1994 WORLD FOOD DAY TELECONFERENCE CONCEPT PAPER
The theme of the 1994 World Food Day Teleconference on October 14
will be water -- the rising competition among agricultural,
industrial and urban users for its limited supply and its
increasing role in maintaining world food security. The
teleconference will explore the economic, social and cultural
impact of water scarcity, the reasons for the problems and
proposed solutions, especially in the context of increasing water
availability and/or conservation and waste reduction. A subtheme
and relative newcomer as a public policy issue -- will be the
need to protect the natural freshwater environment of rivers
lakes, wetlands and aquifers. As in years past, the discussion
will be led by an international panel and will put special empha-
sis on the challenges facing countries in the Western Hemisphere.
The 1994 theme reflects the growing international awareness of
vater as a unique and threatened resource, both renewable and
finite, under stress for a number of reasons. It also recognizes
a profound and relatively new fact of life for most countries of
the world: that this resource which was once abundant, free and
clean, and is essential to human existence, is suddenly growing
scarce, more expensive and often contaminated. Worldwide, water
management is now a major public policy concern.
* Underlying the growing scarcity of vater are population growth
and economic development. First, since the water supply is a
constant (despite annual climatic variations by region), water
availability per capita falls in direct proportion to rising
human numbers. Each doubling in global population reduces per
capita -vater availability by half, At the same time, economic
progress and rising standards of living dramatically increase per
capita water consumption. Globally, developed countries use
three times the amount of water per capita as poor ones. In home
use, for example, average per capita use in the U.S. is 185
gallons a day, while in many African countries it is below 10
gallons.
* About two-thirds of all water used by humans is in agriculture
for irrigation. The amount of land under modern irrigation
quadrupled over the past century and now stands at almost 250
million hectares (620 million acres). Generally speaking, this
irrigated land is twice as productive as land farmed only with
rainfall. One sixth of total land is under irrigation providing
one-third of the world's food. But irrigation in most countries
is woefully inefficient and less than half the water used
actually reaches and benefits crops. World population is still
rising rapidly and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization
estimates that irrigated land must meet an even higher percentage
of total food needs in the next century.
* Water for cities and homes, though less than 10% of total water
use worldwide, is an area of extreme concern owing to the linkage
of water, sanitation and health. The World Health Organization
estimates that up to 4 million children die each year as a result
of water-borne infection, mostly in poor countries. Even in rich
countries urban water problems of cost and quality are mounting
and are combined with a widespread loss of public confidence
exemplified by the extensive shelf space in supermarkets now
given to bottled water in cities where tapwater is perfectly
safe. Cities are mushrooming larger throughout the developing
world and slum dwellers are very often served by private vendors
charging up to 100 times the rate for public water but with
little sanitation monitoring. Even at the end of the UN Water
Decade (1981-1990), 1.7 billion people in the world lacked
internal plumbing in their homes.
* The negative impact on the natural environment from increasing
water use and abuse is now a major international policy concern.
Dam construction, river diversion, watershed deforestation,
industrial pollution, groundwater and aquifer mining and
uncontrolled human waste disposal all are destroying natural
habitats and the plant and animal species they nurture. Interna-
tional lenders, national legislatures and the courts are now
demanding environmental impact studies on new water projects and
expensive remedial action to reverse past damage. But the
overriding policy factor is that maintaining freshwater
ecosystems is now a fourth player at the water table along with
agriculture, industry and cities.
Despite all these problems, only 25 countries in the world -
mostly in North Africa and the Mideast - suffer severe water
scarcity, which is measured at less than 1,000 cubic meters of
fresh water supply per person per year. No country in the
Western Hemisphere except Barbados falls in the severe scarcity
category. But the two factors of population growth and economic
development march inexorably forward and it is possible that by
the year 2025 a third of the world population could live in
countries of water stress or severe scarcity.
With this background, teleconference panelists will address
problem and solution alternatives and the help that might come
from international cooperation:
How much international aid is going to urban water
sanitation systems and what kind of priority is that
given as against industrial loans or other
investment-needs?
How can irrigation continue to expand without building
more huge dams and how can it be made more efficient in
terms of water use?
How does water scarcity directly affect economic
development, apart from agriculture, and does it hold
down industrial development?
In water scarce countries, should there be water
rationing and government allocation of supplies for the
public good and how could that work?
In what ways does water management fit into the
concept-of sustainable development?
Source: U. S. National Committee for World Food Day, 1001 22nd
Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20437; 202/653-2404 or 2401.
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