The Solution to World Hunger Cannot be left in the Hands of Western Governments Again

Warning: This piece is long. It attempts to connect many dots on the way to making the point of the title. Hopefully you will bear with me.

The last "saviour" for the world hunger crisis
The Green Revolution (the brainchild of Dr. Norman Borlaug who won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts) which dominated the efforts over the last half century to solve the world food crisis was literally manufactured by the burgeoning bioengineering industry of the U.S. and other western nations. It was built on the use of toxic petrochemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, on massive, mechanized irrigation systems, too often using irreplaceable fossil water from deep underground aquifers, and on the new genetically modified food crops being turned out by agrifood giants like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Monsanto and Dupont.

While it bought us a few more decades of relative global food security it was also very much responsible for the virtual destruction of the natural fertility and food production capability of the world's commercial agricultural soils. It was an aspirin, offering short-term relief but still ending with severe long-term pain. But there was much more.

The strings attached to food and agricultural aid to poor nations and poor peoples by the corporate weapons of western capitalism (The World Bank, IMF, OECD, WHO, FAO and others) contributed to the unmanageable indebtedness of third world nations and ultimately diminished the ability of those nations to feed their undernourished populations. In most cases these strings included a demand for privatization and corporatization of the nation's water supply as well. The power-hungry multinational agrifood companies actually campaigned vigorously and successfully for decades to get control of world food production, making illegal, in many countries, the saving of seeds by indigenous farmers (as a condition of financial aid). The concentration of ever more limited, bioengineered crop varieties has contributed hugely to the destruction of a diverse plant gene pool, including native source crops.

This destruction has been released into the environment through cross pollination of native plants with genetically modified crops. Too often that cross-polination is transferring to native plants a terminator gene which prevents the plant from reproducing, having the potential to cause the extinction of some of those native species. How the introduction of those engineered genes into native species will affect future evolution of native plant species is totally unknown because such uncontrolled evolution of genetically modified species was never studied in the lab or in the field. We have, as a result, now turned the entire biosphere of our planet into an uncontrolled genetic evolution laboratory.

Most importantly for our near-term future, however, because of the move to large-scale, broad-acre farms to achieve efficient crop production, small farmers and indigenous farmers have been driven off the land that had sustained them and the communities around them for generations. Their small holdings of agricultural land are being consolidated into massive, managed, industrialized tracts. As a result, much of the knowledge and practice (including the facility to develop and maintain tools suited to that small-scale production) of small scale farming is rapidly being lost throughout the world. Long before the middle of this century those old ways (so critical as we slide down the other side of Hubbert's Peak) may be lost forever, having to be reinvented by a desperate and hapless population having, for the first time, to learn the art of survival.

Western Capitalism is a delusional destroyer of the environment
If western capitalist society has proven one thing since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution it is that it has chosen to be an enemy and destroyer of the environment which, it has forgotten, sustains it. And in that role it is functioning very successfully. We have also proven that we can easily convince ourselves that what we are doing is good, even when all of the evidence says otherwise. We have industrialized and systematized our propaganda machine and our tools of self-delusion just as effectively as we have the assembly-line production of widgets. We see what we want to see and are blind to that which we do not. In our virtual world perception has become reality. We see wealth in debt. We see nutrition and sustenance in empty calories. We see agricultural fertility in a bag of chemicals. We see reality in staged farces presented on our television sets. And we recoil in fear and loathing at all that is natural, reject the only true source of reality and beauty; nature. And we vilify and criminalize those who would dare to protect what little is left of nature from man's abuse and destruction.

Human population is unsustainable
Man's greatest threat to nature, however, is not our machines, nor our technology, nor our concrete and asphalt cities and roadways. Our greatest threat is our huge numbers, period. There are over 6.6 billion of us and our numbers continue to increase year after year. The rate of population increase has slowed but our numbers could, all other things being equal, double again well before the end of this century. Being the world's most successful omnivore, however, puts us unquestionably at the top of the global food chain. But natural food chains are a pyramid with micro-organisms at the bottom, then herbivores, then carnivores, then omnivores. But each level up the pyramid has to be smaller in number for the levels below to support it. Yet we, through our unnatural use of stored energy, have turned that pyramid upside down, temporarily at least. We are 6.6 billion fairies on the head of the pin stuck in the top of that pyramid.

THAT......... is unsustainable!

Feeding Ourselves
Whether it be natural or artificial, the most common and critical need of all 6.6 billion of us is food. But that food derives from and is critically dependent on the wide diversity of other living organisms with which we reluctantly share this planet. There may be many who do not recognize that reality, who think that food naturally comes in a manufactured plastic container complete with a printed best-before date. There may be billions on this planet who have never seen a cow being milked, never seen a potato growing in the ground, never actually seen a chicken lay an egg. They only recognize these things by their packaging and their location on the grocer's shelves.

