The Kura River winds through Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, amid banks crowned with houses and old churches. From Tbilisi, the river flow east and gradually broadens into an extensive lowland as it nears Azerbaijan.

by Nadya Ivanova
Maps by Hannah Nester and Eric Daigh
Circle of Blue

Almost 20 years after Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan bounced back to full national sovereignty following decades of Soviet control, the winds of change in the South Caucasus have largely faded, leaving behind a region whose geopolitical identity and long-term stability remain uncertain. Once off the radar of Soviet geopolitical analyses, water management problems are now emerging as a cross-cutting issue critical to the stability of volatile regional relations and delicate geopolitical dynamics in the area.

It is often assumed that competition for water will trigger conflict. But in the South Caucasus — a globally strategic corner of the world where Russia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia converge — a proposal to clean up and share management of the region’s largest river basin could well serve as a new route to political stability. And the consequences, diplomats and scientists say, could have strategic importance far beyond – to Europe, Russia, and the United States.

The two rivers at the heart of this complex diplomatic effort are the Kura and its main tributary the Araks (also called the Aras or the Arax), which rise in the mountains of eastern Turkey, join in Azerbaijan and drain a 117,000-square-mile industrial and agricultural basin, parts of which lie in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. But since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which managed the entire basin, the Kura-Araks watershed in the South Caucasus has attracted increasing concern about its intense industrial and agricultural pollution, radioactive contamination and the availability of fresh water for drinking — all of which have fueled the chronic political instability in the region.

MAP: The South Caucasus in Focus

Map by Hannah Nester and Eric Daigh for Circle of Blue (click to enlarge).

Last December, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) completed an intensive seven-year project to understand the ecological dynamics of the Kura-Araks. NATO convened scientists from Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan to propose technical solutions for ecological restoration and cleanup.

The campaign, which also involved technical experts from the United States and several European Union (EU) nations, aimed to be more than a classic environmental initiative. Instead, NATO and OSCE focused on the river basin and its cleanup as a tool for using science, collaboration and strategic investment to design solutions to equally important competition over energy and diplomacy that might thrust the South Caucasus into an international conflict.

The South Caucasus River Monitoring (SCRM) project, as it is called, is one of a number of initiatives by European and American organizations to focus on improving access to fresh water to develop steps and practices that can solve other conflicts between nations. The project, according to the results of an upcoming report to be released later this summer, proved that scientists from different nations can collaborate and produce useful recommendations.

But participants also concluded that the tense relationships among the three governments in the Kura-Araks Basin are a crucial impediment to progress. Reducing those conflicts is essential to cleaning up the river basin and to resolving the important issues that wrack the strategic region, where the EU, U.S. and Russian spheres of influence coalesce over politics, energy and diplomacy.

Water’s Two-Way Flow: Conflict or Cooperation?
Along patches of plum trees, vines and walnut groves, the Kura River eats its way through the hulking mountains of picturesque central Georgia. From there, the “good water” – as it was called in old Georgian — braids, slower and shallower, into the fertile lowlands of Azerbaijan. Hundreds of miles south, the Araks hurries to catch up, gnawing through Armenia and Azerbaijan, to the point of confluence, where the Kura-Araks prepares for its long trip to the Caspian Sea.

Yet, its journey can be deceivingly smooth. To date, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan have refused to cooperate on the management of the Kura-Araks and often blame each other for dumping pollutants into its waters. The political tensions run so deep that when seven years ago NATO announced a water project in the basin, the three governments took out the word “cooperation” from its title. Azerbaijani scientists also had to ask for green light from the Foreign Ministry to meet with their colleagues from neighboring Armenia, which maintains a tense relationship with Azerbaijan.

The disputes that hamper the shared river management run deep into long-lasting cultural and historical problems. The relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan remain cold over territorial disputes in the Nagorno-Karabakh –- an Armenian-populated secessionist region in western Azerbaijan. But the military escalation in August 2008 among Georgia, South Ossetia, Russia and Abkhazia – some of which blazed in the city of Gori on the banks of the Kura River in central Georgia — showed that the conflicts in the South Caucasus could also explosively escalate. While water is not likely to trigger large-scale violence, it can increase the existing tensions over resources with catalytic and far-reaching effects for the region.

