Bitter Harvest

There is a high price you are paying for putting food on the dinner table. And it's not just the money; experts say the environmental costs of producing food have been steadily rising. That, in the long term, is one of the biggest threats to food security in the country.

These costs aren't restricted to the greenhouse gas emissions associated with modern agriculture industry. In the past few decades, farming has led to depletion of resources, soil degradation and pollution. On all these counts, the country's "breadbasket" belt of Punjab and Haryana — the region that lifted India out of foodgrain shortages in the 1970s —has scored poorly. And, the scores aren't getting better.

As economist and Planning Commission member, Abhijit Sen, puts it, "In the case of Punjab and Haryana, we have actually mined the area. We knew the problems but ignored them as these states were producing the food."
Take the case of water. According to the Central Groundwater Board, the water table is receding in 80% of Punjab and 70% of Haryana. The average depletion rate per year is 30-40 cm and goes up to 1 metre at some places. In other words, a proportion of Indians consume food grown with water that belongs to our children. In the long term, the International Water Management Institute estimates shrinking of ground water will reduce India's grain output by one fourth.

Experts feel policy interventions should have come long back to soften the adverse environmental impact of agriculture. Says Ashok K Gulati, Asia director of International Food Policy Research Institute, "Much of the water depletion in Punjab and Haryana is due to water-sapping paddy cultivation. This is a semi-arid region not suited for paddy. High-yield paddy cultivation should shift east, where there's comparative advantage for the crop."

Ramesh Chand of National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research agrees that northwest India wasn't the most suited region for Green Revolution's thrust for raising paddy yields. "Punjab and Haryana farmers, through hard work, 'earned' the comparative advantage in paddy. But it has had its consequences. Now, farmers there should be encouraged to adopt the new rice intensification technique that needs less water. There has to be a gradual shift away from paddy."

Both Gulati and Chand stress that free power to farmers has also led to water wastage through indiscriminate pumping. In Punjab, there are over 10 lakh tubewell connections. "We have to have a policy that accounts for electricity used by farmers," says Gulati.

Water is one aspect of the problem. There's evidence that soil quality in these intensive farming areas is deteriorating. Says food analyst Devinder Sharma, "The micro-nutrient level in soils from Punjab has been found to be 0.1%. It should ideally be 2%." This has come about due to a skewed fertiliser policy that gives more subsidy to certain nutrients, leading to disproportionate use by farmers.

Then there are pesticides that enter the food cycle due to indiscriminate use. A study by PGIMER Chandigarh linked the growing number of cancer cases in some Punjab districts to pesticides. Says Sharma, "We have been using chemicals even where they aren't needed. For instance, the International Rice Research Institute has concluded that in Asia, pesticide use in rice was a waste of time and money."

Sharma says the country needs to rethink the high-input chemical-based Green Revolution model. Other experts say a gamut of measures and policy initiatives are needed for a shift towards sustainable agriculture – intensive linkages between researchers and farmers, and adoption of a holistic approach that looks at soil health, conservation and better quality of life for farmers.

Climate change predictions have injected urgency to these moves. A 2006 study by the Pune-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology says the rainfall pattern in India is changing, with more events of heavy rainfall replacing light rains. The implication is dire: Less light rainfall means less recharging of ground aquifers. More events of heavy rain will lead to an increase in natural disasters.

Last week, representatives from 90 countries met at Johannesburg for an intergovernmental plenary on agriculture. After sustained debate, the International Assessment of Agriculture Science and Technology for Development released 'blueprints' for agriculture's survival. The report on south Asia says: "Climate change and variability will emerge as major threats to the agricultural sector in most of the region. With a plateau of productivity in key Green Revolution areas, achieving increases in food and other agricultural production necessitates broadening the base of agricultural growth."