But feeding our 6.6 billion population is an ongoing and increasingly serious problem as we monopolize, and destroy, more and more of the planet's life-support system to the exclusion of other species. More and more, however, that monopolization of the food producing capacity at the expense of others is now happening within our own species. With more and more people and less and less food, and less and less capability to produce it, larger and larger numbers of people are being left out in our game of musical-food (like musical chairs but with the reward when the music stops being enough food to keep you alive rather than just a chair to sit on). To paraphrase the old expression, you can't have an ever-expanding population and enough food for all too. (I think if Marie Antoinette had lived now and witnessed recent events in Haiti her new slogan would be "Let them eat mudpies!")

Economic system disconnect between ever-increasing needs and ever-declining resources
Western nations are bound to an unforgiving economic paradigm that is critically dependent on perpetual growth with a money supply grown on the ever-increasing issuance of new debt. This cannot be the source of solutions for a world that already has too many people, already scarce and constantly diminishing resources. It is just not possible to maintain a business-as-usual system where the demand side keeps growing and the supply side keeps declining. When the money that is the representation of the economy no longer has a tangible value within the economy then the economy survives only through the momentum of faith and confidence. It can no longer survive an eventual but inevitable loss of that confidence. Even today the Capitalist Church has a rapidly declining membership and may soon face an empty collection plate.

There may have been a time when we could have redressed the economic and cultural supply-demand imbalance by either increasing the supply or decreasing the demand. That option is no longer open to us. The supply can no longer be increased, except of course on the graphs and charts of economists. The resources with which to do so are rapidly disappearing. The only option left open to us is to decrease the demand.

There is some small latitude within the system to reduce the demand without serious impact on population. But even that option is seriously limited and very short-term. The simple and painful reality is that sooner rather than later our massive population is going to have to be reduced because there simply aren't enough resources to maintain us all, no matter what level of resource consumption and lifestyle we consider acceptable. As those resources are finite sooner or later that excess population will deplete them to a level below the minimum sustainable.

Is the Human species too big to fail?

As we have proven over the past couple of centuries, species go extinct. Some 99.9999% of all species that have ever existed on earth are now extinct. Extinction, it is now recognized by science, is a natural phase in the evolution of species. That suggests, therefore, that extinction at some point in the future is inevitable for the human species. From an evolutionary and biological point of view there is nothing particularly unique about our species that suggests any likelihood of our avoiding that eventuality. We may, before that extinction, evolve into a new species. We may, on the other hand, prove to be an evolutionary dead-end, as is the case with the majority of species that have existed. Evolution, despite our beliefs and best efforts to make it otherwise, is a crap shoot. Welcome to the real world.

With that evolutionary perspective I would like to suggest that the period we are entering into (probably covering at least this and next century) is, in fact, going to be a struggle for the survival of our species. Never in the history of our species has such a large population had to deal with such a massive shift in lifestyle and survivability as we will be facing as global energy declines over the coming decades. We have already approached extinction several times since we first evolved into being on this planet. We managed to claw back from the edge of the extinction abyss on each of those occasions. We may still do so several more times before our eventual demise. But we cannot take our continued existence as a species for granted.

Human species is in severe overshoot
We, as a species, have severely overshot the carrying capacity of the environment that sustains us, in our case, unlike most other species, being the entire planet. The resources upon which we critically depend for our survival are rapidly diminishing while our numbers continue to increase. This is a classic pattern of the transition into overshoot. Science tells us resource insufficiency due to overshoot is the most common cause of all extinctions throughout the history of life on earth.

But human overshoot in reality happened some time early in the Industrial Revolution. Many scientists believe that, without the support of the massive amounts of energy we have derived from fossil fuels, the global carrying capacity for the human species is, at best, between 1 and 2 billion. The massive added population that fossil fuels have allowed simply cannot be sustained without them. Whether we like it or not, as the global supply of fossil fuels diminish our human population will go into decline. The only question remaining, to which no one realistically has an answer, is how.

Overshoot ultimately local
Overshoot of carrying capacity, though it has species wide implications, is very much a local, regional phenomenon. Even today there are many regions and nations that can, within the resources available in their region, support their current population. This reality is masked not just by our use of fossil fuels but by the current efficiency of a global food distribution system. At the moment, and as long as there are fossil fuels (or other means) to maintain the distribution system, our carrying capacity has largely been averaged out to a global basis. Poor countries do not have higher levels of starvation and nutrition-related diseases because they do not have the agricultural carrying capacity to produce enough food. They simply cannot compete for that food in a global food distribution system that clearly favours wealthy nations and peoples. This is complicated by the unfortunate capitalist reality that much of the agricultural land of poor nations is currently being used, by large agricultural companies, to produce luxury crops like cotton, coffee, chocolate, and sugar cane for western markets.

