WATER-RELATED CHALLENGES are numerous, diverse and inevitable. Several compelling worldwide statistics compiled from recent publications of the World Bank and the United Nations illustrate the issues:

Human water use has increased more than 35-fold over the past three centuries.

Worldwide, 69 percent of water use is agricultural, 23 percent industrial and 8 percent domestic.

One third of the world's food crops are produced by irrigated agriculture.

In the past 30 years, 50 percent of food supply growth was attributed to agricultural expansion, a rate which is no longer sustainable.

Per capita water consumption in North and Central America is twice that of Europe, three times that of Asia, and seven times that of Africa.

About one billion people in developing countries do not have access to potable water and approximately 1.7 billion have inadequate sanitation facilities.

Unsafe water is implicated in the deaths of more than 3 million people annually and causes about 2.4 billion episodes of illness each year.

The world's population, now 5 billion, is expected to increase to at least 8 billion by 2025 and 10 billion by 2050, which would dramatically raise the demand for water and food.

According to United Nations' projections, by 2050 almost half of the world's population will live in 58 countries experiencing either water scarcity (less than 1,000 cubic meters of renewable water per capita per year) or water stress (between 1,000 and roughly 1,700 cubic meters).

The financial requirements to meet future demands for irrigation, hydropower, water supply and sanitation investments in developing countries are estimated to be $600 billion to $800 billion over the next decade.

These daunting facts are evidence of a global water resources crisis with escalating conflicts. Examples can be cited for all countries. In the Nile Basin, Egypt -- which owes its existence to the Nile -- is concerned about upstream developments in Ethiopia and the Equatorial region. Ethiopian plans for hydropower and agricultural expansion along the Blue Nile could change the flow regime and threaten the Egyptian economy. At the same time, water augmentation projects on the White Nile may provide a temporary relief to the increasing demand for irrigated lands, but would impact the vast region of the Sudd swamps with unpredictable effects on the global climate.

In China, millions of people along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River live under the constant threat of flooding every summer. In one such incident, the river claimed 145,000 lives and inundated 3.4 million hectares of farmland. The Three Gorges Dam would greatly reduce the risk of flooding and would generate enough electricity to meet the power needs of central and eastern China for decades. However, the dam would inundate vast areas, force the relocation of more than one million people, and cause irrevocable environmental damage. Similar controversies surround the Mekong, Amazon, Rhine, Euphrates, Jordan and almost every other major river system.

In the western United States, conflicts and litigations over water allocation have raged for many years. Recently, similar disputes have also emerged in the water-abundant Southeast, where the Savannah, Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint, and Alabama-Coosa- Tallapoosa rivers are at the center of a major multistate conflict. These rivers drain approximately 33,000 square miles in five southeastern states (Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and South Carolina), and they support multiple water uses including hydroelectric energy generation, flood control, water supply, navigation and ecosystem management.

The controversy started when Georgia requested the reallocation of some storage in Lake Lanier for Atlanta's growing water needs. To many, more water for Atlanta translates to less "clean" water for the downstream users in Alabama and Florida, igniting a hot political debate in the 1990 elections for state gubernatorial and Congressional representatives. Today, after a costly attempt to resolve the issue on purely technical grounds, protracted legal battles appear all the more likely.

In view of inevitable population growth, industrialization and urbanization, it is apparent that current water resources management practices are no longer sustainable. There is an urgent need for new water resources policies that accomplish both good economic performance and improvements of environmental and ecological quality -- that see the environment as an objective, not as a constraint in the exploitation of natural resources. Water resources planners and managers (ministers, senior administrators, specialists, professionals and others active in the water sector) must heed the lessons of the last decades and develop a shared vision of new water resources management principles.

In this process of renewal, universities like Georgia Tech, along with international organizations, funding and lending institutions, and professional societies have an important role to play: They must jointly promote education, research and technology transfer, and prepare policy makers for the challenges that lie ahead.

Dr. Aris P. Georgakakos is a professor in Georgia Tech's School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

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Last updated: 12 Sept. 1996