More water woes

This time it's a dispute between two American states:

The issue before the court centered on a claim that Wyoming has been consuming more water due to irrigation advances such as center-pivot sprinklers.

Those sprinklers allow farmers to use water more efficiently, by increasing the amount that goes directly to their crops. But they also mean less surplus water comes off of fields - decreasing the "return flow" into rivers that flow downstream to Montana.

From the Bismarck Tribune. So in other words, Montana is mad because Wyoming isn't wasting enough water. Does that make any sense?

US Southwest could face catastrophic drought

Nothing is certain in this business, of course, but some fear this is what's on the way:

U.S. researchers shows that the American southwest could experience a 60-year stretch of heat and drought unseen since the 12th century.

Researchers at the University of Arizona examined studies of temperature changes and droughts in the region over the past 1,200 years and used them to project future climate models in the hope that water resource managers could use the information to plan ahead.

An examination of the past, through human-kept records but also via rings in the cores of trees that can show periods of wetness or drought, showed that dry spells of earlier centuries were much worse than any we have seen in modern times.

From the Montreal Gazette. The thing is, those areas are strapped for water now owing to the huge demands of agriculture, not to mention the golf courses and swimming pools that litter that part of the US. Even now there are fears of Lake Mead drying up, for instance. What would they do? Desalination might help, but it is extremely expensive in terms of money as well as energy, and given that California and Arizona, at least, are badly strapped for cash, how are they to pay for something like that? Will private money be forthcoming? If not, the next few decades could see a massive displacement of people from those areas. If nothing else, one could relish the irony of Arizonans wanting to move somewhere for a better life and being hated as job-stealing outsiders...

Yet more water troubles

This time it's in Syria:

AR RAQQAH, Syria — The farmlands spreading north and east of this Euphrates River town were once the breadbasket of the region, a vast expanse of golden wheat fields and bucolic sheep herds.

Now, after four consecutive years of drought, this heartland of the Fertile Crescent — including much of neighboring Iraq — appears to be turning barren, climate scientists say. Ancient irrigation systems have collapsed, underground water sources have run dry and hundreds of villages have been abandoned as farmlands turn to cracked desert and grazing animals die off. Sandstorms have become far more common, and vast tent cities of dispossessed farmers and their families have risen up around the larger towns and cities of Syria and Iraq.

From the New York Times. This should be a familiar refrain to regular readers of this blog (see for example this or this). And we're not likely immune to this stuff either. Danny Blair, a climatologist at the University of Winnipeg, thinks we should be preparing in advance for trouble:

It's time for Canadians to wake up to the reality of climate change. Many already do understand that the consequences of climate change for our part of the world and the world as a whole are profound, but many do not. Of course, there are both positive and negative aspects to climate change, but it is increasingly clear the climate trends that will almost certainly prevail throughout this century will leave us with a world in which the benefits of climate change will be swamped by its environmental, economic and humanitarian costs.

From the Free Press. And what might some of these costs be?

On the other hand, insects and weeds will also flourish in a warmer world, perhaps necessitating an increase in the use of pesticides. Warmer summers will also increase the demand for energy to cool our buildings and will increase the frequency of heat-related health problems. Forest fires will become more frequent and the winter recreation season will be shortened. Importantly, the network of winter roads across Manitoba will become even less reliable than is already the case, causing significant and costly impacts.

Impacts related more directly to water are likely to be even more significant. Climate change will likely result in higher annual precipitation totals across Canada, but they also show that the summers will be drier. With more of the annual precipitation falling in the winter and more heat available to evaporate surface water, it is quite likely that the Prairie provinces will have to suffer through more frequent and more severe droughts. Ironically, it is also likely that floods will become even more problematic than they are today, as the hydrological cycle kicks into a higher gear. Thus, the survivability of the settlements of the southern prairies already stressed by the ups and downs in agricultural productivity may become even more tenuous.

It's worth noting that when scientists try to predict the fine details of the effects of climate change there is an element of speculation involved (and it should be noted that Blair is cautious himself, using words like "likely" rather than making definitive statements). Climate is pretty complicated stuff, and we should be preparing for a number of eventualities.

