It is indeed very important that the water is clean since 50% of the water used by the 700,000 residents of Ashgabat comes from the Karakum Canal. Although the other 50% of water used by these residents comes from a cleaner source, it is a large problem to have such contaminated water coming from these canals. As a consequence, the quality of water in Ashgabat does not meet the World Health Organisation (WHO) standards (no water supply in Turkmenistan meets the WHO standards). Ashgabat’s water quality is probably the best in the whole country and still, it fails 87% of the WHO indicators. The problem is that the government does not have enough funds to upgrade the water treatment works in Ashgabat. Nevertheless, the government does not charge the residents for water use. Since Turkmenistan has not been a priority for aid agencies, the country has had no voluntary aid. Since the country does not produce pipes, it must pay hard currency if it wishes to upgrade the quality of the water facilities.
Vast new public buildings and apartment blocks are being built surrounded by green irrigated lawns. As a consequence, several hundreds of people in Turkmenistan are left homeless every week as a frantic demolition program works to clear the city’s traditional houses to make way for the reconstructions. Water is a feature of the new development and is used as decoration in many public areas. Yet another $b billion plan of building a gigantic lake that will apparently be big like a sea, was proposed by the former president in 2004 as a way to solve the water shortage problems. This plan has been criticised since it seems to not be possible to produce this lake without using water from Amu Darya. This lake will be almost 3,500 square km and will enable the creation of 4,000 square km of new farmland which represents a 20% increase of the countries arable land (allowing the production of 450,000 tonnes of cotton and 300,000 tonnes of grain annually).
Although Turkmenistan has large water shortage problems, inadequate central controls of water management have made certain decisions made by the government suspicious and very irrational.
Map showing Turkmenistan’s geography and its surrounding countries.
Examine the environmental and human factors affecting patterns and trends in physical water scarcity and economic water scarcity.
On the Earths surface, 70% is covered by water from which 97% is contained in oceans and seas by salty water. This leaves 3% of the world’s water as drinkable water. Nevertheless, only 0,03% of this water is available to us since the rest is frozen. This allows us to understand why water has such a large important all over the world. Since humans can not survive without water, it must be considered as very precious and must be conserved and used efficiently. It is a fact that more people die everyday by drinking water than alcohol, and over one billion of the earth’s population does not have access to safe drinking water. Consequences of not drinking clean water are diarrhoea which cause about 1,6 million people to die annually, schistosomiasis which causes 6 million people to die annually and finally, intestinal infections which are caught by unsafe water.
As demanding of water increases which is very worrying. In 1995 the world used 3,906 cubic km of water where as in 2025, water use for most domestic uses is said to be increasing by 50%. The consequences of this increase will be that some parts of the world will no longer manage to irrigate their land, causing them to run out of food. The greatest problem is that the supplies of water are unevenly distributed, even within countries. The United Nations (UN) made estimates that by the year 2025, two thirds of the world’s population will be living in countries which have stress on their water supplies. The greatest inconvenience is that between 2000 and 2025 global industrial water will double and water used for agriculture, which is 70% of all water use, will increase by between 50% and 100%. Most of this increase in demand of water supplies will be done by the developing countries (LEDC’s) as their industrial and population growth is supposed to increase at a faster rate. This shows the difference between physical water scarcity and economical water scarcity.
Physical water scarcity occurs in places where the demand for water exceeds the supply and is most common in arid and semi-arid areas where water is very scarce because of very little rain fall and because of fluctuations of river flows or even rivers drying up during certain times of the year. On the other hand, economic water scarcity occurs when water is indeed available but, because of poverty, people are not able to obtain it. This is very common in LEDC’s, mostly in urban areas where poor people live in shanty settlements. One of the consequences of physical water scarcity is that prices are likely to increase in the years ahead which will then make the economic water scarcity worse for many poor people in the world. On the other hand, this will allow some people to give water more value and will motivate them to use water more efficiently, as well as allowing enough money for funds to improve water facilities or build new infrastructures. Nevertheless, since most governments think the increase of water prices will hurt poorer farmers and consumers, there has been a very small upward movement in water pricing. What we must realise is that although the increase of water prices may give poorer families a hard time, this will allow them to potentially have a better future since at the moment, only richer areas have pipelines reaching their homes and allowing them to have access to the clean water where as other poorer areas do not have this privilege and will not have it until money is spent to improve their facilities.
