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Water scarcity hampers development

Md.Asadullah Khan
Currently, as reports reveal, at least 80 countries, representing 40 percent of the world's population, are subject to severe water shortages. Conditions may get worse as population grows and global warming disrupts rainfall patterns.
THE problem of water shortage, compounded by pollution, is causing indisputable harm in most poor countries of Asia and Africa. The population in poor countries like Bangladesh is growing so fast that improvements on water supply have failed to keep pace. Worldwide, two billion people still have no access to clean water, and water contaminated by sewage is estimated to kill 3.4 million, including two million children, every year.
Water experts have sounded an alarm that within the next 25 years, half of the world’s population could have trouble in finding enough fresh water for drinking and irrigation. Currently, as reports reveal, at least 80 countries, representing 40 percent of the world's population, are subject to severe water shortages. Conditions may get worse as population grows and global warming disrupts rainfall patterns.
People in West Asian countries now use 54 per cent of the available fresh water, and additional demand will further jeopardise the ecosystem. Added to this is the problem of pollution caused by fertilisers, pesticides, silts, sewage and other toxic effluents that have killed lakes and poisoned rivers.
The crisis did not end there. Half of the world's wetlands have been drowned through conversion, diversion and fragmentation of the system, resulting in destruction of habitat. Polluted water, winch provides a breeding ground for parasites, amoebas, and bacteria, damages the health of 1.2 billion people a year. Water bome diseases are responsible for 80 percent of illnesses and deaths in the developing world, killing a child every eight seconds.
The water crisis, it is now believed, has been caused by the dam building mentality of the developed nations. The Hoover Dam, built over the Colorado river to support Los Angeles, inaugurated an age of dam building. The dam building mentality. however, has pretty much expired in the developed world, but is still prevalent throughout much of the rest of the world. In China, which is erecting the Three Gorges Dam. the biggest hydroelectric project in history and at $25 billion the most expensive, one sees outright resentment against rivers running free.
Almost everyone appreciates how water projects have altered the course of civilisation in ways we call (perhaps foolishly) benign. Dams and reservoirs permit unimaginable numbers of people to inhabit forbiddingly arid regions as well as flood plains, where cities would be washed away without upstream protection.
Despite the fact that dams provide more clean energy than any other conventional source, including nuclear reactors, and reservoirs behind the dam supply irrigation water to farmlands, they have well-publicised vices. They are notorious for causing great environmen- tai change and force massive human resettlement, mostly of people who live where the lake is due to appear.
Darns, with all their material blessings, are responsible for some of the worst environmental tragedies in history. The Three Gorges Dam is now under construction upriver in Sinchuan province, but turning the upper Yangtze into the world's greatest reservoirs won't stop flooding, inundation and pollution of water areas and vast farmlands in the lower riparian countries, India and ultimately Bangladesh.
The construction of the Farakka Barrage in West Bengal in India did not yield the anticipated benefit even for India, let alone the unimaginable havoc it has wrought on Bangladesh through the drying up of rivers, creating a severe water shortage. West Bengal bears the brunt of the folly and fancy of the central government. The huge amount of silt deposited in the upstream has reduced the depth and slope of the Ganges, causing in its wake erosion and change of course of the river.
The Ganges carries 80 crore ton of silt every year. In just three decades after the commissioning of the Farakka Barrage, because of the obstruction caused, the Ganges is now laden With a huge amount of silt, reducing the depth of the river. We are yet to see what effect the Tipaimukh dam, to be constructed in Manipur state in India, has on both India and Bangladesh.
Reports circulated by UNDP, FAO, WHO and World Bank indicate that the world's supply of clean fresh water, already threatened by construction of dams and growing levels of pollution, is going to be so scarce in some areas that, if the current trend continues, two-thirds of humanity will suffer moderate to severe water stress within 30 years. The report warns that the situation imperils not only human health and development on a large scale, but also the aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems on which much of Earth's life depends. There is clear and convincing evidence, the report says, that the world faces a worsening series of local and regional water quantity and quality problems, largely as a result of poor water allocation, wasteful use of water resource and lack of management resources.
"The glaring lack of attention to water issues seems puzzling, and may be termed as the most critical failure of the 20th century and a major challenge for the 21st," contends Peter Gleick, one of the world's leading experts on fresh water resources. Gleick further says that the economic costs are not that high compared to the costs of failing to meet those needs. There is hardly any second opinion about the fact that we are now facing a
world water gap and, because of our apathy, it is getting worse with each passing day.
With about 250 rivers that once dotted the country, Bangladesh is now identified as a water-scarce country. The consequences of failing to bridge the gap will be higher food prices and expensive food imports. Hunger and thirst, experts say, are linked to political instability and low rates of economic growth.
That underscores the fact that there must be political will and national consensus in solving the key issues affecting people's lives. With the food and disaster management ministry receiving the highest allocation in the current budget, it would be wise for the government to invest a sizable amount for creating water reservoirs, excavating silted tanks and canals, and maintaining flow of rivers by proper dredging, as the prime minister has asserted on different occasions in the
past six months.
These measures will work as steps towards disaster preparedness, augment food production and meet the crisis of drinking water. With underground water table being depleted abnormally because of excessive extraction, we have to conserve surface water to allow aquifers to be charged.
Moreover, as much of the world becomes urbanised, its water crisis will deepen. Dhaka, a mega city of 12.5 million people, has to rely mostly (about 87 percent) on ground water, but aquifers take decades to recharge while the population growth in the city is exponential. Human activity is playing an ever greater role in creating water scarcity and "water stress" -- defined as the indication that there is not enough good quality water to meet human needs.
Burning fossil fuels indiscriminately to power industrial growth, deforestation and dam-building are some of the ill-thought out activities the developed countries have been carrying on to meet their insatiable needs. In consequence, global warming fueled by excessive carbon emission has resulted in a drought like situation, creating water scarcity in many parts of the world including Bangladesh.
The fact is that, population wise and area wise, in respect of water resources Bangladesh is not in a very uncomfortable position. But its people are having an increasingly difficult time managing, allocating and protecting the water that exists. And the present government, that has made firm pledges to usher in changes, must meet the challenge squarely.
Md Asadullah Khan is a former teacher of physics and Controller of Examinations. BUET.
e-mail: aukhanbd@gmail.com