Food vs. Water -- What's the Solution

The New York Times reported today:

Global food shortages have placed the Middle East and North Africa in a quandary, as they are forced to choose between growing more crops to feed an expanding population or preserving their already scant supply of water.

For decades nations in this region have drained aquifers, sucked the salt from seawater and diverted the mighty Nile to make the deserts bloom. But those projects were so costly and used so much water that it remained far more practical to import food than to produce it. Today, some countries import 90 percent or more of their staples.

Now, the worldwide food crisis is making many countries in this politically volatile region rethink that math.

The population of the region has more than quadrupled since 1950, to 364 million, and is expected to reach nearly 600 million by 2050. By that time, the amount of fresh water available for each person, already scarce, will be cut in half, and declining resources could inflame political tensions further.

“The countries of the region are caught between the hammer of rising food prices and the anvil of steadily declining water availability per capita,” Alan R. Richards, a professor of economics and environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said via e-mail. “There is no simple solution.”

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Originally posted by Scriabin
The New York Times reported today:

Global food shortages have placed the Middle East and North Africa in a quandary, as they are forced to choose between growing more crops to feed an expanding population or preserving their already scant supply of water.

For decades nations in this region have drained aquifers, sucked the salt from seawater and diver ...[text shortened]... he University of California, Santa Cruz, said via e-mail. “There is no simple solution.”

....

Originally posted by dryhump
Good thing the US is making ethanol from corn isn't it?

Originally posted by dryhump
Good thing the US is making ethanol from corn isn't it?

Originally posted by scherzo
And impoverishing much of Brazil in the process.

Originally posted by der schwarze Ritter
I'm curious -- how is the United States impoverishing Brazil by making corn-based ethanol?

Originally posted by scherzo
It's destroying the soybean fields and the farmers that farm around the Amazon rainforest. In addition, it's destroying the rainforest itself by cutting down trees for corn farms, a plant that's not indigenous to Brazil anyway.

Originally posted by Scriabin
The New York Times reported today:

Global food shortages have placed the Middle East and North Africa in a quandary, as they are forced to choose between growing more crops to feed an expanding population or preserving their already scant supply of water.

For decades nations in this region have drained aquifers, sucked the salt from seawater and diver ...[text shortened]... he University of California, Santa Cruz, said via e-mail. “There is no simple solution.”

....

Originally posted by Nemesio
So, do you mean that Brazil is impovrishing Brazil by producing things
to sell to the United States?

Originally posted by scherzo
The U.S. is funding ethanol production. So the U.S. is destroying Brazil to support the U.S. economy regardless of Brazil ... sound familiar?

Originally posted by Nemesio
I'm sorry, but I missed the part where the U.S. invaded Brazil and forced them to produce corn.
Brazil is making its own informed choice. It is doing so because it feels its in its best interests.
It values selling stuff to the U.S. over preserving its heritage, rain forest, &c &c 7c.

I'm sorry you disagree with their decision, but the U.S. is only a consumer in this model.

Nemesio

I started this thread as a means for encouraging focus, discussion, and education -- I don't know the answer to this problem and it takes an informed public to address the possible approaches. All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. So failure to get up to speed on this issue is an abdication of personal responsibility. For all those here, most as far as I can see, who set themselves up as figures of authority with almost completely inflexible positions on issues, here is one test for you: see if you can deal with an issue about which you are not expert enough to rant on and on and on.

Here are some resources to find out what's going on:

http://ag.arizona.edu/OALS/IALC/links/water.html

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/natres/waterindex.htm

democrats.science.house.gov/Media/File/Commdocs/hearings/2008/Full/14May/Hearing_Charter.pdf

http://www.ivarta.com/columns/OL_060612.htm

An interesting article:

The danger of water wars

Fred Pearce

Published 28 November 2007 in The New Statesman

Water consumption has tripled in the past 30 years and there's a growing danger that disputes over the most necessary of resources could erupt into violence

Water is rapidly becoming one of the defining crises of the 21st century. Climate change is making its availability increasingly uncertain. And we are using ever more of the stuff.

In the past three decades the human population has doubled but human use of water has tripled – largely because, tonne-for-tonne, modern ‘high-yielding’ crop varieties often need more water than the old crops.

A typical Westerner consumes, directly and through thirsty products like food, about a hundred times their own weight in water every day. That is why some of the great rivers of the world, such as the Nile, Indus, Yellow River and Colorado, no longer reach the sea in any appreciable volume. All their water is taken.

Many parts of the world, notably the Middle East, are running out of water to feed themselves. In response, a vast global trade is emerging. Not in water itself, but in thirsty crops like grains and sugar and cotton. Effectively the UK imports 45 cubic kilometres of water every year embodied in such crops – much of it from poor and arid lands.

Economists call this the ‘virtual water trade’. Many countries would starve without it. But as more and more countries run short of water, the trade will be disrupted. And the threat of wars over water will grow.

Already water shortages are at the heart of many injustices. Ever since Israel took control of the West Bank in 1967, it has refused to let Palestinians sink new boreholes there. It says this policy is necessary to protect the underground water reserves, which are already being over-used. That is true. But the reality is that Israel takes most of the water, and the limits only apply to Palestinians.

