UNU Update
 
The newsletter of United Nations University and its network of research and training centres and programmes

Issue 11: September 2001

OPINIONThis commentary by Ramesh Thakur, UNU Vice Rector and director of the Peace and Governance Programme, appeared in the International Herald Tribune of August 14. 
 

We Need More Clean Water
for Health and Peace

TOKYO: Over the next 25 years, half the world's people will have difficulty finding enough freshwater for farming and drinking. Asia's water stocks are already among the most polluted in the world.

In parts of China and India, water tables are falling from one to three meters annually. As water tables and the amount of arable land decline, disputes over them are likely to multiply.

As countries in Asia and elsewhere strive to get or maintain access to vital natural resources, environmental security will become an increasingly important element in national defense. Disputes over water, for example, could cause conflict between nations. Upstream states could manipulate shared river basins to inflict pain on downstream states. Dams, irrigation systems, desalination plants and reservoirs could be direct targets in war.

Half of the world's 6 billion people lack proper sanitation, and a billion cannot get safe drinking water. Three-quarters of these people live in Asia.

Five million people die each year from water-related diseases around the world. Water-borne bacterial contamination has the most devastating impact on the poorest members of society, especially women and children who lack basic food and speedy access to doctors and medicine.

If food scarcity and famine were to become a major problem in Asia, this could cause domestic instability and a breakdown of law and order, or provoke mass migration of people to other countries and a resulting increase in cross-border tensions.

China is in the midst of the most rapid industrialization in the world. It is likely to be the source of much of the increase in pollution in East Asia, while still being a low per capita polluter. Any effort to catch up to its industrialized neighbors in water usage would be catastrophic for already stressed water resources.

Northeast Asia contributes heavily to ozone depletion, greenhouse gas emissions and acid rain. It is also subject to great dust storms that sweep across China, Mongolia and Korea.

A country would not tolerate thousands of its citizens being killed every year by a foreign army. Why should the deadly effects of air and water-borne toxins be treated differently?

The writer, vice rector of the United Nations University in Tokyo, contributed this personal comment to the International Herald Tribune. The university, with the support of the Ford Foundation, is engaged in a major study of environmental security in East Asia.

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