needs. Yet despite its stature as a prerequisite for life and for living, the price of water remains artificially low based on an institutional ideology that developed when accessible freshwater was relatively abundant and when contamination was mitigated by the ubiquity of the resource.

Sustainability is the mantra behind many emerging regulations, water-policy initiatives and technological advances. And nowhere is the market price of water more critical than in the concept of sustainability. Efficiency is critical in achieving sustainability and a market-driven price is paramount to the efficient allocation of water resources. The sustainability criterion suggests that, at a minimum, an allocation must leave future generations no worse off than current generations. Economics has much to say about the efficiency of the allocation.

The pricing of water must go beyond the mechanical and political aspects to the basic factors that affect the relationships between producers and consumers, and that are implicit in the rate structure. The principle of sustainability is critically dependent upon efficiency in water use. And efficiency cannot be achieved without the proper signals included in market prices. Market value is equivalent to water rates based on economic principles of water-resource pricing. In that regard, resource economics requires the convergence of two key principles: equimarginal value in use and marginal cost pricing.

Economic principles of resource allocation dictate that when costs are incurred in the acquisition, treatment and transport of water supplies to customers, the principle of equimarginal value in use should be combined with the principle of marginal cost pricing; that is, market value must govern. Additional units of water can always be made available by expending more resources to acquire and transport it, that is, at a given marginal cost.

The question of where to stop in increasing the supplies made available is then added to the question of how to arrange for the allocation of the supplies in store at any point in time. On efficiency grounds, additional units should be made available as long as any customers are willing to pay the incremental or marginal cots incurred. To meet the criterion of equimarginal value in use, however, the price should be made equal for all customers in a class.

It is precisely because of practical considerations such as alternative supplies, location, use patterns, types of service etc, that the marginal costs of serving all customers will not be the same. Pricing should be arranged, then, so that all customers within a class served under identical cost conditions pay the same amount equal to the marginal cost or market value. Between classes, however, prices should differ, and the difference should be the difference in marginal costs involved in serving the two. In general, the economic principles of resource allocation indicate that customers served under identical cost conditions should be charged equal prices and that the water should be supplied and priced in such a way that the price for each class of service equals the marginal cost of serving that class.

Water rates should be designed to fully recover the costs of providing water by charging customers in accordance with how they contribute to the costs. Schedules of water rates that charge customers in accordance with the cost of service would be efficient from the economic point of view, in that the price of a unit of water would be equal to the cost of the resources used to obtain and deliver that water. Further, they would be equitable in that no customer would be required to subsidise any other customer. To sum it up, the dictates of efficiency are clear: water should be allocated so that the marginal net benefit is equalised for all users. If marginal net benefits are not equalised, it is possible to increase net benefits by transferring water from those uses with low net marginal benefits to those with higher net marginal benefits. Again, the pricing of water at the ‘market’ value is the only way to make these determinations.

The amount of easily accessible freshwater is coming under increasing pressure as a result of global population growth, particularly in developing countries where urbanisation and industrialisation are underway, and the degradation of existing supplies. The amount of readily accessible freshwater is a minuscule percentage of the Earth’s total water budget. If per capita consumption of water continues to increase at its current rate, we will be using over 90% of all available freshwater with 20 years.

Scarcity, spatial and temporal, must be reflected in a pricing mechanism. Water is like any other economic good for which there is supply and demand and a pricing mechanism that seeks equilibrium between the two.

This is not a process-oriented enchantment with the free market that it may appear to be. While this might sound like so much economic rhetoric, the reality is that market pricing is central to enabling the forces that allow the efficient allocation of the resource. It is simply a recognition that market prices convey a great deal of information; information with respect to incentives, efficiency and allocational considerations. The pricing of water based on its true market value is also critical in resolving the issues associated with its allocation among competing beneficial uses.

