Wealthy nations face water crisis like poor -- WWF

First posted 09:46am (Mla time) Aug 16, 2006
Agence France-Presse

http://news.inq7.net/archive_article/index.php?ver=1&index=1&story_id=15547

GENEVA -- Wealthy nations are facing a water crisis mirroring the one experienced by drought-plagued poor countries, the environmental group WWF warned in a report Wednesday.

The report, "Rich countries, poor water," said that climate change, drought, and loss of natural wetlands that store water, along with mismanagement of freshwater resources, pollution, and overconsumption by industry, agriculture and big cities were stripping supplies.

The report singled out Australia, European countries, the United States, and Japan.

It also warned that major schemes in emerging nations, such as redirecting rivers like China's Yangtze, merely shifted problems elsewhere and replicated errors made in the past by rich nations.

"Economic riches don't translate to plentiful water," says Jamie Pittock, Director of WWF's Global Freshwater Program.

The report underlined that the crisis was best tackled first by conservation of natural resources.

"The crisis in rich nations is proof that wealth and infrastructure are no insurance against scarcity, pollution, climate change and drought. They are clearly no substitute for protecting rivers and wetlands, and restoring floodplain areas," adds Pittock.

In Europe, countries on the Atlantic seaboard have experienced more droughts while Mediterranean nations are squandering natural resources with poorly thought out expansion of tourism and agriculture in some areas, according to the report.

Meanwhile, contamination of wetlands polluted by industry in Eastern Europe has yet to be tackled, the WWF said.

In Australia, annual rainfall has been declining since a sudden drop of 15 percent in the 1970s, prompting the western coastal city of Perth to build a desalination plant to meet its needs.

Natural groundwater sources that gave the Australian desert town of Alice Springs its name were "ancient" and no longer recharged, the WWF underlined.

"Alternative water sources are likely to be both expensive and similarly limited," it added.

Despite high rainfall in Japan, the report said the country's population density was gaining the upper hand on what it acknowledged was "high quality" supply and sanitation engineering.

The report said Japanese water supplies were increasingly contaminated.
Big cities were proving to be ever thirstier.

In some instances, such as in Houston or Sydney, they were simply overconsuming, according to the report. In London, leakage from ageing water mains is estimated at 300 Olympic-size swimming pools a day.
But the WWF praised New York, noting that it had less severe water problems because of a tradition of conserving key catchment areas and green areas in New York State.

Other areas of the United States are already using substantially more water than can be replenished naturally, a situation that is likely to be exacerbated by climate change, the report said.

Increased salt levels or contamination by pollutants that would otherwise be diluted were also a growing threat in areas suffering from water scarcity, it added.