This spring, more than twenty former heads of state, including Bill Clinton and Vincente Fox, along with water experts, came together in Quebec City for fact-finding on water issues and in order to discuss possible solutions for an impending water crisis. The meeting’s announcements were released last month and weren’t happy. It is a stark warning of impending water wars. Me and all the participants — we were particularly dumbfounded because we coincided with the worst droughts on record as both China and Northern Europe endured one of the driest springs in history. Could all the horrible & pessimistic water predictive scenarios come true and unfold so soon in front of our very own eyes?
In my mind when all the world speaks of peak oil and is fearful of it — we should look elsewhere, because the really important issue is PEAK WATER. Cause we are way past peak water and we should all be prepared… or at lest aware. At least this is what I spoke about in the Quebec city meetings.
Just to show you how strange the world we live in is, here is a differing focus between human beings. While the world was apparently going dry, electric utility heads at the conference, were fearful that a lack of water could lead to the closure of their nuclear plants, since they couldn’t draw cooling water. And I was speaking of my worries that huge increases in food prices will result because of failed crops and of the climate change diverting the water precipitation cycle and that the water will surely come down when is most destructive like in Pakistan’s floods last year. And also that the unseasonal water cycle will have to enter the system at another time. Different tunes for different folks…
But now with record floods from melting snow in the Missouri and Mississippi rivers making those nuclear plants unsafe and useless if not downright destructive — because when you see them from the air, they look like they emerge from inside a lake — our fears are realized, albeit differently for each one of us. And it is also now that my fears of worldwide food price hikes for the basic staples of humanity, have all been realized. And you know it’s never good to see your fears realized…
So this unfolding humanitarian crisis causes us to reconsider the investment strategies of the past, in order to address the challenges for our future of fresh water.
And we hold a conference in London and Nepal on water this October… with the best minds to convene and start the dialog of water as an investment in London and as a human right and a human necessity in Nepal.
And this is more urgent by the day because with more than a billion people who don’t have reliable access to safe fresh water and two billion people without good access to water for sanitation, the human family is in peril. And we should throw the power of our investment muscles behind the solutions fully.
And with our growing human family, within a single generation, these numbers would surely double. Two billion people without basic access for drinking water and more than four billion without easy access for sanitation water, as growing demands for water will far exceed the available and sustainable supply by 40 percent, according a recent study. “Peak Water” has already come and gone. Humanity uses more water than can be sustained, drawing on non-renewable reserves of water accumulated over thousands of years in deep aquifers.
Human beings will do what they always do. And that’s incidentally what’s best for you too. Powerful self interest will guide you both in the North and in the global South. Both in the City of London and in Kathmandu Nepal.
And in this case, that means — in the two Environmental Parliament simultaneous city conferences in London and Kathmandu respectively — that both investing in water solutions as all these powerful leaders do and informing the governments and NGOs to define the access rights for people to safe drinking water and sanitation will result in a comprehensive solution.
Approaching the problem from the two most important ends will be a catalyst for robust solutions globally. Because in the global south the people need to manage access while the wealthy North regulates the flow of capital in order to make that access effective and efficient.
Let me pass on some of the insight, of how much energy and capital will be thrown at this problem, and which solutions will be the most valuable, based on the take aways from the Quebec city conference of leaders the Environmental parliament participated into.
THE SEVEN SIMPLE FACTS BELLOW GUIDE THE WAY OF THE FUTURE WATER:
China will invest upwards of $617 billion on Water
China spent more than $55 billion on water projects over the past five years, the bulk of which (about 65%) went toward the South-North Water Transfer Project, reinforcing aging reservoirs, and diverting inland waterways.
Another 10% ($5.4 billion) went to building irrigation facilities and other agricultural projects.
In the next decade, China’s Ministry of Finance said it will spend $617 billion on similar projects because “many cities face water shortages and irrigation facilities are badly in need of overhaul.”