India was a signatory to the document. Now is the time to put the words into action.
Amit Bhattacharya

amit.bhattacharya@timesgroup.com
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Deep_Focus/Bitter_Harvest/articleshow/2964353.cms

Aquifers and Rivers Are Running Dry.

Photo: Donald Milne
That the news is familiar makes it no less alarming: 1.1 billion people, about one-sixth of the world's population, lack access to safe drinking water. Aquifers under Beijing, Delhi, Bangkok, and dozens of other rapidly growing urban areas are drying up. The rivers Ganges, Jordan, Nile, and Yangtze — all dwindle to a trickle for much of the year. In the former Soviet Union, the Aral Sea has shrunk to a quarter of its former size, leaving behind a salt-crusted waste.

Water has been a serious issue in the developing world for so long that dire reports of shortages in Cairo or Karachi barely register. But the scarcity of freshwater is no longer a problem restricted to poor countries. Shortages are reaching crisis proportions in even the most highly developed regions, and they're quickly becoming commonplace in our own backyard, from the bleached-white bathtub ring around the Southwest's half-empty Lake Mead to the parched state of Georgia, where the governor prays for rain. Crops are collapsing, groundwater is disappearing, rivers are failing to reach the sea. Call it peak water, the point at which the renewable supply is forever outstripped by unquenchable demand.

This is not to say the world is running out of water. The same amount exists on Earth today as millions of years ago — roughly 360 quintillion gallons. It evaporates, coalesces in clouds, falls as rain, seeps into the earth, and emerges in springs to feed rivers and lakes, an endless hydrologic cycle ordained by immutable laws of chemistry. But 97 percent of it is in the oceans, where it's useless unless the salt can be removed — a process that consumes enormous quantities of energy. Water fit for drinking, irrigation, husbandry, and other human uses can't always be found where people need it, and it's heavy and expensive to transport. Like oil, water is not equitably distributed or respectful of political boundaries; about 50 percent of the world's freshwater lies in a half-dozen lucky countries.

Freshwater is the ultimate renewable resource, but humanity is extracting and polluting it faster than it can be replenished. Rampant economic growth — more homes, more businesses, more water-intensive products and processes, a rising standard of living — has simply outstripped the ready supply, especially in historically dry regions. Compounding the problem, the hydrologic cycle is growing less predictable as climate change alters established temperature patterns around the globe.

One barrier to better management of water resources is simply lack of data — where the water is, where it's going, how much is being used and for what purposes, how much might be saved by doing things differently. In this way, the water problem is largely an information problem. The information we can assemble has a huge bearing on how we cope with a world at peak water.

That data already shows the era of easy water is ending. Even economically advanced regions face unavoidable pressures — on their industrial output, the quality of life in their cities, their food supply. Wired visited three such areas: the American Southwest, southeastern England, and southeastern Australia. The difficulties these places face today are harbingers of the dawning era of peak water, and their struggles to find solutions offer a glimpse of the challenge ahead.

On the descent into Sky Harbor International Airport, Phoenix's endless grid of streets and tract homes is etched into the desert floor like the imprinted surface of a microchip. When the sunlight hits at the right angle, the canals that zigzag across the landscape light up like semiconductor traces surging with electricity.

And Phoenix is sprawling at a rate that seems to rival Moore's law. In the 1990s, the metro area was growing at the rate of an acre every three hours. The population is expected to nearly double in the next 20 years. But cities, unlike microchips, don't double in efficiency every 18 months. A 2007 government report stated that staggering growth in the American Southwest "will inevitably result in increasingly costly, controversial, and unavoidable trade-off choices." The issue: how to parcel out a dwindling water supply.

The city's chief water sources are the Salt River Project and the Central Arizona Project, two massive water systems that bookend a century-long effort to hydrate the region. The Salt River Project began in 1903 with the Roosevelt Dam, which reined in the flood-prone waterway. Today, the SRP is a vast network of reservoirs, hydroelectric dams, and channels. As for the Central Arizona Project, it's one of the largest and most expensive aqueducts in the US, completed in 1993 at a cost of $3.6 billion. The 336-mile CAP canal diverts 489 billion gallons a year from the Colorado River, irrigating more than 300,000 acres of farmland and slaking the thirst of Phoenix and Tucson.

