onlooker wrote:http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/12/four-billion-people-face-severe-water-scarcity-new-research-finds
Four billion people face severe water scarcity, new research finds
Delhi has “completely run out of water,” its chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, said on Twitter on Monday morning.
Four days of violent unrest outside this capital city had left at least 19 people dead by Monday, choked surrounding highways and the city’s water supply, led schools to close and halted production in the area by India’s biggest carmaker.
The Indian Army, sent over the weekend to quell the violence, took back a crucial water canal on Monday that members of a caste demanding affirmative action had captured, Delhi officials said. But they added that water would remain in short supply for at least a week.
Although the army had retaken control of the main water canal serving Delhi, it had been damaged and needed repairs, Mr. Das said. He said 80 percent of roads that had been closed were open again on Monday morning.
Delhi, whose only river is the polluted Yamuna, depends for its water on the neighboring states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.
Delhi officials said they decided to close the city’s public and private schools to conserve water. They said they had also arranged for 700 water tankers to bring water to areas of Delhi where the water supply had run out.
More than 10 million people in India's capital, Delhi, are without water after protesters sabotaged a key canal which supplies much of the city.
Sixteen million people live in Delhi, and around three-fifths of the city's water is supplied by the canal, which runs through the neighbouring state of Haryana.
Mr Chandra said that prior warnings meant that people had managed to save water, and tankers had been despatched to affected areas of the city, but that this would not be enough to make up for the shortfall.
The army took control of parts of the canal on Monday morning, but repairs are expected to take time.
The violence had earlier forced the closure of several key roads and national highways, and paralysed the railway system in northern India.
Manak Canal - Water source for 3/5ths of Delhi
No resource stands to be more affected by the arrival of the Anthropocene than fresh water. Finite and increasingly scarce in many parts of the world, fresh water remains the most vital single input for everything from food production, energy generation, and manufacturing to human health, social development, and economic modernization. Unlike oil, water has no substitute, making access to it nothing less than a matter of existential importance to every living creature on Earth.
Yet despite its monumental role in local and international affairs, water ironically remains completely undervalued, pumped and consumed virtually free of charge across much of the world. We essentially pump water as we breathe oxygen; it is a learned reflex, central to our ability to survive and thrive as a species. Nicknames like “blue gold” and “oil of the 21st century” attest to the value of fresh water and its importance to everyday affairs throughout the world.
While every country’s water equation is different, at a global scale the basic problem is that demand for water is soaring while water supplies are being squeezed. On the demand side, the challenge results from an inexorable combination of global economic and population growth combined with water-use inefficiencies. On the supply side, the problem results not just from exhaustion of the world’s stock of fresh water capital, as is happening to groundwater reservoirs nearly everywhere. Fresh water supply is also becoming less predictable as climate change sets in—shifting rainfall and snowfall patterns and increasing evaporation rates are giving us more frequent droughts and floods.
Water stress is best understood as a precursor to conflict. While the environmental security community generally agrees that water disputes rarely leads to interstate violence, the same cannot be said of intrastate conflict. Here, at the subnational level, water disputes and instability can trigger violent conflict, particularly in situations of existing social, political, or economic fragility. Water stress acts as an accelerant, increasing the likelihood of conflict. Moreover, water scarcity-fueled instability can have dangerous security implications for wider geographic regions.
The upshot is that the arrival of the Anthropocene foreshadows a world where received wisdom may no longer be a reliable guide to the future. Water insecurity from drought, excessive groundwater extraction, and changed seasonal precipitation patterns is affecting — or soon will affect — regions as diverse as the Middle East, South Asia, the Caribbean, northern China, sub-Saharan Africa, the western United States, and many more.
Sixty percent of groundwater in South Asia is unusable, according to a new study in Nature Geoscience. The future of water security in the region is extremely precarious, a growing body of research shows.
Around 750 million people in the Indo-Gangetic Basin — from India to Pakistan to Nepal to Bangladesh — rely on these water sources for drinking and agriculture. Fifteen to twenty million wells draw water from the ground.
At the same time, melting glaciers are threatening water security in the region. As global temperatures rise, key glaciers that feed South Asia’s most important rivers are rapidly disappearing. Hundreds of millions of people rely on rivers like the Ganga to survive.
