BLOGS

Perils and conflicts due to water scarcity in Southeast Asia

Jan 27, 2022
6 min read

Water scarcity, along with its deadly effects, is rapidly engulfing the globe. Over two billion people already live in nations with severe water scarcity. According to the United Nations, one out of every four children would face severe water scarcity by 2030-2040, and approximately 750 million people will be displaced due to water constraints. In the second half of this century, water is projected to be one of the primary causes of war, geopolitical tensions, humanitarian, environmental, and economic disasters. We only have so much freshwater available in our closed water system. However, with an ever-increasing global population, an ever-increasing need for water, and the burning of natural resources to accommodate us all, sharing water peacefully and responsibly between governments and those who need it most will be a difficult task.

Southeast Asia under the microscope

Water scarcity will be disproportionately catastrophic for Southeast Asia's economic and human development, with millions of people reliant on a single lake or river. By 2050, more than half of the world's population will live in water-scarce areas, with Asia accounting for 73 percent of those affected. In addition, although utilizing the least quantity of water per capita, Asia withdraws the highest percentage of freshwater sources, at 20%. Furthermore, with agriculture accounting for 80% of this water loss, it is impossible not to raise concerns about the economic vulnerability of some of the less developed countries that are more reliant on crops and farming.

There is water everywhere, but not a drop to drink

'Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink,' applies not only to the miseries of an Ancient Mariner but also to a location afflicted by water scarcity despite being surrounded by oceans. Tensions are unavoidably going to grow in the near future. We don't even have to wait 40 years to see this play out since the seeds of discontent and strife are already there.

The Mekong river basin is a good place to start looking for these issues. The river flows through eight nations, and 60 million people in five countries in the Lower Mekong Basin rely on it for food and income. However, a combination of water politics and more severe drought seasons raises the potential of dependency. For example, in July 2019, the Mekong's water levels were at their lowest in 100 years, putting people in jeopardy and making conditions worse.

ASEAN and a water management system based on rules

Southeast Asia, on the other hand, can still establish a rules-based water management system that facilitates and addresses international discussions, infrastructure funding, and mounting conflicts. ASEAN appears to be the best prospect for this position. The shared idea of "one identity, one vision" is the ideal reason for collaboration among the Mekong river states. If tensions are to be reduced, the ASEAN-Mekong Basin Development Cooperation, which had been dormant for more than two decades prior to the Asian Financial Crisis, must be injected with strategic vision and financing as soon as possible.

To be sure, this can only happen if the BDC, or a revamped version of it, has an executive with equal representation for all states, particularly an equal platform for the region's least developed countries. In the long run, however, a structured and sustainably used river basin will benefit all states in the region, ensuring future development, trade, and security.

Transfers and technological innovations

As a result of new ASEAN initiatives, more developed countries in the region may be able to provide money and technological transfer. Singapore is a good example. The state has developed ways to obtain a regular supply of freshwater and becomes less reliant on Malaysia for its water through technological advances such as installing desalination plants and storage of treated sewage water. Our natural environment does not have to constrain us in our hunt for water sources in our technological age. As a result, the current murky hydro-politics can be avoided. However, when we consider how the Chinese government has provided no indication that it is willing to negotiate joint control of the Mekong, this becomes far-fetched thinking. Without China accepting that the Mekong is not theirs to maintain, solutions will continue to be based on scholarly, journalistic, and individual speculation.

The governments of Southeast Asia are well aware of the intertwined concerns of water security and disaster management. The Kuala Lumpur Declaration on ASEAN 2025 forging ahead together and the building resilience for sustainable ASEAN from water-related disasters project indicate the importance member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have on this dual objective.

However, the frameworks and actions for dealing with water – too little, too much, or polluted – in these two areas are still not as integrated as they should be. How ASEAN member states work together to ensure appropriate access to clean, potable water and alleviate the effects of water-related disasters? Defining and solving the issue of water security Using a disaster governance perspective to secure water and improve resilience might open up new avenues for pooling resources, building political will, averting conflicts, and fostering transboundary collaboration.

Integrating water-security priorities into broader disaster governance aims is one strategy to achieve this goal at the regional level. The work program of the ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response (AADMER) provides a starting point. The AADMER is more than just a framework for regional collaboration in disaster loss reduction and emergency response. It is also the first legally binding instrument of its sort. A normative entity like ASEAN has an advantage in gaining committed and sustained political, financial, and administrative backing over competing for regional agendas.

