7. Water: Who Has It, and Who Doesn’t
“All the water that will ever be is, right now.”
—National Geographic, October 1993
“Between earth and earth’s atmosphere, the amount of water remains constant; there is never a drop more, never a drop less.
“This is a story of circular infinity, of a planet birthing itself.”
—Linda Hogan, Northern Lights, Autumn 1990
Before we address the issue of which regions and nations have the most affordable and accessible water resources, let’s take a look at what the entire world must divvy up. The information comes from Water in Crisis: A Guide to the World’s Fresh Water Resources (Oxford University Press, 1993), in the chapter “World Fresh Water Resources.”
Although more than 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, 97.5% of that is salt water, as shown in Figure 7.1. Salt water will kill you if you drink it without diluting it with freshwater. (The next chapter talks more about the science of water.) That leaves just 2.5% of Earth’s water resources as “potentially” available to support human, animal, and plant life.
Source: Water in Crisis: A Guide to the World’s Fresh Water Resources (Oxford University Press, 1993)
Except. Except that 69% of that 2.5% is unavailable because it is frozen in the ice caps of Antarctica, Greenland, and the far-north Arctic islands. Another 30% of this 2.5% potentially drinkable water is locked in the ground, either as economically unrecoverable water in the soil itself or as deep aquifers inaccessible for human use. Even if we count all this water because, at some price, we may be able to filter water from soil or tap the deeper aquifers we haven’t already begun to plunder, we must remember that it took eons to store water as glacier or aquifer. Both of these sources are nonrenewable and currently are noneconomic and not feasible to recover. However, creating new mouths to feed is eminently “renewable.” We must accept the hard fact that just three-tenths of 1% of the water we see is available for the world’s 6.9 billion (and growing) population. Only the water found in lakes, streams, rivers, reservoirs, and underground sources that are shallow enough to be tapped at an affordable cost is regularly renewed by The Water Cycle and therefore available on a sustainable basis.
Is this remaining three-tenths of 1% distributed equally across nations and regions? Not on your life—and “your life” is precisely what is at stake.
Where Is the Water?
The amount of water on the surface of the Earth, and in the atmosphere that protects us, is relatively constant. It exists as humidity—basically, water droplets too small for gravity, the sun, wind, and other atmospheric conditions to coalesce into rain or snow. It exists as saltwater oceans, freshwater lakes, glaciers, rivers, ice, rain, and snow. The amount extant is recycled by plants and animals in an endless chain of evaporation, transpiration, condensation, and precipitation. So it would seem the problem is merely capturing what is available and using it as wisely as possible.
That is what happens over most of the world today. Every year farmers on the Indian subcontinent and all across Southeast Asia eagerly await the coming of the monsoons. At their most virulent, they may bring flooding, death, and destruction. But without those blessed rains, there would be no rice. Without those rains, there would be no dilution of the man-made, animal-made, and man-caused concentration of sewage and chemicals that renders the groundwater undrinkable. And without those rains, often collected in open cisterns, there would be no water in the dry season.
That is why the coming of the monsoons is a time of trepidation but, overshadowing this trepidation, also a time of great joy. I was a defense attaché in Myanmar (Burma) for three month-long tours in the 1990s. Every year, with the first big fat black clouds releasing water in March and April, the entire Burmese nation enjoys a Water Festival. Deprived, rationed, or self-rationed for so many months, with the first rains every inhabitant takes to the streets and throws pails of water at passing bicyclists, cars, and pedestrians or engages in squirt-gun shenanigans. Or they simply stand, arms akimbo and smile wide, as the cooling drops of rain pelt their bodies.
There are only three problems with this delightful scenario and reliance on the ever-dependable cycle of drought and monsoon:
• The supply of water may be constant, but with more and more people covering every square meter of this overburdened planet, the demand has gone into the stratosphere. An increasing number of nations simply have too many mouths to feed and thirsts to quench for the current level of potable water to sustain.
• As the eminent American biologist Dr. Garrett Hardin presciently observed, “We can never do merely one thing.” We may rejoice that the world’s standard of living is, in the aggregate, improving. We see nations once consigned to the Third World now either “emerging” or “developing.” Certainly, from a social perspective, that is desirable. But “we can never do merely one thing.” As individuals improve their economic condition, they don’t first want tickets to the opera. They don’t even lust after a motor scooter first. What they want is more protein in their diets. That typically means transitioning from a cereal-based diet (rice, corn, wheat) to a diet with more animal protein. If 1.3 billion Chinese are going from eating half a chicken over seven days to enjoying a whole chicken and maybe a little pork as well, that means way more grains are being used for animal consumption. And that means more water is being used to grow more grains to provide less, albeit higher-quality, protein.