As the global food distribution declines and ultimately fails, which it will, carrying capacity and food security will again become very clearly a local problem. Regions and nations will survive or fail based on their ability to produce the food needed to support the population within their region, and to control the level of population within their region. This local food security issue, of course, is clearly recognized by an increasing number of groups and grass-roots organizations around the world who are today fostering "eat local", "food miles" and bio-regionalism efforts.

Western Capitalism and the current global food crisis
Food self-sufficiency and food security has different components in different regions around the world. In North America and Europe the prime underpinning of our food security is wheat. In Latin America it is corn. Much of the poor diet of Africa is based on Casava and Taro (taro is also a key food in the Pacific islands, as well as fish). Asian food security is dominated by rice.

When nations supply food aid they tend to think in terms of offering that with which they are familiar. America offers wheat. Japan and China offer rice. The benefits from such aid are immediate and short term. But they create and reinforce a dependence on a foreign food source. It does not have long-term viability. It does not allow or facilitate the people or nation being helped to achieve long-term sustainability.

The real need is to help those nations and peoples strengthen and secure local self-sufficiency. In many cases, because of the consolidation effort during the Green Revolution, that may require extensive land redistribution, putting the small farmer back on the land. It needs a strengthening of development of that food resource (such as Casava in Africa) that naturally underpins the region's food security. It probably also needs a disconnect from the global debt economy, which may also need debt forgiveness to get those poor nations out from under the burden of unmanageable indebtedness. In a global economy and money supply grown by debt-issuance, the debt of not just poor nations but all nations can never be discharged. It takes new debt to pay existing debt.

Food crisis is not a technological problem, it is a population problem
Western capitalist nations approach every offer of aid and assistance as a profit-making venture and a technological challenge. Neither of these have long-term viability as solutions to the current global food crisis. This food crisis is not a technological problem. It is a population problem. Global population MUST be reduced.

This, above all else, is the reason that the global food crisis cannot be left to western capitalist nations. Every nation and region is going to have to determine what its local long-term carrying capacity is. Perhaps western nations can offer some assistance in this effort. Once that carrying capacity is determined, however, each nation and region is going to have to determine how to get their population below the level of the carrying capacity. Under no circumstances should western capitalist nations have a role in determining how this is achieved outside of their own borders. We have far different criteria than is needed. We value life very differently than most peoples and nations can afford. Whether we like it or not, life is brutal and tough, especially when the world is in overshoot and people are having to struggle for their survival. We cannot impose upon such a world our current unrealistic view of worth and value. We have spent far too long (since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution) living within the bubble of a virtual world. Our perceived reality does not an can not match the hard realities of the bulk of the 6.6 billion people and 200+ nations on this planet.

I don't know how the people of Botswana (just an example) will achieve equilibrium within their carrying capacity. I know, however, that they must figure it out, that it is not my problem to deal with. Yes, many countries and peoples will sort it out in brutal civil and inter-tribal wars, in revolutions. But if 3-5 people out of every six globally are going to be casualties it is unrealistic to expect this to be done nobly, humanely. As the money supply increases the value of that money diminishes. As the population increases, especially in overshoot, the value of each life diminishes. This is a reality we have thus far been able to avoid.

We have an unfortunate tendency to shoot the messenger, especially when the news he brings is bad. Believe me, I am not sitting back counting my piles of money and rubbing my hands in glee at the prospect of a global die-off. The next century or two are going to be a brutal struggle for survival. How quickly that struggle deepens into a battle I do not know. I don't think it is that far away. We can see the signs of an escalation in those struggles already. I am of an age and a state of health where I am content to know that I will not be around to face the worst of it. But our children and grandchildren will. And I fear for them.

Soil Fertility and Carrying Capacity

Earth, the living planet
Earth's life-supporting environment was created by the very life dependent upon it. It is a symbiotic relationship with both halves of that partnership critically dependent upon the other. Without earth's benign and supportive environment there would be no life. Had plant life never arisen the oxygen atmosphere upon which all animal life is dependent would not exist.

As we near the end of our fossil-fuel age, the heartbreaking truth we must endure is that our dream of reaching out to the stars is likely never to be realized. We evolved as an earthbound species and will, I believe, be forever constrained to that reality. We, myself included, desperately want to believe there are other planets teeming with life. The reality is that, despite an incessant search, the only planet in all the universe that we know contains life is our own earth.

Like so many others I desperately wish SETI would receive that elusive signal from other intelligent life. Perhaps that would convince us all of what we have in common, that we are one us in a universe of them. But there are so many more reasons that we will never receive that signal than reasons that we might. Regardless, the reality is that we will continue to be dependent upon this planet for our existence.

