All our societies are built in response to the physical environment, where the weather plays a major role. Our economy, culture, infrastructure, legal system and governance are adapted to a historically stable climate and water regime. It is interesting to note that all great civilisations seem to have developed around rivers like the Euphrates and Tigris, the Nile, the Indus, the Ganges. Water has historically been an element around which cooperation and societies have been born. In addition, the world’s languages and cultures are littered with references to the importance of water. The Chinese word for politics is built on the character for water, implying the intimate linkage between politics and water control. The currency of Botswana, the Pula, means rain. Water has a holy quality in both Christianity and Hinduism. And not least, compare the prices Swedes are prepared to pay for a summerhouse or an apartment with or without sea view (sjöglimt)!
In addition to being an indispensible part of all our lives, water, or rather the hydrological cycle, is the main component of the climate and also both the medium and the messenger of climate change. The effects of climate change will be experienced through water. Paradoxically, climate change will make the world both wetter and drier. In addition, the water will be dirtier as heavier rainstorms flush out more pollutants and drier conditions leave less water to dilute the effluents. Developing countries and poor citizens will be hardest hit by these changes as they are more dependant on and exposed to the vagaries of the weather.
The changes in the hydrological cycle by global warming have the power to disrupt the very fabric of society. Already, many nations are struggling to manage their precious water resources properly. For example, inability to tackle hydrologic variability in Ethiopia has been estimated to cause a 38% decline in GDP and a projected 25% increase in poverty for 2003-15. The Mozambique floods of 2000 caused a 23% reduction in GDP and a 44% rise in inflation. Worldwide, more than 7,000 major water related disasters have been recorded since 1970, causing at least $2 trillion in damage and killing at least 2.5 million people. Globally there is no physical water scarcity, there is enough freshwater for all, but, as with money and power, it is unevenly distributed. Interestingly, clean water tend to gravitate towards the rich and powerful whereas dirty water flow towards the poor.
This week the annual World Water Week in Stockholm bring together practitioners, researchers and decision-makers from the whole world to share experiences and knowledge on these issues. The overarching theme is Transboundary Water Resources Management and two days are dedicated to the central role of water management in climate change adaptation. Our globe contains 263 transboundary river basins covering nearly half of the earth’s land surface, crossing the territories of 145 countries. Climate change makes it even more important that people sharing a river are not rivals, even though the original meaning of rival actually is “someone sharing the same river”. Most agreements on shared water bodies contain serious gaps and failings, lacking components for integrated management and pollution control as well as appropriate enforcement mechanisms and monitoring provisions. In 60% of the world's international watercourses, no cooperative management frameworks exist at all. The UN Watercourses Convention, lacking only 18 signatures to be ratified, would provide states with minimum legal standards to support coordination and cooperation towards the sustainable, cooperative and equitable management of transboundary river basins. Sida will do its best to encourage more countries to sign the convention as an important step towards increasing the adaptive capacity of our world. Contrary to what Mark Twain said, that “Whisky is for drinking, water is for fighting over”, water have been, is and will continue to be a source of peace, power and prosperity.