But as it traverses political boundaries, the Kura-Araks might also become a pathway for collaboration among the three river-dependent states. In the last decade, the region has been the focus of foreign-organized peace building activities, part of which rest on the idea that getting people to cooperate on water might also channel broader and long-term political dialogue.

“The water aspect is just another part of the puzzle,” said Michael Campana, project manager of the SCRM project, which is funded under NATO’s “Science for Peace and Security Program.”

Designed to measure and monitor the quality and quantity of the Kura-Araks, the project also aimed to solve the water issues in the three riparian states before the water problems start brewing. Though a final report is still pending, participants say that many scientists are willing to work together on transboundary water management – a trend that has the potential spill over to the higher levels of government.

“Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan are still relatively fragile, so water and everything which is somehow linked to security and peace is of course a politically sensitive issue and a politicized issue,” said Achim Maas, project manager at Adelphi Research, who worked on a project in the South Caucasus in the context of the EU’s Initiative for Peacebuilding.

Oil, Gas and Water: The Region’s Peace is the World’s Peace?
The South Caucasus has emerged as convergence zone for the interests of the EU, Russia and USA, who are actively seeking to secure their diplomatic leverage – increasingly through well-meaning water-and-security projects like NATO’s. “That is why, NATO has a stake to try to diffuse the situation before it gets too dangerous,” said Federico Bordonaro, geopolitical analyst at the Italian analytical group equilibri.net. “And water management is one of the most complicated issues.”

Planned Oil Pipelines

Map by Hannah Nester and Eric Daigh for Circle of Blue (click to enlarge).

The Kura has already had a taste of its oil rich future, when a few years ago a pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea was installed beneath the river. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, the second longest oil line in the world, was completed with the strong backing of Europe, the United States, Georgia and Turkey.

Developing regional security and diplomatic leverage through water cooperation is especially important now, as the Caspian Basin hydrocarbon resources are becoming essential to energy-hungry Europe. Nestled among areas of huge hydrocarbon wealth in Central Asia, Russia and the Middle East, the South Caucasus has emerged as a focal point of Eurasia’s energy corridors, spurring frantic competition between Russia and the European Union for energy supplies and transit routes – a game where water takes a surprising, albeit indirect, role.

“We are using water as a tool for political aims — stability and uninterrupted energy supplies,” Campana said about the SCRM project. “It’s not so much that we love Armenia, Georgia or Azerbaijan, it’s just that we love gas and oil.”

The realities of the struggle over energy trade became clear to the shivery states of Eastern European last January, when Russia cut off gas supplies over a pricing dispute with transit country Ukraine. The shutdown was the second in three years and prompted the EU to step up its plans to diversify its energy sources. With Russia providing more than one quarter of Europe’s hydrocarbon supplies, the EU is looking to wean its dependence on Russian oil and gas by building pipelines that bypass Russia and Russian-controlled infrastructure. This makes the South Caucasus’ favorable location between the oil-rich Caspian Sea and the Black Sea a central concern for both Russia and the EU.

Both sides have already proposed gas and oil pipelines that directly compete for the same resources and transit states in Central Asia and the Caspian Basin. The Western-backed Nabucco project –- designed to deliver Caspian Sea gas from Azerbaijan through Turkey to Central Europe – rivals the Kremlin’s South Stream pipeline, which will cross the Black Sea and reach the Balkans on its way to Italy.

Moreover, according to Bordonaro, both Russia and the West will be even more frantically looking to secure their supplies and transit routes, as China looks toward Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to convoy hydrocarbons to its own territory. This gives Brussels, Moscow and Washington added impetus to solidify their presence in a stabilized South Caucasus.

