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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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