City of Philadelphia Signs $2 Billion Clean Water Plan
It’s not every day the fifth largest city in the U.S. commits a sum like that to improving water management…
The 25-year plan will reduce the amount of sewer and storm water overflow entering the city’s waterways by 5 billion to 8 billion gallons per year, or 80% to 90%. The bulk of the plan is about infrastructure modification: using things like porous asphalt and rooftop gardens to reduce the amount of runoff tainted with road oil, litter, and raw sewage.
Dow to Increase Water Unit Sales by 60%
In a very profitable breakthrough, Dow Chemical (NYSE: DOW) has said it will reduce the energy required to desalinate seawater by a third to as little as 2 kilowatt-hours per cubic meter by 2015.
According to Ian Barbour, who manages Dow’s water and process solutions division, desalination membranes are a $1 billion per year market. And that will grow by at least 10% per year over the next decade into a $2.6 billion market.
Dow already owns 40% of that market, and only looks to expand its dominance as it continues to reduces costs.
India Spends $1 Billion on the Ganges
For the first time in more than 20 years, India has allocated major financing to clean up one of the world’s dirtiest rivers.
Almost 400 million people live along the banks of the river and depend on it for drinking, cooking, and washing. For decades, raw sewage, agricultural runoff, and industrial waste have spewed untreated into the river and its tributaries.
Even with a $1 billion price tag, the World Bank concedes it “takes decades and costs hundreds of billions of dollars” to cleanse an entire river.
India better get ready to do some spending; even environment minister Jairam Ramesh admits, “Most of India’s rivers have become sewers.”
America fears the Return of the Dust Bowl
US’s Breadbasket is made possible by an underground lake that stretches from the eastern slope of the Rockies over to South Dakota and down to the Texas Panhandle. Called the Ogallala aquifer, it was formed between two million and six million years ago and is believed to be the world’s largest body of freshwater. And that aquifer is what turned the 1920′s ”Dust Bowl” into the Breadbasket of the world.
The Ogallala aquifer ranges from 300 feet deep under Nebraska and Kansas down to 50 feet near the Texas/Mexico border. And just like oil, it’s a finite resource. Since it was discovered in the 1940s, we’ve drained enough water from the Ogallala to half-fill Lake Erie. The aquifer has gone from an average depth of 240 feet to 80 feet. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has said: “The Ogallala supply is going to run out and the plains will become uneconomical to farm.” They give it 60 years, best case. But towns in Texas, where it’s much more shallow, are already running dry…
Water scarcity ripple effects
When highlighting the hidden financial risk of water scarcity in U.S. water and electric utility bonds, we are continuing to drive change among the practices of credit rating agencies and states, particularly in the Southeast, when it comes to addressing water challenges. The Ripple Effects from the present Water Risk in the Municipal Bond Market report urged major credit rating agencies to look more closely at water scarcity issues when evaluating state and municipal water bonds. Earlier this month, Fitch Ratings issued a special report warning that it may downgrade Georgia’s bonds if water deficit challenges are not addressed. American Rivers, sent a letter this month to Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal urging him to devote more state funding to water conservation efforts. The state’s water and economic security rests on the efficient use of water, as increasing regional water competition, ongoing legal battles and more volatile weather that will surely limit supplies.
Investors Action on sustainability
Investor Network on Climate Risk, the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change and the Australia/New Zealand Investor Group on Climate Change published a report earlier this month detailing the investment practices of 46 asset managers and 44 asset owners – with collective assets totaling more than $12 trillion – on climate change issues.
The report results show that asset owners and asset managers understand the importance of addressing climate change through their investment practices and are making significant progress in a variety of areas. U.S. investors, however, lagged behind their European and Australian counterparts in integrating climate change across all of their portfolios.
US investors have strongly advocated for robust climate policies, and they have succeeded in getting the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to issue ground-breaking climate risk disclosure requirements for companies, according to the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR).
But their climate-related investment practices, in most cases, trail their international peers, and this will be a key focus for INCR in the coming months.
Yours,
Pano
PS:
Do you see the patterns yet?