Desalination is an example of where the market value of water plays an important role as a catalyst for problem resolution. In regions of the world where water is permanently scarce, desalination has emerged to meet demand. And it has done so only because there are few options. Granted, desalination is more attractive where energy is cheap, but it points to the reality that if water is simply unavailable, the market value argument is easy to acknowledge. It stands to reason that water priced at the market value (which includes scarcity, regulatory costs, treatment costs and resource management considerations) would be beneficial for the entire spectrum of conditions.

The signals and incentives contained in pricing water at its market value also enable the processes of recycling, reuse and conservation that are central to achieving sustainable water use. That water is not priced (valued) at its market value is the main reason why we are experiencing many of our severe water-quality and -quantity issues. Resource economics dictates the allocational efficiency of market-driven pricing.

# # #

Con Opening Statement
Dr. Vandana Shiva, Director, Research Foundation for Science, Technology & Natural Resource Policy

Between last year and this the market value of Lehman Brothers dropped from $38.4 billion to $5 billion, Merrill Lynch from $71.9 billion to $33.1 billion, and Morgan Stanley from $70.2 to $43 billion. Since then Lehman Brothers has collapsed. There is clearly no reliable "market price" in a volatile world driven by greed and profits, with no social regulation. The idea that the management and distribution of and access to a scarce and vital resource like water can be left to the market—and that the market can assign a reliable price reflecting the real value of water—is both absurd and irresponsible.

All cultures have viewed water as the basis of life. Marketisation, however, allows water to be perceived as no different from any other commodity in the global market place–to be owned and bought and sold at arbitrary, unreliable prices.

The commodification of water shifts the focus from the water cycle on to water markets – diverse species, ecosystems and water systems adapted to millions of years of evolution are replaced by instantaneous relationships between “sellers” and “buyers” negotiating a commodity transaction which determines how water will be used, where it will flow, and where and to whom it will stop flowing. It is assumed that water will flow from “low value” to “high value” use. This increase in “value” (which refers to price) is supposed to magically overcome water scarcity and allocate water equitably.

We need to focus our thinking on water cycles rather than water markets, on human rights to water rather than profits to be made from commoditising a scarce resource. It is our relationship with the ecology of water that has the capacity to sustain water supplies for us and other species. Trade in water can help water markets grow in the short term, but unregulated markets will make our scarce and fast-disappearing water resources disappear ever faster. It is the discipline of ecology and hydrology that we need to guide our efforts at conservation, not the ecological indiscipline of markets.

The anarchy of the water market can be a good guide to profits – but it is a bad guide for the equitable, just and sustainable use of our precious water systems.

In the years ahead, the ecological and commercial paradigms will clash intensely as globalisation displaces cultures of water conservation and replaces them with a commercial monoculture of water as a commodity.

The commodification of water resources is being promoted by the World Bank and free-trade agreements like NAFTA and WTO. The World Bank is using Structural Adjustment programmes to privatise water resources. Free-trade agreements are defining water as an environmental service covered by rules of free trade in services. Privatisation and commodification are threatening to accelerate the processes that have led to the growing crisis of drought, desertification and water famines.

The market paradigm of water involves the assumptions that:

1. Increase in price is increase in value.

2. Increase in water trade is increase in water supply and hence free trade in water can overcome the water crisis.

The assumption that water markets will overcome the water crisis is, however, fallacious and malicious. Firstly, water markets cannot reduce water use and conserve water because commercial exploitation has created water scarcity by fuelling over-exploitation. In a world of inequality, higher prices do not tame consumption–they increase the luxury consumption by the rich and deprive the poor even of survival needs.

Secondly, water trade cannot increase water supplies. Water cannot be created by markets. It can be stored, diverted, polluted and also over-exploited, but its overall availability cannot be enhanced.

Water is defined by the water cycle and renewed if the water cycle is maintained. The ecological paradigm recognises that:

1. Water is the basis of all life on the planet including diverse species and all human communities.

2. Non-sustainable water use spurred by non-sustainable economies and technologies which violate the limits and the integrity of the water cycle are creating a water crisis.

