Jeffrey D Sachs: Action is needed in arid regions where extremism thrives

Published on Friday 5 June 2009 19:22

MANY conflicts are caused or inflamed by water scarcity. The conflicts from Chad to Darfur, Sudan to the Ogaden Desert in Ethiopia, and across to Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, lie in a great arc of arid lands where water scarcity leads to failed crops, dying livestock, poverty and desperation.

Extremist groups like the Taleban find ample recruitment possibilities in such impoverished communities. Governments lose their legitimacy when they cannot guarantee basic needs, such as safe drinking water, food crops, and fodder and water for the animal herds on which communities depend.

Politicians, diplomats and generals in conflict-ridden countries treat these crises as they would any other political or military challenge. They mobilise armies, organise political factions, combat warlords, or try to grapple with extremism.

As a result, the United States and Europe often spend billions sending troops to quell uprisings, but do not send one-tenth or even one-hundredth of that amount to address the underlying crises of water scarcity and under-development.

Water problems will not go away by themselves. They will worsen unless we, as a global community, respond. A series of recent studies from Unesco, the World Bank and the Asia Society show how fragile the water balance is for many impoverished and unstable parts of the world.

The reports tell a similar story. Water supplies are increasingly under stress in large parts of the world. Rapidly intensifying water scarcity reflects bulging populations, depletion of groundwater, waste and pollution, and the enormous effects of man-made climate change.

The consequences are harrowing: drought and famine, the spread of water-borne diseases, forced migrations and even conflict.

Solutions include better water management, improved technologies to increase efficiency of water use, and new investments undertaken by governments, business and civic organisations.

Future water stresses will be widespread, including both rich and poor countries. The US, for example, encouraged a population boom in its arid south-western states in recent decades, despite water scarcity that climate change is likely to intensify. Australia, too, is grappling with droughts in the agricultural heartland of the Murray-Darling river basin. The Mediterranean basin, including southern Europe and north Africa, is also likely to experience serious drying.

But the precise nature of the water crisis will vary, with different pressures in different regions. For example, Pakistan, an already arid country, will suffer under the pressures of a rapidly rising population, which has grown from 42 million in 1950 to 184 million in 2010, and may increase further to 335 million in 2050. Even worse, farmers are now relying on groundwater that is being depleted by over-pumping.

Solutions will have to be found at all scales, meaning we will need water solutions within individual communities along the length of a river, even as it crosses national boundaries, and globally, for example, to head off the worst effects of climate change.

Lasting solutions will require partnership between government, business, and civil society, which can be hard to negotiate and manage, as these sectors often have little or no experience in dealing with each other.

Most governments are poorly equipped to deal with serious water challenges. Water ministries are typically staffed with engineers and general civil servants. Yet lasting solutions to water challenges require a broad range of knowledge about climate, ecology, farming, population, engineering, economics, politics and local culture. Government officials also need the skill and flexibility to work with local communities, private businesses, international organisations and donors.

A crucial next step is to bring together scientific, political and business leaders from societies that share water problems to brainstorm creative approaches to overcoming them.

Such a gathering would enable information-sharing, which could save lives and economies.

&#149 Jeffrey D Sachs is a professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, New York.