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United Nations Declares Clean Water Is a Fundamental Human Right

By hudson in July 28th 2010   No Comment »
Filed Under drinking water, fresh water, health, infrastructure, rivers, social structures, water born diseases, water bourne diseases, water security, waterborne diseases, waterbourne diseases, watershed, world water     Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,      

About time, too. Although it is deplorable – and immoral – that countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada abstained, presumably to ensure that they’re in line first if there is any money to be made from selling clean water – Hudson

From BBC News

Many people around the world have little or no access to clean drinking water The UN has declared that access to clean water and sanitation is a fundamental human right. A non-binding resolution was passed with 122 nations in favour, none against and 41 abstentions. Abstaining countries said the resolution could undermine a process in the UN’s Human Rights Council in Geneva to build a consensus on water rights.

According to the UN, about 1.5 million children under five die each year from water and sanitation-related diseases. The text of the resolution said that 884 million people have no access to safe drinking water and more than 2.6 billion lack access to basic sanitation.

It “declares the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of the right to life”. It urges the international community to “scale up efforts to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable water and sanitation for all”.

Canada, the US, the UK, Australia and Botswana were among the countries which abstained from voting.

China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain and Brazil were among those supporting the resolution.

Read the entire article here…
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Read Reuter’s take on the story here
Read Canada’s National Post’s story here

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Will the U.S. EPA Approve an Oil Pipeline Stretching From Canada To Texas?

By hudson in July 28th 2010   No Comment »
Filed Under aquifer, disaster, drinking water, fresh water, infrastructure, pollution, technology, water security, watershed     Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,      

By DAVID SASSOON of The Guardian

The EPA has slowed down the approval process of a permit for a new Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline that a few months ago looked like a shoo-in for a State Department rubber stamp by the fall.

The EPA gave the State department’s draft environmental impact statement for the 2000 mile pipeline that will cut across the nation’s heartland the worst rating possible, noting that if differences between the agencies can’t be resolved, the matter could get referred to the White House for resolution.

In response, the State department announced yesterday it intended to add 90 days to the process of making a decision on the pipeline permit to allow the final environmental impact statement to be reviewed by other federal agencies. Observers think that means there will be no decision until sometime next year.

Last year, a similar pipeline received approval with far less scrutiny. Is environmental security rising to become a matter of primary national interest in the wake of the Gulf oil disaster?

The proposed TransCanada pipeline will carry crude from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries in Texas. Known as the Keystone XL, it would increase the flow of a far more polluting form of oil from the north by 900,000 barrels a day and double US consumption.

The EPA has asked the State Department to consider the national security implications of expanding the nation’s commitment to a relatively high-carbon source of oil, which EPA says has a well-to-wheels carbon footprint 82 percent larger than conventional oil.

Also of concern is what would happen if a pipeline accident caused a serious spill above the Ogallala aquifer which millions of Americans in the Midwest rely on for fresh drinking water as well as irrigation, but many other long-standing environmental impacts are also giving EPA pause.

Read more here…
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Voices of World Water Day 2010 // Pulitzer Center

By paulstewart in July 25th 2010   No Comment »
Filed Under communications, sanitation, water security, world water     Tags: , , , , , ,      

Be part of the solution. Put your river, wetland or waterway on the map here at Mouth to Source.

http://mouthtosource.org/rivers/register

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A breach of faith in dams

By paulstewart in July 18th 2010   No Comment »
Filed Under dams, disaster, drought, hydropower, rivers, water security, watershed     Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,      

Hindustan Times

For the Uttarakhand government, the hydropower story is becoming a case of ‘so near and yet so far’. Its dream of building a network of projects on the Ganga has run into yet another roadblock. Last week, the Environment and Forests Ministry’s Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) decided not to give clearance to any of the proposed projects until the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA) conducts a cumulative impact assessment study of all the proposed dams. The decision came after an FAC team, under instructions from the Uttarakhand High Court, found that serious violations had occurred in some existing dams and that the government had inexplicably decided not to do any cumulative study on the effects of building so many dams on the Ganga. Only couple of months ago, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India warned that there would be no water in large stretches of the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi riverbeds if the state builds the 53 power projects on these two rivers.