“Many people forget that these resources — oil and gas — can travel only one way,” Bordonaro said. “If there is a certain contract on certain reserves, the reserves will either flow toward China, or toward Russia, or toward Europe. This is why the United States, Russia and Europe are engaged in this so-called New Great Game in the South Caucasus.” As many of these questions still hang over the region, he and other experts are trendspotting water’s increasingly strategic role for peace and security in the area.

“You cannot depoliticize water on a regional level in the South Caucasus,” Maas said. “The pollution of the Kura-Araks River is also a political and politicized issue.”

Michael Campana is Director of the Institue for Water and Watersheds at Oregon State University. The views he expressed in this article do not represent those of NATO.

Keith Schneider and C.T. Pope contributed to this story.

But despite all of the rhetoric, news stories, name-calling, yelling, and screaming, Californians have very little clue about what a real water crisis looks like. It looks like what’s happening in Australia.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Dr. Peter Gleick is president of the Pacific Institute, an internationally recognized water expert and a MacArthur Fellow.

Read his full bio…

Water Number: 18,000 tons of rice
That is the total rice production from all of Australia last year, compared to the long-term average from 1970 of over 720,000 tons, and the high (in 2000) of over 1.6 million tons. Effectively, Australian rice production has dropped to zero because there is not enough water. And that is only one measure of the severity of their water crisis.

I think when the final agricultural production numbers for this year are released, it will turn out that California agriculture overall had a pretty good year. Indeed, for some growers and sectors, income and levels of production will be at record highs. In fact, the loss of Australian rice production is one reason California rice production is going to be healthy this year–prices are up. Are some farmers and sectors going to see decreases from last year, or from average? Yes, certainly. But what we are experiencing now in California is a far cry from the seriousness of what the Australians have had to deal with.

Australia has suffered from a decade of drought. Serious drought. And rainfall shortfalls have been accompanied by seriously rising temperatures. The hot, dry conditions have led to unprecedented bushfires, deaths, and property destruction. Power plants have shut down for lack of cooling water. Cotton, wheat, and other crop production also plummeted. The Australian Bureau of Statistics calculated that more than 10,500 families gave up farming between 2001 and 2006.

This real drought has, at last, led to transformational changes in Australian water policy–changes unlike the tiny, incremental modifications we’ve fought over in the western United States. Among other things, they have:

• Restructured their water rights
• Integrated groundwater use with surface water use, and instituted comprehensive monitoring of all water use
• Strengthened ecosystem protections during shortages
• Expanded gray water use and water recycling
• Cut industrial water use by over 30%
• Imposed strict water rationing backed by real penalties
• Raised prices for municipal water
• Developed a foundation for real water trading
• Banned using hoses, washing your car, watering your garden, or filling your swimming pool
• Required installation of rainwater tanks in some locations, and mandatory installation of efficient shower heads and toilets
• Invested in infrastructure improvements and expansion, such as desalination, efficient irrigation systems, leak detection and elimination practices, and better meters everywhere

There is also no serious disagreement about climate change. Australians largely accept the science and have moved on to the real discussion: what needs to be done to prepare to adapt to unavoidable impacts on water systems.

In short, under duress, Australians did what they (and we) should have done long ago.

Australian rice production in thousand tons per year, from 1960 to 2008. These data come from the annual crop reports of The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE).

And the results? Urban and agricultural water consumption has been reduced throughout Australia–they’ve had no choice. In Canberra, water consumption dropped 35% within the space of just one year. In Melbourne, per capita water consumption in 2008 fell to its lowest level since 1934. In Sydney, water use today is at the same level as it was in 1974, despite 1.2 million additional residents. And their use is far, far below our use here in California. (For more details, see the good summary by Craig Windram at his Think Carbon blog.) While a few of the measures used to achieve these immense decreases are extreme (they were in an extreme situation), many of these techniques are no-brainers and are long overdue for California.

Will we, in the western U.S., stop the scrambling for political positioning, move from ideological arguments, look for common ground, and stop misusing data in attempts to gain some political advantage? Maybe someday, when today’s “drought” looks like the good old days of plenty. I’d like to think we can do these things before the real pain starts.

