Launching a Memorandum for a World Water Protocol in the European Parliament in Brussels, Mikhail Gorbachev said the inclusion of water in global climate talks should be a high priority.

“Water is without no doubt a political problem, and a crisis of development that is unsustainable. It is part of a global political crisis,” Gorbachev said. Meanwhile, the current global economic crisis may even act as a catalyst for a new order to help overcome “our old unsustainable model of development,” he said.

Gorbachev called for clear political leadership on water, demanding that all nations help the United Nations to ”enshrine the right to water as the most important human right”.

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Source: EurActiv

As member states prepare to unveil their draft national plans for the protection of rivers, environmental NGOs, EEB and WWF announced a set of headline indicators against which they plan to measure the EU 27’s performance on the issue.

The priorities identified for the upcoming national plans include the following:

• Transparent and publicly owned water management comprising both public and business involvement and empoPreview this Postwerement and clear information on who pays for which water use.
• Reducing waste and better use of water through the adoption of a new approach to water management, through integrating consideration of the way in which water is legally allocated, financially valued, distributed and used into policies on manufacturing, energy production, agriculture, domestic supply and tourism.
• More space for living rivers, which are under pressure from human use. This should be done by creating of buffer zones in which human activities are restricted or banned.
• Healthy, safe water for people and nature through reduced pollution, substitution of hazardous chemicals and making the polluter pay for the costs of cleaning up.

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Source: EurActiv

Discussed last week at the forum’s annual meeting in Davos, the report on managing future water needs argues that “we are now on the verge of water bankruptcy in many places, with no way of paying the debt back”.

Many of the “regional water bubbles” are already bursting in parts of China, the Middle East, the southwestern US and India, and “more will follow”, with serious consequences for regional economic and political stability, the report continues.

Climate change further adds to the urgent need to manage water efficiently, the report notes. In many parts of the world, glaciers act as “water banks”. For example, melting glaciers in the Himalayas and Tibet alone will cause serious water supply problems for more than two billion people, it predicts.

Referring to a UN-sponsored 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment , the report underlines that 70 of the world’s major rivers, including the Colorado, Ganges, Jordan, Nile and Tigris-Euphrates, are ”near [their] maximum extraction levels to supply water for irrigation systems and for reservoirs”.

Meanwhile, growing global demand for food is set to place more pressure on water resources for agriculture. ”The volatility in food prices in 2008 should be treated as an early warning sign of what is to come,” the report warns.

Discussing the findings, Davos participants noted that while economic stimulus plans include huge investments in improving agriculture, infrastructure, clean energy and trade, politicians “unfortunately rarely invest in improving the resource on which those outcomes depend: water”.

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Source: EurActiv

The notion of “virtual water” embedded in a commodity or a product, is an essential part of the ’water footprint’ theory but has not yet received much attention, argued Maude Barlow, a special adviser on water issues to the president of the UN General Assembly.

However, she warned: ”You are going to hear about this virtual water trade a lot more in the next few years.”

A water footprint is the total amount of water a country needs to sustain its population and industry. But while Europe tries to take good care of its own resources, it uses water from other places via its agribusiness imports. “I think it is important to find out about each country’s footprint, how much of your water comes from outside the country and what was the energy needed to bring that water here,” she said.

Barlow called into question European consumers’ way of life, with some wanting strawberries all year round. Meanwhile, African lakes are dying, because the berries suck up water which is then shipped out of the country, she said. Great Britain alone “imports two thirds of its water footprint. And it imports it from Africa, Latin America and from places which don’t have any water,” she noted.

As for biofuels, she noted that while there is a drive to grow biofuels to combat CO2 emissions, ”we don’t stop and ask what biofuels might do to other parts of nature. They are water guzzlers. Biofuels and corn ethanol use a huge amount of water”.

Water and climate change

Barlow thinks that the chance of getting water high up the agenda of the UN climate change negotiations in Copenhagen are “slim”, as “Copenhagen is already so contentious and there are so many issues”. However, she thinks that water may well become part of the post-Copenhagen talks once people become more water conscious.

“The water crisis is where climate change was five years ago. It is just starting to get into the media and people’s heads, and in five years it will be what people talk about,” she said.

Barlow also argued that the water crisis must no longer be considered a result of climate change, but rather as another side to the equation of what causes climate change. “You’ve got to get the analysis right if you’re going to get the answer right,” she said.

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Source: EurActiv

Boisterous summertime crowds pack sprawling exhibits showcasing European rivers and lakes and Middle Eastern oases. But there is a sobering message behind the international fair: a growing demand for water and the effects of climate change are making water an increasingly scarce and fought-after resource, experts say – not just in the Middle East or Africa, but also in countries like Spain.

“National and regional governments in Spain have a problem when it comes to water – primarily because of the intensifying competition among agriculture, tourism and urban development, especially along coastal areas,” said Kevin Parris, an economist at the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris. “And also climate change, which suggests the problem of water scarcity, will increase in the next 20 to 30 years.”

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Source: The San Francisco Chronicle

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Germans pay more for their water than anybody else on the planet according to the study. At £1.50 per 1000 litres, prices are four times as much as in America, and twice as much as in parched Australia. Britons on average pay £1.18 for the same amount, a little less than the Belgians.

As the Berlin summer was interrupted by yet more showers on Monday, German water users reacted to the news with grumbles familiar the length and breadth of the UK.

“We have masses of water,” wrote one reader to Die Welt newspaper. “It’s just that the water companies let everything leak into the rivers. Germans are being ripped off because our politicians are useless. Everything has been run wrong for 20 years.” The survey was produced by energy consultants NUS, which monitors electricity, gas, oil and water prices every quarter.

Senior energy analyst at NUS, Bruce Blazey, said that British customers still have a lot to complain about.

“In the UK it seems to be constantly raining and yet the reservoirs seem to dry out so quickly,” he said. “You have towns flooded the whole time and yet hosepipe bans are in force.

“There’s just not enough being spent on infrastructure, and the pipelines are just really bad. Thames Water is dreadful. They blame it on the wartime damage – that nothing’s been really properly repaired since the 1940s.”

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Source: The Telegraph

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The magazine says trees are densely packed, planted in massive irrigated lowland plains and harvested by machines that shake the trunks, which uses more water and chemicals than traditional farms on upland terraces.

It says: “To meet this new appetite mass-market brands are produced intensively, so supermarkets can sell it in high volumes at lower prices. Demand for cheap, mass-produced oil is making it a struggle for the smaller, traditional farms to be economically viable.”

Between 2000 and 2005, UK olive oil sales have risen by 39 per cent and more money is spent on it than all other cooking oils. A World Wildlife Fund report from 2001 said the more intensive plantations are of “little or no conservation value, and create environmental problems – desertification, pollution from agrichemicals, depletion of water resources.”

Guy Beaufoy, a consultant on agricultural and environmental policies in Europe said the situation was “an environmental catastrophe”.

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Source: The Telegraph

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These days the chronic water shortage has culminated. Because of the restrictions imposed by the Regional Water Supply center in Pristina, the two aforementioned villages have been without water for 20 days now, reads the communiqué.

The inhabitants are searching for the water in natural springs, kilometers away, in order to fill couple of containers, since the restrictions have included Gracanica and other villages of the central Kosmet.

The citizens have announced the blockade on the regional road Pristina-Janjevo, unless the water is provided soon.

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Source: EMPORTAL

For more information on water conservation, visit www.nuprana.com