3. The current water crisis can only be overcome by respecting the limits on water use that are enforced by the water cycle.

Markets driven by commercial values can neither recognise or respect the ecological limits set by the water cycle, nor give water its real value as the very basis of life. The real value of water is assigned by culture, which treats water as sacred; it is also assigned by rules of social equity and justice which recognise that everyone has a human right to water.

Water Markets Violate the Water Cycle

Water markets define “value” only as commercial and market value, and try and maximise this value as profits through commercial transactions and trade.

In nature’s economy, the primary value is sustainability and maintenance of nature’s essential ecological processes. Conservation is the imperative in nature’s economy for maximising ecological values.

In the sustenance economy, meeting people’s biological and livelihood needs for water are the primary objectives. Equity, justice and human rights are the primary values. Sharing of scarce water equitably is the imperative in the sustenance economy.

When water's social and ecological values are ignored and markets determine how water flows, it starts to move against the law of gravity. It moves upwards – to money – from the poor to the rich, from agriculture to industry, from the countryside to the city. In water markets, water moves from having a high ecological and social value, but a low market value, to having a low ecological and social value, but a high market value.

Water markets take water from where it is needed by nature’s economy, people’s economy and the countryside, to where there is purchasing power for water as a commodity—the urban areas, industry and industrial agriculture. Managing a scarce and precious resource like water requires conservation, equity and the recognition that as the basis of life, water is priceless.

Climate Change Shrinks Africa

Nice little climate change scare story with "experts" predicting that the coast of Africa will soon have to be redrawn as sea levels rise. This is merely another example of the poorest countries (who contributed least to the pollution in the first place) experiencing the largest amount of pain.

In the first paragraph I particularly like the term "brutally redrawn". This gives the impression of a some rather aggressive pen on map behaviour.

West Africa's coastline redrawn by climate change: experts [Yahoo]

Rising sea levels caused by climate change will brutally redraw a 4,000-kilometre (2500-mile) stretch of west African coastline from Senegal to Cameroon by century's end, experts were told AFP Friday.

../

Among the cities worst hit would be the Gambian capital Banjul and Lagos, Nigeria's economic capital and home to 15 million. Some parts of Lagos lie below sea-level today and it is already subject to frequent flooding.

The Niger delta's income-generating oil fields are especially vulnerable, Cramer said.

Clearly the economists have been called in and come out with the old adage "too expensive" therfore you are doomed.

Another serious threat is salty sea water intrusion into fertile agricultural land.

"This will make the ground water undrinkable and unsuitable for agricultural purposes. The result will be food and water insecurity," said George Awudi, Ghana Programme Coordinator for Friends of the Earth.

Environmental experts offer different solutions, but all agree on the futility -- and prohibitive cost -- of erecting massive sea barriers.

"The sensible option is moving to higher ground, which is a tough option especially for Nigeria as it means giving up its economic centres in Lagos and its oil installations in the Delta," Cramer said.

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These "Dam" Externalities get everywhere

Despite my poor attempt at a play on words in the title (there must be a better one), the "economics of dams" is something that interesting me for some reason.

I just can't help thinking that the knock on effects of dams are never fully included (either upstream or downstream) in any cost benefit analysis.

Today's PlanetArk post on the effect of Chinese built dams in Cambodia articulate my initial fears more eloquently. The title of the article is misleading. These are Chinese built dams but are located in Cambodia.

The main loss will be felt by those perpetual losers in these matters, the "indigenous communities", followed closely by the always "rare" wildlife (turtles in this case and some migrating fish) plus an ark load of other big beasts.

Chinese Dams Threaten Cambodia's Forests, Farmers [PlanetArk]

../

Faced with a rapidly growing but power-starved economy, Prime Minister Hun Sen has decided the rivers flowing from one of the few elevated spots in a relentlessly flat country should become its battery pack.

With this in mind, in the last two years he has agreed to at least four Chinese-funded hydropower projects as part of a $3 billion scheme to boost output from a measly 300 MW today to 1,000 MW in a decade, enough to power a small city.

