Dr. Jennifer Veilleux is a geographer and water scientist. This blog shares news, research, and fieldwork experiences from the Nile, Mekong, and Missouri river basins. She analyzes the impact development has on water and river communities.
A recent news article about a new World Bank report - with partners like Coca-Cola in tow - was released that says something about how water management contributes to climate change and that water is directly linked with a country's GDP. I was introduced to the concept that there is a link between water and GDP four years ago during a conversation with someone in Ethiopian government. At the time I asked where they had heard this idea - and they told me that they heard it through the World Bank. Well, the Bank has continued with this premise even though I have a hard time finding scientific or economic evidence to back this claim up.
I find that this cannot be true of water scarce countries in our world's desert areas who have quite healthy GDPs (based on petroleum). I also think a country's GDP depends on many factors, water perhaps being one, but not necessarily a central one. I shudder to think why the Bank is pushing this idea - the last of the world's great wild stretches of rivers are located in developing places where country governments are strategizing how they can improve their GDPs.
I err on the side of caution: always, always attempt to use critical thinking with these ideas that are placed before me as common truths until I find evidence to swing me in one direction or another...
What I think: the World Bank is building up a story to validate their aggressive plans to develop the world's last remaining wild resources. If there is money to be had, the World Bank will be there with bells on. They claim to serve community interests, but they continually serve select members of country government interests while displacing high numbers of people, rendering them landless and dependent on an already taxed system. They put countries into further debt for projects that benefit the few, and perhaps the national GDP, if the host government is lucky. I have yet to see a World Bank project, a significant one, that really improves society. They do build schools and contribute to the medical sector in some select places...say they are contributing to combat climate change in various ways (don't look to closely as to how), but at the end of the day they are a bank, not a service outfit. They want you to show them the money - even if it breaks the lives, identities, and dignity of people living in conditions with little choice to begin with. The horror.
Water Scarcity Can Lower GDP by 6 Percent in Some Regions, Report Warns
By SUSANNA KIM
May 3, 2016, 3:37 PM ET
Andrei Pungovschi/AFP/Getty Images
Young men load water from the Nile river into containers, Feb. 26, 2014 in Bor, South Sudan.
Lack of water is not only a health issue for many regions of the world, it can have a huge economic impact, even lowering GDP by as much as 6 percent, according to a report issued today by the World Bank.
Factors like growing populations and climate change could reduce water availability in cities by as much as two-thirds by 2050, compared to 2015 levels, according to the report. Even rising incomes will cause further strain by creating a surge in water demand.
The effects will be far-reaching, even in regions in Central Africa and East Asia where it's now abundant, unless governments respond. Countries like China and India could be among the nations that have a 6 percent drop in GDP by 2050 without efficient water policies, the report states. The impact is greatest in places where water's already in short supply, such as the Middle East and the Sahel region in Africa, which includes countries already suffering from the effects of drought or war, such as Mali and Sudan.
The report, "High and Dry: Climate Change, Water and the Economy," explains that economic growth can be hampered by water-related losses in agriculture, health, income and property. In the next three decades, the global food system will require between 40 to 50 percent more water while municipal and industrial water demand will increase by 50 to 70 percent, according to a 2009 Water Resources Group report by the World Bank and business partners like McKinsey and Company and the Coca Cola Company.
World Bank
The Estimated Effects of Water Scarcity on Gdp in Year 2050, under Two Policy Regimes
The World Bank researchers used economic modeling to find that bad water-management policies can exacerbate the effects of climate change, while better managing resources can neutralize them.
Among the policies that could offer solutions are advancing technologies to increase water supply, such as waste-water recycling and desalination. The most widely used method to increase water supply is water storage through dams, the report states. Better planning and incentives, such as water permit allocation, giving users the right to "sell" or "rent" water, is another idea, the report states.
Unfortunately, the poor will disproportionately feel the effects of water mismanagement, the report states. About 800 million people, or nearly 78 percent of the world's poor, live in rural areas and rely on agriculture, livestock and fishing. More vulnerable communities are "likely to rely on rain-fed agriculture to feed their families, live on the most marginal lands which are more prone to floods, and are most at risk from contaminated water and inadequate sanitation," the report states.
The report warns that water insecurity could multiply the risk of conflict, as droughts can cause a surge in food prices and exacerbate migration and already dangerous situations.
World Bank
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