• I said earlier that the amount of water on the surface of the Earth, and in the atmosphere that protects us, is relatively constant. And I discussed inaccessible groundwater and inaccessible large aquifers. But some aquifers are closer to the surface and have been discovered and exploited via wells that pump this stored water to the surface. These aquifers are saturated subsurface rock that we think of as lakes or pools of water that have accumulated as some rain and snowmelt are pulled by gravity down into the ground rather than drained away via a river or stream. Nature has provided these pools of water—if only we will use them sparingly and wisely. Thus far, we have not done so. We need not look to the developing world to see this. Americans have only to consider Las Vegas, with its tens of thousands of irrigated green lawns and open swimming pools. About seven-eights of the water Vegas uses comes from the Colorado River. But the large population increase and tourist flow has forced residents to also tap, for the other one-eighth, a large aquifer that is now being drained at such a rapid pace that it may be dry in less than 40 years—even if the population and tourism quit growing.
Because of these three mitigating factors/problems, those who actually have abundant water are clearly to be envied, and possibly viewed more favorably for their investment possibilities. Water could be used to secure the health and success of a population, used as a geopolitical weapon (“You cut off my supply of natural gas, I cut off your supply of water.”), or sold directly to less-fortunate neighbors. Whatever the case, nations with water increasingly will be in the economic, geopolitical, and investment catbird seat.
A country might trade, say, oil for water (via desalination, for instance). Or it might give concessions to its upstream neighbors whose mountainous snows and rivers supply its own parched plots of earth (think Turkey and Iraq, or Sudan and Egypt). Or a country could simply plunder another nation to get at its precious water (as may have been the case with Tibet, from whose high plateaus most of the water for China and Southeast Asia is sourced). Regardless, every nation gets at least some of what it wants, and others approach close to all of what they need—for now, anyway.
The supply of water is finite but huge. The supply of potable water is finite and sustainable at today’s current population—barely. With 384,000 new mouths to feed and thirsts to quench every day, it is no longer sustainable. Danger exists and, as in every crisis, opportunity as well. Technologies exist to make nonpotable water drinkable. The issue isn’t whether it’s possible to render seawater or wastewater drinkable. The issue is one of affordability and accessibility.
A nation rich in internal renewable water resources per capita may spend its treasures and talents on other technologies, enhancements, and productivities. A nation poor in internal renewable water resources per capita may expend its treasures and talents on mere survival.
So who has the water?
The UN now standardizes the use of certain terms to be able to answer that question. Total Actual Renewable Water Resources (TARWR) is a standardized index that reflects the water resources theoretically available from all sources within a nation. It basically adds all internally generated surface water annual runoff and groundwater recharge derived from rain, fog, and snow, as well as any external flow entering from other nations that contributes to both surface water and groundwater. Then the index subtracts a factor to correct for the same water that comes from surface and groundwater system interactions and any flow volume required by treaty to leave the country. The result is expressed in cubic kilometers of water.
The map shown in Figure 7.2 indicates that China, Indonesia, and India all seem to be in pretty good shape. In fact, in terms of the absolute amount of TARWR, Indonesia is #5 with 2,838 km3, China is #6 with 2,830 km3, and India is #9 in the world with 1,880 km3. They are behind Brazil, #1 with 8,233 km3; Russia, #2 with 4,508 km3; the U.S., #3 with 3,051 km3; and Canada, #4 with 2,902 km3. India is slightly behind Colombia and Peru. These nine countries account for some 60% of the world’s freshwater supply.
Figure 7.2. Total renewable water
Source: ChartsBin.com
Ay, there’s the rub. This map refers only to supply, not demand. It shows which nations are blessed with water resources, but it fails to note how many thirsty voices are crying out for water in that nation. If you instead look at the situation on a per capita basis, for some nations—again, with major investment implications—the numbers are turned on their heads. Figure 7.3 is a more accurate rendering of nations with water to spare, those in the middle, and those in dire straits.
Figure 7.3. Total renewable water resources per capita by country
Source: ChartsBin.com
The ballyhooed BRIC nations of India and China, thanks to their massive populations, must devote significant effort to ensure their population’s survival by buying water rights, desalinating ocean water, bartering for water, or taking it by military action. Neighbors Russia and the nations of Southeast Asia have ample amounts above those needed to satisfy their populations. In this more appropriate analysis, the UN says that roughly 1,000 cubic meters per person per year is more than enough. Below that, water is “a potentially serious constraint, and a major problem in drought years...when even slight variations can render whole communities unable to cope and create disaster conditions.” The countries in the middle have more than enough but are not as blessed. The countries at the bottom must desalinate, spend, barter, or attack to get enough. Here are the top nations in descending order of water per person:
• French Guiana and Iceland are the undisputed leaders, with, respectively, 609,091 and 539,683 cubic meters (m3) per person.
