RIYADH, 30 Sept. — Resolutions of some international conferences on environment and development often resemble an invitation for poor countries to perish from thirst, starvation and disease.
They call for reduction of water consumption and imposition of high taxes on water in countries where millions of people lack clean water supplies and where the annual water consumption per person is less than the weekly consumption of a citizen in an industrialized country. They call for restrictions on agriculture and food production operations – to save bio-diversity and soil quality – in countries where the population suffers malnutrition. Selective saving and overexploitation will both keep us in the vicious circle of aimless development.
Some 1.1 billion people, or 18 percent of the world’s population, lack access to safe drinking water, and over 2.4 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation. While 70 percent of freshwater is used for agriculture, most irrigation systems are inefficient, losing about 60 percent of the water. Inefficient irrigation not only wastes water, but also causes environmental risks, including loss of productive agricultural land to water logging. Overexploitation of groundwater is another major problem, especially in areas where supplies cannot be replenished at the same rate of withdrawal or cannot be replenished at all.
In answer to this global challenge, the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg has decided to cut in half the number of people without access to clean water and sanitation by 2015. Although it is argued that this was the only target that the Summit succeeded in adopting, no implementation mechanism was discussed. It is estimated that, in order to achieve this goal, a global investment in all forms of water-related infrastructure of up to $180 billion is needed.
The Arab region
Water scarcity and land degradation are just two of a long list of global environmental issues. However, they are considered to be the main environmental challenges facing the Arab region, comprising 22 countries located in arid and semi-arid zones.
Renewable water resources in the Arab region are estimated at 265 billion cubic meters per year. By 2025, the share of freshwater per person will drop to 460 cubic meters per year, representing half the present levels, and half the internationally recognized water poverty level.
Arabian Gulf countries depend on desalination as the main source of freshwater, producing 12 billion cubic meters per year, which amounts to 60 percent of the total world production. Out of the total area of the Arab countries, desert covers 54.8 percent, with much higher percentage in the Gulf region. Land suitable for agriculture is 14.5 percent, of which less than 30 percent is used, comprising less than 4 percent of the total area.
It is true that one third of the world’s population are threatened with water crisis in 25 years. Millions of hectares are transformed annually into deserts due to intensive and inappropriate land use.
Many species are becoming extinct with urbanization, industrial development, exploitation of forests and resources, as well as a wide variety of pressing environmental problems such as river, marine, air and soil pollution.
All these are undeniable and persistent problems requiring prompt solutions. But how can restrictions on water use and food production be imposed on thirsty and hungry people without providing alternatives? Why is consumption reduction being marketed as the only solution? While economy in the use of natural resources is vital, implemented alone it will only lead to more need and poverty, because it means sharing the decreasing available recourses by an increasing number of people. This humiliates human dignity and capabilities, and jeopardizes the rights of the poor.
Costly source of water
International conferences are rather expected to adopt programs to transfer and tailor technologies to beneficiary developing countries. This way, environment conservation will be achieved with due respect to developing local capabilities, and safeguarding resources will run parallel to developing new appropriate production techniques which ensure abundance.
Arab countries short in fresh water are all located on seas. Many oil-producing countries desalinate seawater via distillation or reverse osmosis processes. Desalination techniques currently used are very costly and cannot be made accessible to all. They are fully based on imported technologies developed in countries where fresh water is plenty and desalination is not needed. Why not invest huge resources in research programs to develop cheap desalination techniques? For example, can solar energy and vast deserts be of any use in this area? Is it possible to construct huge collecting ponds in the desert and pump water through sand to help the desalination process?
Scientists pose many questions that need serious research. In the Netherlands, for instance, there are successful experiments on primary purification of water by pumping it underground through sand dunes. Rather than merely warning against the misuse of agricultural land, serious efforts should be made, and resources invested, in research to develop appropriate means to increase food production while protecting the environment. New crop varieties can be engineered that adapt to local climate and conditions.