Dr. Gleick’s blog posts are provided in cooperation with the SFGate. Previous posts can be found here.

Turkey’s environment minister Veysel Eroglu said during a news conference that the building of the dam on the Tigris River could resume after July 6, when a six-month funding suspension on the construction is due to expire. In December 2008, the German, Swiss and Austrian underwriters of the 1.2 billion Euro project froze the finances amid fears that the dam did not meet 150 World Bank conditions on the environment, heritage sites, relocation and neighboring states.

Throughout its history, the project has attracted vocal criticism from environmentalists, who argue that the construction would destroy up to 80 towns, villages and hamlets and would displace somewhere between 50,000 and 80,000 people. Critics have also pointed out the dam’s negative effect on water supply in drought-stricken Iraq, which lies farther downstream and often demands more water from its upstream neighbors.

Adding to the controversy, historians and archaeologists fear for the fate of the ancient town of Hasankeyf, most of which, they say, might be swallowed up by water.

But Eroglu said that the Turkish government has taken steps to ensure sufficient funding for the project’s completion and for meeting the environmental and social standards under question.

First planned in 1980s, the 1,200 megawatt Ilisu Dam is an important part of Turkey’s ambitions to ease its dependence on foreign gas imports for energy generation. It also hopes to boost the economy of the impoverished southeastern part of the country. If completed according to plan –- in 2013 -– the power station will supply the region with some 3.8 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year.

Read more here, here and here.

Sources: Reuters, The Guardian, Today’s Zaman

At the time of closure, the Masinga Dam level was one and half meters below the recommend minimum operating level. In the last two dry years, water levels have gradually sunk by almost 1,000 meters since May of 2007, KenGen said.

The biggest hydropower station on the Tana River, Masinga supports the Seven Forks dam system that generates about 47 percent of Kenya’s electricity needs. Its closure will hopefully free up water and increase the efficiency of the Kamburu Dam farther down river. This will cushion the effect of the power loss on the country’s overall power supply, KenGen added.

“The overall effect on power generation output will be minimal,” Richard Nderitu, KenGen’s acting managing director, said in a statement.

Although Masinga is expected to resume operation during Kenya’s “short” rainfall season in October-December, businesses and policy makers are struggling with the shaky power supply in the country. As Kenya’s economy — the biggest in east Africa — continues to grow along with the population, electrical demand is rising by about 8 percent annually.

Read more here, here and here.

Sources: Reuters, AllAfrica

Until now, citizens who practiced an “off-the-grid” lifestyle or used rainwater for domestic use had to keep their rainwater collection under wraps for fear of legal and criminal repercussions.

“I was so willing to go to jail for catching water on my roof and watering my garden,” Tom Bartels told The New York Times. “But now I’m not a criminal.” Bartels had been illegally watering his vegetables and fruit tress from water collected in his gutters.

But the law is still limited, because it only applies to people who have or would qualify for a well, Daily Camera reports. In the dry Southwestern climate of Colorado, every drop of water is allocated based on water rights, some of which have existed for more than a century.

Colorado typically receives about 100 million acre-feet of water annually from snowmelt and rain. Yet, only 15 percent makes it into the rivers, meaning that the amount of water used by rainwater collectors would most likely have little significance, according to Regan Waskom, director of the Colorado Water Resources Research Institute at the Colorado State University.

Meanwhile, in nearby western states, such as Utah and Washington, rainwater collection is still largely illegal, as ownership of precipitation falls on whoever possesses water rights for a particular area of land.

Read more here and here

Sources: Daily Camera and The New York Times

The report, by Michael D. Blum and Harry H. Roberts of Louisiana State University, estimates that with no new sedimentary input, 10,000-13,500 square kilometers of coastal wetlands could be lost to the sea by the year 2100.

Sustaining the existing delta surface area would require no less than 18-24 billion tons of new sediment — a fact complicated by the estimated 8,000 dams in the Mississippi’s drainage basin, which have reduced the river’s sediment load by half.