One eventuality that Manitoba should definitely be preparing for, though (and yes, I've harped on this in the past) is the melting of the glaciers in the Rockies. Right now, the Saskatchewan and Churchill Rivers are flowing very nicely indeed, fed by the melting glaciers... but in a few decades the glaciers will be gone, and then those rivers will be a lot smaller. The probably won't dry up entirely, since it will still rain and snow periodically, but Manitoba Hydro should be planning for this now by getting other clean energy sources online as quickly as possible. Ideally, what we should have is enough solar and wind capacity to keep Jenpeg closed enough of the time that Lake Winnipeg can be kept near its current level. Will we do it? That remains to be seen...

Some bad news about the world's food supplies

A couple of stories today are worthy of concern. The first is this from the UK:

In a study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, the scientists warned that rising temperatures would make crops mature more quickly, reducing their yield, while extreme temperatures could also significantly reduce yields.

More droughts would affect crops, while more intense monsoon rains could lead to flooding and crop damage, the researchers said.

If nothing else, it's noteworthy that a paper as conservative as the Telegraph is covering this. Of course, they also happily report the proposed solutions:

But they said the worst effects of climate change could be limited by investment in better farming and the development of new drought resistant or heat tolerant crops. This could be done by aid money, breeding and new technologies like genetic modification (GM).

Hmm. While I'd support GM if it really turns out to be necessary, I'd prefer to see enough of an effort made to fight climate change that we can get by without it. But that's another story.

The second story on this issue is what's happening to the vast Murray-Darling Basin that spans four Australian states:

Farmers and small business owners are predicting the Murray-Darling Basin Authority's recommendation for massive water cuts will force a mass exodus from their communities.

The authority predicts the reductions in water allocations may result in losses of up to $1.1 billion a year to irrigated agriculture production, 800 job losses and significant social impacts across the basin.

But business leaders in the New South Wales Riverina town of Griffith say cuts of 43 per cent for their area mean, at worst, a loss of 5,000 jobs across the region.

They say there will need to be a big investment in mental health facilities for not only irrigators, but the wider community.

From the ABC. The Murray-Darling basin today, the American southwest tomorrow...

Water resolution passes at UN

So the resolution to declare water and sanitation to be basic human rights passed at the UN General Assembly. But guess who sat out the vote:

Although the motion passed with 124 countries voting in favour of the resolution drafted by Bolivia, Canada was among the 41 nations to abstain on the issue.

Hmm. And why did John McNee (Canada's ambassador to the UN) abstain? Don't know; perhaps it was a compromise between him and the government.

One thing that bothers me about the resolution, though, is this:

The final resolution "Calls upon States and international organizations to provide financial resources, capacity-building and technology transfer, through international assistance and co-operation, in particular to developing countries, in order to scale up efforts to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable drinking water and sanitation for all."

All of that is very good. Safe, clean, accessible, and affordable drinking water and sanitation should be available to all. But in that list I'd like to have seen the word sustainable.

Another water war brewing?

A couple of months ago I mentioned the dispute between Egypt and its upstream neighbours over the waters of the Nile. Well, that's far from the only place on the planet where trouble is brewing over this essential resource:

The last time water issues pushed India and Pakistan to the brink of armed conflict was half a century ago, when Bashir Ahmad Malik was an engineering student. His government asked him to drop his graduate studies and join a team of experts urgently negotiating a way to share water between the rival countries.

“Both sides were threatening war,” he said. “India was shutting the canals, starving or flooding us.”

The Indus Water Treaty averted disaster when it was signed in 1960. Even when India and Pakistan did eventually go to war over different issues in the following decades, they continued to respect the water treaty.

But the agreement now seems to be unravelling. Dispute-resolution mechanisms, never invoked in the first four decades of the treaty, have been triggered twice in recent years. The latest round of talks broke down earlier this month, as the two sides failed to agree on a neutral umpire to settle a quarrel over India’s plans for the Kishanganga hydroelectric project in northern Kashmir.

Even the veteran water expert who assisted with the original negotiations now feels that the treaty was inadequate.

“At the time, we felt it would be all right,” Mr. Malik said. “But now, I don't think it was a good treaty for Pakistan.”

Loss of faith in the Indus Water Treaty comes at a time when water disputes between the nuclear-armed neighbours have reached unprecedented levels of bombast.