Could it be that scientists, capable of reproducing cells and cloning animals, are unable to develop seeds that can be planted in saline water with reasonable costs? Besides technologies oriented to high productivity on a mass scale, what efforts are made to develop local appropriate technologies to increase production and improve life quality at the family and community levels? Developing countries should reject the alleged equity theory based on fair distribution of their limited resources, and start to develop innovative, clean and appropriate production technologies that provide abundance, while protecting the environment, or rather developing the environment. After all, equitable and fair distribution, in view of the principles of sustainable development, means sharing of abundance, not partaking of poverty.
Good ideas but more support needed
Those are beautiful ideas; the critical issue is how can they be implemented and who will provide the funding required.
The World Bank predicts a four-fold increase in the world’s economy, to $140 trillion a year, over the next 50 years. While a growing world economy is essential for lifting billions of people out of poverty, it could spell disasters if it cannot be coupled with sustainable management of limited resources.
Continuing the present practices, economic and population growth will come at the expense of water shortages, rising pollution, less crop land, mammoth cities and civic unrest.
"If we are going to conquer poverty we have to have growth, and at a serious rate," according to the World Bank. "If that is sustained over the next 50 years and environmental issues are not addressed, growth is derailed."
The Earth Summit in Rio 10 years ago and the Johannesburg Summit a few weeks ago, both diagnosed the impasse of environment and development, and unanimously prescribed sustainable development as the magic cure. Yet the human and financial resources fell short to set our path to sustainable development.
Developing countries rightly complained that the industrialized countries have fallen short of fulfilling the pledges they made at Rio. Actually, official development assistance has since declined by one third, to 0.22 percent of the gross domestic product of the rich countries, instead of increasing to the promised 0.7 percent. No new commitments were made in Johannesburg, and contributions remained voluntary. Although the developing countries are willing not to pursue the same development patterns that have been followed by the industrialized countries and caused the environmental havoc that the whole world is suffering from, they must be helped to follow alternative and sustainable patterns of development, without compromising their own national resources and sovereignty.
The answer to the failures of globalization to benefit the poor is not isolationism, but more global integration, based on fair and equitable distribution of resources and responsibilities.
While international institutions and governments play a pivotal role in setting the stage for sustainable development, the lessons of the past have shown that the private sector has an essential role to play. Rio Summit was about what governments could do.
Johannesburg emphasized partnership among the public, private and civic sectors. Sustainable development is about difficult trade-offs between environmental protection and economic growth, a mission that cannot be achieved without the active involvement of the business community.
At varying levels, many corporations have introduced environmental reporting, sustainability programs and corporate social responsibility commitments. At present, direct investment by the private sector in developing countries exceeds the missed UN targets for official aid. Business can claim to have outperformed governments. However, in Johannesburg they were resisting a wave of international regulations on corporate accountability, and at the end accepted a series of trade-offs.
Whatever the shortcomings of the private sector, it is usually much more effective than the public sector in setting goals and meeting them. And many businesses are becoming more and more aware that it pays off to be a part of the solution to environmental problems rather than continuing to be a part of the problem.
These attitudes can only be strengthened by national and international regulations, which guarantee fair competition among businesses abiding by the same laws, not between polluters and environmentally friendly corporations. In the end, rules and regulations are what make sustainable and environmentally sound measures attractive option to the business community.
The biggest legacy of Johannesburg Summit was introducing the private sector as an integral part in implementing sustainable development. But while business has a role to play, ultimately it is governments that must play the leading role, as they are accountable to the people not to the shareholders.
(Najib Saab, publisher and editor-in-chief of Al-Bia Wal-Tanmia (Environment & Development), the leading Arabic environment magazine, was the guest speaker at a seminar in Riyadh on irrigation water management. The seminar was organized by the Rain Bird and Building Material Trading Company (BMTC), on the occasion of Saudi Agriculture Show, which opened yesterday in Riyadh.)
