The Philippine Online Chronicles

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is warning of a region-wide water shortage which is set to grow worse over the next twenty years.

New studies presented at the five-day Water: Crisis and Choices - ADB and Partners Conference 2010 held at the ADB Headquarters in Manila showed that by 2030 the region's water supply could fall short by up to 40 percent. Parallel to this, Asia’s food demand is expected to surge by 70 to 90 percent over the next two decades, which will most likely take a toll on local water resources.

The conference brought together over 600 water professionals and policy makers from around the world to examine critical water challenges facing Asia, and the measures needed to tackle them.

“Asia is witnessing a despoliation of its freshwater resources with disastrous consequences for ecological balance and environmental sustainability," said ADB's special senior advisor Arjun Thapan.

Currently, Asia uses around 80 percent of its water supply for irrigation. However, up to 29 billion cubic meters of treated water, valued at around USD9 billion (P389.02 billion), is lost every year due to leakage in urban water supply systems. Climate change, inefficient collection, theft and other causes have also severely affected water supplies.

“Asia’s population will reach five billion by 2050 and feeding 1.5 billion additional people will require irrigation systems that generate more value per drop of water,” according to the study Growing More Food With Less Water: How Can Revitalising Asia’s Irrigation Help.

"The water footprint in our towns and cities, in our irrigation systems, our energy production systems and in industry in general, is extravagant," said Arjun Thapan, one of the authors of the study. "It needs to shrink and Asia needs to become acutely conscious of the scarcity value of its accessible freshwater, and the imperative of efficiency in managing it.”

Past the tipping point

Already, quickly developing nations like the People’s Republic of China and India are seeing an alarming drop in available per capita water supplies.

“Asia’s water world has gone past its tipping point. The challenge now is to urgently halt, if not reverse, the decline in freshwater availability,” said Thapan. “Asia needs to aggressively adopt measures that dramatically improve water use efficiencies and safeguard the region’s food and energy security.”

The conference discussed the possibility of using large-scale water reuse facilities to conserve water supplies, as is currently being done by the NEWater program in Singapore.

"Harnessing used water will help to lighten the need to transport large volumes of water over great distances; and with lower energy consumption compared to desalination and increasing public acceptance, the market for water reuse is expected to grow exponentially," said the study Water Reuse: Scale, Technologies and Prospects.

It also pointed out the need for national and local governments to coordinate with water agencies to invest in infrastructure for water conservation, and to design and implement better demand management solutions.

Thapan gave the Philippines as an example of a country with efficient cooperation between public and private sectors when it comes to water distribution, as its water concessionaires are publicly owned but privately managed.

"These are the kinds of examples of public and private partnerships needed to help close the water gap not only by improving your rate of use of water with efficiency by bringing in capital," he said.