Our solar system is a closed system. Our earth is a semi-closed system, receiving input from only our sun as it, like all stars, slowly consumes itself. The resources this planet contained before life arose are finite. Most of the resources since created by earth's living processes are renewable, not infinite but perpetually recreated by living organisms. Most of those renewable resources are themselves created from earth's finite resources. Life constantly recycles those elements through one living organism after another.

Converting inorganic matter to organic
Some of those organisms convert raw minerals and other elements into a form that they themselves and other organisms can utilize. They are made available to the roots of plants which make them available to animal species who eventually return them to the soil when they die. Then the microorganisms start the process all over again. Nature wastes nothing.

Life is still critically dependent on these organisms for extending and maintaining the carrying capacity of the planet. Every ounce of raw planetary resources converted by them to a bio-available form extends and maintains the amount of life this planet can support. In these first few billion years of terrestrial life the most readily available and easily obtained of these finite resources have continuously been drawn upon by earth's life forms.

All finite, non-renewable resources being consumed will eventually be used up, at least in their native form. Consumption will generally be at it's maximum at the point where about half of that resource has been used. This is the peak, just like Hubbert's Peak which describes the point of maximum consumption of the world's crude oil supply. Oil, though created from living organisms, is a finite resource. It is renewable only in that the same processes that created the oil we now use can recreate it. But the timescales involved are so long, on the scale of millions of years, that in human terms we must consider oil finite. I am, of course, discounting the abiotic oil theory which argues that oil is continuously created in the earth's mantle.

Resource dependence
The agent using a finite resource builds a dependence on it consistent with the rate at which that resource is being consumed. That dependence is at maximum when consumption is at maximum, when that resource has reached peak and is half used up. As that resource passes peak and its availability declines so too will the agent responsible for its consumption. That is not limited to finite resources. Dependence can also be built around a renewable resource. The number of Koala an area can support is dependent on the rate at which the Eucalyptus trees on which they feed reproduce. Pandas are dependent on the reproductive rate of bamboo. Cheetah's rely on the breeding rate of Thompson's Gazelles. Oil can be reproduced but the rate of regeneration is far exceeded by the rate at which we humans consume it.

We consume and destroy earth's resources at a rate far exceeding that of all other life forms on the planet. Our activities, unlike those of any other species, are systematically destroying the life-support capability of the planet. Vigorously carried on long enough we will destroy the planet's ability to support any life at all, ourselves included.

Life's critical dependence on top soil
Earth's life-support system consists of various components and sub-systems like the water cycle and the carbon cycle. The one component, however, most critical to land-based life, the engine of their life-support system, is top soil. That is the thin layer of dark, organically rich soil in which plants spread out their roots and upon which animals walk, urinate, defecate, give birth and die. It is in this thin, vital layer of soil that microorganisms convert raw resources and make them available to the myriad forms of life around and above them.

The human body contains trace amounts of almost every mineral on earth; carbon, calcium, sulfur, phosphorus, potassium, gold, silver, zinc, copper, iron, aluminium, molybdenum, chromium, platinum, boron, silicon and more. These are derived from the soil through our food. The amino acids that our body's proteins are made from contain only carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur. Our bones are constructed mostly of calcium, silicon, and boron. What are all of those other minerals used for?

Enzymes and Hormones in living organisms
All living organisms are vitally dependent on two particular types of proteins that control metabolism, conversion of food to cellular material, functioning of the nervous system, cell regeneration and more. Hormones are the body's internal messaging system. They control, for example, your body's rate of cell reproduction that controls your growth, your nervous reactions, cell division, immune responses and the contraction of muscles. Enzymes are responsible for the conversion of material from one form to another, the physical construction, maintenance and division of cells, the conversion of glucose to energy, and much, much more. There are literally tens of thousands of different types of enzymes responsible for virtually everything that happens in your body.

Enzymes and hormones are built to exacting specifications contained in your DNA. An enzyme may be responsible for combining together a carbon atom and an oxygen atom or splitting apart two joined sulfur atoms united by a disulfide bond. Each does only one very specific function. Most enzymes require a catalyst that acts as an agent in speeding up a chemical reaction (getting the carbon atom and oxygen atom to link or getting the two sulfur atoms to separate). These reactions would otherwise take place at such a slow rate that life could not function. Movement would not be possible. Your body would be unable to build replacements for your damaged or worn out cells. Food could never be transformed into usable material in your body or converted to energy to drive your muscles and nervous system. Enzymes quite literally are the key to life.

You may be aware of the handful of your body's digestive enzymes. But most of the tens of thousands of enzymes in your body are contained within your cells. They are generated there, do their function there, are broken down and recycled there, never exiting the cell in which they are created. Your food may be acted upon by hundreds, even thousands of different enzymes (like workers on an assembly line) from the time it enters your mouth until it is used in various bodily processes or built into a cell.

