Water pollution is a bigger environmental threat than climate change The eminent poet W H Auden noted, “Thousands have lived without love, but not one without water.” And this view has been upheld by UN declarinmg today- the 22nd March as World Water Day and also by the World Economic Forum (WEF). WEF has just published its 10th annual Global Risk report. For the first 10 years the premier spot is taken by a non-financial issue, water. We have to realize that truly, bu sadly, water all over the world receives a low priority in public agenda. Climate change has become a major issue, promoted as it is by Nobel Prize winners, environmental activists and climate scientists, NGOs, Hollywood stars and filmmakers. Water issues sadly have not elicited such support. Yet over the medium term of 10 years, water issues will have significantly more adverse impacts than climate change. The WEF report is therefore to be welcomed for providing water a much-needed boost. This of course does not mean that climate change is not important. However, over the medium term, efforts to ensure the availability of adequate quantity of good quality water need greater emphasis. In addition climate change has numerous uncertainties, but we know how to solve water problems. We also have the knowledge, technology and investment funds needed to solve them. Yet, poor water management continues all over the world and there is no sign that this situation will improve soon. Ancient civilizations grew up on the banks of major rivers like Indus, Nile and Tigris-Euphrates where water was plentiful. Human beings are emotionally attached to water, much more so than to any other resource like food or energy. This emotional attachment has made efficient water management a difficult process. Throughout history, water has been taken for granted and has been used and abused as seen fit. We have yet to accept that water is a limited resource which must be managed prudently. One manifestation of this emotional attachment is that water is provided free, or at highly subsidised prices, almost everywhere. Agriculture accounts for nearly 70% of all global water use. Yet not a single country charges farmers full operation and maintenance costs for irrigation water, let alone investment costs. Even for domestic water, people in very few cities pay the real cost. With sensible water pricing, utilities can be financially viable and people would use water efficiently. Poor water management over decades has created numerous structural problems. The Aral Sea used to be the world’s fourth largest freshwater lake. The diversion of two rivers, Amu Darya and Syr Darya, which provided it with a steady flow of freshwater for cotton production, has reduced it to only a small shadow of what it used to be. Lake Chad was one of the largest water bodies in Africa in the 1960s. Unsustainable water use has meant that its level and size have shrunk by an incredible 90%. Take China. In the 1950s, the country had 50,000 rivers having catchment areas of more than 100 sq km. By 2013, this number has been reduced to 27,000. Rivers have disappeared because of overuse by agriculture and industry. Anecdotal evidence indicates that Indian water bodies are facing a similar fate. Many of the mighty rivers have now become a trickle by the time they reach the sea. These include the Colorado, Nile, Indus, Yellow and Murray rivers. The World Commission on Water has noted that more than half of the world’s rivers are seriously depleted. Water bodies in near all urban centres of the developing world are seriously polluted. There is no shortage of evidence. In 2011, water from more than half of China’s largest lakes and rivers was declared unfit for human consumption. More than half of groundwater in northern China is so polluted that it is not suitable for bathing, let alone drinking. The Indian government reported in 2013 that nearly half of the country’s 445 rivers are too polluted for drinking in terms of biochemical oxygen demand and coliforms. If other pollutants like toxic chemicals and heavy metals are considered, the overwhelming majority of water sources can no longer be used without expensive treatment. The economic, social, health and environmental costs of such heavy contamination are increasing steadily. In some countries, the real costs of poor water management are approaching as much as nearly 5% of GDP. Calls are mounting that the world is steadily drifting towards a major water crisis. We have a new report by the United Nations warning that "the global water crisis is one of governance, much more than of resource availability”. It adds that there is enough water to meet the world’s growing needs “but not without dramatically changing the way water is used, managed and shared”. This is important for Pakistan for two reasons. First, we are fast becoming a water-starved country as per capita availability is falling at an alarming rate. Second, in order to remedy this potentially catastrophic slide, we need to shift our thinking away from building mega dams to increase water availability towards a more judicious utilisation of the resource that is currently available in our system. Everybody understands that Pakistan is a hydrological society, underpinned by agriculture and sustained by water. What needs to be repeated, however, is that we are wasting a precious and dwindling resource by failing to adopt more efficient farm practices, technologies of water conservation, efficiencies in watercourse management, and pricing incentives to encourage its more thoughtful utilisation. In its annual report on world water development, released on Friday, the UN emphasised this shift in focus when talking about investment in water projects as well. “There is a need, however, to increasingly shift the focus of such investments towards changing the way in which water, and the environment more generally, are valued, managed and used.” This theme runs through the report, and it needs to be made part of our thoughts on water as well — more particularly, of the thinking coming out of the myriad government agencies built for the purposes of water management. In fact, this emphasis on how water is “valued, managed and used” should be internalised by Irsa, the main regulator for the water sector, which recently made headlines by advancing an impractical proposal that the entire development budget of the country be diverted towards the construction of water storage infrastructu If current trends continue, the situation will get worse. Take industry. Nearly two-thirds of companies now consider that water poses a substantial risk to their business. Mining giant Rio Tinto announced in April 2014 that it would abandon its Pebble Mine project in Alaska because of water-related concerns and donated its 19% stake to two state charities. Millions of people are dying each year due to water-related diseases. Droughts and floods are inflicting tens of billions of dollars in damages each year. The United Nations has estimated that droughts are the world’s costliest natural disasters, inflicting $6-8 billion annual losses. Every year floods contribute to major damages, including loss of lives. All these can be significantly reduced by better water management.