By Matthew Power
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-05/ff_peakwater#

Musician's campaign for clean water wins environmental award

Feliciano dos Santos in San Francisco with his award.
Credit: Goldman Environmental Prize


A musician with polio, who has dedicated his life to campaigning for clean water and sanitation, has been awarded the world's most notable environmental prize for grassroots activists.

Feliciano dos Santos is one of six recipients of the international Goldman Environmental Prize, recognized for his commitment to campaigning for better public health through safe water and sanitation in Mozambique.

More than half of the population of Mozambique lives in extreme poverty without access to clean water or basic sanitation. The World Health Organisation attributes 80 percent of all illness in the world to unsafe water and poor sanitation, and over two million people (including 1.5 million children) worldwide die from water-related diseases each year.

Santos's work
Born in a remote village in Mozambique's northern province of Niassa, Santos grew up poor and was disabled by polio as a result of contaminated water and poor sanitation. His experiences led him to set up a local NGO, Estamos, where he is now leading a novel program of public health initiatives. Estamos is a valued partner organization of WaterAid in Mozambique.

Santos has developed a unique approach to communicate the importance of clean water and sanitation, using the power of music to convey public health messages and initiate social change. Through his band, Massukos, Santos draws in locals to hear songs that focus on health, water and HIV/AIDS.


With sanitation as the theme for some of his songs, Santos has turned a taboo subject into music with a message that has a direct impact on people's lives. His music inspires people to keep a clean, healthy home and village, and helps them understand how their interaction with the environment affects things such as water and food supply.

An innovative approach
Through Estamos, Santos began working in Niassa - where many villages lack even a basic sanitation infrastructure - promoting low-cost, environmentally sustainable sanitation that composts human waste into nutrient-rich fertilizers. Families that use this model report fewer diseases, better soil retention and a 100% improvement in crop production.

This sanitation model enables villagers to produce enough food for their families and generate a small income from selling some of their harvest. Santos's innovative approach has now become the model for sustainable development programs worldwide.

The success of Santos's work is due to personal involvement rather than imposing sanitation systems or behavioral change. He works with villagers in workshops, helping them understand their sanitation options so that they can choose the best solution and build it themselves.


Having helped thousands of people in the villages of Niassa, Santos is now working through Estamos in the capital, Maputo, and in three districts in northern Mozambique.

WaterAid's Joe Gomme described the impact of Estamos and Santos's work: "Although certain communities have taken up ecological sanitation enthusiastically, it has not yet spread significantly to communities in which Estamos has not worked. Estamos has always been strong in community education work, and taking that to many more communities is now the new challenge."

Listen to Santos being interviewed on the BBC World Service.


The prize
Established in 1990, the Goldman Environmental Prize is awarded each year to environmental heroes from six continental regions. Endorsed by more than 100 heads of state, the prize allows individuals to continue winning environmental victories against the odds and inspires ordinary people to take extraordinary actions to protect the world.

This year, the prize winners received their awards at the San Francisco Opera House on Monday April 14, 2008.

‘Climate change means less water, less food’

Rainfall in India and other tropical and sub-tropical countries has gone down from the 1970s due to global warming, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), predicting that food supplies will also go down in these regions. Climate change means more evaporation of fresh water, changing rainfall patterns, reduced snow cover and widespread melting of ice and changes in soil moisture and runoff, all becoming highly probable, says the latest report by the UN body.

This would have “wide-ranging consequences on human societies and ecosystems”, says the IPCC, the organisation that shared the Nobel Peace Prize last year for its seminal fourth assessment report that has focussed world attention on the menace of climate change.