The indigenous communities who have lived off the forests in the Cardamoms since the dawn of time appear to be the ones who will be paying the biggest price.

../

WAR ON BLACKOUTS

Few people argue that Cambodia's 14 million people need more power.

After decades of war and upheaval, including the Khmer Rouge "Killing Fields" of the 1970s, the economy has finally taken off, growing at nearly 10 percent a year.

But its antiquated, mainly diesel-fuelled power plants can meet only 75 percent of demand, meaning frequent blackouts and unit prices around twice those of neighbouring Thailand and Vietnam -- both factors inhibiting faster expansion.

With the closer ties Hun Sen has cultivated with Beijing in the last five years, Chinese cash and dam-building expertise has become a logical solution to what is one of the inevitable pains of breakneck growth.

"Chinese investment in hydropower is so important for Cambodia's development," Foreign Minister Hor Namhong said in January after meeting with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi.

But critics maintain that much of the planning is taking place with scant regard for the long-term impact on the environment in a country where (80) percent of people still rely on agriculture for their livelihoods.

"Poorly conceived and developed hydro-power projects could needlessly and irreparably damage Cambodia's river system with serious consequences," said Carl Middleton of the US-based International Rivers Network.

MUDDY WATERS

The Chinese embassy in Phnom Penh denied Beijing was taking any short-cuts in dam construction in Cambodia -- part of a massive aid package designed to ensure a compliant friend in the region.

"They comply with environmental standards and are approved by the Cambodian government," said a Chinese diplomat who did not wish to be named. "We just want to help Cambodia as much as we can."

But the Chay Areng project hardly appears to be a model of transparency.

The deal was signed in late 2006 with China Southern Power Grid Co (CSG), one of China's two grid operators, to build a 260 MW plant at an estimated cost of $200 million and with a completion date of 2015.

With no prior consultation, the first villagers knew of the project was when Chinese engineers turned up this year to start working on feasibility studies -- details of which CSG and the government are reluctant to discuss.

Environmentalists who have conducted their own studies say the dam's lake will cover 110 sq km (42 sq miles) and displace thousands of indigenous people in nine villages.

More than 200 animal species, including elephants, sun bears, leopards and the endangered Siamese crocodile, would be affected upstream, said Sam Chanthy, head of the NGO Forum, a foreign-funded non-governmental organisation in Phnom Penh.

Downstream, the delicate ecosystem of the flooded forest, home to some of the world's rarest turtle species as well as hundreds of types of migratory fish, would also be hit by disruptions to water flow, he said.

"It won't take long for these invaluable assets to disappear when the dam is built," said Eng Polo, of wildlife group Conservation International.

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China spends 1.35% of GDP on the environment

In an ambitious statement, China has pledged to spend 1.35% of GDP on environmental protection. Significantly higher than the 1% of GDP the Stern review requests all countries spend.

There is still a data problem here. Some academic research based on Chinese data appears to show SO2 levels falling. Yet this article claims that SO2 has rose 27% between 2000 and 2005. I tend to believe that figure. I suppose the good news is that energyu consumption increased 55% so at least energy production is becoming "relatively" cleaner through the introuduction of clean(er) technologies and more stringent regulations.

China promises 1.35% of GDP as annual environmental protection investment [People Daily online]

The Chinese government will invest 1.35 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) each year for the next three years in environmental protection.

The State Council, China's cabinet, publicized a belated five-year environmental protection plan for 2006 to 2010 on Monday.

"Most of the investment will go to treating water pollution," said Zou Shoumin, director of the Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning, who took part in drafting the plan.

He estimated the government would spend 640 billion yuan (85.33billion U.S. dollars) on treating water pollution, 600 billion yuan (80 billion dollars) on air pollution and 210 billion yuan (28 billion dollars) on solid waste.

