WATER CRISIS JOSE T. ABRAHAM Without water, no forms of life can exist.

Water is a prerequisite for all human and economic development. Yet today, nearly one billion people about one in eight lack access to clean water. More than twice that many, 2.5 billion people, dont have access to a toilet. There has been significant public attention paid to the issue of water scarcity lately. Although water is a renewable resource, it is also a finite one. Only 2.53 percent of earths water is fresh, and some twothirds of that is locked up in glaciers and permanent snow cover. Less than 1% of the world's fresh water (or about 0.007% of all water on earth) is readily accessible for direct human consumption. But despite the very real danger of future global water shortages, for the vast majority of the nearly one billion people without safe drinking water, todays water crisis is not an issue of scarcity alone, but of access also. In most developed nations, people take access to safe water for granted. But this wasnt always the case. A little more than 100 years ago, New York, London and Paris were centers of infectious disease. Child death rates were as high then as they are now in much of SubSaharan Africa. It was the sweeping reforms in water and sanitation that enabled human progress to leap forward. It should come as no surprise that in 2007, a poll by the British Medical Journal found that clean water and sanitation comprised the most important medical advancement since 1840. The health and economic impacts of todays global water crisis are staggering.

More than 3.5 million people die each year from water-related disease; 84 percent are children. Nearly all deaths, 98 percent, occur in the developing world.

Lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills children at a rate equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing every four hours. Lack of sanitation is the worlds biggest cause of infection. Millions of women and children spend several hours each day collecting water from distant, often polluted sources. This is time not spent working at an income-generating job, caring for family members, or attending school.

443 million school days are lost each year due to water-related illness.

The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.

At any given time, half of the world's hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from a water-related disease. By 2015 nearly half the world's population more than 3 billion people will live in countries that are "water-stressed" have less than 1,700 cubic meters of water per capita per year mostly in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and northern China. By 2020 Between 75 million and 250 million in Africa is projected to suffer from water shortages. Climate change will aggravate the water stress currently faced by some countries, while some countries that currently do not experience water stress will become at risk of water stress . Climate change and variability are likely to impose additional pressures on water availability, water accessibility and water demand in Africa. Even without climate change, several countries in Africa, particularly in northern Africa, will exceed the limits of their economically usable land-based water resources before 2025. About 25% of Africas population (about 200 million people) currently experience high water stress. By 2025 Five billion people are expected to experience periodic water shortages. Greater variability in weather patterns along with higher temperatures may lead to droughts and water shortages. Today 1.7 billion people about one-third of the world's population live in places that have periodic water shortages. That number is expected to increase to 5 billion by 2025. By 2050 an 80% increase in water supplies is required to meet projected water demand of world population. "The global population tripled in the 20th century but water consumption went up sevenfold. By 2050, after we add another 3 billion to the global population, humans will need an 80% increase in water supplies just to feed ourselves. No one knows where this water is going to come from." Indian Situation Since 1966, as a consequence of the introduction of the Green Revolution model of water intensive chemical farming under World Bank and US pressure, India has over exploited her groundwater, creating a water famine. Intensification of drought, floods and cyclones is one of the predictable impacts of climate change and climate instability. The failure of monsoon in India and the consequent drought, has impacted two thirds of India, especially the bread basket of Indias fertile Gangetic plains. Bihar has had a 43 per cent rainfall deficit, Jharkhand 47 per cent, Uttar Pradesh 64 per cent, Haryana 61 per cent, Punjab 26 per cent, Himachal Pradesh 63 per cent,

Uttarakhand

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cent.

Indias food security rests on the monsoon. Monsoon failure and widespread drought implies a deepening of the already severe food crisis triggered by trade liberalisation policies which has made India the capital of hunger. It also implies a deepening of the water crisis. A new study led by Matthew Rodell of Nasas Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland has shown water levels in north India have fallen by 1.6 inches per year, between August 2002 and August 2008. More than 109 cubic km of groundwater have disappeared from aquifers between 2002 and 2008. Not only has water wasteful chemical agriculture mined groundwater, it has also mined soil fertility and contributed to climate change. Chemical fertilisers destroy the living processes of the soil and make soils more vulnerable to drought. Chemical fertilisers also produce nitrogen oxygen, a greenhouse gas which is 300 times more potent the carbon dioxide.

By the year 2020, says a recent World Bank report, most major Indian cities will run dry. Severe water shortage had already led to a growing number of conflicts across the country, with 90 per cent of India's territory served by inter-state rivers. India's supply of water too is rapidly dwindling primarily due to mismanagement of water resources, although over-pumping and pollution are also significant contributors. The IPCC 4th Assessment Report has found: Frequency of hot days and multiple-day heat waves have increased in past century; Increase in deaths due to heat stress in recent years . The entire Himalayan Hindu Kush ice mass has decreased in the last two decades and the ratio of melt accelerates. Hence, water supply in areas fed by HKH glacier melt, on which hundreds of millions of people in China and India depend, will be negatively affected Sea-level rise leads to intrusion of saline water into the fresh groundwater in coastal aquifers and thus adversely affects groundwater resources. For two small and flat coral islands at the coast of India, the thickness of freshwater lens was computed to decrease from 25 m to 10 m and from 36 m to 28 m, respectively, for a sea level rise of only 0.1 m .

Ganges-Brahmaputra delta (also Bangladesh): More than 1 million people will be directly affected by 2050 from risk through coastal erosion and land loss, primarily as a result of the decreased sediment delivery by the rivers, but also through the accentuated rates of sealevel rise . Warmer climate, precipitation decline and droughts in most delta regions of India have resulted in drying up of wetlands and severe degradation of ecosystems The gross per capita water availability in India will decline from ~1820 m3/yr in 2001 to as low as ~1140m3/yr in 2050 . Water scarcity and climate change is threatening the existence of various life forms including human life on earth but our experience and the approach of countries like United states shows that the present Economic and political system based on profit motive will not be able to find a solution to this serious issue. A radical change in the social system only will be able to find a lasting solution to the problem of water crisis.