The world’s fresh water supplies are almost fully exploited.Almost al, 97 per cent, of the world’s water is salt. Of the fresh water in the world, two thirds is locked up as ice and snow (the cryosphere – to you and me, kid!). Globally, three quarters of the water that is used is used by agriculture. India, China and the United States, use more fresh water than is available. The water level in those nation’s aquifers is falling as a result.The current food crisis has come about largely as a result as the shortfall in available water begins to impact on the cost of irrigation.Â
The worst culprit was Europe at 53,661 thousand cubic metres in 2004 – a surprising figure when you consider it also has some of the world’s most reliable and clean supplies of tap water.
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BHP Billiton plans to run a trial of drawing water from a hypersaline aquifer below its proposed open pit expansion of the Olympic Dam mine in outback
A 25-kilometre pipe has been installed north of Roxby Downs to remove water from below the mine site and inject it into a nearby aquifer, instead of letting it run onto the ground.
If the mine expansion is approved, the saline water would be extracted and used for tasks including suppression of dust.
Anita Poddar, for BHP Billiton, says without access to the aquifer, the company would have to look for other water sources, such as more desalination or water from the Great Artesian Basin.
“It’s good that we don’t have to use that water and obviously it’s a better environmental alternative,” she said.
The proposed trial has government backing and has been discussed with the Arid Lands Natural Resources Management Board and the Pastoral Board.
Electricity supply to Nasiriyah has dropped by 50% because of falling levels of Euphrates river
A water shortage described as the most critical since the earliest days of Iraq‘s civilisation is threatening to leave up to 2 million people in the south of the country without electricity and almost as many without drinking water.
An already meagre supply of electricity to Iraq’s fourth-largest city of Nasiriyah has fallen by 50% during the last three weeks because of the rapidly falling levels of the Euphrates river, which has only two of four power-generating turbines left working.
If, as predicted, the river falls by a further 20cm during the next fortnight, engineers say the remaining two turbines will also close down, forcing a total blackout in the city.
Down river, where the Euphrates spills out into the Shatt al-Arab waterway at the north-eastern corner of the Persian Gulf, the lack of fresh water has raised salinity levels so high that two towns, of about 3,000 people, on the northern edge of Basra have this week evacuated. “We can no longer drink this water,” said one local woman from the village of al-Fal. “Our animals are all dead and many people here are diseased.”
Iraqi officials have been attempting to grapple with the magnitude of the crisis for months, which, like much else in this fractured society, has many causes, both man-made and natural.
Two winters of significantly lower than normal rainfalls – half the annual average last year and one-third the year before – have followed six years of crippling instability, in which industry barely functioned and agriculture struggled to meet half of subsistence needs.
“For thousands of years Iraq’s agricultural lands were rich with planted wheat, rice and barley,” said Salah Aziz, director of planning in Iraq’s agricultural ministry, adding that land was “100% in use”.
“This year less than 50% of the land is in use and most of the yields are marginal. This year we cannot begin to cover even 40% of Iraq’s fruit and vegetable demand.”
During the last five chaotic years, many new dams and reservoirs have been built in Turkey, Syria and Iran, which share the Euphrates and its small tributaries. The effect has been to starve the Euphrates of its lifeblood, which throughout the ages has guaranteed bountiful water, even during drought. At the same time, irrigators have tried tilling marginal land in an attempt for quick yields and in all cases the projects have been abandoned.
“Not even during Saddam’s time did we face the prospect of something so grave,” said Nasiriyah’s governor, Qusey al-Ebadi. Just east of the city, the Marsh Arabs are also on the edge of a crisis – unprecedented even during the three decades of reprisals they faced under the former dictator.
“The current level of the Euphrates cannot feed the small tributaries that give water to the marshlands,” he continued. “The people there have started to dig wells for their own survival. There is no water to use for washing, because it is stagnant and contaminated. Many of the animals have contracted disease and died and people with animals are leaving their areas.”
