Table Of ContentAsit K. Biswas
Water Resources ofNorth America
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg GmbH
Asit K. Biswas (Ed.)
Wa ter Resources
ofNorthAmerica
with 66 Figures and 41 Tables
Springer
PROFESSOR ASIT K. BISWAS
Avenida Manantial Griente 27
Los Clubes, Atizapan
Estado de Mexico, 52958, Mexico
Email: [email protected]
cover photo: © Bryan P. Bernart
ISBN 978-3-642-05550-8 ISBN 978-3-662-10868-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-10868-0
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Biswas, Asit K.
W ater resources of N orth America I Asit K. Biswas.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
l. Water resources development-North America. 2. Water-supply-North America-
Management. I. Tide.
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Preface
Leonardo da Vinci, the eminent Renaissance scholar and philosopher said, "water
is the driver of nature". Many may have considered it to be an overstatement in
the past, but at the beginning of the third millennium, no sane individual would
disagree with Leonardo's view. Water is becoming an increasingly scarce
resource for most of the world's citizens. The current trends indicate that the
overall situation is likely to deteriorate further, at least for the next two decades,
unless the water profession eschews its existing "business as usual" practices,
which can only allow incremental changes to occur.
Somewhat surprisingly, the water profession as a whole neither realised nor
appreciated the gravity of the global water situation as late as 1990, even though
a few serious scholars have been pointing out the increasing criticality of the
situation from around 1982. For example, the seriousness of the crisis was not a
major issue, either at the International Conference on W ater and the
Environment, which was organised by the UN system in Dublin and also at the
UN Conference on Environment and Development at Rio de Janeiro. Held in
1992, both are considered to be important events for the water sector of the past
decade. It is now being increasingly recognised that the Dublin Conference was
poorly planned and organised, and thus not surprisingly it produced very little, if
any, worthwhile and lasting results. Furthermore, as the Dublin Conference was
expected to make the necessary inputs to the Rio discussions, water did not
receive proper emphasis at Rio. For all practical purposes, at Rio, water was
basically ignored by all the Heads of States, whose primary interests were
focused on issues like climate change, biodiversity, and deforestation. Water was
at best a very minor issue during the plenary sessions at Rio. Equally, the chapter
on water in Agenda 21 is not only the Iongest but also is the most poorly
formulated.
Thus, in spite of the rhetorics of many international institutions, the impacts of
the Dublin and the Rio Conferences on water management globally and
regionally are now not discernible. In all probability, the developments in the
water sector would not have been materially different even if these two events
had never occurred. Much as though this simple fact was consistently denied by
VI Preface
the institutions and the individuals who were associated with the organization of
the Dublin and the Rio Conferences, the truth is that these two conferences only
had a very marginal impacts on global developments during the ensuing 10 years.
This fact was widely accepted during the UN World Summit on Sustainable
Development that was held on Johannesburg in 2002. Thus, both the Dublin and
the Rio constituted a lost opportunity for water, since they failed to put water in
the international agenda. Only time will teil if the Johannesburg Summit will
have any impact on the future water developments. However, the initial signs are
not very encouraging.
By the second half of the l990s, most of the water profession had accepted that
the world is heading for a water crisis that is likely to be unprecedented in the
human history. Just as at the beginning of the decade, the water crisis was not
taken very seriously by most members of the profession, now nearly every one
believes that such a crisis is inevitable. It is highly likely that just as the previous
position was erroneous, so will be the current thinking.
While predicting the future is an extremely hazardous business, one item can be
predicted with complete certainty: the world in the year 2025 will be vastly
different from what it is today, in the same way that the world today is
significantly different from what it was in 1975. Among the main driving forces
which are likely to contribute to these changes are evolution of new development
paradigms, demographic changes, technological advances in all fields, speed and
extent of globalisation, improvements in human capital, and future national and
inter-governmental policies.
The water sector is an integral component of the global system, and thus it will
unquestionably undergo major changes during the next 25 years. In fact, water
development and management will change more during the next twenty years
compared to what we have witnessed during the past 2000 years. The water
profession has generally ignored so far the global forces outside the water sector
that are already shaping its future availability, use and management practices.
These external impacts are likely to increase significantly in the next quarter of a
century. And yet, the water profession has not yet started to consider seriously the
implications of accelerating developments in areas like globalisation, public
private partnership, demand management practices, biotechnology, desalination,
and inforrnation and communication revolution, which are likely to change water
availability, use, and management practices dramatically in the coming decades.
It is now widely accepted that the world will face a major water crisis in the
coming decades because of increasing physical scarcities in numerous countries.
Many international organisations have published maps in recent years, all
somewhat similar, which show that more and more countries of the world will
Preface VII
become water-stressed because of increasing scarcities. It is high time to review
critically the reliability of such forecasts for several reasons. First, the
information base on which such forecasts and maps are based is highly
unreliable. Extensivereview by the Third World Centre for Water Management
indicates that the national estimates of water availability and use, on which the
current global figures are based, are often erroneous, in many cases very
significantly. For many major countries, like India and China, some estimates of
water availability and use are currently available, but no one has any clear idea
about the reliability and usefulness of such national statistics. Thus, it is
impossible to get any reasonably reliable picture of the global and regional water
situations, which are based on the aggregation of such incomplete and unreliable
national data sets.
Second, water abstraction is at present widely used as a proxy for water use.