Below St. Louis, the Mississippi has effectively been turned into “a pipe,” Roberts said in an interview with The New York Times. Getting sediment down into the marshes along Louisiana’s coast “is not happening, at least not very efficiently,” he added.

Today, Mississippi sediment deposits range in thickness from less than 10 meters near Memphis to more than 100 meters in the far-downstream areas of Plaquemines Parish, near the mouth of the river — the product of 12,000 years of Holocene delta-plain construction, averaging 230-290 million tons a year. Using that rate as a benchmark, Blum and Roberts studied the effects of the thousands of dams on the Mississippi, finding that sediment load dropped remarkably after they had been built.

While pre-dam load met necessary replacement levels averaging about 400-500 million tons per year, data for the period 1976-2006 showed that sediment load was only 205 million tons per year for the lower Mississippi. Faced with a supply deficit, the delta is succumbing to subsidence and losing ground to rising sea levels, which are increasing at a rate at least three times higher now than during the original delta-plain construction.

In other words, if the river started all over again, the Mississippi delta would be very different, covering a much smaller area.

But sediment deficit is only part of the problem. Rising sea levels, which Blum and Roberts estimate will accelerate linearly from three millimeters per year now — according to data supplied by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — to four millimeters per year by 2100, combined with subsidence over time, will cause “land surfaces that are now below one meter in elevation [to] be converted to open water or marsh”, according to the research. Indeed, with around 7,000 square kilometers of delta already below sea level, the threat of rising tides is close.

Under the four scenarios that Blum and Roberts laid out for sediment supply and sea level change, only one was able to envision the current delta landscape in 2100:

1. Modern sediment loads and sea level rise of 1 mm/year: mass deficit of ~1-5 BT of sediment by 2100
2. Modern sediment loads and sea level rise accelerating from 3 mm/year in 2000 to 4 mm/year in 2100: mass deficit of ~11-17 BT of sediment by 2100
3. Pre-dam sediment loads and sea level rise of 1 mm/year: sufficient sediment load to sustain the delta plain through 2100
4. Pre-dam sediment loads and sea level rise accelerating from 3 mm/year to 4 mm/year: mass deficit of ~3-9 BT of sediment by 2100

Breaking open the dams, then, will not save all of the delta. And according to Roberts, the increased sediment flow from such action may have drawbacks: although nutrients critical to marshland growth would reach the delta in greater quantities, agricultural runoff and other effluents from the previously-trapped sediment might worsen the water quality at the already polluted mouth of the Mississippi.

Read more here [pdf] and here.

Sources: Nature Geoscience [pdf] & The New York Times

Unfortunately, some of what he heard was misleading or false. Certainly farms and farmers are suffering, so are fish and ecosystems. But so is the truth. Here are three oft-repeated falsehoods.

Myth 1: Farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley are receiving “just 10 percent of their allocation this year.”

Myth 2: Water shortages are causing massive new farm unemployment.

Myth 3: Farmers are bearing disproportional impacts of water shortfalls because of court rulings in favor of fish.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Dr. Peter Gleick is president of the Pacific Institute, an internationally recognized water expert and a MacArthur Fellow.

Read his full bio…

All three of these statements are false, and they’ve been shown to be false so many times that continuing to repeat them verges on intentional deception on the part of those who repeat them to gullible politicians or lazy reporters.

Farmers in the Central Valley get water from many places, and when one source dries up, another temporarily takes its place.

In a remarkable letter sent by DWR Director Lester Snow to Senator Dianne Feinstein on May 15th, official data show that the major Central Valley districts will use at least 75% of their average water use by mixing sources, using stored groundwater, participating in water transfers, and so on. Not 10%. And the biggest moaner is the Westlands Water District. Yet Snow points out that they will apply at least 86% of their normal water. On the other hand, the San Joaquin Valley wildlife refuges will get 75% of its promised water, less than many of the agricultural districts. Some farmers get less than others in dry years because of their junior water rights — and they always have. Are they arguing to revamp the water rights system? That would be a worthy discussion to have.

