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Rivers:
A Drying Shame
Sunday
12 March 2006
Disaster
warning from UN as investigation reveals half of the planet's
500 biggest rivers are seriously depleted or polluted.
The
world's great rivers are drying up at an alarming rate, with devastating
consequences for humanity, animals and the future of the planet.
The
Independent on Sunday can today reveal that more than half the
world's 500 mightiest rivers have been seriously depleted. Some
have been reduced to a trickle in what the United Nations will
this week warn is a "disaster in the making."
From
the Nile to China's Yellow River, some of the world's great water
systems are now under such pressure that they often fail to deposit
their water in the ocean or are interrupted in the course to the
sea, with grave consequences for the planet.
Adding
to the disaster, all of the 20 longer rivers are being disrupted
by big dams. One-fifth of all freshwater fish species either face
extinction or are already extinct.
The
Nile and Pakistan's Indus are greatly reduced by the time they
reach the sea. Some, such as the Colorado and China's Yellow River,
now rarely reach the ocean at all. Others, such as the Jordan
and the Rio Grande on the US-Mexico border, are dry for much of
their length.
Even
in Britain, a quarter of the country's 160 chalk rivers and steams
- such as the Kennet in Wiltshire, the Darent in Kent, and the
Wylye in Wiltshire - are running out of water because too much
is being abstracted for homes, industry and agriculture.
This
week an influential UN report will officially warn the world's
governments of an "alarming deterioration" in the planet's rivers,
lakes and other freshwater systems. Klaus Toepfer, the executive
director of the United Nations Environment Programme, told the
IoS yesterday that the state of the world's rivers is "a disaster
in the making."
The
UN's triennial World Water Development Report, compiled for an
international conference in Mexico City which opens on Thursday,
warns that "we have hugely changed the natural order of rivers
worldwide," mainly through giant dams and global warming. Some
45,000 big dams now block the world's rivers, trapping 15 per
cent of all the water that used to flow from the land to the sea.
Reservoirs now cover almost 1 per cent of land surface.
The
UN report says that demand for them "will continue to increase,"
but recommends that they should be barred from the world's remaining,
undammed "free-flowing" rivers.
The
United States has dismantled 465 dams in recent years, mainly
for environmental reasons. But last week, in an abrupt U-turn,
it signalled that it was about to embark on its biggest dam-building
campaign in decades, when the Washington State legislature passed
a bill to allow the federal government to build a series of dams
on the Columbia, the West's largest river.
Global
warming is endangering even the rivers that have largely escaped
damming.
The
relatively untamed Amazon was hit by its most serious drought
on record last autumn. And salmon are dying in Alaska's Yukon
River - the world's longest undammed watercourse - because its
waters are getting too hot.
On
Tuesday an international day of action will see demonstrations
across the globe to draw attention to rivers' plight.
Go to Original
Rivers:
A Drying Shame
By Geoffrey Lean
The Independent UK
Sunday
12 March 2006
We
have used our engineering skills to harness the Earth's water
systems. Now we are paying the price.
The
delta of the great Colorado River - where once it swept into the
Gulf of California - used to be the most wonder-filled wetland
in the whole North American continent.
Some
400 species of plants and animals - including jaguars, beaver
and the world's smallest dolphin- thronged its 3,000 square miles
of wetlands, lagoons and tidal pools. The local people made a
good living fishing its teeming waters. Now it has become a forbidding
desert of salt flats and giant heaps of dead clamshells. The fishing
boats have been long since beached; the destitute people have
to seek what work they can in wheat fields and tortilla factories
far away.
The
reason for the transformation is not hard to find. Not a drop
of the mighty river which once carved the Grand Canyon now flows
through the delta to the sea. It has all been used upstream -
to slake the thirst of cities such as Tucson, Arizona, feed fountains
in Las Vegas, green golf courses and irrigate farmland. Such water
as remains in the delta has flowed in from the sea.
It
is much the same story in that other great river of the American
south-west, the Rio Grande. This does not merely fail to reach
the sea: it disappears for much of its length. The atlases tell
us it is one of the 20 longest rivers in the world, but in reality
it stops some 800 miles inland at El Paso, Texas, which takes
all its water. For the next 200 miles or so there is just a dribble
of sewage in its old river bed, and even this often dries up in
summer. Local people call it "the forgotten river". The dry channel
does not come alive again until a relatively healthy tributary,
the River Conchos, joins it from Mexico. For the rest of its length,
as it forms the boundary between the two nations, it should, in
justice, be called the Conchos, not the Rio Grande. But even this
is quickly used up, mainly to irrigate farmland, and often fails
to make it through to the Gulf of Mexico.
