By James Grubel
CANBERRA, Aug 16 (Reuters) - A third of the world is facing water shortages
because of poor management of water resources and soaring water usage, driven
mainly by agriculture, the International Water Management Institute said on
Wednesday.
Water scarcity around the world was increasing faster than expected, with
agriculture accounting for 80 percent of global water consumption, the world
authority on fresh water management told a development conference in Canberra.
Globally, water usage had increased by six times in the past 100 years and
would double again by 2050, driven mainly by irrigation and demands by
agriculture, said Frank Rijsberman, the institute's director-general.
Billions of people in Asia and Africa already faced water shortages because of
poor water management, he said.
"We will not run out of bottled water any time soon but some countries
have already run out of water to produce their own food," he said.
"Without improvements in water productivity ... the consequences of this
will be even more widespread water scarcity and rapidly increasing water
prices."
The Sri Lanka-based institute, funded by international agricultural research
organisations, is due to formally release its findings at a conference in
Sweden later this month.
Rijsberman said water scarcity in Asia and Australia affected about 1.5
billion people and was caused by over-allocating water from rivers, while
scarcity in Africa was caused by a lack of infrastructure to get the water to
the people who need it.
"The water is there, the rainfall is there, but the infrastructure isn't
there," Rijsberman told reporters.
He said more needed to be done to promote rain-fed agriculture and to increase
water storage in Africa, where many people live with water scarcity.
THE PRICE IS NOT RIGHT
"Irrigation needs to be reinvented," said Rijsberman, adding
irrigation in many countries was inefficient.
But scarcity problems could also be overcome by more efficient water use,
recycling and better pricing of water, which in its bottled form was already
rivalling the cost of oil.
Rising living standards in India and China would lead to increased demand for
better food, which would take more water to produce, he said.
Rijsberman said the price of water would have to increase to meet an expected
50 percent increase in the amount of food the world will need in the next 20
years.
He said in Australia, five years into a drought, irrigation water costs less
than five U.S. cents a cubic metre, compared to $1 to $2 per cubic metre for
drinking tap water and $100 to $200 per cubic metre for bottled drinking
water.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, whose constituency covers the
mouth of Australia's longest river system, the Murray-Darling, said solving
water problems was a pressing problem for the world.
"Improving the efficiency of agricultural production and water use is
fundamentally important to improving economic growth, sustainability and
reducing poverty," Downer said.
The Murray-Darling runs through Australia's main crop and food-growing region
but water flows have dropped dramatically because of drought and large amounts
of river water pumped out to irrigate cotton.
Downer said Australian researchers were working with counterparts in China to
develop new irrigation methods for rice, while Australian aid programmes were
working to improve water in the Mekong River through Laos, Cambodia, Thailand
and Vietnam.
A report on global water by environment group WWF released on Wednesday warned
that rich nations, like Australia, were not immune to the coming water crisis.
It said Sydney was using more water than could be replenished and Australia
had among the highest water usage in the world.
Each day, urban Australians use an average of 300 litres of water each,
compared with Europeans who consume about 200 litres, while people in
sub-Saharan Africa existed on 10-20 litres a day, said the report.