• Suriname and Guyana, two sparsely populated rain forest nations next to French Guiana in South America, are next, also with six-digit amounts per capita.
• Canada has 87,285 m3.
• Norway has 80,134 m3.
• New Zealand has 77,305 m3.
• Virtually the entire rest of South America is blessed with both the Andes Mountains and the Amazon rain forest, where almost all nations have less than Norway but more than the last two entries on this list.
• Russia has 31,883 m3.
• Australia has huge deserts but also favorable rains and mountains, giving it 23,346 cubic meters of water per person per year.
The U.S., while well above the “subsistence” threshold of 1,000 m3 that the UN uses, at 9,789 m3 is solidly in the middle of the pack and at the low end of the nations at the top of the list. Given the cost of desalination and, heaven forbid, shipping water long distances, the U.S. is fortunate that it has a special relationship with its primary trading partner, ally, and neighbor to the north that most other nations do not enjoy. (By the way, that UN subsistence level is defined as the minimum to sustain life and ensure agricultural production in countries with climates that require irrigation for agriculture. So it refers not just to water consumed as water but also to the amount of water necessary to grow food to ensure subsistence.)
So which nations need to begin planning today to secure future water sources and/or build desalination plants and/or clean up their polluted water supplies? As you would suspect, typically these are the most populous nations engaged in a headlong rush to industrialize (the resulting pollution further reduces their potable water supplies) and desert nations closer to the equator cursed with scant rain and snow. They include the countries listed in Table 7.1. It was taken from the current CIA World Factbook, which ranks all countries’ water availability in cubic kilometers per 100,000 people. This table lists only the lowest 20.
Table 7.1. World Rank by Water Availability Per 100,000 Population
For comparison, given the CIA’s different methodology, Iceland has 53.4 km3 per 100,000 people, and the U.S. has 0.993 km for every 100,000 residents.
This leads to Figure 7.4—nations dependent on others for much of their water supply. This need not necessarily lead to conflict, of course. For example, South America has plenty of water for all. It obtains water from other nations simply because the Andean/Amazon watersheds border so many other countries. And many Mideast nations, thanks to desalination (or the fact that their neighbors have even less water to provide, pilfer, or plunder than they do), are not dependent on other nations. Still, this provides an interesting geopolitical perspective and rounds out the idea of not just who has water and who doesn’t, but who is dependent on the good intentions of the people upstream.
Figure 7.4. Total renewable water dependency ratio
Source: ChartsBin.com
For the record, 38 countries depend on other nations for over 50% of their renewable water resources: Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Benin, Bolivia, Botswana, Cambodia, Chad, Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Gambia, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Latvia, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Netherlands, Niger, Pakistan, Paraguay, Portugal, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia.
What all this taken together illustrates is that for now and into the near future—say, 2025 or 2030—the developed countries of North America and Europe, including Russia, will not see any serious threat to their water supply. Declining or stable populations are and will remain well aligned with available water resources.
However, North Africa, the Middle East, South Africa, China, India, probably Iran and Afghanistan, and possibly Pakistan, may face severe water shortages due to physical scarcity of water, a high level of pollutants in the freshwater supply, and overpopulation.
Even water-rich South America and Sub-Saharan Africa may face water supply issues by 2025. In their case, however, the issues are more likely to be overpopulation and the difficulty of providing pure, disease-free water.
The wildcard, of course, in this “Who has water and who doesn’t?” conundrum is unconventional water sources. I have relied primarily on the UN Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the CIA World Factbook in researching the numbers in this chapter. Neither of them yet takes into account the use of nonconventional water sources such as the production of freshwater by desalination of brackish or salt water or the reuse of urban or industrial wastewaters (with or without treatment)—mostly in agriculture, but increasingly for industrial and even domestic uses. And yet these two areas are where we will have to concentrate our efforts going forward. The Hydrologic Cycle (also called The Water Cycle) ensures that no less water is available to us in the future—but no more either. It is fixed. And that leads to the geopolitical implications of water.
I spent many years in the U.S. intelligence community. Most analysts therein dwell on matters military, economic, political, cultural, and social, not biological. But I suggest that far more emphasis be placed on the economics and politics of water, whether for national defense, geopolitical positioning, economic necessity, or investment opportunity. We’ll return to this topic in greater detail and discuss the investment implications a bit later. But to place this subject in the most rational context, first we must make sure that we understand something of the science of water.