Worldwatch Hypes “Water Scarcity”

With much publicity — news releases, interviews, and a press conference at the National Press Club on November 14 — the Worldwatch Institute1 launched a new book alleging a strong connection between population growth and water shortages.

The book, The Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity,2 was written by Sandra Postel3 and financed by a “generous grant” from the Ford Foundation.4 Last Oasis and its accompanying press release claim that already “26 countries have more people than their water supplies can adequately support.”5 Although various new technologies and better policies of water management and conservation are proposed to promote greater water efficiency and supply, Last Oasis flatly states that:

They alone cannot avert conflicts and shortages where population is expanding faster than efficiency measures can release new supplies. Any hope of balancing the water budgets of most Middle Eastern countries, for instance, rests as much on lowering birth rates as it does on modernizing irrigation systems. And in many water-short African countries, slowing population growth appears to be the only way of meeting minimal per capita needs in the near future.6

Last Oasis concludes that “Ultimately, securing sufficient water for people while leaving enough for a healthy environment overall depends on a rapid slowing of population growth .… Reducing birth rates through comprehensive family planning…is essential to a secure water future.”7

Readers of Ms. Postel’s new book may not be aware that just a few years ago she said that “The volume of fresh water annually renewed by the [Earth’s] water cycle could meet the material needs of 5 to 10 times the existing world population.”8 Ms. Postel calculated that some 39,000 cubic kilometers of precipitation falls upon the world’s land mass annually, which, she said, means that “For each human inhabitant there is now an annual renewable supply of 8,300 cubic meters [of water]…[and, subtracting off the portion that flows rapidly away in floods]…the total stable supply [is] about 14,000 cubic kilometers, or 3,000 cubic meters per person ….”9

At that time, although Postel noted that “Population continues to grow fastest in some of the most water-short regions [of the Earth],10 she never advocated population control measures to solve mankind’s water resources problems. Despite her citation of “current population projections” in the calculation of “per capita global water supply,” Postel looked to “a water efficient economy” and “conservation and better management” of water resources as the solution to the world’s water problems. Postel confidently noted that thus far “we have seen only hints of their potential” to deal with the problems of adequate water supply for all. “Water crises need not occur,” said Postel.11

Now that Ms. Postel is alleging a causal relationship between population and scarce water resources, her list of the aforementioned “26 water-scarce countries” has become a centerpiece of her new thesis. According to Postel, “hydrologists designate water-stressed countries as those with annual supplies of 1,000–2,000 cubic meters per person. When the figure drops below 1,000 cubic meters…nations are considered water-scarce .…”12 Postel has neatly tabulated those “26 countries” whose annual per capita supply of freshwater is less than 1,000 cubic meters, and which thus “fall into the water-scarce category,”13 as she so defines it. Postel’s list of “Water-Scarce Countries” appears below as Table 1.

In case anyone doesn’t quite grasp Postel’s linkage between population and water scarcity, she spells it out with the inclusion of “Population” and “Population Doubling Time” figures for each country she cites.

*Countries with per capita renewable warn supplies of less than 1,000 cubic meters per year. Does not include water flowing in from neighboring countries.

However, despite the basic argument which Postel wishes to advance, one immediately notes that her list contains a very high percentage of countries with extremely low populations: four of her countries have less than a half million population and two others have exactly a half-million. Five more have between one and 2.8 million — less than the suburbs of many major cities.

Continuing down the list, an additional four countries range from 3.6 million to 5.8 million, making half (13) of the “26 water-scarce countries” with populations under 5.0 million, and two others barely exceeding that figure! Another two countries have populations under 10.0 million, while three others are just slightly over ten million. Twenty-three of the 26 countries have populations less than 20 million — in most cases a lot less. Of the 26 countries cited by Postel, just three have populations in excess of 20 million, and only Egypt with some 55 million people may be said to have a “large” population.

Just what is it that has occurred within the chronic water-short countries of Northern Africa and the Middle East which now leads Ms. Postel to zero in on their population growth? After all, most of these countries have always experienced water problems, irrespective of their populations, small as they are.

Actually, the water situation in those lands is nowhere near as bleak as Postel would have us believe. It seems that Ms. Postel has been “cooking” the figures, so to speak, in order to arrive at her Exhibit A, those “26 water-scarce countries.”

Postel’s usage of a 1,000 cubic meters of water annually as the benchmark for per capita water supply, is taken from “Swedish hydrologist Malin Falkenmark [who] has put forth this definition .…”14 Postel further cites a paper by Falkenmark in which he gives his definition of water supply adequacy.15

In that paper, Falkenmark states that “In order to assess the level of water scarcity, data is needed on the gross amount of water available to a country from the global water cycle. This is the sole source of water…annually available to the country…Part of this water enters as exogenous supply in cross-boundary aquifers and rivers from upstream countries [and] the other part is provided as endogenous supply via precipitation over the territory.”16

Notice the footnote to Postel’s table of “water-scarce countries,” reproduced here as Table 1: “Does not include water flowing in from neighboring countries.”17 There it is — Postel has deliberately chosen to include only part of the water supply available to a country, and in doing so she has literally stepped over the first part of her own source’s (Falkenmark) definition in order to pick up just the second half of it!

What is the effect of ignoring the “exogenous” portion of a country’s water supply? In the case of Egypt, for instance, “river inflow [from the Nile] provides over 50 times more water than domestic rainfall does.”18 If Postel had included this source of water, Egypt would be off her list of “water-scarce” countries as its annual per capita supply of water would now far exceed 1,000 cubic meters.19

Similarly, both Botswana and Mauritania each receives some seventeen times as much water inflow from rivers entering their lands as falls within the country as rain.20 For Hungary, the number is 18 times, Belgium has an additional 50% of its water supply flowing into the country, while the Netherlands has eight times as much water available to it from the Rhine as precipitates within the country’s borders.21 Those figures are more than sufficient to push these countries well above the 1,000 cubic meter threshold, whatever its significance may be. It is ludicrous for Postel to have singled them out as “water-scarce” lands, just to score a cheap over-population “brownie point.”

Furthermore, there appears to be some question regarding the total water supplies available to some of the other “water scarce” countries. Falkenmark, Postel’s own source, gives annual water supply figures for Kenya, Algeria and Libya sufficient to lift all three countries off Postel’s list.22

At best, therefore, Postel’s list of 26 nations actually reduces to some seventeen barely populated countries, four of which are islands. All of these lands have long had water problems, even when their population and population growth was far smaller.

What is the significance of including Kuwait in such a listing when this scarcely populated but immensely wealthy nation can, and docs, make all the water it desires from desalination of sea water? There is no water problem in Kuwait, nor is there likely to be one.

Similarly, the oil rich kingdoms of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates manufacture water from the sea, as needed. Indeed, it is precisely because of the increased populations now inhabiting those lands that new supplies of water beyond the network of oases was sought. No longer tied to a nomadic lifestyle, these countries have assumed more prestigious stations among the world’s nations. And it was population increases, as much as their oil, which provided the impetus for their success.

The water problems of the Middle East will be solved by more desalination, better water management and conservation — as once advocated by Postel — and yes, more dams and inter-country waterways. Additionally, there are vast reservoirs of water under many of the area’s deserts: “hydrologists now calculate that the Nubian sandstone aquifer under the Sinai and Negev [deserts] holds 200 billion cubic meters of water ….”23 As H. G. Wells expressed it nearly eighty years ago:

Men spread now, with the whole power of the race to aid them, into every available region of the earth. Their cities are no longer tethered to running water and the proximity of cultivation…they lie out in the former deserts, those long-wasted sun baths of the race.… One may live anywhere.24