“Over the 20th century precipitation has mostly increased over land in high northern latitudes, while decreases have dominated from 10

By Joydeep Gupta

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/enviornment/climate-change-means-less-water-less-food_10037114.html

Climate change might lead to water crisis in future

The findings are based on the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which has concluded that sea level could rise as much as 23 inches within the next 100 years, thus flooding coasts worldwide. In the United States, lands along the East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico are most likely to be flooded as sea levels rise. Vulnerable areas worldwide include Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and northern Europe.

Based on this report, hydrologists have simulated how this situation would lead to saltwater intruding into fresh water aquifers. The researchers simulated coastlines made entirely of coarse or fine sand, and different textures in between.

Scientists had previously assumed that, as saltwater moved inland, it would penetrate underground only as far as it did above ground.

According to Motomu Ibaraki, associate professor of earth sciences at Ohio State, “Most people are probably aware of the damage that rising sea levels can do above ground, but not underground, which is where the fresh water is.”

The new research shows that when saltwater and fresh water meet, they mix in complex ways, depending on the texture of the sand along the coastline. In some cases, a zone of mixed, or brackish, water can extend 50 percent further inland underground than it does above ground.

This was also illustrated in the simulations made by the scientists. It showed that, the more layers a coastline has, the more the saltwater and fresh water mix. The mixing causes convection, which is similar to the currents that stir water in the open sea. Between the incoming saltwater and the inland fresh water, a pool of brackish water forms.

Further sea level rise increases the mixing even more, which leads to the underground brackish water being extended 10 to 50 per cent further inland than the saltwater on the surface.

Like saltwater, brackish water is not safe to drink because it causes dehydration. Water that contains less than 250 milligrams of salt per liter is considered fresh water and safe to drink.

“Climate change is already diminishing fresh water resources, with changes in precipitation patterns and the melting of glaciers. With this work, we are pointing out another way that climate change can potentially reduce available drinking water. The coastlines that are vulnerable include some of the most densely populated regions of the world,” Ibaraki added.

“Almost 40 percent of the world population lives in coastal areas, less than 60 kilometers from the shoreline,” Mizuno said. “These regions may face loss of freshwater resources more than we originally thought,” he added.

The solution for this crisis situation is obtaining economical water for everybody.

“In order to obtain cheap water for everybody, we need to use groundwater, river water, or lake water,” Ibaraki said.

But the problem is that these water resources are disappearing due to several factors like an increase in demand and climate change. This calls for the need to create new fresh water resources.

“One way to create more fresh water is to desalinate saltwater, for which we need massive energy,” said Ibaraki. “So our water problem would become an energy problem in the future,” he added. (ANI)

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/sci-tech/climate-change-might-lead-to-water-crisis-in-future_1004104.html

Indus River dying a slow death owing to climate change

“India is named for the Indus River, along whose fecund banks a great urban civilisation flourished more than 4,000 years ago,” writes American historian Stanley Wolpert in his well-know book A New History of India. But the 3,000-kilometre-long river that is the lifeline of Pakistan’s economy is dying a slow death due to thinning of Tibetan glaciers and building of dams and barrages upstream.

The glaciers of the Tibetan plateau are vanishing so fast that they will be reduced by 50 per cent every decade, according to The Independent. Citing the leading Chinese scientists, it says the glaciers have been receding over the past four decades, as the world has gradually warmed up, but the process has now accelerated alarmingly. “The melting threatens to disrupt water supplies over much of Asia. Many of the continent’s greatest rivers-including the Yangtze, the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong and the Yellow River rise on the plateau,” the report says.

The Indus also has great heritage value and many fascinating names. In Tibet it is the Lion River issuing from the mouth of the Lion, in the gutter between the Karakoram and the Himalayas people call it ‘The Eastern River’, because it comes to them from the sunrise. It is also called ‘Abasin’, the Father of Rivers. In ancient times, says historian Jean Fairley, it was called ‘Sindhu’, meaning divider, keeper or defender, the name was gradually changed to Indus.

