NOBEL LAUREATES 2000 -- PERES AND GORBACHEV - WATER: THE KEY
ISSUE OF THE 21ST CENTURY
Mikhail Gorbachev was the
last president of the Soviet Union and now heads the International Green Cross.
Shimon Peres, a former Israeli prime minister, is currently Israel's Minister
of Regional Cooperation. Both are recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.
by Mikhail Gorbachev and Shimon Peres
GENEVA -- There is one salient fact that overrides all others
in the 21st century: Today's 6 billion people -- projected to
grow to 8 billion within the next 25 years -- must share the same
amount of water on this planet shared by less than one-sixth that
many before the turn of the 19th century.
As population grows, economies develop and megacities expand,
greater and greater demand will be placed on freshwater supplies.
Unlike a resource such as oil, for which coal, wind or nuclear
power can be an alternative, water has no substitute.
This condition can either be a motor for peace, leading to
unprecedented cooperation to manage supplies, or it can generate
greater conflict, perhaps even war in water-scarce regions.
Unless we acknowledge this crisis and take steps to head it
off, our future on a global scale could look a lot like certain
locales in the past when, 4,500 years ago, the city states of
Lugash and Umma went to war over irrigation rights along the Tigris
River. Indeed, in our time, we are already witnessing outbreaks
among farmers fighting over resources from Cochabamba, Bolivia,
to Cauvery, India.
And if nothing is done in the next 10 to 15 years, the thirst
for peace in the dry and volatile Middle East may revert to a
belligerent fight over water.
A GLOBAL ISSUE
A glance at a world map conveys the erroneous impression that
there could hardly be a water problem. But 97 percent of Earth's
water is in the sea and very expensive to desalinate. Two percent
is locked in the polar icecaps. Subtracting the amount lost to
floods, evaporation, inaccessible regions and contamination, that
leaves a mere 0.1 percent of global water resources to sustain
billions of us in the coming century.
It is true that this limited freshwater is a renewable resource;
in principle it can be fully recycled and reused. But contamination
beyond repair diminishes even what is available in limited quantities.
Much of the world relies on natural underground aquifers for
freshwater. Yet, we are rapidly using those reserves, digging
ever deeper wells (like those in northern Syria) and lowering
water tables in every continent. Some alarmed Chinese leaders
have even suggested moving their capital from Beijing because
of chronic water shortages.
More than half the major rivers in the world are going dry
or are so polluted they endanger the health of those depending
on them. In 1998, 25 million people fled their homes because of
water crises in river basins -- a far higher number than refugees
from war in that same period. Have we already forgotten the floods
in Mozambique earlier this year or in Bangladesh?
In the developing world, roughly a quarter of the population
or 1.3 billion people -- does not have access to clean water.
More than twice that number, almost 3 billion people, lack proper
sanitation, causing millions of deaths each year -- mainly as
a result of children drinking contaminated water.
Region by region across the globe, freshwater resources are
under strain. The Ganges in India, believed to be sacred and often
a burial place for the dead, carries typhoid, cholera and diarrhea
to the living.
In China, the Yellow River, which caused so much grief throughout
that country's long history because of flooding, is running dry
because of the rapid expansion of agriculture, industry and population
along its meandering 3,600-mile path.
In the former Soviet Union, the Aral Sea remains the world's
foremost example of the kind of ecological calamity mismanagement
of water resources can cause. When Soviet central planners decided
to grow cotton in the desert, they diverted water from the rivers
flowing into the Aral Sea to irrigate crops on which pesticides
were heavily applied. The sea has since shrunk to two-thirds of
its former size, leaving the old port town of Muynak 30 miles
from the present coast.
Today, the native fish are all gone, and salt and toxic dust
from pesticide runoff chokes the area. Children suffer chronic
respiratory diseases as a result.
Even the Colorado River that has made Los Angeles bloom in
a virtual desert is ranked as one of the world's most stressed
and over-committed rivers.
A DRY PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST?
More than anywhere else, the Middle East exemplifies the perils
and possibilities created by the water crisis. Turkey, in the
far north, is blessed with abundant water supplies. As the rivers
run down into Syria and on into Jordan and Israel, however, there
is scarcely enough water for the present population of the Jordan
Valley. And if current trends continue, this population will double
in the next 20 years.
Already, the Israeli rate of usage of water per acre for irrigating
crops is just 30 percent of that used by U.S. agriculture. Still,
Israel uses far more water than the Palestinians who, on the verge
of realizing the dream of their own state, nonetheless fear ''a
dry peace.''
In the past 10 years the various states in the Middle East
have spent billions to acquire arms instead of building water
pipelines or finding ways to conserve, clean and use water more
efficiently on a shared, regional basis.
We all know that deserts create poverty, and that poverty
often leads to war -- especially when everyone is armed to the
teeth. But missiles in an armed desert can't carry water any more
than minefields can stop pollution from crossing borders.
The alternative to another round of conflict, this time over
water instead of land, is cooperation. Desalinization or joint
management is cheaper than launching wars for rivers.
Recently, Green Cross International, supported by the Peres
Institute for Peace, has launched a joint effort to encourage
cooperation among all stakeholders by finding a way to manage
water on a regional basis.
Such an effort is especially critical for Israel, Jordan and
the Palestinians, who must get water from the same aquifers. In
March, Jordan's King Abdullah, Israel's President Ehud Barak and
the Palestinian Authority's President Yasser Arafat all announced
support for this initiative.
In the long term, of course, any settlement of the water issue
would have to include Syria and Lebanon, which will hopefully
be brought into the process sooner rather than later. (Mr. Gorbachev
will personally play a mediating role with Syria.)
Overall, we are optimistic about the prospects for cooperation
in the Middle East. This should be an example for other areas,
from the Parana Rio de la Plata in South America to the Nile River
Basin in Africa. More than 300 water basins in the world are shared
by two or more countries -- all of which will have to work out
complementary arrangements.
GLOBAL SOLUTIONS
On the international level, several proposals have been set
forth that will help encourage regional cooperation, ease conflict
and offer a peaceful and sustainable solution to the problems
of water scarcity and pollution.
Green Cross International, which promotes international mediation
to prevent water conflicts and encourages integrated basin management,
has proposed the creation of watercourse management authorities
for critical international basins, with the authority and tools
to implement regional decisions. The legitimacy of such regional
bodies derives from a new concept made necessary by 21st-century
realities: Like liberty and the right to a livelihood, access
to clean, safe water should be regarded as a human right.
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has also recently
proposed a worldwide water alliance to keep neighboring countries
from fighting over water. Instead of a formal NATO-like structure,
the water alliance would be open to those countries and governments
that ''understand the urgency of working together to conserve
transboundary water, manage it wisely and use it well.''
We support these proposals as important steps in a new awareness
that the planet's most precious resource must be husbanded in
the 21st century. If this awareness can be translated into a political
practice of cooperation instead of conflict, humanity as a whole
will have reached a new watershed for peace.
(c) 2000, Nobel Laureates 2000. Distributed by the Los Angeles
Times Syndicate
For immediate release (Distributed 5/15/00)