Violence has broken out in India's technology hub Bangalore in Karnataka state over a long-running dispute about water. Protesters are angry at a Supreme Court ruling ordering Karnataka to share water from the Cauvery river with neighbouring Tamil Nadu. TS Sudhir reports on the latest crisis.
... Tamil Nadu says it badly needs the river water for irrigation. Drought-hit Karnataka argues that most of the river water is now needed for drinking water supplies in Bangalore and some other cities, leaving no water for irrigation at all.
... The main city of Bangalore is the worst affected: the violence in the technology hub forced the closure of many offices and much of the public transport system. Police have imposed an emergency law that prohibits public gatherings, and more than 15,000 officers have been deployed across the city.
One person was killed when police opened fire on protesters on Monday evening. Buses and trucks bearing Tamil Nadu number plates have been attacked and set on fire. Schools and colleges are closing early and many businesses are shut.
By dusk, dark smoke had filled the Bangalore skies. Some 35 buses had been set on fire by protesters, just because the buses belonged to an travel agency whose owner is Tamil.
Across the border, in Tamil Nadu, petrol bombs were hurled at a popular restaurant owned by a resident of Karnataka in Chennai while the driver of a vehicle with Karnataka number plates was slapped and ordered to say "Cauvery belongs to Tamil Nadu".
... Witnesses said warplanes first bombed workers drilling for water, then hit a crowd gathered at the scene.
"I remain deeply disturbed by the unrelenting attacks on civilians and on civilian infrastructure throughout Yemen by all parties to the conflict, which are further destroying Yemen's social fabric and increasing humanitarian needs, particularly for medical attention at a time when the health sector is collapsing," UN Humanitarian Coordinator Mr McGoldrick said in a statement on Monday.
Nearly all of China’s neighbors have forged water agreements among themselves but not one of them has a water agreement with the Asian giant.
Chellaney acknowledged that it would be difficult to convince Beijing to consider negotiating a regional agreement, saying its key location as the source of much of the region’s water gives it little reason to share resources with its neighbors downstream.
One unintended consequence of China's spectacular economic growth is a growing water shortage, reports Joshua Bateman. As rivers run dry, aquifers sink, climate harshens and pollution spreads, he asks: can China solve its water crisis?
...China's water shortage has global implications. As more water projects are built in China and water is diverted from the south to the north, the water supplies of nearby countries such as Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, India, Thailand and Bangladesh will be affected.
Intensified attacks on the Syrian city of Aleppo have left nearly two million people without water, the UN says.
The UN children's agency says fierce strikes on Friday prevented repairs to a damaged pumping station supplying rebel-held districts of the city.
In retaliation, Unicef says, a nearby station pumping water to the rest of Aleppo has been switched off.
Unicef deputy director Justin Forsyth told the BBC: "Aleppo is slowly dying, and the world is watching, and the water is being cut off and bombed - it's just the latest act of inhumanity."
Unicef spokesman Kieran Dwyer said the lack of running water could be "catastrophic" as residents now had to resort to contaminated water and were at risk from waterborne diseases.
He said water was being used as a weapon of war by all sides. The pumping station supplying rebel-held parts of Aleppo was damaged on Thursday and subsequent strikes had made repairs impossible, Mr Dwyer told the BBC.
"That pumping station pumps water to the entire population of the eastern part of city - that's at least 200,000 people and then in retaliation for that attack a nearby pumping station that pumps water to the entire western part of the city - upwards to 1.5 million people - was deliberately switched off," he told the BBC.
Plantagenet wrote:This is a military strategy called "investment"----its been used for thousands of years to conquer an enemy fort or a fortified city that would be too difficult to take by a direct assault. ... Now they are cutting off the food and water supplies to Aleppo in order to starve out the enemy Islamist forces. (along with the 2 million civilians)
OK--we've got them surrounded. We've cut off the water and food. Now all we have to do is wait and starve them out
Rule 53. The use of starvation of the civilian population as a method of warfare is prohibited.
Summary: State practice establishes this rule as a norm of customary international law applicable in both international and non-international armed conflicts.
Rule 54. Attacking, destroying, removing or rendering useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population is prohibited.
Summary: State practice establishes this rule as a norm of customary international law applicable in both international and non-international armed conflicts. This rule is a corollary to the prohibition of starvation (see Rule 53).
Rule 31. Humanitarian relief personnel must be respected and protected.