Unfortunately, whenever violations are exposed, we are so often presented with a fait accompli. Take, for example, the Lohari Nagpala Hydel Power Project. Even though the Union Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh accepts that there have been large-scale violations of green laws, he now says that it’ll be difficult to abandon it because Rs 600 core has already been spent on it. So what happens to the project developer and the officials who were in cahoots with the company? And, what about the threat of an environmental disaster in the future? Witness the kind of violations that are taking place in the projects underway. The Srinagar project, according to Bharat Jhunjhunwala, an economist, in his petition to the HC, was cleared as a 200 MW project in 1985. Then in 1987, it was raised to 330 MW and it was necessary for the project developers to obtain a fresh environment clearance. But no one bothered to apply for a fresh one.

Such total lack of regard for the law by the state as well as the central ministry can have far-reaching effects. For example, a $600 million loan for a 444 MW hydropower project in the state may be in jeopardy following allegations about the manner in which it received environmental clearance. In the hills, the protests are increasing and this should be a cause for worry for the state and the Union governments. How the Ministry of Environment and Forests in particular — and the Government of India in general — handles corporate violations of this magnitude will demonstrate how serious they are about saving our fragile environment — and how seriously they take their own laws.

[Ed-Apols for full quote]

Source

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A human right Canada rejects: Access to clean water

By admin in July 16th 2010   No Comment »
Filed Under drinking water, fresh water, health, sanitation, water security, world water     Tags: , , , , , , , ,      

Contary to what Ottawa says, UN convention would not compel exports to U.S.

By Maude Barlow and Anil Naidoo

On June 17, Pablo Solon, the Bolivian ambassador to the United Nations, presented a draft resolution declaring the human right to “available, safe, acceptable, accessible and affordable water and sanitation” to a closed-door consultation at the UN General Assembly that will be dealt with over the next several weeks. This is the first time the General Assembly has been asked directly to deal with this issue and it presents a huge test for the world and for Canada.

When the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights was written, no one could foresee a day when water would be a contested area. But in 2010, it is not an exaggeration to say that the lack of access to clean water is the greatest human rights violation in the world.

Nearly 2 billion people live in water-stressed areas of the world and 3 billion have no running water within a kilometre of their homes. Every eight seconds, a child dies of water-borne disease, in every case preventable if their parents had money to pay for water.

And it is getting worse as the world runs out of clean water. A new World Bank report says that by 2030, global demand for water will exceed supply by 40 per cent, a shocking prediction that foretells of terrible suffering.

For several years, international and local community groups fighting for water justice have been calling for a binding UN convention that clarifies once and for all that no one should be denied water for life because of an inability to pay, especially in light of the water markets now being set up that allow the wealthy to appropriate dwindling water supplies for private profit.

The fact that water is not now an enforceable human right has allowed decision-making over water policy to shift from the UN and governments to institutions such as the World Bank, the World Water Council and the World Trade Organization that favour a market future for water.

Support for the right to water has been steadily growing in recent years but, strangely, Canada has emerged as the leading opponent.

Canada has blocked even the most modest steps toward international recognition of the right to water and has worked behind the scenes to derail advancement toward a binding instrument. Government officials have not explained their position except to say that such a convention might force Canada to “share” its water with the United States. However, this is a complete red herring and the Harper government knows it.

No UN rights convention obliges one country to provide those rights to another country. Canada signed the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is under no obligation to provide housing, jobs, pensions or health care to everyone in the world, only to its own citizens. A rights convention obliges every country, to the best of its ability, to take steps to ensure the realization of this new right to its own citizens and to report these steps to the UN.