How catalytic enzymes function
The key to the enzyme's ability to do it's job, like the assembly line worker, is the tools it has to work with, the catalysts. That catalyst may be a particular vitamin, an atom of oxygen, or more likely an atom of a particular mineral like iron, gold or silver. The minerals in your body not used in the structure of your bones, cells, nerves and muscles are used by hormones or by enzymes as catalysts in completing the chemical reaction they are responsible for. Without it's required catalyst, like the assembly line worker without his tools, the enzyme cannot do its job. If one enzyme in a series of reactions doesn't work the whole series of events shuts down. The enzymes after that can't get their materials. If the body, for example, does not have functioning amylase enzymes which break down starches, all of the bodily functions dependent on the nutrients in starches will not be able to function because their materials are, in a sense, held up at the receiving dock.

It is through our food that we get all of the minerals and other substances that our enzymes and hormones need as building materials and, most importantly, as tools to do their work. The body may still be able to generate the enzymes from instructions contained in the DNA but without their catalysts they are as productively useless as the workers sitting in the cafeteria.

Destruction of critical soil micro-organisms
Plants get those minerals from the soil through the help of an army of microorganisms that convert them into a form, very often an oxide, that the plant can use and making them available to the roots of the plant. We are systematically destroying the microorganisms upon which all life is dependent and the overall fertility of our soil. We are doing so;

* through our use of agricultural pesticides which kill soil organisms as well as the insects and other pests that we intend to destroy,
* through intensive deforestation resulting in millions of tons of critical top soil (and the microorganisms and minerals in that soil) being eroded away,
* by exposing forest soil microorganisms that break down dead and fallen material on the forest floor to construct new soil,
* through intensive irrigation which leaches vital mineral content of the soil down to levels where it is no longer accessible,
* with air pollution which results in toxic chemicals being absorbed into the soil where it kills those microorganisms,
* with industrial scale plowing and tilling of the soil resulting in millions of tons of top soil being dried up and blown away every year,
* by creating an impermeable layer of hardpan just below the top layer of soil which prevents both plant roots and soil microorganisms reaching the mineral nutrients in the subsoil,
* in turning over the soil with the plow which brings deep topsoil organisms to the surface where they are killed by exposure and driving aerobic microorganisms from the top layer of soil deeper underground where they are killed for lack of air, water and heat from sunlight,
* with our systematic destruction of the balance of soil nutrients through continued application of artificial fertilizers containing only nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus,
* by systematically changing soil ph levels which makes it an inhospitable environment for many of these critical soil organisms,
* by systematically changing the symbiotic relationships of soil organisms and plants by destroying the native variety of plants and replacing it with massive tracts of monoculture.

Clearly we cannot continue the destruction of this life-support capability upon which we and all other terrestrial life depend. We must begin making drastic changes now, before it is too late. Sooner or later we will push that system to a tipping point beyond which recovery is not possible. We do not know where or when that tipping point will be. We can only hope that we have not already passed it but we must still proceed with the assumption we have not.

Focusing on food security
The focus of our effort must be food security. The most critical aspect of our ability to feed our massive population is soil fertility. We must ensure that the balance of the mineral and other elemental content of our soils is rebuilt and maintained and that the soils are repopulated and maintained with the critical microorganisms that convert those elements and make them available to the other living organisms, including ourselves.

We cannot use those processes that allow us to feed over six billion people but destroy earth's life-support capability and at the same time help the planet regain it's optimum carrying capacity. The two are mutually exclusive. The longer we use those destructive processes the greater the risk we will push the life-support system beyond the tipping point leading to its eventual and inevitable collapse.

If we pass that tipping point the worst-case scenarios of population collapse become increasingly probable. The global population will inevitably contract, with or without peak oil, with or without global warming or any of the other global crises looming on the horizon. When and how badly depends upon how soon and how seriously we begin to rectify the problems we have created and move toward a sustainable modality of interfacing with this planet's natural systems. Continuing to push the limits of that life-support system while continuing to live in denial of that reality almost guarantees the worst possible outcome, eventually.

The Global Freshwater Crisis

Seventy percent of the earth's surface is covered with water. Yet more than one out of six people (1.1 billion) lack access to safe drinking water. And more than two out of six (2.6 billion) lack adequate sanitation.[16] And those numbers grow every year.

Today over half the world's population live in heavily energy-dependent cities whose aging water infrastructure, even now before peak oil, is beginning to crumble. Even in wealthy North America, the cost of renewing and modernizing water and wastewater infrastructure is enormous. And there is an urgent need for rational assessment and informed decision making about the need for new or expanded infrastructure and about potential impacts on, for example, Great Lakes waters.[12]

The water crisis is largely due, at this point, to global warming, surface water and groundwater pollution, marine pollution, rainforest destruction, and soil loss. But where will peak oil leave us when added to this long list of exacerbating factors? What are our prospects for long-term sustainability and survivability?