Methodologically, this of course is fundamentally wrong. Unlike oil, water is a
reusable resource, which can be used and reused many times. For example, some
scientists have pointed out that each drop of the Colorado River water is currently
used 6-7 times before it reaches the sea. Globally water is being increasingly
reused, both formally and informally, and all the indications are that the extent of
reuse in all countrieswill aceeierate further in the coming decades. Accordingly,
the current practice of using water abstraction as a proxy for water use is already
significantly erroneous. In 10-20 years, when reuse becomes even more
extensive, this practice of using water abstraction data as the total water available
would become virtually meaningless.
Currently, no reasonable estimates exist for reuse of water, even at the national
Ievels, Iet alone for the world as a whole. Some data exist only for a very few
developed countries like Japan. Since the water profession has not considered
reuse as an important factor in global water availability and use considerations,
all the existing forecasts are highly suspect.
Third, private sector, water pricing and cost recovery are likely to play
increasingly important roles as the 21st century progresses. The net result of these
developments is likely to be significant advances in demand management, which
currently plays a minor role in most countries of the world. This would mean that
within a short period of about a decade or so, all projections of future water
requirements would have to significantly revised downwards because of
increasing emphasis on demand management, other associated conservation
practices, and better management processes.
The current estimates of the future global water requirements are likely to prove
to be far too high, and thus would have to be revised significantly downwards
during the next decade. Simultaneously, the amount of water that is available for
VIII Preface
use at present is seriously underestimated because reuse and recycling are
ignored, estimates of groundwater availability would have to be revised upwards,
and technological advances are making costs of desalination and new non
conventional ways of transportation of water (i.e. rubber bags to transpoft water
over long distances over the sea) more and more attractive. Because of the
upward adjustments in water availability and downward revisions in
requirements, one can now be cautiously optimistic of the global water future.
This, of course, does not mean that it would be an easy process for countries to
adjust to the new realities of a rapidly changing global water scene.
Unquestionably, many countries are likely to find it difficult to manage the
transformation without discontinuities because of socio-political constraints,
institutional inertia, increasing management complexities and current and past
inefficient water management practices. However, since the "business as usual"
will not be a feasible option for the future in nearly all countries, policy-makers,
water professionals and public institutions, whether they like it or not, would be
forced to embrace the new conditions, most probably within the next 10-15 years.
All these and other associated developments are likely to make the present,
"gloom and doom" forecasts of a global crisis due to water scarcities somewhat
unlikely in the coming decades.
On the basis of the above analysis and other associated considerations, the threat
of a global water crisis because of physical scarcities only, as is expected at
present, is probably overstated. lf there is likely to be a crisis in the water sector,
it would probably be due to two reasons, none of which is receiving adequate
attention at present.
The first reason which could contribute to a crisis could be due to continuous
water quality deterioration. Globally, water quality is receiving inadequate
attention, even though it has already become a critical issue. While global data on
water quantity is poor, it is virtually non-existent for water quality. Even for
major developed countries like the United States or Japan, a reliable picture of
national water quality situation currently simply does not exist. For developing
countries and for countries in transition, existing frameworks and networks for
water quality monitoring are highly deficient, adequate expertise on water quality
management simply does not exist, and laboratories for water quality assessments
suffer very seriously from poor quality control and quality assurance practices.
Furthermore, senior water policy-makers in most developing countries become
interested in quality aspects primarily when there are major local crises due to
political and /or media interventions. Sadly, for all practical purposes, water
quality is still receiving only lip service from the water professionals, mostsenior
bureaucrats and politicians of developing countries and countries in transition.
Preface IX
Not surprisingly, because of the above deficiencies, water quality problems are
becoming increasingly serious in all developing countries. For example, nearly all
surface water bodies within and near urban industrial centres are now highly
polluted. While data on the existing groundwater quality are extremely poor, it is
highly likely that groundwater is also getting increasingly contaminated near
centres of population.
Because of poor and unreliable water quality data, we now have an incorrect
picture of the existing water quality conditions. As a general rule, in developing
countries, the official pictures of water quality situations are mostly rosier than
the current conditions warrant. Such Statements are often repeated by
international institutions, which simply adds to a false sense of security.
Absence of good data and information means that many of the currently accepted
wisdoms in the water sector need to be challenged. Furthermore, some of the
current problern identifications may be wide of the mark because the data used
may not be reliable, or data required are simply not available or accessible. If the
problern identifications arenot accurate, their solutions cannot be correct either.
The quality and extent of data available in most parts of the world at present do
not allow us to assess, analyse and evaluate the degrees and extents of many
global and/or regional water problems. Thus, when the World Commission on
Water, of which I as a member, started its work, very soon it became clear that
the current data availability is a serious constraint to conduct proper global water
policy dialogues. In some instances, data may have been collected, but they may
not be accessible.
Faced with these constraints, the Third World Centre for Water Management,
with the support of the Nippon Foundation, initiated a project on the assessment
of freshwater-related issues in certain major countries of the world. The study
considered issues like water availability (quantity and quality), uses, demands,
impacts on environment and health, etc.
Unlike earlier assessments, these studies were not carried out by bureaucrats in
international Organisations with limited knowledge of national water situations,
but by knowledgeable water experts from the countries selected. This book is the
first major publication from this project, which provides an objective and
definitive assessment of the state of the water resources in North America, that is,
Canada, the United States and Mexico. We believe that these studies will give the
water professionals a good platform from which the current problems in these
three countries can properly be assessed, and reliable forecasts can be made of the