The overall job problem is not a water problem — it is a result of a global and national economic crisis. Increases in unemployment are worse, by far, in non-farm industries.

In Fresno County, unemployment today is substantially lower than it was just five and ten years ago and farm employment grew; non-farm employment shrunk. Indeed, the only sector showing increases in employment in May 2009 was the farm sector. In some of the hardest hit areas, unemployment is much higher — but it is always much higher. Unemployment rates in Mendota are above 30% now. But you know what? Nine years ago, unemployment in Mendota was 30%. Six years ago, it was 36%. The problem in Mendota isn’t just the current drought. The Central Valley of California has been plagued by poverty and lack of access to reliable jobs and basic services, like clean drinking water, for decades. Turning the pumps back on will do little, if anything, to address the systemic injustice that farm worker communities endure in both wet years and dry.

It’s not the fish.

Two months ago, DWR director Lester Snow testified before Congress that if there had been no court order to protect fish, CVP deliveries to the San Joaquin Valley would only be 5% higher. The problems farmers are facing aren’t due to the tiny portions of water offered up for ecosystems; they are due to a drought and a dysfunctional water management system that has been slowly collapsing for decades.

The longer misleading arguments and facts are put forth to politicians and the media, the longer it will be before a serious and effective solution can be found to our water challenges.

Dr. Gleick’s blog posts are provided in cooperation with the SFGate. Previous posts can be found here.

Large scale desalinization already takes place in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This plant in Ras al-Khaimah, contributes to the nearly 8.5 million cubic meters of water produced per day in the UAE (click image to enlarge).

by Connor Boals
Infographics by Hannah Nester
Circle of Blue

Pressed by growing urban populations, drier and warmer climates and the need to fortify supplies stretched by the increasing worldwide thirst, metropolitan and national governments on five continents are building record numbers of industrial plants to use a nearly alchemic technology to produce drinking water from the sea.

Over the last five years, an average of 800 new desalination plants have been constructed annually, according to various industrial reports, and the global market could reach $58 billion a year. In 2006 and 2007 alone, according to Global Water Intelligence, an industry research group that tracks water trends, the world’s desalination capacity grew 43 percent, and since 1990 has experienced an average annual growth rate of 17 percent. About 14,380 desalination plants operate across the world, said Global Water Intelligence, with a total contracted capacity of 62 million cubic meters, or 16.3 billion gallons, per day.

“In the last ten years, there’s been almost exponential growth, and I think it’s going to continue to grow,” said Tom Pankratz, member of the board of directors at the International Desalination Association.

MULTIMEDIA: Desalination by the Numbers

Infographics by Hannah Nester/Circle of Blue (click any to enlarge).

But even as desalination emerges as one of the world’s important infrastructure development industries, attracting globally significant companies like General Electric and Veolia Environment, environmental and economic authorities have raised concerns.

“Desalination plants are enormously expensive, use tremendous amounts of energy and have major environmental costs that are not always adequately addressed, including brine disposal, impingement and entrainment of aquatic organisms and coastal development problems.” said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute.

Technology and Need Converge
As is so often the case in the 21st century, the growing desalination market is made possible by powerful trends that have converged. Technology has dropped the per-gallon cost of turning seawater or brackish water into drinking water, and improved the energy efficiency of plants. Shortages of fresh water and the unyielding movement of the world’s rural people to cities has dramatically increased the need for alternatives.

The Middle East has long been the dominant market, with Saudi Arabia producing more than 10 million cubic meters a day and the United Arab Emirates producing almost 8.5 million cubic meters a day, according to Global Water Intelligence. But the United States is now the world’s third leading builder of desalination plants. Other top markets are Spain, Kuwait, Algeria, China, Qatar, Japan and Australia. Almost two-thirds of all desalination plants use seawater, with 19 percent drawing from brackish sources.

Without any other sources for freshwater, desalination is quickly becoming vital to many regions. St. Martin’s desalination plant is run by France’s Veolia Water Caribbean.

