Water in the Environment

Study shows that for water allocation and management ‘hydro-centricity’ entails risky policies. Water resources relevancy to politics and international relations also heighten proportion of risk. The theoretical linkages must be much more comprehensive with culture, society and political economy being included as essential elements of a larger analytical framework. There are far more complex issues arising in water shortages other than simplistic approach to a linear mode of anxiety, conflict and violence figuring sequentially. Communities in practice have choices and they can, and do, substitute for scarce economic factors.

At the end of cold war ending threats from mutual destruction, national security had immediately recognized that important economic, social and environmental dimensions beyond those of conventional military security are emerging. One project that attracted a strong coalition of funding trusts – MacArthur, Ford, Rockefeller – was a review of water resource security based on environmental determinism. The concept of ‘ingenuity’ was brought up to explain why determinism did not work as explanation. Lowi captured the term hegemonic cooperation reflected the coercive context in which the riparians contested the inadequate water resources of a river basin interpreting the hydropolitics of Jordan Basin. The collective action outcome was predictably unfair but enduring. While useful, this analysis did not explain why the outcome endured despite the radical worsening of the resource circumstances.

Every tonne of grain imported allows the importing economy to avoid the costly environmental, economic and political stress of mobilizing 1,000 tonnes (cubic metres) of fresh water. The 1,000 tonnes of water associated with the production of each tonne of grain has been termed ‘virtual water’.7 The importers also enjoy the advantage of cheaper commodities as the exporting economies – the USA and those in the EU – set prices as low as half the production cost of, for example, wheat, through subsidies.

Such perverse economic solutions are nowhere gainsaid by governments that can avail themselves of the subsidies without making it public that they are doing so. Unrecognized, these invisible processes have spectacular impacts on the capacity of political scientists to identify reasons for the enduring and unfair water allocation at the same time as the nonconflictual collective action outcome.
International lawyers have also been tempted by the notion of environmental determinism. They conclude that international water law will be needed to address the problems of shared waters. Wouters, for example, has taken a pessimistic view of the water resource situation in the Middle East and concluded that operational international water law will be essential if conflictual relations are to be avoided

The notion of virtual water traded in water-intensive commodities is a fine example of the problem-solving capacity of a problemshed – in this case the global trading system – to address the problems of a local watershed with limited water resources. The powerful insight of the problemshed forces us to shift the analysis from a hydro-centric focus to a comprehensive approach embracing the political economy and other relationships that are part of operational water allocation and use.

A very important example of the impact of the virtual water solution on political processes is found in the Middle East. Here discursive coalitions in individual economies can reinforce the politically acceptable ‘sanctioned discourse’ prevalent across the Middle East region, namely that ‘all we need is a little more water, and ‘vital lies’ – ‘there is no water shortage’ then we shall manage it more carefully and everything will be all right’. The no-go area in such policy discourse is the topic of water and food insecurity. Even defining the analytical domain of water policy-making is politically subversive.

There are two types of water – small water and big water. Small water is the water needed for drinking, domestic uses and the water needed by industry and services. The small water is about 10 per cent of the water needed by an individual as well as the 10 per cent of water needed for the security of an economy as a whole. This small water must come from freshwater sources – rivers, lakes, reservoirs and groundwater. Small water can command quite high prices and is commonly delivered for about US$1 per cubic metre. The big water is the 90 per cent of water needed by an individual and economy to be self-sufficient in food.
The water to raise food can come from freshwater sources in which case it competes with the provision of water for domestic and industrial livelihood uses as well as for the security of environmental services. The water to raise food can also come from the soil profile. Soil water, or effective rainfall, is the majority water in economies located in humid temperate and humid tropical regions. Semi-arid regions have to endure their very poor endowment in soil water. Worryingly big water are expected to be free when delivered by costly irrigation system.

The existence of soil water is denied by those who draw up the water budgets of national economies. Economists and engineers are also blind to its existence. Soil water accounts for at least 50 per cent of the water used to raise field crops worldwide. It is soil water in the temperate humid regions, which enjoy soil water surplus circumstances and can ‘export’ virtual water, that solves the water deficits of poorly endowed economies across the arid world. Hoekstra and Hung have estimated that 15 per cent of the water used to raise crops goes to raise commodities that enter international trade.

The global phenomenon of about 1,600 cubic kilometres of water being marshalled annually in international trade to meet the needs of water deficit economies dwarfs the achievements of engineers to store and deliver water. More important it addresses something that the much less flexible engineering solutions cannot, namely the constantly variable demand for food across the global system.

Source: J. A. Allan, Oxford Center for Water Research, 2006
www.ocwr.ox.ac.uk