Green growth and water
Lifeng Li, Director of Global Freshwater Programme, WWF International
Thank you Chairman. Thanks particular OECD for inviting me. It’s my privilege to join
your discussion about growth and water management. For what I say in the next a
couple of minutes, I hope it’s clear that nothing for us is more important than managing
water wisely for sustaining our growth and our nature. Specifically, I would share a few
suggestions through this panel discussion.
1. water resources come from freshwater ecosystems – rivers, lakes and wetlands,
which provide more services than we realize. Without water, without good water
management, probably there is no growth at all.
Freshwater ecosystems sustain global economy that you are familiar with. First and most
for this time is food crisis. You could remember water is equal to food. 45 per cent
world’s food is come from irrigated agriculture, and we expect it grow.
As we face of growing demands for food, we also use more water for feeds and for
biofuel in the coming decades. River systems provide something likely 19 per cent of
world’s electricity.
Water systems also of cause carry those goods and other goods to market, and a single
vessel can carry more than 90 railway carriages.
Many millions of people on the world depend on freshwater ecosystems for protein. In
fact, sixty million people from Mekong get their protein from freshwater fisheries.
Those are the goods and services that we are most familiar with perhaps. But let’s also
remember the freshwater ecosystems provide more broader benefits which are
economically, socially, and biologically important.
They help regulate climate. Freshwater ecosystems absorb much of the carbon in the
atmosphere, in fact the carbon sequestrated just in the world peat land were all released
to the atmosphere, that by itself will raise global temperature by 2 to 3 Celsius degree.
Freshwater ecosystems also give us resilience to droughts, to floods, and to storms.
And if you care biodiversity as we do, then you know freshwater ecosystems are home to
40 per cent of all species on earth.
All these goods & services, lives are possible only if freshwater ecosystems are healthy,
only if there are rivers that ebb flow with seasons, rivers with water reach to the sea; only
if there are wetlands and lakes that breed birds and fish, they processing waste, absorb
flood waters, they recharge aquifers.
However, many of these invaluable services haven’t been fully unrecognized by water
users and decision makers, thus very often, they are unsustainably used and poorly
managed. These services are equally important for us to sustain economic growth, and
more importantly to develop the new economy in the 21st Century. Without water,
without good water management, probably there is no growth at all.
2. reducing our water footprint impacts needs global efforts.
Water footprint is the total direct water use and virtual water content of products
consumed by an individual, company or nation. For example, a can of cola contains 0.35
litres of water, yet it requires an average of 200 litres to grow and process the sugar
contained in that can. For a cotton shirt, it requires more than 3000 litres of water.
In the report WWF published last year, it’s estimated that UK’s total water consumption is
150 times of total runoff of the Thames. Where is it from? It is imported from many other
countries embedded in agricultural products and many others. Among total water
consumption by UK, more than 60% is imported from other countries, including Brazil,
China, India, Pakistan, and Turkey. It’s same for the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland,
Japan, and so on, as they have been relying on importing agricultural products from
other countries as well. Thus we can conclude that water is a global issue, although
our water footprint impacts on the quality, quantity and timing are local.
Water, has been traveling along the supply chain and cross national borders. The “water”
linkage between the rivers in the exporting countries and the consumers in the importing
countries has been lost. For a global sustainable green growth, this has to be
recognized, so that the consumers, business leaders, and decision makers will think
outside of their water boxes.
Within this context, it’s crucial for the decision makers to endorse related international
agreements for water management, in particular transboundary water management; for
business leaders to look at water issue through their supply chain, measure their
business water footprint impacts, and take leadership to promote sustainable water
management in related sectors; for consumers, to waste less imported foods, pressure
retailers and food manufacturers to deliver water sustainability through their supple
chains, and support and pressure government to implement fully domestic and
international policies. It’s in the context that we all live in the same global water village –
water connects us all.
3. maintaining healthy freshwater ecosystems is the most effective way to adapt to
climate change.
As we all realize that climate change is going to hit us through water. While we have
been facing global water crisis, climate change will make the situation even worse. We
need to double check our policies, plans, and management capacities through a climate
lens, and ensure that our water management in the future is climate-smart. For example,
covering only an estimated 3~4% of the world’s land areas, peatlands are estimated to
hold about 25–30% of carbon storage contained in terrestrial vegetation and soils.
Healthy freshwater ecosystems will continue to provide the society with goods and
services for development, and ensure the flexibility of the society to adapt to climate
change.
4. promoting non-structural measures and sustainable water infrastructures to
meet demands for growth.
We have been used to build infrastructures, but very often to use natural infrastructure.
We built more than 45000 large dams, which fragmented more than 60% of world large
freshwater systems; we abstracted water from rivers, and dried up the lakes and
reclaimed the wetlands; we canalized rivers, deepen and narrow them. All of these have
been seen as great achievements in traditional water management community. But their
impacts on freshwater ecosystem are enormous. I’d like to give you two examples.
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Once, Pacific salmon ran so thick in the streams of the western US that early
explorers Lewis and Clark marvelled that you could almost walk across a river on
salmons’ backs without getting your feet wet. In decline for decades, this year, for
the first time ever, the entire fishery was shut down. This is mainly because there
are too many dams have been built in the rivers, which completely destroyed the
salmon migration between the sea and rivers. But 150 years ago, when first
explorers arrived in the region, they could cross the river on the back of salmons,
without hardly wet their shoes.
The shrinking Aral sea is another example of unwise management of freshwater
ecosystem. Fishery industry and local communities have been wiped out. The
Aral Sea is, in fact, freshwater – the fourth largest freshwater lake in the world. But
during the Soviet era, the rivers that fed it were diverted extensively to irrigate arid
Steppe lands for growing cotton. Between 1960 and 1995, the lake level fell by 17
metres and by 2007 its surface area had shrunken by 90%. It’s a disaster of
extraordinary magnitude.
To increase water storage capacity and meet growing energy demands, there is a desire
to build more water infrastructures. However, this is one of the solutions.
We should firstly find non-structural sustainable solutions. Rather than building dams
for water storage, restoring and wise use traditional water tanks in India has been proved
as a more sustainable solution, as they also have significant cultural values.
We should also keep eyes on the aged infrastructures, and find innovative approach to
maintain them, operate them, or remove them. For example, thousands of hydropower
dams have overworked, or have been silted, thus can’t generate hydropower efficiently
as expected; There are engineering solutions to flush out the silts and clean up these
reservoirs, replace the generators, etc. These solutions will also create more jobs, but
not necessarily increase impacts on environment.
If all the non-structural solutions have been tried, if we have to build new ones, we still
have many choices of options. We need to ensure that we build them in right places,
and operate properly, to meet economic, social and ecological imperatives.
There are available principles and guidance that help us to make the decision on this,
such as those proposed by World Commission on Dams, the World Bank, and
International Hydropower Association in partner with many other stakeholders including
WWF.
In summary:
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water is more than A resource, its’ ecosystem vital for growth by providing many
services for us. No water, no growth.
water connects us all from water footprint perspective. Reducing our water
footprint needs global efforts.
maintaining healthy ecosystems is the best way to adapt to climate change.
Thanks.
we need both non-structural measures and sustainable water infrastructures to
meet our water demands for growth.