The industry’s leading companies — France’s Veolia Environment (5.4 million cubic meters a day), Italy’s Fisia Italimpianti (3 million), South Korea’s Doosan (2.8 million) and GE Water in the United States (2.5 million) — now compete with hundreds of companies for lucrative municipal contracts.

“We do see double digit growth rates in the [desalination] market,” said Jeff Fulgham, chief marketing officer for GE Water. “That is a big deal for us from an investment standpoint.”

Fulgham said GE is involved in desalination in more than 100 countries and will reinvest 3 percent of its overall revenue in technology development over the next three years –- a large piece of which will be going to seawater desalination, brackish water desalination and water reuse projects.

Companies are attracted to seawater desalination, executives say, because the projects are very large — usually in excess of at least $100 million — are very visible and often generate lots of publicity, making them attractive to private firms.

In Carlsbad, Calif., Poseidon Resources is finishing permitting on a desalination plant that will supply 50 million gallons a day to nine Southern California water municipalities. The company selected Barclay’s Capital to oversee the $300-plus million project, said Scott Maloni, vice president at Poseidon Resources.

The basic business strategy is straightforward. Although the plants involve significant investment, most projects come with a sovereign guarantee that municipalities will purchase water as long as the plants continue to produce it. Along with the water purchases, the companies are usually contracted to operate the plants for up to 20 years.

“[Companies] have to recover some initial investments,” said Tom Pankratz, of the International Desalination Association. “But it’s not a risky endeavor.”

Pankratz predicted that the total global seawater desalination market could be worth $25 billion over the next five years and $58 billion over the next ten years.

Clean Water vs. an Ocean of Problems
Although significant energy, funding and political attention is behind the desalination movement, Adam Scow, California Deputy Director for Food and Water Watch, said he is wary of this “silver bullet” technology.

“It’s about maximizing conservation and efficiency and preventing waste,” he said. “There are lots of opportunities to do that in all different sectors before investing in a very expensive and environmentally polluting plant such as a desalination facility.”

According to calculations in Desalination, With a Grain of Salt, a recent study on the role of desalination in California by the Pacific Institute, if all of the 20 proposed plants were built, seawater desalination would supply six percent of the state’s 2000 urban water use.

Food and Water Watch, the advocacy group, interprets this statistic in their report Desalination: an Ocean of Problems, which said that if all these plants functioned at their full capacity, the additional water would only be enough for every Californian to take an extra three-minute shower a day.

Neil Palmer, general manager of technical services and operations at OSMOFLO, a supplier of reverse osmosis desalination plants based in Adelaide, said that before 2006, Australia had no large desalination plants. By 2012, though, the country will be producing about 1.3 million cubic meters per day, with at least one large facility in all of its major cities.

“If we get another drought, and climate change suggests that maybe we will, it’s a sound investment in infrastructure, and one might say, overdue,” he said. “Its an inevitable consequence of growth, because as population grows you need water and you can’t keep restricting. You’ve got to create new sources of water, and desalination is a good, reliable technology that’s not climate dependent.”

Palmer approximates that water out of a desalination plant in Australia — including all input costs, finance charges, operations and maintenance — would be about $0.96 per cubic meter. If the water came from a reservoir and a water treatment facility, he estimated, it would be closer to $0.32 per cubic meter.

“The most reliable, most cost effective and most environmentally friendly source of water is conservation, increased efficiency and waste prevention,” Scow said. “We have so many opportunities to save water. Those needs need to be addressed first.”

Many in the industry see a silver lining in the higher pricing of desalinated water: people will be thriftier and use less.

“Yes, the price is obscenely high, but what’s the alternative if you don’t have any water?” Pankratz said. “Until we look at water differently and start valuing it for what its real cost is, we won’t have a good picture, and people won’t be conserving water like they should.”

Palmer said that the pricing of water in Australia has always been too cheap. “We are the driest continent, and our prices for municipal water are about half of what people charge in Europe, where there is admittedly more water,” he said.