Water shortage and stress solutions and contingency plans can assist ASEAN to make tangible progress toward more proactive and adaptive drought-risk management by including them into disaster-risk assessments, early warning systems, response mechanisms, needs assessments, and risk financing. Similarly, adopting people-centered disaster governance mechanisms, such as community-based approaches for dealing with periodic droughts, can help meet a growing population's water needs while not leaving vulnerable people behind. It can also help to motivate local participation in water-rationing exercises to reduce abuse of water resources, which is especially important in large urban areas.

Another stage would be to combine structural water-security measures for reducing water pollution and flooding with non-structural ways for dealing with the compound risks of water-related calamities. Waterborne disease outbreaks can be reduced by prioritizing the provision of a secure, reliable water supply as part of disaster preparedness. Adopting technologies to monitor structural faults and water levels in reservoirs can help with system redundancy and disaster response for rising dangers such as dam breakdowns.

Non-structural disaster governance measures, meanwhile, can improve the effectiveness of water security technologies. In water security planning, catastrophe risk-informed development frameworks can highlight trade-offs of investment initiatives. Installing floodwalls, for example, can improve the protection of metropolitan areas. However, it exposes nearby rural areas to floods in different ways.

Finally, inequalities are at the root of many water-related issues. To address these, we need to engage in participatory discourse and action that takes into account the interests and capabilities of local actors as well as the business sector. Water security is threatened by social marginalization, politicized commercialization, environmental racism, and unregulated privatization. Disaster governance crowd-sourcing networks that are diverse and inclusive can be excellent venues for multi-stakeholder collaboration. Putting these strategies in place under AADMER would help guarantee that ASEAN's joint efforts to secure water and create resilience continue to get funding, direction, and support.

In many places of the world, water scarcity and climate change have resulted in limited access to safe drinking water. Water supply is being seriously impacted by rapid urbanisation. With decentralised, sustainable, and highly scalable water solutions, Maithri Aquatech is revolutionising water access and purification. Its product, MEGHDOOT which is based on the concept of Atmospheric Water Generation (AWG), is capable of producing clean, potable water from the air. There is no requirement for groundwater or surface water. The solution to the worldwide water dilemma is Atmospheric Water Generators, which combine water generation and purification into a single device.

Atmospheric water generation (AWG) is a technique for extracting potable water from the atmosphere. The technology provides an alternate, long-term water source. This has the potential to increase water availability during shortages, pollution incidents, and other problems that can cause drinking water supplies to be disrupted. Natural calamities, such as hurricanes, and public water infrastructure problems, such as pipe corrosion resulting in contamination issues, have piqued interest in AWG technology as a short- and long-term supply option.

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Middle East and Water Stress

Dec 1, 2021
5 min read

Water Stress in the Middle East - Precarious situation

Less than 3 decades back, Lake Urmia was the Middle East's largest lake, with its banks a thriving centre of tourism, hotels, restaurants, etc., boosting the local economy. Since the 1990s, however, Lake Urmia has more than halved in size -- from 5,400 square kilometres to about 2,500 square kilometres -- according to the Department of Environmental Protection of West Azerbaijan, the Iranian province where the lake is located. Boats that used to ferry tourists to and from little islets in the lake are grounded now because the lake is fast becoming a salt plain! [1]

Homes even in the capital city of Jordan, Amman, receive water once or twice a week. Jordan had much less rain in 2020 than it did the previous year, putting more than a quarter of water resources at risk and halving drinking water sources.

Iraq’s Sirwan river has been drying up. People have started leaving nearby villages because of this. The river provided livelihood to the villagers in the nearby village of Imami Zamen. Fishermen have had to stop fishing, most of the village's 70 resident families have left, the village primary school has been closed [2]. Moreover, the summer of 2021 was recorded as the second-driest season in 40 years.

This year, Syria also faced its worst drought in 70 years [3] - more severe than the one in the period 2006-2009, which, many believed, was one of the factors responsible for the civil war in the country!

Farmers in Yemen have increased the depth of the water wells on which they live by approximately 50 meters during the past 12-13 years, but the amount of water accessed has decreased by two-thirds. [4]

These are just a few instances that highlight the severity of the water crisis in many parts of the Middle East -- water is just running out.

The MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region is reportedly the most water scarce region in the world; over 65% of the most water-stressed countries in the world are in the Middle East and North Africa. The region houses 6% of the world's population but comprises of only about 1.4% of the world's water resources. The average per capita share of total renewable freshwater in the region was about 600 m3 in 2016, as compared to the global average of about 6000 m3. [5] As many as 13 countries in the MENA region were benchmarked for "absolute water scarcity" in 2014, as per data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN [6].