In Canada, that would mean principally that the government would have to clean up its act in First Nations communities where water quality is often substandard. In poorer countries, where there are deep access inequities, a right to water convention would give local communities a tool to demand water justice, challenge the existing privilege of the rich and demand public not private water services.

Far more dangerous to this country’s water are the provisions of NAFTA, which give American companies rights to Canada’s water, and the proposed Canada-E.U. Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), which will give water corporations the right to challenge local public control of water services.

The truth is that a right to water convention at the UN would act as a counterweight to those who want to sell Canada’s water for profit and is a more likely explanation of Canada’s continued opposition.

The events of the next few weeks will tell if the UN will adopt this historic resolution. What will Canada do?

Will it stand with those who say no one should be denied water for life?

Or will this wealthy nation yet again take a position that would deny this most basic right to the billions without it now?

The whole world is watching.

Maude Barlow is national chairperson and Anil Naidoo is Blue Planet project organizer with the Council of Canadians.

Source

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The Right to Water

By admin in July 16th 2010   No Comment »
Filed Under communications, drinking water, food security, fresh water, health, sanitation, water security, world water     Tags: , , ,      

By MIKHAIL GORBACHEV

The right of every human being to safe drinking water and basic sanitation should be recognized and realized.

The United Nations estimates that nearly 900 million people live without clean water and 2.6 billion without proper sanitation. Water, the basic ingredient of life, is among the world’s most prolific killers. At least 4,000 children die every day from water-related diseases. In fact, more lives have been lost after World War II due to contaminated water than from all forms of violence and war.

This humanitarian catastrophe has been allowed to fester for generations. We must stop it.

Acknowledging that access to safe water and sanitation is a human right is crucial to the ongoing struggle to save these lives; it is an idea that has come of age. It was first proposed a decade ago by civil society organizations, like Green Cross International, which I helped establish in 1992. Today, it is a mainstream demand that many governments and business leaders support. That is a great achievement.

This month, for the first time, the U.N. General Assembly is preparing to vote on a historic resolution declaring the human right to “safe and clean drinking water and sanitation.” It is a pivotal opportunity.

So far, 190 states have acknowledged — directly or indirectly — the human right to safe water and sanitation. In 2007, leaders from the Asia-Pacific region recognized safe drinking water and basic sanitation as human rights and fundamental aspects of security. In March, the European Union affirmed that all states must adhere to their human rights commitments in regard to safe drinking water.

Not all nations are on board, however. The United States and Canada are among the very few that have not formally embraced the right to safe water. Their continued reluctance to officially recognize the right to water should be questioned, not least by their own citizens. President Barack Obama’s national security strategy calls for furthering human rights and sustainable development around the world; that goal should be translated into support for access to water as a human right.

A few other states, like Turkey and Egypt, have also hesitated to formally acknowledge the right to water, mainly because of boundary-related water issues.

However, an absolute global consensus is not essential. The reluctance of a handful of countries cannot derail this vitally important trend.

Recognizing water as a human right is a critical step, but it is not an instant “silver bullet” solution. This right must be enshrined in national laws, and upholding it must be a top priority.

Failures to provide water and sanitation are failures of governance. Recognizing that water is a human right is not merely a conceptual point; it is about getting the job done and actually making clean water widely available. We must clarify the obligation of governments to finance and carry out projects that bring these services to those who need them most.

Developing countries that have incorporated the right to water in their legislation, like Senegal and South Africa, have been more effective in providing safe water than many of their neighbors.

Recent U.N. statistics show that the world is on track to meet, or even exceed, the Millennium Development Goal to halve the number of people without safe drinking water by 2015. This should be applauded. But the goal for sanitation will be missed by 1 billion people. At current rates, some parts of Africa are at least a century away from providing safe water and sanitation to all. A “water apartheid” has descended across the world — dividing rich from poor, included from excluded. Efforts to redress this disparity are failing.

