WASHINGTON, 20 January 2003 — The use of water for irrigation, industry and resident municipalities is drastically damaging and destroying natural habitats, reports the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute. Currently, the world population is already using more than half of the planet’s available freshwater from rivers, lakes, streams, and shallow aquifers.
By 2025, Worldwatch predicts the human share could rise to more than 70 percent.
“When we ignore the water needs of wildlife, we not only undermine other species, but also threaten human prospects,” says Don Hinrichsen, who wrote the report, “A Human Thirst.”
“Unless we act quickly to reduce the demand for water, and manage the water we have better, we will pay a terrible price for plundering the Earth’s plumbing system.”
Demand for water has been particularly devastating for wetlands and related habitats. The study notes that globally, the world has lost half of its wetlands, mostly in the last fifty years.
One-fifth of the world’s freshwater fish — 2,000 of the 10,000 species identified — are endangered, vulnerable, or extinct.
In North America, 67 percent of all mussels, 51 percent of crayfish, 40 percent of amphibians, 37 percent of fish, and 75 percent of all freshwater mollusks are rare, imperiled, or already gone.
Worldwatch presents other disconcerting examples of water exploitation worldwide:
— China is draining some of its rivers dry and mining ancient aquifers that take thousands of years to recover.
— The Aral Sea in Central Asia, once the fourth largest inland sea in the world, has contracted to half its size and has lost three-quarters of its volume since the 1960s, when two rivers that fed it were diverted for irrigation.
— Africa’s, Lake Chad, once the continent’s second-largest lake, has shrunk from a surface area of 25,000 square kilometers in 1960 to only 2,000 square kilometers, and the lake’s fisheries have collapsed.
All large carnivores, such as lions and leopards, have been exterminated by hunting and habitat loss.
Privatizing state-run water utilities is not always the answer, adds Worldwatch.
Often massive grassroots protests have been staged as many countries and cities embraced privatization in order to attract the private capital and expertise needed to build or expand expensive water systems and to expand service to the millions who currently make do without piped water, notes the report.
The potential is enormous as private companies currently provide less than 10 percent of water services worldwide.
But without strong government oversight, notes Worldwatch, privatization has often backfired, producing drastic rate increases, job cuts, fewer environmental safeguards, and poorer service for remote communities. For these reasons, people are resisting privatization.
For more information, log onto www. worldwatch.org.
Arab News Features 20 January 2003