Why is the Middle East more vulnerable to water stress?

There is a multitude of causes for the current water situation in the region. Population increase, climate changes, mismanagement of water resources and, to some extent, lack of cooperation on water sharing among neighbouring countries are some of these causal factors.

The latter part of the 20th century witnessed a rapid increase in population growth in the MENA region. The region added about 280 million people in 50 years as the population increased from around 100 million in 1950 to around 380 million in 2000, at a rate of 3.8% - higher than any region in the world.

Apart from a steep population rise, the Middle East is supposed to be warming two times the global average. Countries like Kuwait, Oman, Iran, the UAE and Saudi Arabia recorded temperatures greater than 50 degrees Celsius in the summer of 2021. It is believed that the region will be hit the hardest by climate change [7]. As it is, only 2% of the Arab region is covered by wetlands, nearly 95% of which are vulnerable to climate change [8].

The chief source of water in more than 50% of the middle Eastern countries is groundwater, but it has been depleted at an alarming pace. The region has the highest per capita rates of freshwater extraction in the world (more than 800 m3/year) and currently exploits over 75% of its renewable water resources. To cite an example, the water table in the UAE has dropped about one meter per year over about the last 30 years. At this rate, the UAE is projected to deplete its natural freshwater resources in about 50 years [9].

Studies show that between 2002 and 2009, the region lost enough water from groundwater, soil, snowmelt and reservoirs to fill the entire Dead Sea — about 144 cubic kilometers, the majority of which was from aggressive extraction of groundwater. Worryingly, despite the region being arid, some of the more prosperous countries of the region have among the highest per capita water consumption rates in the world. Bahrain uses 220% of its available renewable water reserves, compared to 943% in Saudi Arabia and 2,465% in Kuwait. [10]

According to a new UNICEF report entitled ‘Running Dry: the impact of water scarcity on children in the Middle East and North Africa’ [11], another key factor contributing to this unprecedented water stress situation is rising agricultural demand and the expansion of irrigated land using aquifers. While globally, agriculture accounts for an average of 70% of water use, it uses nearly 85% water in this region. The overuse of water through heavy irrigation in agriculture is affecting the countries' already scarce water resources.

While most causal factors for water scarcity are common to the region as a whole, some are country specific. Unilateral initiatives by governments have impacted the supply of water available to their neighbours. Construction of dams and reservoirs by some countries restricts water flow in neighbouring downstream countries, leading to conflict.

None of the Middle Eastern Countries enjoys water surplus except perhaps Turkey [12]. In view of the region’s crisis with respect to current water resources, the Middle East needs more than one solution to ensure a water positive situation in the future.

Impact of water stress

Lack of fresh water by itself is the most deleterious effect, considering the value of water as a life-giving resource. Apart from this, water scarcity also implies food insecurity. This, in turn, is likely to increase or even begin conflicts in the region.

Water scarcity directly reduces agricultural output, since water is a key input for farming, therefore the agriculture sector is the worst hit. In addition, there are spillover effects from agriculture to the rest of the economy. Many industries in manufacturing and services sectors i.e., electricity companies, petrochemical facilities, hotels and restaurants, to name a few, will not be able to operate at full capacity with less access to water [13].

On the social and health front, 90% of the children in the MENA region live in areas of high or extremely high-water stress; this is very likely to affect not only their health, nutrition and mental development but also their future livelihoods. According to a World Bank Study, “the region has the greatest expected economic losses from climate-related water scarcity, estimated at between 6 and 14% of GDP by 2050 [14].”

What lies ahead

As per current predictions, per capita water availability in the MENA region is set to fall by 50% by 2050, and the region may be affected by more frequent and severe droughts and floods, caused by climate changes.

While governments and policy makers in the region are taking urgent steps to remedy the problem, the question is whether current measures are adequate to counter the looming threat of severe water stress over the region, and what else can be done? In order to guarantee a sustainable water positive future, it is important to first ensure peace, cooperation and inclusiveness. Governments, researchers, think-tanks, businesses and individuals need to come together and work out the solutions. There will not be a ‘one size fits all’ solution, but clearly, the use of innovation, technology and ‘out of the box’ thinking would be required to reverse the current crisis. Multiple innovative, sustainable and scalable solutions to the water problem are required to secure a better future for the MENA region.

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