Water is the ultimate renewable resource, but the world seems to be running out of it.
The annual amount of available freshwater sources per person has declined by more than 20% over the last two decades, according to the latest report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Some 2.2 billion people do not have safely managed drinking water, while 4.2 billion lack safely managed sanitation, say Unicef and the World Health Organisation.
Water is now joining gold, oil, and other commodities traded on Wall Street. Apart from being a tradable contract, the futures launch also highlights growing worries that the life-sustaining natural resource is becoming scarce across of the world.
According to Chicago-based CME Group, the futures will help water users manage risk and better align supply and demand.
Climate change isn’t just exacerbating droughts. It is intensifying downpours and speeding up evaporation, both of which make it harder to harvest water produced by the rain cycle.
Solving local water shortages by moving it to where it’s wanted is as old as the canals of Mesopotamia, and ancient Roman aqueducts still span valleys across Europe.
But water transport has its limits.
The amount of water consumed by industry, agriculture, energy, and municipal users has grown globally at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century.
Today, it takes about 40 barrels of water to produce a barrel of oil despite improved efficiencies, while coal-fired generators use large volumes, according to a Bloomberg estimate.
Water footprint analyses show about 450 gallons of water, about 1,700 litres, is needed to make a quarter-pound hamburger.
The Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region has the world’s scarcest supplies of water, but Gulf countries consume more of it per person than anywhere else, according to the World Bank.
More than 60% of the people in Mena nations live under conditions of high or very high water stress.
Higher GDP and population growth levels, as well as the increasingly hot climate, mean the Gulf countries need to spend heavily to meet their energy needs. All six Gulf Co-operation Council countries are likely to be “extremely highly stressed” for water by 2040, according to the non-profit World Resources Institute based in Washington, DC.
Every country has an energy consumption profile defined largely by its climate and culture. But every Gulf resident – citizen and expat alike – should be made aware of the priceless value of each drop of water and each unit of power coming in uninterrupted supply out of the capital-intensive and energy-consuming desalination process.
Water, for sure, is directly or indirectly supports many sectors of the economy, but the current largest user – agriculture – accounts for more than 70% of global withdrawals.
The FAO has called for sustainably remodelling the use of water in agriculture.
In July 2010, the UN general assembly declared access to water and sanitation as a human right, with its sixth Sustainable Development Goal being access to clean water and sustainable sanitation for all by 2030.
Make no mistake, humans are using more water than they need to.
Here is the good old maxim once again: “Water saved is water produced.”
