DEAD SEA, Jordan, 5 June 2004 — “The key to managing water is recycling,” Masahiro Murakami, professor of international development, Kochi University of Technology told the delegates at the Water Demand Management Conference in Jordan on Wednesday. “Emphasize conservation and efficiency; develop wastewater treatment and conservation even before desalination.”
Using the Japanese example, Murakami said the total gross new fresh water supply in Japan is 87 billion cubic meters a year. Municipal use accounts for 19 percent, Industry 15 percent and agriculture 66 percent.
“Industry actually uses 55.5 billion cubic meters a year,” he said. “This included 43.7 billion cubic meters a year of recycled water, 78.6 percent of the total water used in industry. The net new supply of fresh water accounts for only 11.9 percent or 109 billion cubic meters per year.”
Industry since 1965 has more than doubled the percentage of the recycled water it uses, from 35 percent to over 78 percent. “The forecast increase in water supply over the same period was overestimated,” he said, “but so was the estimate of water demand.” The success of recycling materially affected the original projections. “This resulted in the current policy of quantitative improvement in a stable water supply. Recycling of treated wastewater is a key factor of conserving fresh water resources and environment.”
Overuse of groundwater led to a decline of the groundwater level. This brought a set of problems including seawater intrusion into the freshwater aquifers and land subsidence — particularly during overextraction of water during Japan’s rapid industrial growth in the 1950s.
Prof. Ervin Laszlo of the research organization Club of Budapest — a philosopher and systems theorist — introduced the conference to a lateral thinking approach to demand management. “Only 2.5 percent of the water on the planet is fresh,” he said, “and most of that is locked up in icecaps or underground. Only 0.007 percent is in the form of lakes, rivers and reservoirs.”
He says there is no inherent reason that humanity should survive. “Historically, extinction of a species is far more common than survival,” he said.
Lazlo documented the decline in per-capita freshwater reserves globally from 17,000 cubic meters in 1950 to 7,300 cubic meters today and a projected 4,800 cubic meters in 2025, and that amount unevenly distributed between nations. “At this rate, two thirds of the world will be facing unliveable conditions, a recipe for water wars,” he said. “We are at a tipping point.”
Laszlo acknowledged that modern humanity has the technology to supply and manage water for the whole human population. “We need to develop the political will and the socioeconomic tools, change priorities and the way people think,” he said, “Because the present system is becoming increasingly unstable.” Quoting Einstein’s dictum he said, “You cannot solve the problem with the same kind of thinking that gave rise to the problem.”
Water wars are a real probability, he said. The alternatives are confrontation or trying to control confrontation. “Coping with confrontation by violence will reach a point of cultural polarization. We have the technology still to wipe out humanity in a few days.”
“One alternative is dialogue,” he said, “Peace and ecological movements are a start, but I do not know if it will work.”
The problems are more pressing than many are aware, Laszlo continued. There is good reason to believe that from the melting of the polar icecaps, that the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic could be diverted in the next ten or so years. “The UK would then have the same climate as Labrador,” he said, hinting at enormous sociopolitical and economic problems that would result.
Prof. Lazlo argued strongly for a holistic approach to the question of human survival in the face of dwindling water supplies. “We have all the technical means to create enough water and food if we are willing to put in new policies to cope with the problem. The critical issue is culture, a planetary consciousness. The human is an endangered species.”