The Politics of Water and Sustainable Development

China's Ministry of Environmental Protection recently released a report stating that only 49.3 percent of China's surface water is fit for drinking, with almost a quarter so polluted that it is unfit even for industrial use.

Although one can easily reach for the 'oh China' head shaking that often comes with discussions involving China and the environment, China's situation is not unique. Lack of access to clean drinking is a global problem - a reality that those of us who simply have to turn on a tap to get clean water often ignore for the privilege of paying exorbitant rates for bottled water. The importance of water is important because water is not fungible - there are no substitutes for drinking water - and this reality is leading to rising global tension.

For example Egypt, which lies at the end of the Nile, is experiencing increasing tension both from its own increasing population and because its upriver neighbors are experiencing increased need for the Nile water. This is particularly problematic because in May of this year five upriver nations - Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda- signed a treaty declaring that not only did they have rights to a share of the already taxed river's flow, but that they would no longer be bound by the 1959 British treaty which had given Egypt 55.5 cubic kilometers of the river's flow and Sudan 18.5 cubic kilometers, but no formal entitlements for any nation upstream, documents a June Yale 360 article. Egypt, by contrast, has often said that any attempts by upstream nations to control the river would be met with war.

While war has not broken out, Egypt is in an untenable situation, 75 million of its 80 million inhabitants are dependent on the river for water and agriculture, and the Nile is already overused. The river once known for its tendency to flood its riverbeds enriching the surrounding farmland routinely now fails to make it to the sea.

The issue at the core of not only the Nile debate but also with worldwide access to water comes in two broad categories. The first is that many people live in areas with scarce water supplies. From Arizona to Australia, some parts of the world just naturally have limited water supplies. There's nothing wrong with these ecosystems, except that too many people have chosen to settle in these places and/or raise crops and graze animals which are ill suited to this water restriction. In the process they serve to further tax the region's limited water supplies increasing the likelihood of drought, or other human catastrophe. A related problem is that many places have enough water to support their human populations, but human behavior - namely environmental destruction - has eliminated the ecosystems capacity to do so. Ultimately, however, both problems either emerge or are exacerbated by an erosion of biodiversity.

Biodiversity as evidenced by healthy watersheds and freshwater ecosystems naturally perform a wealth of services that cities and rural areas need such as purifying drinking water, alleviate hunger, mitigate flood damages, and meet other societal goals at a fraction of the cost of conventional technological alternatives. Yet because commercial markets rarely put a price on these "ecosystem services," and because governments often fail to protect these crucial ecosystems they're rapidly being lost. These human activities combined with global warming means we face a future of falling water tables, shrinking wetlands, vanishing species, and a decrease in both the quality and quantity of available freshwater. We must change our behavior, because the evidence clearly shows that restoring ecosystems is often not only the best methods for ensuring adequate water supplies, it is often the most economical. New York City, for example, recognized that taking steps to ensure that the land surrounding it's system of reservoirs was well maintained and protected from land development, was a cheaper and more effective than building a billion dollar (with $300 million dollar operating costs) water filtration system.

Human needs and environmental needs are often pitted against each other in a false dichotomy; protecting the interests of one side, we worry, harms the interests of the other. But in the case of clean drinking water human and environmental interests lay clearly on the same side. Maintaining and restoring ecosystems is both an economical and environmentally sustainable method of achieving this goal. Holistic water management water is essential if the world is to off future conflicts and achieve sustainable development.