‘Water management key to achieving sustainable development goals’

STOCKHOLM — As demand for water grows, the world must focus on how the precious resource will be shared among farmers, the energy sector and cities if it is to achieve the United Nations' new development agenda, a World Bank expert said this week.

The world faces a 40 per cent shortfall in water supplies in 15 years due to urbanisation, population growth and growing demand for water for food production, energy and industry, according to a United Nations report published in March.

The UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which had focused attention on the needs of poor nations for the past 15 years, included boosting access to clean water and sanitation.

The Sustainable Development Goals, due to be adopted at a UN summit in September to replace the MDGs, broadens water from a narrow access issue to a "fundamental rethink" of how it is managed, said Junaid Ahmad, director at the World Bank's water global practice.

"We're headed into a perfect storm in which over the next 20 years we will see the demand for water growing significantly, driven by thirsty agriculture, thirsty energy and thirsty cities," Ahmad indicated on Sunday on the sidelines of a global water conference in Stockholm.

"If we are to achieve these goals of food and energy security, sustainable urbanisation, and ensure service delivery of water and sanitation to citizens, we now need to figure out how water is going to be allocated across sectors," he said.

Some 2.6 billion people have gained access to clean water since 1990, but more than 660 million still live without access, according to UNICEF and the World Health Organisation.

Ahmad said achieving the new water goal and scaling up access means not only building pipes, but also fixing institutions and improving governance.

Another challenge, he added, is putting a price on water.

"We are in a world in which we are trying to price carbon, but we do not know how to value water," he continued, noting  that because water is a human right, there is an assumption that it should be free.

"Free water is probably the most expensive water for poor people, because whenever you give out free water it's captured by the politically powerful, not by the poor," he indicated.

Other challenges include climate change, which has made the water supply patchy, and the management of groundwater.

"Groundwater is the biggest source of stored water that we have, and yet it has been progressively abused", extracted at a faster rate than it is being recharged, he said.

More than 2 billion people still lack access to toilets, but Ahmad is optimistic that the new goal of universal sanitation coverage by 2030 can be achieved.

"It took developed countries many years to achieve universal access," he added, mentioning that a World Bank simulation showed countries such as France took 25 to 30 years to provide toilets for everybody.

"If we look at history and the pace in which developed countries have changed, then what developing countries are doing today is pretty historic. They are catching up at a very fast rate," he elaborated. 

Separately, an expert described the doom and gloom predictions of increasing battles around the world over water as a myth, with only a handful of disagreements over shared waters leading to armed conflict.

Competition over water has often been cited as having a potential for turning into conflicts between countries fighting to secure the limited resource.

While water is fundamental to development and national security and can contribute to hostile situations, "very few" disagreements have led to conflict, said Therese Sjomander Magnusson of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI).

"It is a myth that water leads to war," Magnusson, SIWI's director of transboundary water management, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation late on Sunday on the sidelines of a global water conference.

She said that over the last 50 years, there have been more than 1,800 interactions on transboundary basins, including both conflict and cooperation.

"Only seven disputes have involved violence," she indicated. "During the same time, more than 200 agreements and treaties on transboundary waters have been signed."

Even though population growth and climate change have led to disagreements over water, conflicts were more common on national levels — such as between pastoralists and farmers — than between countries, Sjomander Magnusson added.

In fact, she continued, many governments are looking into dialogue and cooperation when it comes to water, rather than sending armies against each other.

"In an insecure world that we are facing right now, with many unstable situations, what we've seen over and over again is how governments are eager to position themselves as a stable countries open to cooperation," Sjomander Magnusson said.

One unlikely example in which water issues have led to cooperation is discussions between Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian territories over the Jordan River, which runs along their borders, she indicated.

"This is the only platform where these countries have met for the past couple of years," the expert added

She said data sharing has been a sensitive topic in international water negotiations, but is becoming fundamental as countries cope with the effects of climate change.

Climate change will play an integral role in future water cooperation agreements, she stressed.

"Many treaties on transboundary waters probably need to be revised in line with the new climate change data and maybe a bit more flexible to cope with the extreme weather events," Magnusson concluded.