Expanding access to water and sanitation will open many other development bottlenecks. Water and sanitation are vital to everything from education to health to population control. As population growth and climate change increase the pressure for adequate water and food, water will increasingly become a security issue. As global temperatures rise, “water refugees” will increase. Water touches everything, and strong collaboration among all sectors of society — governments, activists, farmers and the business and science communities — is needed to increase its availability.

Making access to water and sanitation a daily reality is good business, and good for the world economy. According to the U.N. Environment Program, a $20 million investment in low-cost water technologies could help 100 million farming families escape extreme poverty. Dedicating $15 billion a year to the water and sanitation millennium goals could bring $38 billion a year in global economic benefits. That’s a pretty good rate of return in today’s financial climate. It is within our grasp for the first time.

There is tremendous political will and popular momentum behind the movement to formally declare safe water and sanitation as human rights. We must seize this moment and translate our enthusiasm into solid, binding legislation and action at the national and international levels — starting with the expected U.N. vote this month.

I was pleased a few weeks ago to hear President Nicolas Sarkozy call for the 2012 World Water Forum — to be held in the French city of Marseille — to be the venue for the international recognition of the universal right to safe water and sanitation. This cause needs more “champions” — respected public figures and opinion leaders who act as its ambassadors around the world.

The actions and voices of millions of citizens have brought the global movement for the right to water this far. I hope that more people will join us to help bring us closer to the ultimate goal — a world where everyone’s right to safe water and sanitation is not just recognized but is also fulfilled.

Mikhail Gorbachev was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until its dissolution in 1991. He is a founding member of Green Cross International and is on its board.

[Ed-Apols for the full quote]

Source

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Not what you bargained for: China’s massive water scheme delivering polluted goods

By paulstewart in July 15th 2010   No Comment »
Filed Under China, drinking water, infrastructure, irrigation, pollution, resettlement, rivers, water security, wetland, world water     Tags: , , , , , ,      

Brady Yauch for Probe International

While Chinese officials continue to forge ahead with an expensive scheme to move water from the Yangtze river in the south of the country to water-starved cities in the north, fears concerning its cleanliness are surfacing once again. According to a recent report, authorities are concerned over the poor water quality in the eastern leg of the South North Water Diversion (SNWD) project.

Vice-Minister of Environmental Protection Zhang Lijun said officials have shut down thousands of polluting paper mills and breweries in order to improve the quality of the eastern route’s water. The closures come under a State Council-approved directive requiring authorities to ensure that the water meets Grade 3, the minimum standard for drinking water.

But authorities have been struggling with the polluted water for more than eight years, before construction began on the eastern route.

The eastern route will involve a series of canals, connecting a number of river systems, and will channel water, predominantly, through Jiangsu and Shandong provinces—two provinces with the worst water pollution along the route—to Tianjin, on the border of Beijing Municipality. According to a Chinese government website, the eastern leg will span 1156 kilometres.

The director of the massive water project, Zhang Jiyao, says, “there is still a long way to go before local authorities transform the eastern route into a clean-water corridor and ensure the quality won’t decline again.”

Zhang added that, “key pollution-control facilities”—including manmade wetlands and pipelines connecting sewage treatment plants—are slated for the end of this year. According to the state-run China Daily, tests in the first quarter showed that water quality was at least Grade 3 in 23 trunk canals, or 66 percent of the sections planned for the eastern leg, south of the Yellow River.

In recent months, some local officials have expressed concern about the quality of water in the eastern leg, with the official in charge of the pollution treatment planning telling a local reporter, “from the beginning of the project, both Hebei province and Tianjin municipality said they didn’t want the water from the East Route because they were deeply concerned that it would be seriously polluted, especially the section within Shandong province.”

The entire SNWD involves three routes—eastern, central and western. Construction and relocation have started on the eastern and central routes, while the western leg is still in the planning stage.

In total, the project is expected to cost $62-billion—more than double the official estimates for the controversial Three Gorges dam—and will result in relocations of more than 330,000 citizens.

