The UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health’s report, ‘Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era’, paints a picture of a world beset by a major global crisis in which global warming plays only an ancillary role. It introduces a new term, which deserves more familiarity that it has, that of ‘water bankruptcy’. Hitherto countries and regions or cities have been flagged as water-risk, water-stressed or water-scrace, The report labels the entire planet as water-bankrupt. One frightening implication is that even if the global warming issue is solved, which is far from the case, the water bankruptcy issue will not be solved. If global warming is being caused by the factories of the Global North, water bankruptcy is being caused by overuse of renewable water resources, drawing down not only the ‘income’ of renewable flows but also the ‘savings’ stored in aquifers, soils, glaciers, wetlands, and river ecosystems, all over the world, not in any one part of the world, simply because there are too many people using the water for irrigation, washing, drinking, and such very human activities.
Pakistan is among the countries facing a deterioration in its status, and is already water-stressed, heading towards becoming water-scarce. Yet, it has recently suffered a blow from India having suspended the Indus Waters Treaty, even though it could not do so, and was merely trying to oil out of its responsibilities as the upper riparian. Though India can only indulge in mischief, as it has shown in both the monsoon and winter by trying to cause floods by un-intimated releases of water, it presently cannot divert Pakistan’s share of water. Pakistan’s position was explained by Pakistan’s acting Permanent Representative to the UN while addressing the Global Water Bankruptcy Roundtable organised by the same institution as issued the report, the UN University.
Unlike global warming, the threat to water resources by and large does not come from far away (except for glacier melt), but from nearby activity. However, water bankruptcy does result from human activity. While global warming needs collective action by nations, water bankruptcy needs individual regions to take action. Better use is needed to ensure that even the present population can be sustained. Present wasteful practices make it impossible for the earth to provide people the water they need. This has to change, for it is too much to expect the world to tackle two existential crises (the other being climate change) at the same time.