Earth. The water planet. Waterworld. Or, as Carl Sagan called it, the pale blue dot, Sagan's apt description of what earth looks like from the outer fringes of the solar system. Water, water everywhere. The oceans and lakes are full of it. The poles are covered with it. Rivers move it from place to place. Blocks of it measuring thousands of cubic kilometres float about the oceans near the poles. The atmosphere is full of it. All the plants and animals on the planet are made up mostly of it. It's in the soil, even in the rocks. It exists as a liquid, a solid, a gas. On a planetary basis it is a perpetually-recycled finite resource. It has been estimated that, in total, the earth contains about 1400 million cubic kilometers of it, give or take a few million.[15] But it's not always conveniently in the place and in the form we humans want it to be.

It's plentiful, but can you drink it?

Water scarcity amid plenty
Of all of the water on the planet only a paltry 2.5% or about 35 million cubic kilometers is fresh water. The rest is salt water. The usable portion of those freshwater resources is less than 1% (about 350,000 cubic kilometers), only 0.0025% of all the water on earth. The total global freshwater breaks down as; 0.3% contained in lakes and rivers (90% of that in lakes); 29.9% fresh groundwater (aquifers); 0.9% other (swamp, soil moisture, tundra and permafrost); 68.9% ice caps, glaciers and snow cover.[15] The atmosphere itself contains only about 0.001% (0.4% of all global fresh water) of the total water available on our planet.[17]

But fresh water is not evenly distributed throughout the planet. North America's Great Lakes contain about 18 percent of the world’s surface freshwater supplies, shared by only two nations. The Great Lakes have a combined surface area of over 325,000 km2. Overall, however, jurisdiction for the Great Lakes is shared by two federal governments (Canada and the United States), two Canadian provinces (Ontario and Quebec), eight US states (New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Minnesota), and hundreds of municipal governments.[12] Only about 25 million people (about one third of 1% of the global population) currently rely on the Great Lakes for their drinking water.[12]

At the other extreme, the 29 countries in the near east region account for 14% of the world’s land area and are home to 10% of the world’s human population. Yet the whole region has only about 2% of the world’s renewable freshwater resources.[15] While the global average availability is 7000 cubic meters of water per person per year, in these countries the average is about 1580 cubic meters of water per person per year.[15] In Jordan and the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) only 170-200 cubic meters of renewable water resources are available per person per year, less than 3% of the global average.[15]

From this limited availability of fresh water, however, global withdrawals for irrigation represent an average of 66% of the total withdrawals (up to 90% in arid regions like the middle east). The other 34% is used by: domestic households (10%) (representing only 17-20 cubic meters per person per year in the above-mentioned countries), industry (20%), or evaporated from reservoirs (4%).[16]

Managing our water usage
Population growth, economic development, and changing national and regional values have intensified competition over increasingly scarce freshwater resources worldwide. There is increasingly widespread concern and predictions of rising future conflicts over shared water supplies.[8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16] Of greatest concern is the potential for conflict within the world's 263 international freshwater basins (basins shared by two or more countries). However, since 1948, the historical record documents only 37 incidents of acute conflicts (i.e., those involving violence) over water. Over half of these have been between Israel and various of its neighbours. During that same period, approximately 295 international water agreements were negotiated and signed.[10] It is unlikely that that low ratio will hold over this century as water shortages become increasingly common and critical.

Europe has the largest number of international freshwater basins with 69, followed by Africa with 59, Asia with 57, North America with 40, and South America with 38. The world's 263 international freshwater basins account for nearly one-half of the earth's land surface, generate roughly 60% of global freshwater flow and are home to approximately 40% of the world's population. A total of 145 countries contribute territory to international basins, some albeit reluctantly. Thirty-three nations, including such sizable countries as Bolivia, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger, and Zambia, have more than 95% of their territory within the hydrologic boundaries of one or more international freshwater basins. Needless to say such countries take their international water agreements very seriously.[10]

Many international freshwater basins involve a significant number of nation states. The Danube, for example, has seventeen riparian states. The Congo, Niger, Nile, Rhine, and Zambezi are each shared by more than nine countries. The Amazon, Aral Sea, Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna, Jordan, Kura-Araks, La Plata, Lake Chad, Mekong, Neman, Tarim, Tigris-Euphrates-Shatt al Arab, Vistula, and Volga basins each contain territory of at least five sovereign nations.