Source and many links to additional reading here…

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How water raises the political temperature between countries

By admin in July 12th 2010   No Comment »
Filed Under conflict, disaster, food security, habitat, health, rivers, social structures, water security, world water     Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,      

By John Vidal, environment editor The Guardian

Water wars haven’t started yet, but shortages certainly cause tensions between states to rise

Fifteen years ago Ismail Serageldin, an Egyptian who was vice-president of the World Bank, shook politicians by predicting that the wars of the 21st century would be fought not over oil or land, but water.

So far he has been proved wrong, but escalating demand for water to grow food and provide drinking water for burgeoning urban populations has raised political tensions between many countries.

In Asia, there are disagreements over the right to dam shared rivers. India and Pakistan are in semi-permanent dispute over hydro-power on the river Indus. China, Nepal, India and Bangladesh all spar over the rivers rising in the Himalayas and which flow through neighbouring countries, providing water for nearly 500 million people on the way.

Tensions run high between Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan over the Amu Daria and Syr Daria rivers, as well as the severely depleted Aral Sea. Argentina and Uruguay have taken their dispute over the river Plate to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, while Mexico and the US argue over rights on the Rio Grande and Colorado.

Last month, Baghdad demanded that Syria cease pumping water from the Iraqi portion of the Tigris. Elsewhere in the Middle East, Palestine and Israel, and Iraq and Iran, row over water supplies from the Shatt al-Arab waterway and Turkey’s dams.

In Africa, the Chobe, a tributary of the Zambezi, has caused tension between Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe, while there have been incidents between Mauritania and Senegal over control of the Senegal. Shares of the Niger, Volta and Zambezi are all disputed.

According to the UN, there are more than 250 internationally shared rivers covering nearly half the total land surface of the earth, as well as innumerable shared aquifers. Around 300 potential conflicts around the world have been identified but history suggests very few if any are expected to develop into armed conflict. In the last century, only seven minor skirmishes over water were documented.

However, nearly all the world’s major rivers are expected to come under increased pressure to provide farming, industry and drinking water for the three billion extra people expected to be born before the world’s population starts to drop. By 2025, says the UN development programme, nearly one in three people will live in countries that are affected by water shortages. These already affect 450 million people in 29 countriesand, and according to the World Water Forum, tensions over water rights and allocations are expected to mount.

Last year the Pentagon predicted that water disputes would rise up the agenda in global politics in the coming years. It argued that water was central to border disputes. Conflicts in Chad, Yemen and Somalia, it said, have all been linked to water scarcity.

The disputes are not just between countries but between states and rural and urban users. The Yellow river in China, the Ganges, the Mekong and other Asian rivers do not always reach the sea in dry seasons, leaving farmers short and blaming factory users higher upstream.

The river Kaveri is the bone of serious contention between Tamil Nadu and neighbouring Karnatgaka states, and water from the Vansadhara river is disputed between Andrah Pradesh and Orissa states.

Ed-Apols for full quote

Source

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EM Documents $10 billion Global Water Market

By paulstewart in June 24th 2010   No Comment »
Filed Under biodiversity, conservation, forestry, fresh water, habitat, health, pollution, water security, watershed, wetland, world water     Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,      

Ecosystem Marketplace

Cash-strapped governments around the world are using market mechanisms to keep water clean and prevent a threat that rivals climate change, according to a new report that documents nearly 300 programs involving nearly $10 billion in transactions. It was launched at the 17th Katoomba Meeting in Hanoi.

23 June 2010 | HANOI | An innovative market in water quality is rapidly emerging worldwide, as cash-strapped governments in countries as diverse as China, the United States, Brazil and Australia invest billions of public and private dollars in schemes that reward people who protect water resources, according to a new Ecosystem Marketplace report launched today at the Global Katoomba Meeting in Hanoi, where financiers, farmers, policymakers, and environmentalists are exploring new means of incorporating the value of nature’s services into the global economy.

The report, State of Watershed Payments: An Emerging Marketplace, will be available for upload later today and is the first to quantify payments for watershed services that could help avert a looming global water quality crisis.