In 2005, China spent 238.8 billion yuan (31.8 billion dollars) on environmental protection, accounting for 1.31 percent of that year's GDP, according to a government white paper.

The plan, only adopted by the State Council in September, sets out guidelines, major tasks and measures for the government to tackle pollution.

As part of the plan, China aims to cut its chemical oxygen demand (COD), a major index of water pollution, in 2010 by 10 percent from 2005 and sulfur dioxide emissions also by 10 percent.

By 2010, the plan says, 75 percent of China's large cities will enjoy more than 292 days of good air quality (air quality level IIor better) every year. In 2005, the percentage was 69.4.

China's air quality level II is equal to a pollution reading of between 51 and 100.

The country issued a five-year environment plan for 2001 to 2005 but the targets set were not met.

According to the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), sulfur dioxide emissions in 2005 increased by 27.8 percent over that in 2000 instead of dropping while the COD fell 2.1 percent from 2000 rather than 10 percent.

Water pollution has been worsening. Twenty-six percent of surface water can not be used for any purpose, 62 percent is not suitable for fish and 90 percent of the rivers running through cities are polluted.

"The country failed to meet the target of reducing sulfur dioxide emissions, mainly because of the unexpected increase in energy demand between 2000 and 2005," Zou said.

The energy consumption in 2005 increased by 55.2 percent from 2000 but the newly-built thermal plants did not adopt facilities to reduce the sulfur dioxide emissions while the projects to update the old ones with eco-friendly technologies did not go well, he said, adding the papermaking industry had also caused serious pollution.

"Some local governments have favored economic growth much more than environmental protection and the environment watchdog also lacks strong power to supervise them," he said.

The State Council said in its statement on the new plan that it will set up an assessment mechanism to monitor the local governments.

Every half year, the State Council will publicize a report of major pollutant discharges in all provinces and regions and launch national checkups on how local governments implement the plan in 2008 and 2010, the statement said.

"The results will be key to assessing the performance of local governments," it said.

Treehugger also cover this announcement in the "treehugger" style.

Is 27 Billion Dollars Enough to Clean Up China?

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Overdramatic climate change picture of the day

The old polar bear on the last bit of ice picture is always a good one to pull at the heart and purse strings. This photo is out of the top draw.

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"Encroaching Desert, Hidden Water"

Headline of the week award goes to the Independent for this desertification article (even if I changed "missing" to "hidden" in my title).

This is a good article and is littered with examples of X watched as his farm disappeared and Y looked on as the lake dried up. All well and good and makes for a compelling read but there is a lack of substance.

For example,

"The water is less and less every year, and without water we can't grow the crops," said Jiang, who wears a baseball cap at a jaunty angle and smokes copious cigarettes as he sits on a stool surrounded by drying cotton.

What is the jaunty angled baseball cap telling us exactly?

The gathering sandstorm: Encroaching desert, missing water [Independent]

China is losing a million acres a year to desertification. In Dunhuang, a former Silk Road oasis in the Gobi, the resulting water shortage has become critical.

This statistic is more worrying. We all know that China is large and that it has a huge population but did we know that 1/5th of China is desert?

The government in Beijing acknowledges desertification as the biggest environmental challenge holding back sustainable development, and has pledged to control the country's spreading deserts, which already cover a fifth of its land.

So what can be done? The following quote does suggest that all will not continue to be rosy in China and a whiff of social unrest is in the air. If we thought a 1/5th was a lot SPEA are suggesting 40% "soon" although no indication is given to "how soon is now?"

China's environmental watchdog, Sepa, says the desert's march is claiming a million acres of land every year, and soon 40 per cent of China could be lost to the creeping sands brought in by worsening sandstorms. Millions of tons of sand from the Gobi desert are dumped on Beijing by sandstorms every spring, and Chinese dust makes its way into the skies above cities as far away as Los Angeles. China suffers from a shortage of 30 billion cubic metres of water for irrigation every year. And while China has more than 20 per cent of the world's population, it has only 7 per cent of its arable land, precious farmland that the desert is slowly but surely eating its way into. This could result in higher food prices throughout China, a potential disaster given 750 million people live on less than £1 a day and can ill afford more expensive rice and other staples.