However, the grandiose of the River Indus is melting fast and points to a creeping emergency because it happens to be the main source of water supply to Pakistan’s major cities, including Karachi, besides irrigation. The situation can be gauged from the fact that freshwater availability in Pakistan has fallen from 5,200 cubic metres per capita in 1947 to less than 1,000 cubic metre currently, making it one of the most parched nations in the world.

The damming of the River Indus has further deteriorated the situation. “Before dams and barrages were built in the Indus Valley, the delta area was criss-crossed by the distributaries of the Indus. The discharge from the river was large enough to affect the ocean currents up to over a hundred miles from the shore. Due to this “an enormous quantity of freshwater and silt the river were brought with it and the delta lands became the richest in the area that constitutes Pakistan,” says noted town planner and architect, Arif Hasan.

The gradual but disastrous cut in the flow of freshwater to the Indus Delta has not only affected the lives and livelihood of the inhabitants of the once fertile delta, it has also led to sea intrusion up to 54km (36 miles) upstream along the main river course of the River Indus. “Nearly 1.6 million acres of agricultural land has been destroyed by sea intrusion,” says Mohammad Ali Shah, Chairman, Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF). As a result, tens of thousands of inhabitants of Indus Delta have been forced to migrate to greener pastures, including Ibrahim Hyderi, a fishing village in the suburbs of Karachi.

The lack of fresh water (down stream Kotri Barrage) has also badly affected the mangrove forests that happen to be the nurseries of shrimp and fish species. This indirectly affects the fishing industry of Pakistan that fetches $200 million per annum in terms of exports. “Studies have shown that some 60 per cent to 80 per cent of world’s commercial fisheries catch are mangrove dependent species,” says Tropical Rainforest Portfolio 1996-2001, a report prepared by the World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature and the Netherlands government.

The precarious situation has been an outcome of the non-availability of freshwater downstream Kotri Barrage. This is amply demonstrated by the fact that the average annual and seasonal discharge downstream Kotri Barrage was 150 million acre feet (MAF) in 1880-92 but was merely 10MAF in 1992 due to building of dams and barrages upstream.

By Shahid Husain

http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=106526

solvewater ‘crisis’ in three easy steps

California has enough water. Surprised?

We hear endlessly about the “water crisis.” Politicians are pushing to build more dams, at a cost of several billion dollars each. Even the Peripheral Canal has resurfaced as a solution to our crisis. Yet do we really need to pile on to the state’s debt and wait decades for these “solutions” to be built? Isn’t there a quicker, cheaper, smarter answer to our problems?

Let’s be clear. California certainly faces major water challenges such as global warming and increased demand. So, some people are rushing to build dams — expensive 19th century solutions to 21st century problems. We don’t need solutions that are expensive, destructive and useless. A little common sense shows us that the real answers to our problems are easy, efficient and smart.

Why dams don’t work: Dams are expensive. Dams today are the most expensive option for water, costing billions of dollars each to build and maintain. Taxpayers could end up paying a bill that’s almost 50 times — yes, 50 times! — the cost of smarter solutions.

Dams are destructive. California already has lost 90 percent of its river environment. We have lost 95 percent of our salmon and steelhead habitat. Our commercial fisheries — and the communities they once supported — are barely hanging on as it is. Building more dams will only destroy more rivers and more fisheries.

Dams are useless. California already has 1,400 dams on its rivers. As a practical matter, there is very little water to collect behind new dams anymore. According to the state, new dams would provide even less reliable water than cloud seeding!

Why common sense does work: Saving water is easy. Conservation really does work. California has cut its per capita water use by 50 percent over the past 40 years, even as the state has boomed. Simply using the tools we already have — such as new appliances and drip irrigation — we can easily cut our water use another 20 percent and still support a growing population and even bigger economy.

