The global water crisis

V.1.1. Stationarity over, uncertainty on the rise

The theories, laws and institutions of today’s transboundary water governance regimes have evolved in relatively stable hydro-climatic conditions over the past century or so. These regimes therefore reflect a high degree of stationarity, an assumption that the physical design parameters of the management of international rivers are known and, to a large extent, predictable.

The past few decades have, however, brought about fundamental changes into the key factors of water management: natural hydrology and human uses. This may render established frameworks of transboundary water governance unsuitable in the future. Order-of-magnitude increases in human population, atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions or agricultural water use have triggered a global water crisis that is likely to have significant repercussions on co-riparian relations even in historically water-abundant, cooperative and wealthy regions of the world.

Evidently, the security and political implications of the water crisis multiply in areas characterised by arid conditions, high anthropogenic water stress or political instability.

As a consequence, the stability of political relations among states sharing freshwater resources has recently become a major subject of interest for governments, international organisations and academia alike. Findings of empirical research dedicated to the issue in the past two decades suggest that the key determinants of hydropolitical resilience and vulnerability are not one (or a handful) powerful hydrological or political driver(s), such as water scarcity or unilaterism.

Instead, the stability of transboundary water relations depends on the capacity of the governance regime in place to absorb changes that go beyond the ranges of previously observed events.

Recent academic, policy and political assessments reveal that – according to the above institutional capacity test – all regions of the world face significant water security challenges both internally and in a transboundary context. The risk of serious political conflict is likely to arise or intensify in a growing number of international river basins in the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent or South East Asia. These regions are not only at high risk because of rapid changes in hydrology and the scale of human interventions, but – even more prominently – because their transboundary governance regimes are not sufficiently robust and flexible to absorb multiple and simultaneous changes. Other regions of the world are not immune from these challenges either. Changing hydroclimatic conditions are likely to force political decision-makers to revisit the fundamentals of transboundary basin management, even in such politically balanced and well-watered regions as the joint watersheds between Canada and the United States or the European Union.

V.1.2. The Anthropocene and its impacts on freshwater

“Anthropocene” (the “Age of Man”) is a term widely used to describe the present time interval in which many geologically significant conditions and processes are fundamentally altered by human activities. While not yet formally recognised as a unit of the international Geological Time Scale, the term usefully informs scientists and policy-makers about the overwhelming

31

power and scale of man’s impact on Earth generated by the sky-rocketing increase in industrial and agricultural production in the past 150 years.

The most visible of such changes is the unprecedented increase in human populations: since the 19^th century the global population has risen from one billion to over 7 billion by 2015. Currently, 80 million new human beings are born annually, with the global population likely to reach 9 billion by 2050. The population boom went hand-in-hand with a massive acceleration of urbanisation (6 billion people are projected to be city-dwellers by 2050) that has produced a 25-fold increase in megacities (urban areas with more than 10 million inhabitants) between 1950 and 2005⁹⁹.

The Anthropocene has brought about a wide range of negative environmental consequences.

These include an order-of-magnitude increase in the long-term rate of soil erosion and sedimentation, unprecedented loss of biodiversity, growth in atmospheric CO2 concentration over a third above preindustrial level, etc. The ensuing rise in temperature has important repercussions on the state of the polar ice-sheet, glaciers and snow-packs as well as sea levels and river flows. The rate of change seems to exceed the adaptive capacities of the biosphere.

Species will migrate (if they can) to trace their optimal climatic conditions, resulting in cascade-like changes in entire ecosystems both in land and sea. Coupled with other human stressors (habitat fragmentation, invasive species, etc.), the unfolding climate change may trigger the sixth great extinction event on planet Earth¹⁰⁰.

Water is one of the key environmental media through which the above negative changes are manifested. As a recent flagship publication on planetary boundaries concludes: „[t]he global freshwater cycle has entered the Anthropocene because humans are now the dominant driving force altering global scale river flow and the spatial patterns and seasonal timing of vapour flows”¹⁰¹.

The UN’s regular publication on water security, the World Water Development Report, identifies the ever increasing global demand as the main stressor on the availability and quality of freshwater resources. Expanding economies have been demanding more water for more food production, fibre and energy. The emergence of the global middle class has prompted an unsustainable increase in water use, especially in regions already characterised by water stress.

Over the past decades the rate of demand for water has doubled the rate of population growth.

Demand for water is expected to further increase in all sectors of production. By 2030, the world is projected to face a 40% global water deficit (i.e. demand for freshwater will outreach supply by 40%), if current trajectories remain unchanged. The ensuing urbanisation gives rise to special water challenges. Already, more than 50% of the world’s population lives in cities with 30% of all city-dwellers residing in slums without proper access to water and sanitation.

40% of all urban expansion in developing countries is made up by slums¹⁰².

Broken down by sector, the impacts of energy production and agriculture on water clearly stand out. Fossil, nuclear, hydro-power generation and mining are major users of water. Energy

99 STEFFEN, Will et al. (2015): The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration, The Anthropocene Review 2(1) pp. 81–98, p. 83-87.

100 ZALASIEWICZ, Jan et al. (2010): The New World of the Anthropocene, Environ. Sci. Technol. 44 pp. 2228-2231, p. 2229.

101 ROCKSTRÖM,Johan et al. (2009): Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity, Ecology and Society 14(2) pp. 32-65, p. 47.

102 WWAP (United Nations World Water Assessment Programme) (2015): The United Nations World Water Development Report 2015: Water for a Sustainable World, Paris, UNESCO, p. 11.

32

production accounts for 15% of water consumption today, but it is expected to rise to 20% by 2035. Globally, however, it is agriculture that is already the biggest water consumer, singlehandedly responsible for 70% of all freshwater withdrawals. Unless major improvements take place in water use efficiency, the water footprint of agriculture is likely to increase due to population pressure and the extension of irrigation necessitated by declining river runoffs¹⁰³. Given the increased competition for water among human and economic needs water quality and ecosystem integrity is often overlooked. In most parts of the developing world population and economic growth leads to uncontrolled surface and groundwater pollution. Groundwater, the most widely used source of drinking water all over the world, is not only threated by such unabated pollution, but also by over-abstraction¹⁰⁴.

Out of the above drivers and impacts climate change bears special relevance as its impacts are mainly expressed through changes to hydrology. The 5^th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change summarises the major freshwater-related risks of climate change as follows:

- dramatic decrease of renewable water resources in large areas of the world that will intensify competition for water among agriculture, ecosystems, settlements, industry, and energy production, affecting regional water, energy, and food security,

- increased exposure to 20th-century 100-year river floods,

- likely increase in the frequency of meteorological droughts (i.e. less rainfall) and agricultural droughts (i.e. less soil moisture) in presently dry regions, which is likely to result in less surface water and groundwater,

- negative impacts on freshwater ecosystems by changing stream flow and water quality, - projected reduction of raw water quality, posing risks to drinking water quality even

with conventional treatment as a result of increased temperature, increases in sediment, nutrient and pollutant loadings due to heavy rainfall, reduced dilution of pollutants during droughts, and disruption of treatment facilities during floods, etc.,

- increasing alterations of stream flow in regions with snowfall,

- decrease in total meltwater yields in the long run in glacierfed rivers. Continued loss of glacier ice implies a shift of peak discharge from summer to spring¹⁰⁵.

103 Ibid. p. 10-16.

104 Ibid. p. 2.

105 JIMÉNEZ CISNEROS, Blanca E. et al. (2014): Freshwater resources. In FIELD, C.B. et al. (Eds.): Climate Change:

Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 229-269, p. 232-234.

33

V.2. POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE GLOBAL WATER CRISIS