Water for people.pdf - WHO Thailand Digital Repository

2 9 4 / M A N A G E M E N T C H A L L E N G E S : S T E W A R D S H I P A N D G O V E R N A N C ESharing Water: Defining a Common InterestWATER IS ESSENTIAL to national economic and social development, in the areas of health, food, industry andenergy. As a resource that transcends most political and administrative boundaries, the world’s availablefreshwater must be shared among and between individuals, economic sectors, intrastate jurisdictions andsovereign nations, while respecting the need for environmental sustainability. The challenges surrounding the equitablesharing of water resources are complex and have intensified in recent years due to population growth, developmentpressures and changing needs and values. There is already growing competition between different development sectorsin countries, to varying degrees. This has placed increasing strain on freshwater supplies both in terms of quantity andquality, resulting in tensions and, indeed, conflict between uses, users and across political boundaries.In any single country, the commitment to the MillenniumDevelopment Goals will increase water use in all key sectors, whilethe available water resource will remain the same. Thus, unlessmanaged holistically with adequate sharing of water betweensectors, each individual Millennium target involving water may notbe achievable, to the detriment of those particular areas ofeconomic or social development in most need of help andecosystem integrity.Furthermore, many countries rely on upstream member statesfor inflow, and therefore attainment of the Millennium Goals in anysingle country cannot depend solely on that water under thegovernance of national sovereignty alone. Attainment of targets andthe associated people-centred outcomes by downstream countrieswill, to varying degrees, be dependent upon the actions ofupstream countries. Conversely, in the case of longstandingarrangements for water sharing, later development of upstreamcountries may be constrained by precedents set for downstream useor existing agreements.In recent years, as concern over the equitable allocation andsustainable development of scarce water stocks has heightened,efforts to improve the management of shared water resources haveexpanded. The Declaration of the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, andthe accompanying Agenda 21 Action Plan, for example, called uponthe international community to recognize the multisector nature ofwater resources and to holistically manage the resource within andacross national boundaries. Since then numerous policy and legalactions have been executed at all scales. These have included thepassing of new national water laws, which have introduced orreinforced Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM)techniques, the creation of national and international river basinorganizations, and the adoption of international conventions,treaties and declarations concerning the management of freshwatersupplies. Additionally, the concept of ‘virtual water’, whichrecognizes the sharing of water resources between water-rich andwater-poor countries via trade in agricultural products andmanufactured goods, has gained increasing attention in the post-Rioperiod.Competition for Water withinCountriesAnalysis of total water abstraction as a proportion of river flowallows levels of water stress in a basin to be assessed. Map 12.1shows the drainage basins that are considered to be under mediumor high stress and the principal use of water in these regions.There are many examples of how competition for scarce waterwithin countries is increasing as a result of population growth andthe need to satisfy social and economic development. These issuesare of increasing importance in both the developed and developingworld, and on a small and large scale. On a small scale, examplesinclude Fiji, where indigenous peoples’ water management, blendedwith ritual, is being threatened by the development of a governmenthydropower scheme, and the case of a small town in Colombia,where the community is experiencing the consequences of unfairallocation of water as illustrated in box 12.1.On a larger scale, consider the case of China, which has achievedrapid economic and social development over the past twenty years,although the per capita resource is only a quarter of the globalaverage. Through improvements in irrigated agriculture, China nowprovides food security for 22 percent of the world’s population,using only 7 percent of the world’s cultivated land. China has anannual average precipitation of 648 millimetres (mm), a runoff of2,712 cubic kilometres (km 3 ), groundwater reserves of 829 km 3 , anda total water resource volume that is sixth in the world at 2,812 km 3 .Due to the huge population and area of farmland, the water volumeper capita or per hectare is small. The resource is, in addition,unevenly distributed with the south benefiting from more water thanthe north, while there are large variations within and between yearsas well as in quality. In recent years, overall domestic and industrialwater use in China has been steadily increasing, while irrigationwater use is unchanged. The total volume of water use in the year2000 reached 550 km 3 , of which 58 km 3 was for domestic use,114 km 3 for industry and 378 km 3 for irrigation. Today,industrialization is a main cause of the decrease in water availabilityand use for irrigation, as discussed in chapter 8. These factors haveled to areas of intense competition between sectors, even within