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Development of global water resources stressed by Staff Reporter , Khaleej Times - 23 April 2001 WINNERS of the Zayed International Prize for Environment have called for sustainable development of water resources globally, at a conference organised yesterday morning.The prizewinners spoke about their areas of expertise. Professor Mohammed El Kassas of Egypt, the second prize winner and former president of IUCN, spoke about his field of study - aridity, drought and desertification. Prof. El Kassas said irregularity in rainfall had led to 60 per cent of rainlands in the world being damaged. "Desertification is often not an ecological phenomenon but a societal one as it often occurs in areas with above-average rainfall," he said. He gave many examples of desertification caused by socio-economic factors, such as invasion of mesquite in the rangelands of Texas which forced animals to feed themselves in smaller areas causing pressure on the land and the 'shift cultivation' practised in the gum Arabic belt of Sudan which rotated cultivation of crops with growth of shrubs every 30 years but could not maintain the cycle due to pressure of growing populations, proving the rhythm of action disastrous. Land transformation in Egypt which has expanded the urban sprawl of Cairo into thousands of hectares of arable land, overdrawing of groundwater in the Ogallala aquifer in the US, irrigation drainage imbalance in countries like Iraq, the US, India, Russia, Pakistan and Syria and labour shortage in Yemen due to workers travelling to Gulf countries which led to the deterioration of terrace farming were some other examples he provided of human action leading to desertification. "We cannot fight drought as it is a natural phenomenon but we can manage it." He said continued drought in regions like Africa could be managed in three ways. "We need an early warning system, societal preparedness and a global mechanism by which a worldwide network of research stations could share their knowledge on climactic conditions and help predict seasonal variations in rainfall, as parallels had been noticed in phenomena such as El Nino and rainfall in tropical countries. "Needless to say, this knowledge should be shared without any barriers such as intellectual property rights. Such sharing has led to many success stories such as the growth of rice in the Philippines and wheat in Mexico. We, as humans, now use only 0.001 per cent of the earth's water. If this can be increased to 0.002 per cent, with the support of new technologies to develop water resources, we can cultivate 40 per cent of the world's drylands and reduce the level of carbondioxide in the world significantly." He said a few ways water output could be increased would be to find cheaper methods of desalination which can be adopted by poor countries, fund better methods of pumping groundwater from underground reservoirs and initiate experiments like the one tried in Saudi Arabia, in which an iceberg was towed from the north pole to meet its freshwater needs. "Such experiments may not be successful initially but are still worth trying," said Prof. El Kassas. Dr Klaus Topfer, UNEP executive director and chairman of the international jury selecting winners of the Zayed Environment Prize, who was the moderator at the conference, said water scarcity should be tackled both from the demand side and the supply side. Fifty per cent of water in African cities leaks away and never reaches the consumer, so it would be much more cost-effective to invest in this area than find new sources of water," he said. Adding to this, the minister for water affairs in South Africa and the chairman of the World Commission on dams, who shares the second prize, spoke about the commission's work in researching the effects of dams on human settlements. He said one in five people in the world lacked access to safe drinking water and half of the world lacked proper sanitation, adding dams had provided many benefits to mankind ever since the beginning of civilisation and hydroelectricity meets the power needs of 63 countries today. Some 45,000 dams have been built at the rate of one per day and $2 trillion have been invested in dams worldwide, which has displaced 40 million people at a conservative estimate, he said. The benefits of dams were enjoyed more in cities than those downstream. Sharing of dam waters had also caused enormous cross-border tensions, he added. "This is simply not acceptable. True, we need to store water as water tables in countries are falling, rivers are drying up and farmers compete with cities for water, but we must find new ways to conserve water, such as building a series of smaller dams and finding other means to store water." Stephan Schmidheiny, third prize winner and founder and former president of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, spoke about sustainable business. He said business could help civilisation live within its environmental means instead of becoming part of the problem. He said globalisation of markets and democracy had caused great changes in the world and leading companies, many of which are members of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development had proved that eco-efficiency pays off at the bottom line. The "new knowledge" and "new service" economy had led smart companies to clean up their act as they realised destructive effects on climate are going to become more economically and politically pressing and led them to cooperate with government and society and offer solutions. He said markets have been governed by humans and it was up to us to try to shape it as a force for good rather than becoming frozen in the headlights of globalisation. Yolanda Kakabadse, president of IUCN and founder and president of the foundation 'Furturo Latino Americano', spoke about the role of NGOs. She said NGOs had gained a bad Press thanks to the recent disturbances at the world trade gatherings in Quebec and Seattle but they played a vital role in acting as society's conscience. They are the voice of society screaming to be heard by decision-makers in governments. They define responsibility. Who else in the world is criticising today's consumption patterns. She said they played a vital role at the grassroots level, working in small rural communities where their efforts were not recognised and energising local authorities. "We cannot tar them all with the same brush. There are good and bad NGOs and of course they need to be accountable and provide clear explanations about their funds. But they have become so necessary today that if NGOS did not exist we would invent them."
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