It
is much the same story right across the world. China's Yellow
River, the fifth longest in the world is in trouble at both ends.
Its source in the Tibetan plateau is drying up - and for most
of the past 35 years it has failed to reach the sea all year round.
Similarly,
despite the words of the spiritual, the River Jordan is far from
"deep and wide". In practice it ends at the Sea of Galilee, where
Israeli engineers have blocked the outflow and piped the water
to irrigate fields and supply Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Such
water as flows down the Jordan valley again comes from a tributary,
the River Yarmuk. But it cannot really do the job. In biblical
times the valley carried a billion cubic metres of water every
year; now it has to make do with less than a tenth of that. The
ugly truth is that the river - sacred to Christians, Jews and
Muslims - is now mainly made up of diluted sewage.
It
is the same for river after famous river. The lower reaches of
the Nile used to carry 32 billion cubic metres of water a year;
now they are down to two billion. The Indus in Pakistan - "Asia's
Nile" - similarly has lost 90 per cent of its water in the last
60 years. Australia's Murray River fails to reach the sea every
other year.
Even
in Europe, Germany's River Elbe has run so dry that it frequently
becomes impassable to barge traffic for months at a time - and
three years ago river traffic almost completely stopped on the
Rhine. In Britain the Environment Agency regularly sounds the
alarm about our chalk rivers and streams - which gave birth to
the sport of fly-fishing. Dozens of them dry up every summer,
and 40 of the 160 in the country are officially under threat.
The
writer Fred Pearce, who has published a groundbreaking book on
the crisis of the world's rivers, says: "The maps in an atlas
no longer accord with reality. The old geography lessons about
how rivers emerged from mountains, gathered water from tributaries
and finally disgorged their bloated flows into the oceans are
now fiction."
The
UN-backed World Commission on Water for the 21st Century reported:
"More than one half of the world's major rivers are being seriously
depleted and polluted".
There
are two main culprits; abstraction of water for rivers - usually
after damming them - and global warming.
The
world has, on average, built two giant dams a day, every day,
for the past 50 years. Now 45,000 of them span the world's rivers.
Every one of the world's 20 longest rivers is encumbered by them.
In
many ways it all began on the Colorado, 70 years ago, with the
Hoover Dam, the great symbol of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.
Today, the dams intercept more than a third of the world's freshwater
as it flows towards the sea and at any one time are holding back
15 per cent of it.
The
UN's triennial World Water Development Report, published for a
international conference in Mexico City this week, cautions that
damming has "hugely changed the natural order of rivers worldwide."
It goes on: "Humanity has embarked on a huge ecological engineering
project with little or no preconception - or indeed full present
knowledge - of the consequences. We have sought to redesign and
impose a new order on natural planetary systems, built over aeons
of time."
Dams
waste massive amounts of water. In hot, dry regions, they lose
about 10 per cent of their reservoirs to evaporation every year:
much more is lost in irrigation. Global warming is making things
even worse. The source of the Yellow River is drying out as glaciers
retreat. And a great drought in the southwestern United States
- so intense that even cacti are wilting - is exacerbating the
crisis of the Colorado and the Rio Grande.
It
is even endangering relatively healthy rivers. The Amazon, relatively
unencumbered by great dams, was hit by the worst drought on record
last year: water levels fell by 10 metres and boats were stranded.
And salmon are endangered in Alaska's Yukon River because its
waters are too warm.
This
will only get worse as the world goes on heating up, making the
desert delta of the Colorado just a foretaste of the rivers of
the future.
River
Report
Amazon
Length: 4,000 miles.
Famous as: Source of some of world's richest
habitats.
Problems: Depleted by a record drought
last year. Widespread deforestation.
Verdict: Largely undammed and rescuable.
Yellow
River
Length: 2,900 miles.
Famous as: Carries most silt.
Problems: Source is drying out and river
now usually fails to reach the sea.
Verdict: Attempts at rescue. Task immense.
Jordan
Length: 104 miles.
Famous as: Holy river.
Problems: Effectively ends below the Sea
of Galilee. Site where Jesus was baptised now a pool of sewage.
Verdict: Hardly exists, damage seems terminal.
Rio
Grande
Length: 1,900 miles.
Famous as: Border river.
Problems: Now two rivers, split by 250-mile
dry section.
Verdict: Over-exploited.