Summary: State practice establishes this rule as a norm of customary international law applicable in both international and non-international armed conflicts. Respect for and protection of humanitarian relief personnel is a corollary of the prohibition of starvation (see Rule 53), as well as the rule that the wounded and sick must be collected and cared for (see Rules 109–110), which are applicable in both international and non-international armed conflicts. The safety and security of humanitarian relief personnel is an indispensable condition for the delivery of humanitarian relief to civilian populations in need threatened with starvation.
“Let me be clear: The use of starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime.”
These are the words of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, uttered in connection with the starvation of civilians in rebel-held Madaya, a suburb of Damascus encircled by forces, including Hezbollah, loyal to the Assad government. His condemnation of the situation in many parts of Syria was echoed this week by US Secretary of State John Kerry who, in connection with the start of the Syrian negotiations (now suspended), bluntly stated:
[P]eople are dying; children are suffering not as a result of an accident of war, but as the consequence of an intentional tactic – surrender or starve. And that tactic is directly contrary to the law of war.
https://www.justsecurity.org/29157/sieg ... war-crime/
vox_mundi wrote:War Crime.....you're OK with that.
ISLAMABAD/NEW DELHI - Pakistan would treat it as "an act of war" if India revoked the Indus Water Treaty regulating river flows between the two nations, Pakistan's top foreign official said on Tuesday.
Tension has been mounting between the nuclear-armed neighbors since at least 18 Indian soldiers in the disputed Kashmir region were killed this month in an attack that New Delhi blames on Pakistan.
India on Tuesday summoned Pakistan's High Commissioner in New Delhi to inform him about two men from Pakistan now in Indian custody who it alleges helped gunmen cross the disputed Kashmir border before the attack. Pakistan denies involvement in the raid and has
One retaliatory move being considered by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is for India to "maximize" the amount of water it uses including by accelerating building of new hydropower plants, along three rivers that flow into Pakistan, a source with knowledge of a meeting attended by Modi on Monday told Reuters.
The source said India does not plan to abrogate the decades-old Indus Water Treaty. But using more of the rivers' water is still likely to hurt Pakistan as the Islamic Republic depends on snow-fed Himalayan rivers for everything from drinking water to agriculture.
Sartaj Aziz, foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said Islamabad would seek arbitration with the Indus Water Commission which monitors the treaty if India increased the use of water from the Chenab, Jhelum and Indus rivers.
However, if India revoked the treaty, Aziz said Pakistan would treat that as "an act of war or a hostile act against Pakistan."
A massive drawdown of water beneath delta-based megacities across the world may be pulling surface pollution deeper into the ground, risking contamination and health problems for local populations, a new study said Tuesday.
Research led by Holly Michael of the University of Delaware in the United States used the example of Bangladesh's capital Dhaka to show how unsustainable water use was exacerbating arsenic pollution.
Water consumption in greater Dhaka, home to some 18 million people, is lowering the local water table by more than three metres per year in some areas.
Slaking the capital's thirst is driving down shallow water contaminated with arsenic—known to cause a host of deadly health problems.
Using a new method for calculating water flows, the researchers showed that deep sources of clean water outside the capital could be polluted "within a decade," said the study, published in Nature Communications.
Previously, scientists had said it would take up to a century for contaminants such as arsenic to infiltrate deep groundwater at least 150 metres below the surface.
... Over the last half century, the water table under the capital has declined by about 60 metres.
Nearly half a billion people live in 50 deltas around the globe, most of them concentrated in megacities.
The availability and status of surface water supply will be aggravated by climate change and rapid population growth, the researchers note
The prolonged heatwave has devastated crops across Europe, leaving some countries facing their worst harvests since the end of the second world war.
The searing weather, especially in central and eastern Europe, has forced countries that usually export food to import it for the first time in decades. Several, including Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, are experiencing rising food prices and the UN is warning this will have a severe impact on economies.
According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), wheat output in the EU is expected to be millions of tonnes down on last year, with much greater losses in southern Europe than in the north.
France has also been severely hit, and is expected to lose more than 20% of its grain harvests. Italy is expected to lose 13% of its wheat, Britain 12% and other countries 5%-10%. In Britain, one immediate effect is likely to be a 7p rise in the price of a loaf, retailers said.
In Ukraine, once known as the breadbasket of Russia, the wheat crop fell to 5m tonnes this year, a 75% decrease on normal years.
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