Policymakers around the world face a host of overlapping demographic, socioeconomic, and environmental challenges as they strive to fulfill their societies’ growing water needs. Expanding populations, shifting consumption patterns, and ongoing global climate change are imposing potentially unsustainable strains on Earth’s freshwater resources. Some 1.6 billion people worldwide currently reside in river basins suffering severe water stress.  By 2050 their number will reach 3.9 billion. Nearly the entire populations of the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and much of China and North Africa, will then live in severely water stressed basins. Already, water use in many major rivers increasingly approaches or exceeds annual renewable supplies. Global climate change threatens to exacerbate these strains, generating chronic pressures on water availability, such as shifting precipitation patterns, and acute crises, such as floods and droughts.<br/>Many observers worry that sharpened competition between countries and communities dependent on common water sources could spur social conflicts and undermine political stability in key areas of the world. Yet addressing water security poses more multi-faceted challenges than public and policy perceptions of declining availability suggest. Much of the strain on the planet’s water flows not from insufficient supplies but from ineffective management.  Agriculture accounts for two-thirds of global water withdrawals, yet in many countries considerable irrigation water never reaches farmers’ crops, instead evaporating from flooded fields or seeping from unlined canals.  Similarly, many current tensions, as well as future risks, stem not from struggles over water scarcities but over water policies.  Thus one country may opt to build a dam – to increase its water storage capacity against drought, provide for irrigation, or generate hydropower.  But the decisions of dam operators upstream to retain water in the reservoir, divert water for crops, or release water to turn the turbines, can all impact the ability of downstream neighbors to control their own water supplies. One country’s efforts to ensure its water security upriver may impinge upon other countries’ security downriver.<br/>Sustainably managing multiple and mounting demands on the world’s water resources will require collective institutions and collaborative approaches to integrate competing uses, reconcile contending interests, and ensure the environmental commonweal.<br/>

Water security in a warming world

249th National Meeting (2015)

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