Food Production
The effect on food production has been tremendous. Although the agricultural world had started to boast of increased food security in the past thirty years, the water crisis spells an obvious doom to this success. This is because irrigated agriculture contributed to 66% of the overall productions. In particular, the arid and semi arid areas depended on irrigated agriculture almost entirely at an overwhelming statistics of 90 %.
Yet still, all projections point to worse situations in the future especially with the increasing water demands by individuals and the relative population increases. In addition, the fact that there exists spatial as well as temporal availability of water means the situation may get too complicated for industries and farmers considering that the said statistics only give the general perception. (Rawsthorn, Alice, 2011) The effects of the current water crisis on the environment can never be underestimated. In fact, it is considered more pressing an issue than the agricultural effects as there cannot be any alternative to natural resources like the aquatic life and other components of the global ecosystem. Although it may look distant from the human race, the eventualities of an imbalanced environment will be too hard to regulate when they finally take toll. Until recently, the global temperatures have hit an all time high making the future look gloomier than the earlier generations had thought.
For instance, the month of June through August saw the state of Texas record an average of 86.8 degrees. According to environmentalists, this was the hottest a state has ever got since the state of Oklahoma set the standards in 1934 recording a whooping figure of 85.2 degrees in accordance with to the National Weather Service statistics. Besides, the absent rains have dried up most of the fields leading to persistent destructive fires across the state.
Inthe area around Austin, for instance, the recurring fires have consumed several residential structures and destroyed up to 1550 homes in a span of less than a week. Indeed, this has superseded the records of 2009 for the entire state. (Rawsthorn, Alice, 2011)The menace of water shortage has caused a significant number of conflicts as well as social conflicts. As a matter of fact, the more scarce the natural resources become, the more tense the situation becomes both at national and international levels. According to the geographical experts, well over 260 rivers are shared by at least two counties.
This serves to cause serious border disputes during the changes in the water basin especially where there doesn’t exist strong political as well as social institutions. This is what often happens when big projects are undertaken without proper collaborations across the regional fronts and eventually forming the serious bases on which conflicts arise worsening the security situations in the regions. The situation in the area around the Parana La Plata, the Jordan River, the Aral Sea as well as the Danube exemplifies this. Moreover, the entire region of the Middle East is marked with serious political hostilities between the different nations because obtaining water has become a golden priority. To prove this point further, the issue of water has been a serious subject of negotiations between Israel and Syria. As a matter of fact, countries like Iraq, Syria and Turkey have recently engaged themselves in diplomatic spat over the rivers that they share.
No wonder the words river and rival share same roots in the Latin language. (Vaux, Henry, 2011) The stakeholders have had to device methods of containing the situation with the main starting point being on saving the existing water resources. The general concession is that whatever we use our wateer for conservation measures can always find a place. This is because we often end up wasting a great deal of the precious commodity on things that can always be avoided. This is often made serious with the false feeling that water scarcity is not always there throughout the year. As result of this, people who are known to suffer during droughts end up carelessly using the available water during the periods when it is available.
Moreover, the emergence of urbanization, coupled with the fact of ever changing patterns of human lifestyle has not eased the problem either. The only hope that remains for the human race is the existing changes that are taking toll on the feeding habits. (Brown, Lester, 2008)The international community must focus on amicably resolving the trans-border conflicts if they wish to implement strategic policies on the water projects. Establishing working relations between the regional rivals will go a long way in paving way for the implementation of the significant policies that will serve better the next generations. Indeed, several institutions have started joint programs in such contested areas to foster a more workable political as well as economic relation between the countries that are regarded as the regional military powerhouses. In other instances, institutional commitments have been the only cards on the table especially around the area of river Senegal.
In the year 2001, for instance, the Unesco entered into an agreement with the Green Cross international in order to appropriately respond to the growing advances towards regional conflicts over the water resources. They also launched a joint operation dubbed “From Potential Conflicts to Co-Operation Potential”. The purpose of this program was solely to foster peace between the communities living around the trans-boundary water bodies as well as address the resulting conflicts. (Fannin, Blair, 2011)