Recycling water is efficient. Why spray clean, clear drinking water on our golf courses and median strips? We can use the rainwater that runs into our storm drains and recycle our wastewater. Through reclamation and recycling we can save enough drinking water each year for 1.5 million households — roughly all of Los Angeles.

Storing water is smart. Every year enough water for almost 3 million households — one-quarter of all the households in California — disappears into thin air behind our existing dams. It’s much smarter to store our water underground, by allowing it to seep into the water table. In fact, we already store enough water underground to fill Hetch Hetchy 15 times over — and there’s room for much, much more.

These three easy steps easily beat billion-dollar dams and canals.

By Tony Bogar

Tony Bogar works with Friends of the River, California’s statewide river conservation group (www.friendsoftheriver.org).

HUMAN RIGHTS AND ACCESS TO SAFE DRINKING WATER AND SANITATION

Attached is A/HRC/7/L.16 - UN Human Rights Council Resolution-7th Session 2008
_____________________________________________________________________

http://www.cohre.org/water

COHRE - Centre on Housing Rights & Evictions


http://vague.eurecom.fr/topics/WaterRight/snews587370

UN Human Rights Council Moves Forward on the Right to Safe Water

and Sanitation - Resolution - Independent Expert on Water & Sanitation

On 28 February 2008, the UN Human Rights Council, the primary United Nations body for human rights issues adopted by consensus a Resolution on 'Human Rights and Access to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation.' Through this Resolution, the Council established a new 'Independent Expert on the issue of human rights obligations related to access to safe drinking water and sanitation.' The Independent Expert will work for 3 years on two primary tasks. First, to identify, promote and exchange on best practices related to access to safe drinking water and sanitation, and, in that regard, to prepare a compendium of best practices; and second, to carry out further clarification of the content of human rights obligations, including non-discrimination obligations, in relation to access to safe drinking water and sanitation.



RIGHT TO WATER



Worldwide, over 1.1 billion individuals lack access to an affordable supply of clean water for their basic needs. Over 2.4 billion people lack access to basic sanitation. Many communities living in slums and low-income neighbourhoods in urban and rural areas are charged unaffordable prices for drinking water, spend several hours daily collecting water or have no alternative but to use contaminated water from rivers or unprotected wells. Clean sanitation facilities are frequently unavailable, inaccessible or insecure. Women and children bear the brunt of this neglect. Development-related evictions and relocations – a constant threat for slum-dwellers – can significantly reduce the access of the affected people to water and sanitation. The imposition of cost recovery for water services has slowed down extension of access and has led in some situations to mass disconnections. In several countries, well-intentioned efforts to resolve the problem have failed due to entrenched traditions of top-down management, discrimination and corruption. Such efforts will continue to fail until marginalised communities have the opportunity and capacity to genuinely participate in decision-making and to hold governments fully accountable.

The laws and policies of many countries provide scant protection for marginalised groups and often lack enforcement mechanisms. Water services can be disconnected without notice and without provision of an alternative water supply despite the dire threats to life and health. Water prices can be arbitrarily increased even where water costs constitute the bulk of an individual or family budget. There are an insufficient number of monitoring bodies to ensure the equitable implementation of water policies and provide redress for violations.

Many of the people denied such basic necessities live in countries with sufficient water supplies and finances or where the bulk of public subsidies do not primarily benefit the poorest members of society. Thus, the argument of scant resources cannot explain away these gross inadequacies. Rather, it is clear that a combination of discrimination, the lack of political will, the exclusion of communities, and inadequate legal structures result in such conditions. Most countries lack a proper system of monitoring and accountability to ensure the equitable implementation of water policies and provide redress for violations.

The international community has affirmed the human right to water in a number of international treaties, declarations and other documents. Most notably, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights adopted in November 2002 a General Comment on the Right to Water setting out international standards and obligations relating to the right to water.



General Comment 15, United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (2002)