Many people believe that a better management of water resources would increase the availability of water. An example is that in LEDC’s, between 60% and 75% of irrigation water never reaches the crops because it is lost in leakage (spoken about already in question 1). This is a problem which arises mostly in LEDC’s since short incomes does not allow for large dispenses in facing problems with water shortage. Many LEDC’s also happen to be situated in arid areas meaning they don’t only have physical water scarcity but also economic water scarcity. It is all a viscous cycle since in these LEDC’s, some people may lack education and will therefore use old methods of water management for farming that cannot cope with the demands of a certain population. Another problem is pollution of water in LEDC’s since water management is not their first priority and these are countries which already have water scarcity, the water which is polluted is used and may filter down to underground reserves which then become contaminated. Since the procedure to clean this water is very expensive these countries may now have economical water scarcity since they will not be able to spend the money needed to clean the contaminated water. Ornamental water use is also a negative factor since water is lost threw evaporation and this is used even in countries where water is scarce.
Since the rate of water demand will increase at a faster rate than population growth, there will be even more pressure on water resources. In 2025, the total water use will rise to 4,772 cubic km, a 22% increase on consumption in 1995. We can also estimate that the increase will be larger in LEDC’s than in MEDC’s (27% and 11& respectively). The increase for domestic, industrial and livestock uses is expected to be 62% between 1995 and 2025, where the domestic consumption will be expected to be 71% of which 90% will be in LEDC’s. The increase in water use in manufacturing use will increase up to 121 cupic km in industries in LEDC’s and 114 cupic km in industries in MEDC’s. There will also be a significant increase in the amount of water used to rise animals for meat consumption. The amount of water used for livestock raising is expected to rise by 71% from 1995 to 2025 (19% increase in MEDC’s and 105% increase in LEDC’s). Nevertheless, the largest use of water today is irrigating farmlands, which consumes about 35% of all the water used by humans globally. The positive aspect in this is that the increase in water used for irrigation is going to increase at a very slow rate because of the effects of urbanisation. Therefore there will only be an increase in 12% of water used for irrigation in LEDC’s from 1995 to 2025, and there be a reduction of 1,5% in MEDC’s in the same period (increase of 4% globally between LEDC’s and MEDC’s). A large inconvenience is that the demand of water for irrigation is not distributed evenly across the world at the moment, and this will continue during the years to come. For example, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America have relatively small areas of irrigation and therefore a lot of potential in their lands, therefore their demand for irrigation water is expected to increase by 27 % and 21% respectively through the years 1995 and 2025.
Examine the factors affecting access to safe drinking water
Access to free drinking water is a very large concern which is targeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs are aiming to halve the amount of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015. The access to safe water drinking is measured as the proportion of people using drinking water, which includes household connections, public standpipes and bare hole, protected dug wells, protected springs or rainwater. Several factors define the challenges. First, quantities of water on planet Earth suitable for drinking are extremely limited. Less than 1 percent of all water on Earth is available as and surface water suitable for human uses such as drinking and cooking. The remainder is either salt water (97 percent) or is locked up in ice (just over 2 percent).
Second, precipitation, which replenishes groundwater and surface water resources, does not fall evenly over the face of the Earth. Also, some times of the year are rainy, other times dry. Therefore, water resources are full at some times and in some places, but extremely sparse in others.
Third, for more than a billion people in developing countries, water is scarce and frequently contaminated, causing a health risk. In these parts of the world, contaminated drinking water along with primitive or nonexistent sanitation systems annually result in widespread illness and millions of deaths annually. The majority of the victims are children.
In developing countries, people (usually women and children) often must walk long distances to find water. These village women from Pakistan's southern Sindh province embark on a water search, carrying traditional earthenware pots in addition to their small children. With 40 percent of the world's population facing water scarcity and some examples of these countries are Burkina Faso, Nepal or Honduras. In Burkina Faso one of the main problems confronting all citizens is insufficient drinkable water sources. This means that women must go get water for their families during most of the day, which restricts their ability to perform other necessary tasks. In Nepal, most of the countries’ 20 million people have no water, no electricity, and limited access to health facilities. Women spend much of their time walking narrow paths in treacherous terrain to the nearest water source. The hike for water is difficult because some women must carry 50-pound jugs full of water for a long period of time. In Honduras, more than 81 percent of families have no access to drinkable water, electricity, or schools. We can come to the conclusion that since water is so important in our lives that the search and transport of water still takes over most of many peoples daily life time.
