Dwindling Water Supplies are the World's Biggest Challenge

Keywords: urbanization, clean water, overpopulation, sustainable cities.

April 09, 2002
By Michael Byrnes, Reuters

SYDNEY — A lack of clean water will be the biggest issue facing the world in the next 50 years, and governments and business are failing to face up to the challenge, a senior Australian researcher said on Monday.

Graham Harris of the state-funded Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) told an environment conference in Melbourne that business needed to understand its dependence on the environment and create a new economic framework that focused on longer-term returns.

"Even if human populations were to level off in the next 50 years, we will require double the present supply of energy, materials, and water. Water is the big issue for the next 50 years," Harris said in a prepared speech. "The vast majority of the world's people already have only limited access to clean water, basic shelter, and adequate food, and the situation is not going to get any better. Without water, food, shelter, and compassion, we are all lost."

Harris told delegates at the ENVIRO 2002 conference that the Australian government's actions, for instance, "fail to reflect the urgency.... We talk too much and act too slowly."

The conference followed another in Melbourne last week that focused on the impact cities have on the ecosystem with more than 50 percent of the world's population living in urban areas. At the end of that earlier meeting, around 40 environmental experts from around the world called on governments to control urban water use as a key part of creating sustainable cities.

GREEN CITIES NOT SO GREEN

"A lot of people think 'if I've got lots of green parks and gardens, that's fantastic,'" said Harry Blutstein, director of sustainable development for the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) of the Australian state of Victoria. "But hang on. They're using enormous amounts of water, often not recycled water. Perhaps an Australian city has to look a bit browner during its summer," he said.

The meeting issued its final statement on Monday. Convened by EPA Victoria for the U.N. Environment Programme, its findings will contribute to a World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg later this year.

For cities to become sustainable, they had to be treated as ecosystems, the experts said. This required much more recycling and reuse of water rather than simply spending large sums on dams.

It also meant new housing developments should incorporate stormwater tanks, so that city people would drink their own roofwater, as occurs in the Australian bush, Blutstein said.

The inefficient design of high-rise buildings, which failed to take into account the environment, was also costly. Studies showed that the productivity of people could be increased by 15 percent or more by providing natural light, natural ventilation, and other inputs from nature. Malaysian architect Ken Yeang, for instance, was building high rises with windows that open and with gardens throughout the structure to filter the air.

"We're used to having a totally sterile environment in which the temperature doesn't vary within a degree. There are no breezes. This is not a natural environment," Blutstein said.

The meeting included environmental officials and experts from Australia, the Netherlands, Malaysia, India, United States, Canada, South Africa, the Philippines, Germany, Vietnam, Nepal, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Japan.

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