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Investors warm to water as shortages mount
Gerard Wynn, Reuters
As liquidity is drained from credit and money markets and pours into oil and gold, another asset class that could offer long-term returns to the discerning investor is water.
Water shortages are on the rise — stemming from soaring demand, growing populations, rising living standards and changing diets. A lack of supply is compounded by pollution and climate change.
Investors are mobilizing funds to buy the assets that control water and improve supplies, especially in developing countries such as China where urban populations are booming, further tightening supply.
(19 March 2008)
A thirsty planet looks for solutions to water shortage
AFP
A world without fresh water would be a world bereft of humans, and yet one in five people lacks regular access to this most basic of life-sustaining substances.
By 2025, fully a third of the planet’s growing population could find itself scavenging for safe drinking water, the United Nations has warned ahead of World Water Day on Saturday.
More than two million people in developing countries — the vast majority children — die every year from diseases associated with unsanitary water.
There are a number of interlocking causes for this scourge.
Global economic growth, population pressures and the rise of mega-cities have all driven water use to record levels.
(19 March 2008)
On World Water Day, a mighty global thirst
Greg Lamb, Christian Science Monitor
Some 1.2 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water. For World Water Day, a report.
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… It’s clear that competition for water “will intensify in the decades ahead,” said Kemal Dervis, administrator of the United Nations Development Program in its 2006 report. “[W]ater is the ultimate fugitive resource, traversing borders through rivers, lakes, and aquifers – a fact that points to the potential for cross-border tensions in water-stressed regions.”
Growing populations, which spur demand for more industries and farmland, are draining water resources. And climate change is expected to exacerbate the problem as it alters rainfall patterns (see page 17). A new UN study shows that as temperatures have warmed, the world’s glaciers have begun retreating at accelerating rates and may disappear entirely within a few decades. China, India, and the West Coast of the United States are among populous places that rely on glacial meltwater for their water supply. Glaciers feed some of the world’s great rivers, such as the Ganges, Yellow, and Mekong, which serve 1.5 billion people.
One of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, established in 2000, is to cut in half by the year 2015 the proportion of people unable to reach or afford safe drinking water.
(20 March 2008)
Climate Change Deepening World Water Crisis
Thalif Deen, Inter Press Service
When U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last January, his primary focus was not on the impending global economic recession but on the world’s growing water crisis.
“A shortage of water resources could spell increased conflicts in the future,” he told the annual gathering of business tycoons, academics and leaders from governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations.
“Population growth will make the problem worse. So will climate change. As the global economy grows, so will its thirst. Many more conflicts lie just over the horizon,” he warned.
Anders Berntell, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute, says the lack of safe drinking water for over 1.0 billion people worldwide, and the lack of safe sanitation for over 2.5 billion, “is an acute and devastating humanitarian crisis.”
“But this is a crisis of management, not a water crisis per se, because it is caused by a chronic lack of funding and inadequate understanding of the need for sanitation and good hygiene at the local level,” Berntell told IPS.
(19 March 2008)