Calling the water crisis a threat to humanity that exceeds global warming, the authors of the study said that a number of regions of the globe seem to be responding to such frightening indicators as the steady proliferation of “dead zones” in waterways around the world.

In the United States, for example, years of unchecked fertilizer run-off along the Mississippi River have generated algae blooms that have created massive oxygen-starved dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico the size of a small US state.

“Our findings suggest growing awareness by the public and private sectors worldwide of the water quality crisis, and acknowledgement that the problem is too big to be solved by traditional approaches alone,” said Michael Jenkins, Forest Trends President and CEO. “But the billions of dollars that are being spent on strategies aimed at protecting water resources represent only a snapshot of the potential for using market-based incentives to reduce threats to water.”

Nearly 300 Programs

The report identifies roughly 288 programs yielding an estimated $9.3 billion in payments for watershed protection in 2008. These include payments for watershed services (PWS), in which “land managers” such as farmers and forest communities are paid to maintain water quality, and water quality trading programs (WQT), in which industry and other polluters meet quality standards by buying and selling pollution reduction credits.

Over the last few decades, the total investment was about US $50 billion and affected about 3.24 billion hectares of watershed, which is land that funnels water into major waterways like the Chesapeake Bay in the US and Yangtze River in China.

“Clearly, a global movement is building that could be rapidly scaled-up to reduce water pollution much the same way carbon markets are intended to reduce greenhouse gases,” Jenkins said.

Marta Echavarria, one of the report co-authors, said that EM’s analysis of payments for water services as well as for water trading schemes revealed that many programs around the world are focused on more effective management of forests. Thus, she said it makes sense to link water quality issues to the climate change discussion regarding the use of payments and trading exchanges to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, or REDD.

“The same activities in forests that can affect climate change also influence water quality and biodiversity as well,” she said. “We need to broaden the lens and look at how payments for environmental services can purchase multiple benefits, from clean air to clean water to biodiversity. Then we can design programs that allow markets to put a value on all of these benefits.”

Trading in Credits for Water Pollution

Water quality trading programs totaled only about US $11 million in 2008, but the authors believe this sector could grow rapidly, much in the way carbon trading has skyrocketed from relatively small investments early in the decade to become a market worth $144 billion in 2009.

The report highlights the potential for attracting private sector participation by setting up exchanges that would facilitate trading in water pollution credits. Like carbon trading, water trading allows polluters to meet a mandated limit, either by reducing their discharges or by purchasing a credit tied to a reduction achieved elsewhere in the watershed, such as by a farmer, forest owner, or wastewater treatment plant.

“Water trading is poised to expand rapidly as a way to protect water quality,” said Tracy Stanton, Water Program Manager for Ecosystem Marketplace and lead author of the report. “We found a number of programs already well-established, but to see wider adoption we need governments to stimulate the markets by setting clear water quality standards that will drive greater demand for pollution credits. Likewise government is uniquely positioned to help lower the barriers to private sector investors by lowering the perceived risks.”

Most of the 72 trading programs studied in the report are located in the US, but they also can be found in Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

For example, in New South Wales, Australia, the Hunter River Salinity Trade Scheme allocates salinity credits that can be traded among 23 coal mining and power generation facilities as way to meet government-mandated caps on pollution discharge.

The report finds evidence that trading schemes could greatly expand in the US, especially now that the Department of Agriculture has established an Office of Environmental Markets. Already efforts are underway to develop ecosystem markets in the Chesapeake Bay, the Florida Everglades, the salmon habitat in the Pacific Northwest, the forests in the Northeast and in the Ohio River Basin. In addition, China has been conducting water trading pilot programs since the early 1980s and appears to be laying the groundwork around the country for establishing large trading exchanges in ecosystem services and Europe has been developing a trading scheme to combat declining water quality along the Danube.

