Water-Energy Nexus Reaches Crisis Level in Asia

A coal-linked project in China's dry Inner Mongolian region has caused a local water table to plunge and a local lake to shrink. In neighboring India, a thermal power plant has been forced to shut down because of severe water shortages.

In Southeast Asia, impoverished Laos risks destroying the spawning grounds of migratory fish species that feed millions of people along the key Mekong River as it pushes ahead with the controversial Xayaburi dam project aimed at selling electricity to power-hungry Thailand.

Wealthy Singapore, meanwhile, is consuming large amounts of of energy to overcome its water scarcity challenge even as the island nation's progress toward water self-sufficiency is considered exemplary.

Decisions made in Asia for water use and management, and for energy production are having major impacts on each other, and serious repercussions for the region, according to studies highlighted on World Water Day last week.

The nexus between water and energy is quite evident in the region largely because of poor and uneven access, and the cross use of the two resources for exploitation, officials say.

"Some of the statistics are quite startling," Shamshad Akhtar, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), said in a speech last week when commemorating a World Water Day event in Bangkok.

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Taxonomy

• Energy Reduction
• Water-Energy Nexus