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2010-04-19 07:59:39
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News
The amount of water used to produce food and goods imported to developed
countries is worsening water shortages in the developing world, a report says.
The report, focusing on the UK, says two-thirds of the water used to make UK
imports is used outside its borders.
The Engineering the Future alliance of professional engineering bodies says
this is unsustainable, given population growth and climate change.
It says countries such as the UK must help poorer nations curb water use.
"We must take account of how our water footprint is impacting on the rest of
the world," said Professor Roger Falconer, director of the Hydro-Environmental
Research Centre at Cardiff University and a member of the report's steering
committee.
If the water crisis becomes critical, it will pose a serious threat to the
UK's future development
Professor Peter Guthrie
"If we are to prevent the 'perfect storm', urgent action is necessary."
The term perfect storm was used last year by the UK government's chief
scientist, Professor John Beddington, to describe future shortages of energy,
food and water.
Forecasts suggest that when the world's population soars beyond 8bn in 20 years
time, the global demand for food and energy will jump by 50%, with the need for
fresh water rising by 30%.
But developing countries are already using significant proportions of their
water to grow food and produce goods for consumption in the West, the report
says.
"The burgeoning demand from developed countries is putting severe pressure on
areas that are already short of water," said Professor Peter Guthrie, head of
the Centre for Sustainable Development at Cambridge University, who chaired the
steering group.
"If the water crisis becomes critical, it will pose a serious threat to the
UK's future development because of the impact it would have on our access to
vital resources."
Key to the report is the concept of "embedded water" - the water used to grow
food and make things.
Embedded in a pint of beer, for example, is about 130 pints (74 litres) of
water - the total amount needed to grow the ingredients and run all the
processes that make the pint of beer.
A cup of coffee embeds about 140 litres (246 pints) of water, a cotton T-shirt
about 2,000 litres, and a kilogram of steak 15,000 litres.
Using this methodology, UK consumers see only about 3% of the water usage they
are responsible for.
The average UK consumer uses about 150 litres per day, the size of a large
bath.
Ten times as much is embedded in the British-made goods bought by the average
UK consumer; but that represents only about one-third of the total water
embedded in all the average consumer's food and goods, with the remainder
coming from imports.
The UK is not unique in this - the same pattern is seen in most developed
countries.
The engineering institutions say it means nations such as the UK have a duty to
help curb water use in the developing world, where about one billion people
already do not have sufficient access to clean drinking water.
UK-funded aid projects should have water conservation as a central tenet, the
report recommends, while companies should examine their supply chains and
reduce the water used in them.
This could lead to difficult questions being asked, such as whether it is right
for the UK to import beans and flowers from water-stressed countries such as
Kenya.
While growing crops such as these uses water, selling them brings foreign
exchange into poor nations.
In the West, the report suggests, concerns over water could eventually lead to
goods carrying a label denoting their embedded water content, in the same way
as electrical goods now sport information about their energy consumption.
The Engineering the Future alliance includes the Institution of Civil Engineers
(ICE), the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) and the Chartered Institute of
Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM).
Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/8628832.stm
Published: 2010/04/19 00:12:51 GMT