The potential for water wars
In all, and most worrisome from the perspective of potential future conflicts, 158 of the world's 263 international freshwater basins lack any type of multilateral cooperative management and conflict resolution framework. Of the 106 basins with water institutions, approximately two-thirds have three or more riparian states, yet less than 20 percent of the accompanying agreements are multilateral, most being bilateral between only two of those states. Many basins continue to experience significant disputes even after a treaty is negotiated and signed, often because of the exclusion from the treaties of one or more of the sharing states. Often, under such pressures, even the signed bilateral treaties begin to break down.[10]

An early and comparatively successful model of cooperative water management structures that can help avoid dispute and conflict was the establishment by the United States and Canada of the International Joint Committee (IJC) for the administration of the Great Lakes watershed and connecting and outflowing rivers.[12] Though somewhat unique because of its focus on shared lakes rather than the much more common shared rivers, it is, nonetheless, a model of the level of cooperation that is achievable. Certainly the relative lack of complexity in being only a bilateral agreement has helped considerably as well. It is fair to say, however, that a significant part of the strong and enduring relationship between the two countries is due, at least in part, to their mutual cooperation concerning, and national reliance on, the Great Lakes. Even so, at least one war (the war of 1812) has been fought between the two nations (Canada was a British colony at the time) partly, in fact, on the waters of these very shared lakes.

Water has always been an important component in the negotiations between states and nations. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has documented more than 3600 international water treaties - covering the surface water in lakes and rivers - dating from AD 805 to 1984.[10] Most of these have to do with rights of navigation, limits on diversion and pollution. The earliest recorded water treaty, however, dates back to 2500 BC, when the two Sumerian city-states of Lagash and Umma crafted an agreement ending a water dispute along the Tigris River.[10]

Since 1948 alone, 295 international water agreements were negotiated and signed dealing with surface freshwater.[10] Yet the surface water at issue represents only 0.3% of the total freshwater on the planet. As regards groundwater (the underground water in aquifers), which accounts for 29.9% of all the freshwater on the planet, "there are no known treaties dealing specifically with groundwater matters."[13] Some freshwater treaties dealing with surface water do casually mention groundwater - almost as an aside or a point for future consideration - but even these treaties do not pursue the issue with any detailed language, measures, agreements or definition.

Underground boundary disputes
Groundwater, of course, is considerably more difficult to map and define than is surface water. There are literally thousands of underground aquifers throughout the world. Most, fortunately, are contained within the boundaries of single sovereign nations. But hundreds of these aquifers run beneath and across the arbitrary human boundaries above them. And just as one state excessively drawing water from a shared lake or river affects the availability of that resource to other countries sharing it, the excessive drawing down of the water in an international aquifer by one state affects the availability of that water to the other states dependent on it

South Africa, for example, shares four rivers with its six neighbours – the Incomati, Orange, Limpopo and Maputo. The water in these rivers is, however, increasingly under pressure due to increased water demands in relatively affluent South Africa, the largest and most powerful of the seven nations sharing those resources.[11] This is not a trivial issue when it comes to groundwater resources. Groundwater systems are often the only source of fresh water in some regions of the world, particularly under arid and semi-arid climatic conditions - such as in the middle east and much of Africa - where freshwater demand is rapidly increasing.[13]

The structure and terminology of most international freshwater agreements tend to follow the pattern codified in the 1997 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses. [10] Attempts have been underway, through the International Shared Aquifer Resource Management (ISARM) efforts[13], to arrive at a similar codification of rules for treaties involving the treatment of international groundwater aquifers. The most recent attempt, The Seoul Rules, demonstrates special concern with international groundwater through the provision of specific articles that relate to “hydraulic interdependence”, “protection of groundwater” and “groundwater management & surface waters” (the latter addresses the issue of conjunctive use).[14]

It is still too early to tell what success these efforts will have or whether anything equivalent to the UN convention will result. The slow progress to date suggests that there is only a slight likelihood of having a framework in place in time to ward off serious future water conflicts. Issues of increasing water scarcity, degrading water quality, rapid population growth, unilateral water development, economic upheaval like the 2008 global financial crisis, and uneven levels of economic development are commonly cited as potentially disruptive factors in co-riparian water relations. The combination of these factors has led academics and policy-makers alike to warn of impending conflict over shared water resources.[10]

Middle East water deficiency
Even when nations equitably share these resources, however, the pressure on groundwater resources, both shared and sovereign, can be immense. Groundwater reserves in the Middle East, for example, are becoming increasingly brackish. More than 50% of groundwater in the region, it is estimated, is already contaminated from salt water intrusion and the proportion is increasing as the rate of extraction of water from aquifers exceeds recharge, in much of the region by three to one.

