“When Mother Nature’s Water Breaks…its Water, Water, Everywhere.”
Water and China were popping up everywhere in the news of 2005. Heck China even ended the year by accidentally spilling Benzine into one of their major river systems and then six weeks later cadmium into another. Add that to the constant flow of western jobs to Chinese sweatshops and the flood of Chinese goods onto the global market and I guess I’ll compromise and call 2005 the International Year of the Flood. The year opened with the aftermath of the Great Southeast Asian Tsunami, the skies opened in what would be the worst Hurricane season on record and the New Orleans dikes opened to flood the Big Easy. Alberta and Manitoba experienced serious flooding, Central Europe spent several weeks underwater, a northern Ontario Indian village was airlifted from their tainted drinking water and my basement flooded again. Meanwhile in Niger an estimated 2.5 million could die as a result of famine brought on by a lack of water.
In a related (emerging) story: We got water and everyone wants it. The following is an excerpt from a Nov. 24, 2005 MacLean’s magazine article entitled, “America is Thirsty “:
“…When the U.S. government surveyed the 50 states in 2003, more than two-thirds said they expect to face some sort of water shortage within the next 10 years. The situation is even worse in the developing world. The United Nations estimates that by 2025, two-thirds of the world population, or almost 5.5 billion people, will face chronic water shortages, and scientists expect global warming will only make things worse.
In this context, Canada is a country of unbelievable water wealth. This country boasts more than 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water, and the flow of rain, spring water and snowmelt that courses through our waterways represents seven per cent of the planet’s renewable water supply — all to satisfy the needs of just 0.5 per cent of the world’s population.
But as the global water crisis deepens over the next two decades, this country’s intransigence will prove increasingly difficult to maintain. Canada is offside even the UN’s position on the matter. In 1997, the UN said that international water markets and trade are likely the only way to alleviate chronic shortages worldwide, while discouraging water waste in areas where it’s plentiful. But it’s not just a humanitarian issue: there is an enormous commercial opportunity and economic imperative at stake. If Canada insists on opting out of international water trade, that decision will almost surely do severe damage to the country’s economy and standard of living.
Dr. Isabel Al-Assar, an international trade expert based at the University of Dundee, Scotland said, “Water will become like oil one day, I have no doubt about it.” If Al-Assar is right, then Canada, through a miraculous stroke of lucky geography, is sitting on a liquid gold mine. Pinpointing exactly how much Canada could reap by selling fresh water depends heavily on a long list of questions: what price would buyers be willing to pay? How would it be transported? How much could be safely withdrawn without damaging sensitive ecosystems? But in 2001, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a Winnipeg-based think tank, constructed a theoretical business model showing that if Manitoba could sell 1.3 trillion gallons of water per year (roughly the amount that drains from provincial rivers into Hudson Bay in only 17 hours) at the same price charged for desalinated sea water in California, the province could reap annual profits of close to $4 billion. In 1992, the World Bank estimated that worldwide trade in water could be worth US$1 trillion within the next generation. Even the opponents of water trade acknowledge that much of that market could belong to Canada.”