Israeli settlers in their hilltop compounds on the West Bank have swimming pools and sprinklers on their lawns, while down below, their Palestinian neighbour go thirsty. Literally, in some cases. Some farmers I met there spend three hours every day carrying pots on their donkeys to get water for their children and animals.

Israel’s relations with its other neighbours are poisoned by its insistence on controlling the watershed of the River Jordan, its main source of water. The 1967 Six Day War was, according to former prime minister Ariel Sharon’s memoirs, fought as much for control of the River Jordan as for land. Israel hangs onto the Golan Heights less for military reasons than because it is where the river rises.

Scour the ‘in briefs’ in the broadsheets and you will see a constant drip-drip of stories about water riots in Pakistan, Mexico, India, China, Indonesia and elsewhere. The world is awash too with disputes over international rivers that threaten to become full-blown wars as water shortages grow. A disturbing number are legacies of British imperial rule.

The 1947 partitioning of India split control of the River Indus. Now India and Pakistan are at odds over a new Indian hydroelectric plant that, Pakistan claims, threatens its British-built irrigation schemes, which supply most of the country’s food. India’s control over the Ganges causes both floods and droughts in downstream Bangladesh.

In Africa, Britain left behind a Nile treaty that gives all the waters of a river that flows through ten countries to the two most downstream: Egypt and Sudan. Egypt now threatens to wage war on anyone upstream -- such as Ethiopia - who takes so much as a pint pot of water from the river.

Other festering disputes concern Chinese dams being built on the Mekong in Southeast Asia, and complex conflicts in central Asia, where upstream hydroelectric dams that keep the people of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan warm in winter disrupt water supplies for the huge cotton plantations of downstream Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

One of the first items on the agenda of a future functioning Iraqi government will be to contest Turkish dams upstream on the Tigris and Euphrates.

A major problem in many of these disputes is that there are no internationally agreed ground rules for how nations should cooperate over shared rivers. One of the first foreign policy acts of the Blair government back in 1997 was to try and rectify this by sponsoring a Watercourses Convention at the UN. And yet a decade later, the government hasn’t got round to ratifying the convention in parliament. And partly as a result, the treaty languishes without sufficient signatures to enter into force.

This seems bizarre when successive Labour foreign secretaries, notably Margaret Beckett, have stressed the security threat posed by disputes over international rivers. And when former defence secretary John Reid recently warned that our armed forces needed to prepare for future "water wars".

Asked to explain Britain’s failure to sign a piece of paper it helped draft and recommended to the world, then international development secretary Hilary Benn told parliament in early 2007: "We do not believe that any potential domestic benefits justify the resources that would be required." And: "We need to ensure this does not just place a further burden on governments in our partner countries."

What resources? What burdens? Which "partner countries"? And what has changed since 1997 when this government saw no such impediment?

Here in the USA, for most Americans, the lack of good quality water has never been a concern. However with the beginning of the 21st century, many U.S. communities are facing diminishing water supplies and a growing competition for the resource. Many lakes and reservoirs throughout the country are at historically low levels. Causes for diminishing water supplies are varied.

Socio-geographic changes in U.S. population are placing increased demands on water resources. Population growth is occurring where municipal and industrial demands are already great. Much of the increased demand is occurring in arid regions where water is always scarce. Water resources become even less dependable in years of drought. As water bodies become depleted, water quality decreases from higher concentrations of chemical, biological, and physical contaminants. Numbers of intra and inter-state controversies are emerging as a result of water shortages.

One such controversy is the so called "tri-state water war", between Georgia, Alabama and Florida. The City of Atlanta, after assessing its projected population growth and future water needs, sought a permit from the Corps of Engineers to create reservoirs on the Chattahoochee, Flint, and Coosa Rivers that would retain an additional 529 million gallons of water a day to be stored in Lake Sidney Lanier, Atlanta's major source of drinking water. Atlanta's long-term plan included an increase in withdrawals of 50% from the Chattahoochee and Flint by the year 2010.

This proposal and announcement by the Corps set off a dispute between Georgia and its downstream neighbors, Alabama and Florida. Alabama viewed the plan as a threat to its own water supply, possibly stunting industrial and population growth in the state and resulting in degraded water quality due to the decrease in water flow. Alabama argued that the downstream flow already brings with it Atlanta's pollution and that a decrease in the water flow would mean more pollutants that would not get diluted. Florida joined the dispute contending that the plan to siphon off more water from the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers would deplete the flow into Florida's Apalachicola Bay and would critically injure the state's $70 million oyster industry.

Similar debates are ongoing farther west. All parties are continually challenging Pecos River and Rio Grande compacts between New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico. Resolutions to the problems of water supply through equitable allocation are critical to the sustainability of our communities throughout the country.

There is no real grasp of how much or how little water is available. And, by nature, the numbers would keep changing at any rate, contingent on dry or wet years. This is why most states have water rights policies established. The administrative principles of the these water rights vary from state to state, but essentially determine who has the right, and to how much, in times of shortages.

Originally posted by Scriabin
An interesting article:

The danger of water wars

Fred Pearce

Published 28 November 2007 in The New Statesman

Water consumption has tripled in the past 30 years and there's a growing danger that disputes over the most necessary of resources could erupt into violence

Water is rapidly becoming one of the defining crises of the 21st century. Clim ...[text shortened]... ountries"? And what has changed since 1997 when this government saw no such impediment?