Nowhere is Iraq’s water shortage more stark than in what used to be the marshlands. Towards the Iranian border and south to the Gulf, rigid and yellowing reeds jut from a hard-baked landscape of cracked mud.
Skiffs that once plied the lowland waters lie dry and splintering and ducks wallow in fetid green ponds that pocket the maze of feeder streams. Steel cans of drinking water bought by desperate locals line dirt roads like over-sized letter boxes.
The Euphrates, once broad and endlessly green, is now narrow and drab. In parts it is a slick black ooze, fit only for scores of bathing water buffalo. Giant pumps lay metres out of reach. Some are rusting. “Not long ago, the level of the Euphrates was at this rust line,” said Awda Khasaf, a local leader in the al-Akerya marshlands, as he pointed at the dwindling river.
“It has now dropped more than 1.5m. This river feeds all the agriculture lands and marsh lands in Nasiriyah. It smells like this because it is stagnant,” he said. “We turned to agriculture in 1991 after Saddam’s rampage, but now the government has ordered us to stop rice farming.”
Further up the river Sheikh Amar Hameed, 44, from Abart village said: “We have lost the soul of our lives with the vanishing water. We have lost everything. We are buying drinking water now. The government must find a solution. The young will all become thieves. They have no prospects.”
Iraq’s water minister, Dr Abdul Latif Rashid, this week estimated that up to 300,000 marshland residents are on the move, many of them newly uprooted and heading for nearby towns and cities that can do little to support them.
The Marsh Arabs are semi-nomadic and large numbers have remained displaced since Saddam drained the marshes in 1991.
“In the last 20-30 years our neighbouring countries have built a number of structures for collecting water or diverting water for their agricultural lands,” Dr Rashid said.
“In some cases, they have diverted the path of the river for their internal use. This has had a very damaging effect. We have a large number of branches of the Tigris that we share with Iran. In most their volumes are low, or completely dried up. In 2006/07 [the marshlands] almost reached 75% of original levels. Now the surface water is around 20%. Water resources have this year become not only serious, but critical. Iraq has not faced a water shortage like this.”
Officials have tried to compensate by digging wells and bores, especially in the ravaged provinces of the south and in Anbar, west of Baghdad. Delegations have also travelled to Turkey and Syria, where they were warmly received, but have achieved few changes. “We were expecting much more of a release from Turkey,” Dr Rashid said. “Iran has been less receptive. We have had no response from them at all.”
Nile Nine Nile basin countries are in dispute over water-sharing. Countries including Uganda and Rwanda are attempting to overrule a 1959 treaty that restricted building on the river without Egypt’s consent. Egypt is reliant on the volume of water it currently receives.
Euphrates Iraq and Syria oppose the building of dams on the river by Turkey. Iraq is reliant on the river for irrigation, and damming upriver seriously affects water flow.
Jordan Israel and Palestine share a water aquifer along the West Bank, but Palestinians only have access to one fifth of the water held there. They are also in dispute over the river Jordan, with Israel claiming 90% control.
Indus Pakistan is in dispute with India over the Indus river that supplies water to millions. Reservoirs and dams have caused water shortages in downstream areas, such as Karachi. A presidential decision to provide more water to the population in Sindh by closing the Tarbela Dam also caused outrage in neighbouring Punjab, whose water was being diverted.
Katy Stoddard
Singer Songwriter, Doug Kerr, has donated half the royalties from his song Give the Water Back to adventurer and rivers advocate Steve Posselt.
“The words of the song completely fit the principles that drop me to mount the expedition and the sentiments of the farmers we have interviewed and filmed along the way,” Posselt said.
“I wrote the song because I love the inland,” said donor, Doug Kerr.
“What we are doing to the rivers is a travesty and I am stoked that Steve is fighting for them. I’m more than happy to split any royalties from the song sold as a result of the expedition,” he said.