In Saudi Arabia water levels declined by more than 70 meters in the Umm Er Radhuma aquifer from 1978 to 1984 and this decline was accompanied by a salinity increase of more than 1000 milligrams of salt per liter. The aquifers of Bahrain, the Batenah Plains of Oman, and the United Arab Emirates are suffering severely from seawater intrusion. Groundwater salinity in most areas of the Syrian and Jordanian steppe has increased to several thousand milligrams per liter and over-exploitation of coastal aquifers in Lebanon has caused seawater intrusion with a subsequent rise from 340 to 22000 milligrams per liter in some wells near Beirut. With the countries in the Arabian peninsula using up their water resources three times as fast as they are being renewed it is estimated that available water resources will be exhausted within 20 years (or made completely unusable because of dangerously high salt levels) unless consumption of freshwater is reduced.[15]

The always volatile countries of the Middle East have become critically dependent on the income from their oil resources and accompanying natural gas (the extraction and processing of which also uses large volumes of water), essentially their only tradeable commodities. As world consumption of oil has grown over this past half century, the populations of these countries have literally exploded. In many of them over half the population is under twenty years of age. When those oil resources go into serious decline, if they are not on the front edge of that predicament already, the means of support for that tremendous population will disappear. Most of these nations have a policy of being as self sufficient in food production as possible, but water limitations, despite their draw down of aquifers at three times the renewal rate and considerable investment in desalination facilities, have kept them from achieving self-sufficiency.[15] Saudi Arabia, in fact, is doing significant promotion of the use of saline water and salt-tolerant species to increase food and feed production.[15] To date the lack of food self-sufficiency has not been a problem for these countries because they have had the income to trade for what they can't produce. As the oil revenues begin to disappear, however, the potential for revitalizing age-old conflicts in the region are of serious concern.

The disputable commercialization of water
Complicating all of the real issues involving water sharing is the fact that water has become the most commercial product of the century. Water is to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th century.[8] Water has been put on the table as a tradeable commercial product in almost every bilateral and multilateral trade agreement negotiated during the rampant growth of commercial globalization. Many weaker countries are being pressured into putting their scarce water resources up for grabs in order to achieve other gains in these trade agreements, or as collateral for IMF and World bank loans. Even Canada is under considerable and constant pressure from the U.S. to put the country's "abundant" freshwater resources at the disposal of commercial interests. It was also, unfortunately, included in the proportionality section of the NAFTA agreement. Canadian water and the shared water resources of the Great Lakes basin are consistently viewed in Washington and many U.S. state capitals as the solution to growing water scarcity in that country's heartland. Once the tap is opened the proportionality clause in the NAFTA agreement will ensure that it stays open as long as NAFTA is in force.

The impact of climate change on the global redistribution of water resources further adds to the complications that threaten to contribute to future conflict. In some areas longstanding water resources, like many of the lakes in Africa, are drying up while other areas, such as much of Europe, are experiencing unprecedented flooding. Areas like the U.S. midwest, one of the world's foodbaskets, are drying up with perpetual crop losses driving more and more producers into bankruptcy. Australia, another global breadbasket, is in the midst of a serious national drought which may, in fact, not be temporary but signal a long-term climatic shift due to global warming. Extreme weather events are on the increase everywhere as the planet warms. All of these things affect the amount of water available to agriculture. The global emergency food grain reserves over this past decade have shrunk from a marginal 119 day supply to a very critical 53 day supply as of 2006, and continues to decline by 2-4 days supply per year.

There is little question that the growing global water crisis has the potential to be one of the key sources of conflict between nations, and even within nations, over the balance of this century and beyond. Considering the political difficulties that have accompanied the drafting, writing and signing of existing international freshwater agreements (most not during times of critical water scarcities), and the frequency with which those agreements are broken by one party or another, future agreements will become increasingly difficult to finalize and consistently open to abuse by the signatories.

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The following were key sources of material for this article;

1) IJC Releases Statement on its Review of Lake Ontario and St. Lawrence River Regulation
2) United States & Canada International Joint Commission Public Interest Advisory Group Public Meeting
3) Long Sault to Beauharnois: the St. Lawrence River restructured
4) Robert H Saunders Dam (before 9/11) and Dwight D Eisenhower Lock in Massena, N.Y.
5) The Lost Villages
6) Lake Ontario St. Lawrence River Regulation
7) Lake Ontario–St. Lawrence River Framework Data Project examines ups and downs of water levels
8) Water crisis looms in countrywide
9) Atlas of International Freshwater Agreements
10) The World.s International Freshwater Agreements: Historical Developments and Future Opportunities[PDF]
11) A Compilation of All The International Freshwater Agreements Entered Into by South Africa With Other States
12) The International Joint Commission and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement
13) International Shared Aquifer Resource Management (ISARM)
14) Internationally Shared Aquifer Resource Management: ISARM AMERICAS
15) Role of Biosaline Agriculture in Managing Freshwater Shortages and Improving Water Security
16) World Water Council: Water Crisis
17) Water in the Earth's atmosphere
18) Why is the Ocean Salty?