WATER AND LIVES

Most people live in one of two worlds, not simply one. Infant mortality in the poor world is 62/100,000; leading causes of death and sickness are diarrheal and infectious diseases and malaria. All are water related. In the other world, children's deaths are 9/100,000 live births; leading causes of death are heart disease, cancer and stroke. Water is central to this disparity. Roughly 1.5 billion people, about 20% of the world's population, lack adequate drinking water and millions more lack adequate wastewater facilities. Sanitation reduces mortality and morbidity from waterborne diseases by orders of magnitude in decades. Global expenditures for water supply in the less developed world are roughly $5 billion/yr. About $4 billion is spent for boutique bottled water in the US each year. Progress in meeting per capita water demands in the developing world is often vitiated by increases in population.

Because urbanization is the dominant demographic phenomena throughout the globe, the demand for water in cities accelerates. Yet rural water supplies for families and small communities are at risk due to supply limitations, contamination from natural and anthropogenic sources, poor operation, and isolation preventing system development and management. Deleterious impacts of very high concentrations of nitrogen or arsenic in some groundwater sources illustrate the risk.

Household uses, irrigation, hydropower, industry, navigation and sustenance of ecosystems compete for water. Structures and institutions are required to adjudicate among competitors and to manage allocation of the resource. Values placed upon competing uses vary both in space and over time. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, no simple rules exist for achieving both equity and efficiency in allocating scarce water resources.