Here’s a taste of the words of the song
You can’t grow a crop because the water’s all goneCopyright Doug Kerr, 2009
“That pretty much says it all,” said Steve Posselt.
A short version of the song is available to listen to free of charge from kayak4earth.com and a high quality version of it is available for purchase.
“Please buy the song, support the cause and enjoy my music,” said Doug Kerr.
Brendan O’Keefe | August 04, 2009
AUSTRALIA’S annual rainfall will increase by an average 8.4mm by 2099, according to results from computer models that have been brought under the one roof for the first time.
Two academics from the Australian National University, Michael Roderick and Wee Lo Lim, have crunched the numbers from 39 models run by organisations such as Australia’s CSIRO and its equivalents in France, Canada, Germany, Japan, the US and Britain to produce a downloadable book that shows all their predictions individually and averaged.
The book and e-book, An Atlas of the Global Water Cycle, will be launched today at the university.
Dr Roderick and Mr Lim calculated that, by 2099, Australia’s nationwide rainfall will have increased by an average of 8.4mm. But include an extra 11.2mm of evaporation across the country and the final result is a loss of 2.8mm.
Globally, rainfall is predicted to increase by an average of 46.9mm.
The Australian averages hide wider predicted regional variations. According to the data, by 2099, the Top End will be receiving 50-100mm more rain than the 1970-1999 average.
All of Victoria, and most of South Australia and Western Australia, will receive up to 50mm a year less than now.
Eastern Tasmania will receive up to 50mm less and the western half of the state will receive 50-100mm less.
One Japanese model predicts 149.7mm more rain by 2099 across Australia and one German model predicts 128.1mm less per year. Australia’s long-term, nationwide rainfall average is about 450mm a year.
Dr Roderick said the compilation of the data was an objective work. “There’s no interpretation,” he said. “This is straight out what they (the models) say.”
He said scientists did not (openly) put more stock in some models over others but “the science is being done at the moment” on which model made the best projections.
All 39 models predict more rainfall across the globe, over land and sea.
Dr Roderick said the information could be useful for people such as farmers and water engineers. “(This work) will allow people to see all the individual runs of models,” he said.
“Here you can see for yourself and people can download a digital copy for free.”
Posted
Updated
Bundanoon put itself on the map recently when the community announced it was banning bottled water. (ABC News)
The New South Wales town which recently banned bottled water is set to save $2.5 million a year because of the move, an environmental campaigner says.
Earlier this month the southern highlands town of Bundanoon became the first community in the world to ban bottled water.
In an opinion piece for ABC News Online, Clean Up Australia chairman Ian Kiernan says government stalling on environmental issues is forcing communities to take action.
“Bundanoon’s move is a sign of things to come … communities are going to start taking matters into their own hands,” he said.
Clean Up’s analysis says people can save themselves up to $1,000 a year by using tap water instead of bottled water.
And Mr Kiernan says Australia uses more than 300,000 barrels of oil in polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle production per year.
“The manufacture of every tonne of PET produces around three tonnes of carbon dioxide,” he said.
Besides the cost of transporting bottled water around the globe, Australia’s thirst for bottled water is driving a dramatic rise in plastic rubbish, Mr Kiernan says.
“Australians purchase about 118,000 tonnes of plastic drink bottles a year but only recycle 35 per cent of them,” he said.
“The 76,700 tonnes left behind either goes to landfill or ends up in our environment as rubbish.”
But Australasian Bottled Water Institute chairman Geoff Parker says plastic water bottles are recycled at the same rate as glass bottles, and the focus should really be on increasing recycling rates.
“It’s not the product’s fault that it might end up not being recycled – a PET bottle is 100 per cent recyclable,” he said.
“The industry acknolwedges that it’s got a role to play.
“Government certainly know that they’ve got a role to play and the consumer has a role to play.
“We have just this week written to all government ministers at the federal and state level to open dialogue as to how we can all work together to increase the recycling rate.”