Payments for Water Services

The authors note that government funds still make up the bulk of payments for water quality, but there are indications of interest from major players in the private sector. Global beverage companies such as Coca-Cola and SAB Miller have been engaged in watershed protection programs for the past several years. And in France, since the mid 1990s, Nestle has paid farmers to manage animal waste and reforest sensitive areas to protect the mineral water used in its Vittel line of bottled water.

“While this type of payment may seem quite small at the moment, this is an area in which we are most likely to see tremendous growth,” says Michael Jenkins of Forest Trends. “After all, if the private sector does not start paying for watershed services, then we are missing an important potential solution to this problem. “

For now, the public sector is funding most of the programs of “payments for watershed services,” and the greatest number of programs are in China and the United States.

In China, for example, where 700 million people lack access to safe water, payments in exchange for watershed protection increased from US $1 billion in 2000 to US $7.8 billion in 2008, and programs expanded from 8 to 47. Thus far, these initiatives have protected or restored 270 million hectares. A significant portion of the payments are subsidies for farmers to reduce their pollution in and around forested areas. And in the United States, payments for watershed services have grown from US $629 million in 2002 to US $1.35 billion in 2008 and could expand rapidly as the federal government has recently taken unprecedented actions to address critical gaps in watershed restoration polices across the country.

But the authors argue that China and the United States could learn much from innovations introduced in the nations of Latin America, where governments are experimenting with new ways of making payments and new methods for measuring and monitoring their impact.

Latin America has emerged as the global leader in innovative market-based clean water programs. Today, there is a range of local, state, and national initiatives underway in ten countries, led by Costa Rica and Mexico but also including Colombia, Guatemala, and Brazil. In 2009, for example, the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo established a new program that encourages dairy farmers in three river basins to close off pastures in order to improve water quality and flow. Farmers are paid for each liter of milk lost due to the closures, with much of the money coming from water tariffs as well as royalties from oil and gas exploration and hydropower production.

In the nations of Africa the report identified 20 programs totaling about US$62.7 million, though the authors suggest that the number could grow as new initiatives are underway including programs supported by the World Wildlife Fund in South Africa and Kenya.

“We now know that payments for watershed services are no longer a series of isolated incidents,” said Stanton. “Though much remains to be done, we have documented the beginning of a global movement; an emerging marketplace in the protection of water resources.”

Source

The report, is available here State of Watershed Payments: An Emerging Marketplace
Steve Zwick is Managing Editor of the Ecosystem Marketplace. He can be reached at SZwick@ecosystemmarketplace.com

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Opinion: Don't Dry Up Fresh Water to Save Salt Water

By admin in June 19th 2010   No Comment »
Filed Under climate change, communications, conservation, drinking water, evaporation, food security, fresh water, greenhouse gas, habitat, health, oceans, opinion, pollution, rivers, seawater, technology, water security, world water     Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,      

James G. Workman

(June 17) — In his Oval Office speech on the BP oil spill, President Barack Obama tried to harness our pent-up outrage over the 2.5 million gallons of crude spewing daily into the Gulf of Mexico — a sickening amount equal to an Exxon Valdez every four days — to wean the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.

Such focused and directed anger is welcome. And the White House energy bill, if revived by righteous fury, may help us reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

But in our rage we should not bleed one liquid asset to offset the damage caused by another. It would be a mistake if, to protect our rich and abundant seas, the U.S. quietly destroys our far more priceless and shrinking streams.

In short, don’t dry up fresh water to save salt water.

Unfortunately, that’s just what the energy bill would do. If enacted, it would, among other things, accelerate the switch from imported gasoline to domestic biofuels — power from burning up the distilled calories in food — to increase energy security. The result would be a switch from dependence on foreign oil to depletion of domestic water.

Energy policy is sexy and glamorous, but water is the silent workhorse that pulls the economy.

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James G. Workman is a former writer for statesmen ranging from Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt to Nelson Mandela. Based on his seven-year study in the Kalahari Desert, Workman wrote “Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought.” Find out more about his work on Red Room.

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