Water
How can everyone have
sufficient clean water without conflict? [Challenge 2]
Sustainable Development
How can sustainable development
be achieved for all? [Challenge 1]
-- Brief Overview --
The leadership necessary for sustainable development has not yet emerged.
Although many at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) called
sustainable development the most important goal for uniting humanity and
its institutions, the Summit did not produce compelling policy directions
sufficient to change international decisionmaking. Total fossil fuel use
over the next 50 years is expected to triple compared with usage over the
last 50 years. Already atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), which for 400,000
years fluctuated between 180 and 280 parts per million (ppm), has reached
350 ppm. Only human activity can explain this change, says the U.S. National
Academy of Sciences. The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred
since 1987. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates a 2.5–10.4
degrees Fahrenheit warming by century’s end, which could raise sea levels
by 34 inches, changing human coastal settlements and melting the polar
ice cap. Glaciers are already receding worldwide. Global temperature changes
threaten entire ecosystems.
Humanity may have consumed more natural resources since World War II than in all of history prior to that time. Half the world’s forests and 25% of the coral reefs are gone. Half of the estimated 3–100 million species (known and still unknown) could be gone by 2100. The interdependence of economic growth and technological innovation has been the most significant engine of change for the last 200 years, but unless we improve our financial, economic, environmental, and social behavior, the next 200 years could be difficult. Next to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), unsustainable growth may well be the greatest threat to the future of humanity. Yet without sustainable growth, billions of people will be condemned to poverty and much of civilization will collapse.
We should review and implement the results of the WSSD as much as possible; resolve conflicts between corporations’ short-term profits and long-term sustainability; establish an environmental crimes international intelligence and police unit; create definitions and measurements for commonly applied tax incentives and labels for more environmentally friendly products; abolish environmentally inefficient subsidies; include environmental costs in the pricing of natural resources and products; invest in socially responsible businesses; spread the environmental standards ISO 14000 and 14001 to more countries and companies; create an international public/private funding mechanism for high-impact technologies such as carbon sequestration or space solar power and acquiring the rights to innovate “green” technologies; declare key habitats off-limits for human development; develop ecologically based agriculture to reduce the large consumption of water, energy, and other material inputs per crop; consider the establishment of a World Environment Organization with powers like the World Trade Organization (WTO) and encourage synergy between environmental movements and human rights groups to make clean air, water, and land a human right; and demonstrate how to change complacency and consumption while increasing efficiency and improving living standards.
-- Brief overviews --
Water tables are continuing to fall on every continent. Agricultural land is becoming brackish worldwide, and groundwater aquifers are being polluted. About 40% of humanity lives in the 260 major international water basins shared by more than two countries; hence the potential for conflict increases with population growth and water demand. Water systems are vulnerable to industrial catastrophe, agricultural pollution, and terrorist attack. Agriculture accounts for 70% of all human usage of fresh water, and according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), water for agriculture needs to increase 60% to feed an additional 2 billion people by 2030, which could cause urban-rural water conflicts. We have to produce more food with less water. There is enough water if we cooperate, which history shows does occur even between people in conflict and has led to cooperation in other areas.
Throughout the world, 1.2 billion people in 2000 did not have access
to safe drinking water and 2.4 billion lacked adequate sanitary systems.
About 80% of all diseases in the developing world are water-related; many
are related to poor management of human excreta. According to the U.N.
Environment Programme’s Global Environment Outlook 3, half the world could
face water shortages by 2032; today 450 million people in 29 countries
live in water-short locations. There are also ecological water needs to
keep our life-support systems healthy.
Halving the number of people without safe drinking water by 2015 will
require 340,000 more water connections and 460,000 sanitation connections
every day from now to 2015. This is the International Year for Fresh Water,
which is helping to move water up the global policy agenda and getting
leaders to realize that business as usual will eventually lead to world
water crises—causing mass migrations, disease, and wars.
The World Panel on Financing Water Infrastructure estimated that the $80 billion spent annually on water systems for developing and transition nations will have to reach $180 billion in 20–25 years. Meanwhile, more empirical studies are needed to resolve the mixed reviews of privatization strategies for water supply.
The water situation can be improved greatly through changing agricultural practices to get more crop per drop of water: better manage rain-fed irrigation, selectively introduce water pricing, add drip irrigation and precision agriculture, invest in watershed management, integrate water management plans, and develop plants that are drought-hearty and more brackish-tolerant. Large investments also have to go into desalination, household sanitation, wastewater treatment, reforestation, water storage, and treatment of industrial effluents in multipurpose water schemes. Water can also be conserved by using animal stem cells to produce meat tissue (without the need to make the animal) and by increasing vegetarianism around the world. Although R&D to bring down the cost of desalination and improve rain-fed agricultural management has to be done, the bulk of the solution will be the support and replication of community-scale projects around the world. Finally, countries should have national and regional water plans, which may need treaties and cooperative agreements to manage water rights.
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