One of the questions I ask my students in a course on environmental issues is: What is the most serious and urgent environmental issue of our time?
Most students say global warming, and they may be right, but another issue that perhaps doesn’t get as much press or public awareness is water shortage and pollution. A couple of recent reports on freshwater shortage caught my attention, so this week, I will share them with you.
Rasoul Sorkhabi
Editor, Core Elements
Rethinking a River
Joe Belanger/ Shutterstock.com
The 1922 Colorado River Compact, also called the Law of the River, shared the water resources of the Colorado River among seven states. A century later, according to a recent report in EOS, the Law of the River may need to be revised.
Relevant geography:
At 1,450 miles long, the Colorado River, is the fifth-largest river in the U.S. and the most important river in Southwest.
The Colorado drainage basin, spanning 250,000 square miles, is divided into Upper (Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico) and Lower (Nevada, Arizona, and California) basin states.
The 1922 Colorado Compact:
In 1922, the federal commission included eight men, one from each of the seven states, plus Herbert Hoover (who would later become the U.S. President).
The commission estimated that the Colorado River discharged 16.4 million acre-feet of water per year at that time.
But this figure was optimistic. In the 1920s, USGS hydrologists suggested 15 million acre-feet per year.
The commission allocated 7.5 million acre-feet annually to the Upper and Lower basin states, each. The remaining was later allocated to Mexico.
Times are changing:
Because of drought, climate change, and population growth, livestock, and agriculture, water levels in the Colorado have significantly lowered.
Farmers and ranchers are the largest consumers of Colorado water.
In 2007, when the Colorado basin was experiencing a severe drought, the U.S. Department of Interior issued guidelines to address water shortages in the Lower basin and in the Lake Mead and Lake Powell reservoirs.
The 2007 guidelines will expire in 2026.
A new agreement: The EOS article calls for a new agreement to provide a realistic reallocation of the water resources. The article suggests this new agreement should:
Be based on scientific knowledge
Include the input of Native American representatives in its formation
Include water conservation, water recycle and reuse, water transfer, land use changes, and efficient uses of water
Go deeper: Read the full EOS article here, and those interested can also read more in Owen’s book, Where the Water Goes: Life and Death Along the Colorado River.
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The Water Crisis in the Middle East and North Africa
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The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has recently published a detailed report and a summary article on the water crisis in the Middle East and North Africa.
It cites climate change, political conflicts, and transboundary river basins as contributing factors to the crisis. Here are some key water developments in the region that help add context:
Mesopotamian water decline:
Mesopotamia—the “land between two rivers” of Euphrates and Tigris in Iraq is facing a serious water crisis.
Ongoing hydropower projects constructed upstream in Turkey and Iran have direct impacts on water flow into Iraq’s rivers.
Since 1975, water supply from these rivers has declined 80 percent. According to one study, the rivers may dry up by 2040.
Drought is another contributing factor. In 2023, the water level at the Mosul Dam was at its lowest since the dam was built in 1986.
Nile Delta:
The Nile River and corresponding delta are Egypt’s lifeboat—home to 99 percent of its population and providing 63 percent of its agricultural lands.
The Nile originates in Lake Tana (Blue Nile) in Ethiopia and Lake Victoria (White Nile) in Uganda and flows through Sudan before entering Egypt.
Construction of a major hydropower dam in Ethiopia has caused conflicts between Ethiopia and downstream Sudan and Egypt, placing additional stress on water resources.
Transboundary conflicts:
River basins are often shared by several countries and transboundary conflicts aggravate the situation.
Underground aquifers and fossil waters are over-extracted in many places.
Libya’s Great Man-Made River project is the largest underground network of wells and pipes producing water from the Nubian sandstone aquifer.
More than half of the world’s desalinization occurs in the Persian Gulf region, Israel, Algeria, and Morocco.
Root cause analysis: Water stress is the gap between demand and supplies (water quantity or quality). Aside from mismanagement, the following contribute to the water stress in the Middle East and North Africa:
The region has an overall arid climate, which means high temperatures, less precipitation, and scarce vegetation.
The aridity also leads to fast evaporation of surface waters.
Agriculture in places like Morocco, Sudan, and Yemen accounts for 90 percent of water use (the global average is 70 percent).
Population growth and urbanization in recent decades have increased demand for water.
Global warming, droughts, and desertification have amplified water issues in the region.
Moving toward solutions: Poor management should be replaced with science-based solutions, better infrastructure, design, and technologies such as wastewater treatment and water recycling plants, regulated water conservation, efficient irrigation systems, and regional cooperation.
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