Richard Ingham Yahoo News 17 Mar 09;
ISTANBUL (AFP) – Nations should throw themselves into building defences against floods and drought, which may already be multiplying due to climate change, the World Water Forum here heard on Tuesday.
The biggest-ever gathering on tackling the world's water crisis was warned that water-related catastrophes are more frequent and more brutal, inflicting a rising toll in lives and damage, and greenhouse gases are fingered as a cause.
"Global warming is intensifying these disasters," said Avinash Tyagi, director of the climate and water department at the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).
Over the last century, temperatures had risen by 0.74 degrees Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) but have accelerated sharply in the last 50 years, he said.
This has coincided with changes in rainfall and snowfall, leading in turn to the now sadly familiar images of parched fields and flooded streets.
Tyagi said scientists were striving to fill gaps in their knowledge, but feared worse is to come when climate change shifts up a gear.
"The projections point to the 21st century as the century of floods or the century of droughts," said Tyagi. "But it could be a century of floods and drought, a mixture of extremes."
"Floods are on the rise. The damage is increasing by five percent per year, while the number of big floods is also increasing," said Chris Zevenbergen, a Dutch expert who is a professor at the UN's Institute for Water Education.
Ministers from Central America and the Caribbean said that they were in the firing line.
"Central America is very vulnerable to the impact of climate change," said Tomas Vaquero, the Honduran minister of natural resources and the environment.
"There is every likelihood of droughts on the Pacific side (of Central America) and floods on the Caribbean side. There are also likely to be changes in the large marine current and salination of our coastal areas" from rising seas.
Experts said strategies for tackling the threat include dams and dikes to collect precious water for parched times; levees to protect cities in river basins; more efficient irrigation; rainwater harvesting; and "climate alert systems" to alert the public of impending weather events.
Authorities should also map vulnerable terrain, develop models of local water drainage, outlaw building in areas at risk and enforce "flood-resilient" building design.
Zevenbergen said only five percent of development in the world's expanding cities was planned. The rest amounted to building in a piecemeal or anarchic fashion.
When the rains come, slum dwellers and homes on flood plains are exposed to inundation and land slips.
Toshio Okazumi, a senior official for water management at Japan's ministry of land, infrastructure, transport and tourism, said his country was already drawing up plans for climate-related water disasters.
From 1901 to 1930, Japan averaged 3.5 days per year in which a day's rainfall was more than 200mm (eight inches), he said. From 1978, though, this rose to 5.1 days per year, a 150 percent increase in frequency.
A century from now, rainfall in Japan will increase by between 10 and 30 percent, especially in the north, increasing the risk of floods, according to Japanese simulations.
Han Seung-soo, prime minister of South Korea, whose country has been hit by two major typhoons and a drought since 2002, took part in a panel that recommended six priorities for reducing the toll of such catastrophes through civil preparedness, emergency water supplies and sanitation.
Loic Fauchon, president of the World Water Council, suggested the creation of a cadre of hydrologists, which he called "water blue helmets" in deference to the UN.
These experts could be rushed to a flood-stricken country to provide valuable skills, he argued.
The World Water Forum, held every three years, has drawn registrations from more than 27,000 policymakers, experts, corporate executives and activists. The seven-day conference winds up in Istanbul on Sunday.
Reducing future water conflict should be priority for ministers and forum
WWF 17 Mar 09;
A global ministerial statement on water management in a time of increasing water shortages and stress should squarely address the need to reduce more and more likely future conflict over water.
“There are several ways to reduce the likelihood of future water conflict but the most urgent and significant is to bring into effect a global agreement for managing the rivers that form or cross international boundaries,” said Dr Lifeng Li, Freshwater director for WWF International.
“We understand the ministers are still wrangling about including a reference to UN Watercourses Convention in their statement but avoiding all reference to it would be very strange. The Convention is the only global agreement focusing on water security and reducing political tension between nations. In a world of climate change it’s more important than ever that it is brought into force.”
The convention received overwhelming support from nearly all countries in a UN General Assembly vote but has languished in limbo for more than a decade with too few countries ratifying the treaty to bring it into force.
If brought into force it would provide the basis for avoiding conflict over the rivers, lakes, wetlands, and aquifers draining almost half the world’s land area, accounting for 60 per cent of global freshwater flows and vital to providing water to 40 percent of the world’s population.
Dr Li said he would be looking for governments to acknowledge the role of the Convention in the ministerial declaration emerging from the 5th World Water Forum, now going on in Istanbul, Turkey. The Forum, criticised for paying insufficient heed to the water needs of the poor and the environment, has the overall theme of Bridging Divides on Water and concludes on World Water Day, also with a theme of shared transboundary waters.
WWF is also looking to both the ministers and the Forum for strong statements on the human rights to adequate water and sanitation and the need to include all stakeholders in decision making on water infrastructure and management.
Water management also needs to be sustainable and protective of the natural systems providing the bulk of humanity’s water, Dr Li said.
Dr Li noted that the ministers appeared to be committing themselves to assessing the impacts of climate change when what was needed was action to drastically reduce emissions and deforestation and adapt to impacts already occurring and reliably anticipated.
WWF also is calling for engineering solutions to be properly assessed in the light of other less destructive alternatives in accordance with existing and emerging international standards for consultation and environmental sustainability.
“We are looking for a clear statement that balances all competing interests and doesn’t disproportionately favour those of the construction industry and utilities,” Dr Li said.
“Water is the most basic of commodities and needs to be kept available for all. Ensuring that natural ecosystems keep providing us with water is fundamental. The ministerial and forum declarations should both emphasise this and reflect it in their proposals.