From the Globe. Scary times we live in...

A war over water?

We're seeing some sabre-rattling on the part of Egypt about upstream uses of the Nile:

After he signed the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in 1979, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat said: “The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water.” Well, the world kept turning, and now a potential war over water is creeping onto Egypt’s agenda.

Egypt is the economic and cultural superpower of the Arab world. Its 78-million people account for almost a third of the world’s Arabic-speaking population. But 99 percent of it is open desert, and if it were not for the Nile river running through that desert, Egypt’s population would not be any bigger than Libya’s (5 million). So Cairo takes a dim view of anything that might diminish the flow of that river.

Back in 1929, when the British empire controlled Egypt, Sudan, and most of the countries farther upstream in East Africa, it sponsored an agreement giving Cairo the right to veto any developments upstream that would decrease the amount of water in Nile. The rationale at the time was that the upstream countries had ample rainfall, whereas Egypt and Sudan (at the time ruled as one country) depended totally on the Nile’s waters.

Thirty years later, in 1959, when Egypt and Sudan were already independent but all of the upstream states except Ethiopia were still colonies, Egypt and Sudan signed another agreement that left only 10 percent of the Nile’s water to the seven upstream countries while giving Egypt almost 80 percent and Sudan the rest. The argument was still the same: the countries further upstream had rainfall, while it hardly ever rains in Egypt or Sudan.

Now the upstream countries that got almost no water in that deal are rejecting it. Thirteen years ago, they persuaded Egypt and Sudan to start talks on the river, but they have now concluded that the two Arab countries really only joined the talks to prevent any new deal. So they are now going ahead without them.

From the Georgia Straight. Will war actually break out? Too soon to tell, but in the long run it's almost inevitable that nations will come to blows over water.

Water export legislation exempts bottled water

The federal government recently surprised skeptics like me with legislation to restrict bulk water exports. However, there's a problem here:

A federal government plan to strengthen a ban on bulk water exports is undermined by a loophole allowing significant water removal for exports of bottled water, critics said yesterday.

Ottawa MP Paul Dewar, the New Democratic Party's environment critic, signalled amendments will be sought to a proposed bill to strengthen the existing ban against bulk water exports by extending it to more than 80 rivers and streams that cross the U.S.-Canada border. "Canada will continue to export water in bulk, just in small individual containers instead of giant containers," said Joe Cressy of the Polaris Institute, a research and advocacy organization that is campaigning against bottled water. "The bill is a first step but it doesn't go far enough."

The new legislation is intended to thwart the diversion of river water south to the U.S. through such means as dams, aqueducts, canals and pipelines.

From the Montreal Gazette (h/t pogge). There may be other issues too -- the Council of Canadians is concerned about what else might not be covered:

Council of Canadians national water campaigner Meera Karunananthan says, “We don’t see Bill C-26 as a ban on bulk water exports. It does not appear to cover waters that are not boundary or transboundary waters.”

In other words, if someone were to draw water from the Churchill River and haul it away in supertankers, that would be just dandy under this legislation. Is this likely? Hard to say. The CoC's Maude Barlow notes here that the right wing think tanks have had their eyes on Arctic water for some time, though.

Another "what's wrong with this picture?" entry

One would expect that water rates would reflect your level of use, wouldn't one? Sadly, that's not the way it works:

SARNIA -- Conservationists beware.

If you don't use much water, your bill will dramatically increase under Sarnia's new water and sewer rates.

Jeannie and Dennis Marshall were shocked by a Bluewater Power water bill they received for a vacant residence owned by Jeannie's deceased brother.

The bill came to 17 cents for five weeks of water consumption, and a staggering $78.53 for water distribution and sewer charges.

No one lived at the property during the billing period of Dec. 24 to Feb. 1.

Jeannie Marshall said she was stunned to see the high fixed costs.

"I think it's ridiculous," she said. "Council should really rethink this."

From the London Free Press. This just seems so wrong. I wonder, is this being done simply out of stupidity, or do they have good intentions in mind (e.g. not wanting to penalize large families)? I wish the reporter had at least tried to ask that question of someone... but journalists like that seem to be a dying (or at least retiring) breed.