Is Water the New Oil… Worth Fighting For?

 

“[You] are, literally, in a race to the bottom.” Richard Damania, a lead economist at the World Bank

Lakes, reservoirs and rivers/streams are losing water in some of the most water-depleted areas on earth. But what we do not see is making water shortages so much worse. “More than two-thirds of the groundwater consumed around the world irrigates agriculture, while the rest supplies drinking water to cities. These aquifers long have served as a backup to carry regions and countries through droughts and warm winters lacking enough snowmelt to replenish rivers and streams. Now, the world’s largest underground water reserves in Africa, Eurasia, and the Americas are under stress. Many of them are being drawn down at unsustainable rates. Nearly two billion people rely on groundwater that is considered under threat…

“As regions and nations run short of water, Damania says, economic growth will decline and food prices will spike, raising the risk of violent conflict and waves of large migrations. Unrest in Yemen, which heavily taps into groundwater and which experienced water riots in 2009, is rooted in a water crisis. Experts say water scarcity also helped destabilize Syria and launch its civil war. Jordan, which relies on aquifers as its only source of water, is even more water-stressed now that more than a half-million Syrian refugees arrived.” National Geographic, July 14, 2016. If water issues were bad when this article was written, they are whole lot worse today. Technology was the beginning of the problem. Climate change made is much worse.

When wind pumps were how farmers extracted water from aquifers, rainwater and other forms of runoff usually replenished what was removed. But beginning in the 1930s, high-capacity diesel pumps gradually began to rise to become the gold standard for many farmers. Slowly, an increasing number of vital aquifers went dry, including parts of the massive High Plains Aquifer and its underground tributaries (running from the northern Midwest right down into Texas). Sequential aquifer failures in many Western states followed, with particular acceleration in the last two decades as global warming reduced rainfall and snowmelt, melted glaciers and temperatures rendered increasing acreage into desert. The level of water extraction from these Western aquifers continues to be, bottom line, unsustainable.

While water may be plentiful in some regions, that does not help areas facing deepening desertification. Pumping water across vast distances is even more than the cost of building pipelines or aqueducts. If you have ever picked up a bucket of water, you know it is very heavy (a 5 gallon bucket of water weights over 40 lbs!). Moving that water across vast distances requires electricity to power the necessary pumps, and if you have to pump water up hills, well you need even more power. While you can generate electricity on the downhill section of pipelines and aqueducts, there is a net lost of energy of about 15% in the up-down process. Old oil pipelines could be used, but they need to be relined for that purpose. But as we shift to alternative energy, water may indeed be more valuable than oil.

The world is shuddering from staggering oil prices, as well as a dearth of fertilizer and foodstuffs from a combination of climate change and Putin’s war against Ukraine. Pretty much, you ain’t nuffin’ yet. Water shortages cause mass migrations of people and animals trying to survive… wars… Water availability is so important, that governments everywhere are adding that issue to both domestic and foreign policy. Case in point, from the June 2nd Associated Press:

“Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday [6/1] unveiled a White House plan to tackle water security as a foreign policy priority in light of ever tightening global water supplies… The plan pledges U.S. leadership in the efforts to ensure there is enough water to support food supplies and healthcare systems. Under the initiative, the U.S. government will also spearhead ways to defuse potential disputes over access to water, Harris said.

“Conflicts over water are becoming more common across the globe as supplies come under increasing pressure from climate change, urbanization and population growth. Research has shown that global warming is intensifying the water cycle, leading to more severe droughts and floods.

“‘Water insecurity makes our world less stable,’ Harris said at the White House, noting water scarcity makes it more difficult for communities to produce food, protect public health and drive economic growth. ‘Many of our most fundamental national security interests depend on water security.’” Those uncontrolled floods don’t solve the problem. They wash away topsoil as the destroy homes… and people. In many areas, they don’t get rain, much less flooding.

If you doubt the political significance of water, that “destabilization of Syria” noted above left about a million Sunni farmers in Syria (pictured above) and Iraq watching their farms blow away in cracked earth and dust. They begged the Shiite controlled governments in Baghdad and Damascus for aid but were rebuffed. That’s when ISIS stepped in and offered those farmers power against their Shiite masters… and gave them hope that they might topple leaders who opposed any aid for religious reasons. The rest is history.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as water literally vaporizes and disappears, the axiom that life without water cannot exist gets very personal to billions of people around the world… increasingly desperate people.