“[Desalinated] water is three times more expensive, therefore you don’t want to waste it,” he said. “So water authorities have to charge accordingly, and people will use less water and waste less water.”

Joe Geever, Southern California Coordinator for the Surfrider Foundation, takes issue with looking to solve water shortages with desalination. In Southern California, Geever said, the majority of the water supply is imported from the northern part of the state, contributing 15 to 20 percent of the state’s current energy demand. Geever said that in accordance with state laws, which compel Californians to reduce their climate impacts, the prime target for this reduction is water management and cutting back on wasted water.

“A desalination plant in San Diego is more energy demanding than pumping water all the way from the Sacramento Delta,” he said. “Rather than looking at water supply management as an opportunity to reduce our impacts on climate change, we’re looking at a solution –- desalination -– that exacerbates that problem.”

Read more here, here and here.

Sources: Global Water Intelligence’s Global Market Snapshot 2008, Food & Water Watch’s Desalination: an Ocean of Problems and Pacific Institute’s Desalination, With a Grain of Salt

Marseille won the vote of the Council’s Board of Governors in a close competition with South Africa’s city of Durban. The French candidacy recognized the importance of regional and global debates around water but also took a step further, vowing to ensure tangible solutions to the world water crisis, the press release added.

Although France’s bid prevailed, the WWC urged the two final candidatures to work hand in hand in preparation for the Forum, which brings together more than 20,000 world leaders, water experts and scientists every three years.

“The World Water Council has encouraged the parties to look into enacting the partnership in the spirit of co-operation, but also in recognition of the quality of the bids that both countries put up,” said Buyelwa Sonjica, South Africa’s Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs.

Prior to the vote, France and South Africa agreed to join forces to ensure the success of the 6th World Water Forum.

”If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together,” said one of the participants in the Board, according to the press release.

The WWC meeting came three months after the 5th World Water Forum wound up in Istanbul. The event –- the biggest international forum on water –- brought together participants from 182 countries in a discussion about the linkages between water, energy, health, agriculture, economy and politics.

While a European report presented at the forum in Istanbul urged more cooperation to avoid conflict over increasingly scarce water, World Water Day emphasized transboundary water management. The Istanbul Ministerial Statement also vowed to develop “cross-cutting coordination and policies” that transcend national borders and engage a wider variety of stakeholders.

Some chided the event in Istanbul for failing to recognize water as a basic right, instead describing it as a basic human need. Tension also simmered outside the Forum, as hundreds of people gathered in Istanbul to protest what they believed constituted the forum’s privileging of private interests over public concerns.

As Marseille and France prepare to host the 6th World Water Forum, organizers will have to carry a controversial legacy of both successes and pending questions as the world stands at a crossroads over its limited water resources.

Read more here and here.

Sources: World Water Council, AllAfrica Global Media

The underground water aquifer consists of nine wells, each with a capacity to produce up to 30 liters (7.9 gallons) per second.

“It will definitely supply the city with drinking water for decades to come,” said Mahfood Obaid Bagwaigo, manager of the Mukalla Water Supply and Sanitation Company.

The reservoir is one of many promising new water sources discovered in southern Yemen recently. The potential for deep well drilling dates at least as far back as 1996, when a paper delivered at a Vienna conference suggested that a “significant deep groundwater resource may exist” in the area.

Many others have suspected that such a find was possible in the arid Hadhramaut region of southern Yemen. When Canadian companies started exploring the area for oil in the early 1990s, their satellite pictures suggested the presence of large underground reservoirs in the Hadrhamaut Valley, where the recent discovery is located.

Despite the fresh new source of water, Yemen continues to face a number of pressing water challenges, ranging from salt water intrusion and urban and industrial contamination to water over-exploitation.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 90 percent of Yemen’s water supplies in 2000 were used for agriculture, 8 percent for drinking and 2 percent for industrial use –- a rate that has depleted many springs and wells throughout the country.

Read more here, here and here.

Sources: UN Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), Vienna Conference 1996 Proceedings and The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

Inset image by James Tenant and published under a CC BY-NC 2.0 license.