Precious, finite and irreplaceable
JORGE ILLUECA and WALTER RAST
call for environmentally sustainable management
of
freshwater resources, and outline UNEP's
work to achieve it
Fresh water - the basic ingredient for supporting terrestrial life systems
- is the most precious of our planet's physical resources, apart from
oxygen. It is also the fundamental natural resource constraint for
socio-economic development and the resulting improvement of human
livelihoods.
The Earth contains approximately 1.4 million cubic kilometres of water,
but about 97.4 per cent of this is sea water or brackish, and so not
readily available for most human uses. About three-quarters of the
remaining 2.6 per cent is locked up in icecaps and glaciers, leaving only
a fraction of a percentage point of the world's total water resources as
fresh water in such surface waters as rivers and lakes or in underground
aquifers.
Even so, this available fresh water would seem at first sight to be enough
to supply all fundamental human survival needs, if divided by the total
population of the Earth. Indeed - although the exact water volume
necessary to fulfil human needs is still a matter of debate - it is
estimated that theoretically there is sufficient fresh water on the planet
to support about 20 billion people. Unfortunately it is not distributed
evenly, as the large arid and semi-arid regions testify. And, thanks to
seasonal weather patterns, it is sometimes not available when most needed,
or arrives in excessive amounts, causing widescale flooding and loss of
human life.
Freshwater resources support ecosystems and life, including people. They
are also a fundamental requirement for economic development. The
environment both supplies the fresh water (and other natural resources)
needed as raw materials to fuel economic development and represents the
ultimate sink of human wastes and by-products inherent in the development
process.
We put our freshwater resources to an enormous number of uses. We use
water for quenching our thirst, cooking our food, and cleaning our clothes
and homes. We use it to grow food, livestock and fish, as a basic
ingredient in industrial processes, and as a means of removing wastes and
by-products. We use it to produce hydroelectric power, to move many of our
products and commerce, and even to put out fires. Fresh water is also used
for many recreational purposes, including fishing and swimming, and has
aesthetic functions, providing breathtaking vistas for human consolation.
There is virtually no substitute for fresh water, either for basic human
survival needs or for economic development. One cannot make paper with
milk, or produce steel with orange juice: both processes need adequate
supplies of fresh water, as indeed would producing the milk and the orange
juice in the first place.
Virtually all economic development seems to have an associated
environmental price tag, and fresh water is perhaps the most sensitive of
affected natural resources: almost all the activities listed above work to
pollute or otherwise degrade it. Increasing human activities require more
fresh water and can result in it being increasingly misused and polluted.
We must therefore devote attention to the protection, conservation and
long-term environmental sustainability of our finite, available freshwater
resources. It has become abundantly clear that it is usually less
expensive to address these concerns before polluting or otherwise
degrading the water, rather than waiting until after the damage has
occurred.
Managing the whole
What is needed is integrated management of freshwater resources.
'Integrating' basically means making a whole out of the parts, a concept
at the core of integrated management. Many complex, and sometimes
conflicting, components must be addressed to ensure an equitable supply of
fresh water. The 'parts' of integrated management comprise a complex
mixture of scientific, technical and engineering factors on the one hand,
and social, economic and legal factors on the other.
Effective management obviously involves considering the supply and quality
of freshwater resources within a given river basin. In rural areas, people
may live close enough to available water supplies, such as nearby streams
or wells, readily to get sufficient supplies for most uses. There is a
continuous danger of pollution, though people can be shown how their daily
activities can degrade common water supplies. Some destructive practices
may be deeply ingrained: it is difficult, for example, to convince farmers
to change unwise water use practices without clearly demonstrating that
this will not involve additional financial, labour or time requirements.
Providing safe freshwater supplies to urban dwellers, on the other hand,
typically requires governmental authorities to identify, transport, treat
and distribute water. These are largely engineering activities, but
considerable attention must also be devoted to the many non-technical (and
sometimes competing) factors that can affect the environmentally
sustainable supply and quality of fresh water, and often prove to be of
primary importance. Effective management of freshwater resources on a
national level can require accurate knowledge and consideration of such
disparate factors as the country's development plans, institutional
structure, legal framework, educational characteristics, social structure,
economic possibilities and political base - which can fundamentally affect
how a country's inhabitants use the resources - as well as the more
traditional engineering focus on water supply and demand.
Fair shares
Ensuring equitable and environmentally sustainable freshwater resources
within a single nation is difficult enough: it is even harder for
internationally shared waters. These comprise rivers or lakes representing
common boundaries between countries, groundwater aquifers underlying two
or more nations, and rivers or lakes flowing from one country to another.
Relations can be especially difficult if an upstream nation does not pay
adequate attention to the needs of the downstream country, or countries,
into which its water flows. Unwise water consumption, water pollution, or
the discharge of wastes into waters that flow into other countries provide
a basis for potential conflict.
Integrated management is essential in multiple riparian situations. All
riparian countries must give proper consideration to the need for
equitable and environmentally sustainable supplies of freshwater
resources. International river or lake agreements that provide for the
protection and conservation of such shared freshwater resources are
especially useful.
UNEP's contribution
UNEP has been involved in a number of international water projects,
stressing its programme of Environmentally Sound Management of Inland
Waters (EMINWA). This incorporates the notion of integrated management of
freshwater resources as a means of ensuring sustainable development while
taking into consideration all the factors that can affect it. First there
is a comprehensive diagnostic phase so as to characterize accurately the
general environmental condition of a drainage basin or groundwater aquifer
and the factors affecting it. Then an action plan is agreed by the
riparian countries, outlining the actions needed to correct the problems
thus identified.
To date, UNEP has cooperated with riparian countries in EMINWA efforts in
a variety of regions, including the Zambezi River Basin and Lake Chad
Basin of Africa, the Mekong River Basin of southeast Asia, the Aral Sea
Basin of southcentral Asia, the San Juan River Basin of central America,
the Lake Titicaca Basin of South America, and in the Xinjiang Autonomous
Region of northwest China. EMINWA projects are ongoing or planned for the
Caspian Sea Basin of eastern Europe, the Nile River Basin of Africa, and
within the Hunnan Autonomous Region of southwest China. Considerable
efforts are needed to complete implementation of some of these activities,
but they nevertheless mark a significant advance in ensuring the equitable
and environmentally sustainable use of such freshwater systems on an
international scale.
A continuum
A final (and recent) consideration is the integrated management of both
freshwater river basins and the downstream coastal and marine systems into
which they drain. As noted in the following article on the Global
Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from
Land-Based Activities (GPA), efforts are under way to consider the
hydrological linkage between land, freshwater river basins and coastal
waters as a 'water management continuum'. This is emphasized by UNEP's
recent amalgamation of its freshwater and oceans programmes into a single
integrated Water Branch, the adoption of the GPA by 109 governments in
late 1995, and UNEP's designation by governments as the Secretariat for
its implementation. This approach can either include protection of the
marine environment as a fundamental goal of river basin management
efforts, or consider pollution sources and land-based activities in inland
river basins extending beyond artificially defined 'coastal zones'.
Ideally both approaches should lead to similar results.
The world's freshwater resources are finite and irreplaceable, they are
sensitive to human uses and misuses, and they are part of a larger
land-freshwater-coastal hydrological linkage. UNEP is working to
incorporate these interrelated components into its integrated
environmental management efforts, in order to ensure the continued
viability of these precious resources within the context of sustainable
development
Jorge Illueca is Assistant Executive Director/Programme and Walter Rast
is Deputy Director, Water Branch, UNEP.