Finally, to emphasise the economics lurking behind this story one only needs to look for the "tragedy of the commons" quotes that the locals inadvertently speak of:

In a neighbouring field, He Zicheng, 50, is clearing a field with his son Wei, loading the brush from the cotton fields on to a cart. His nine sheep nose around, seeking mouthfuls to nibble on. Slim pickings. "Without water the cotton doesn't grow well. Ten years ago we had more water, but there were too many wells and now we have this," he said.

Or what about this one:

Song points to a mark where the water level used to reach. "The biggest shortage we have at Dunhuang is water. It's disappearing because the water table is falling and the spring is not producing as much as before. The trees won't grow, because there is not enough water. It was used up by farmers when irrigation started in the 1970s and the underground water started to diminish," said Song.

Unless government policy includes issues related to "property rights" things are unlikely to improve.

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China and India to suffer water shortages due to biofuel production

Hear an interview with Charlotte de Fraiture who discusses the water shortage situations in China and India, the effects of biofuel production, and the implication for environmental and agricultural policies in these two countries.

Biofuel Production Threatens Water Supplies in China and India[Scitizen.com]

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Are geoengineers taking the p*** in the Pacific?

Although typically an end of the week type post this article serves to show how regulatory loopholes can be exploited.

Is this a good or a bad idea?

You do have to wonder how sites get selected for such geoengineering experiments.

Absorbing CO2 by Dumping Urea Into Ocean Pisses Off Activists[Weird Science]

The Philippines government has approved an Australian company's plan to absorb excess CO2 by dumping massive amounts of urea in the Sulu Sea. Environmental activists say the dumping is a potentially risky, scientifically unsound gamble that underscores the dangerous absence of international geoengineering regulations.

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The groups called for regulators currently meeting to discuss the London Convention to evaluate urea dumping as well as iron seeding. The Convention, enacted by the International Maritime Organization in 1972, prohibits oceanic waste dumping -- but while simply pouring urea into the sea would be illegal, doing so to absorb carbon dioxide is permitted, or at least not forbidden.

That regulatory loophole is symbolic of the general absence of international guidelines for large-scale climate modification projects, both at sea and on land; and Sulu Sea urea dumping, proposed by the Ocean Nourishment Corporation and planned in the future for Malaysia, Chile and the United Arab Emirates, is symbolic of projects that are only going to become more common as climate change and entrepreneurship collide.

Pissing for Profit in the Pacific[ETE Group]

As governments meet in London today to discuss whether the high seas should be used for large-scale iron dumping by companies promising a quick-fix for climate change, one private company is rushing ahead with a new ocean dumping scheme in Southeast Asia – this time with urea. Civil society groups have learned that Ocean Nourishment Corporation (ONC) of Sydney, Australia has been given a “go signal” by the Philippines government to experimentally dump hundreds of tonnes of industrially-produced urea, most likely into the Sulu Sea between Philippines and Borneo.

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“The global South is once again a dumping ground for risky technologies – this time our oceans are being threatened by high-risk geoengineering schemes that are rushing forward without public consultation or intergovernmental oversight,” said Neth Dano of Malaysia-based Third World Network.

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“This technology is dangerous and unacceptable because it could imperil our marine environment – the main source of survival and livelihood for poor fisherfolk in the Philippines,” said Ruperto Aleroza, chair of Kilusang Mangingisda – a fisherfolk movement in the Philippines. “Under Philippine law, experiments like this must undergo environmental impact assessment and the communities that would be affected must give informed consent. Proponents of this technology must comply with these laws and the Philippine government must enforce them,” said Aleroza.

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They argue that urea dumping could tackle climate change and push up fish stocks. However, international scientific bodies, including the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have warned that toxic tides and lifeless oceans might instead result from such geo-engineering activities.

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