Environment
Water Everywhere, But Not Enough To Go Around
Why there's a chronic water shortage
There are few regions of the world where water is so dominant than the small islands of the Pacific. With this vast ocean occupying almost one third of the world’s surface and 10,000 scattered islands taking up only 130,000 square kilometres of land area, water is indeed everywhere.
And, yet today, many of these islands, particularly the small atoll islands, are faced with a chronic shortage of water. In some islands, water means survival!
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The reasons behind these shortages are both natural and man-made. Many of the small atoll islands, such as the Cook Islands, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru and Tonga, are prone to long droughts — devastating for countries dependent on floating water lenses and rainwater collection and storage for their fresh water needs.
In addition, there are increasing demands on the remaining water available from ever-expanding populations, tourism, industry and agriculture. This, combined with the increased pollution of surface water and ground water, threatens the very health, well-being and economic development of the Pacific Islands populations.
Take the remote Micronesian country of Kiribati. Consisting of 33 small, scattered low-lying coral islands, Kiribati is extremely vulnerable to climate change, with increasing occurrence of violent storms and long droughts, due to factors beyond their control.
About half of the country’s 85,000 population live in the capital, South Tarawa — an area where the population is growing at 5% per annum and where the fragile groundwater lens and unreliable rainfall is unable to keep up with demand.
The tourism and fishing industries are also putting demands on the supply with over a fifth of the country’s GDP dependent on foreign visitors — a crucial cornerstone of an economy with few natural resources.
Furthermore, groundwater extraction is increasingly coming under threat from pollution through inappropriate toilet facilities, a seawater based sewerage system and an encroaching human population that has stretched the capacity of the system to the limit.
The result is insufficient drinking water with the average per capita supply of potable water less than 30 litres per day — well below the supply of 100 litres per day considered adequate. Residents have to look elsewhere for their water, often resorting to shallow open wells, where there is a high risk of waterborne diseases.
Yet, amidst the apparent gloom, there is cause for optimism. Significant projects, including one from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), are now underway in South Tarawa, leading to improved water treatment methods and storage facilities; installation of new connections; flow restriction devices and meters; new solid waste management; and education programmes in local communities on the need for improved environmental management and water handling.
The challenges facing South Tarawa reflect the exceptionally difficult problems that characterise Kiribati, but many features are, in fact, a microcosm of a pan-Pacific Islands problem, with countries, such as the Cook Islands and Tonga, also facing water shortages.
Even, in the larger volcanic islands, such as Fiji, Samoa and the Solomon Islands, where rainfall is usually large enough to meet the population’s needs, there are still clean water shortages. This is due to increased pollution, competition for water and inefficient water utilities with low operational efficiency and high levels of unaccounted-for water.
Yet, what of the potential solutions?
What is required is integrated management of water resources across the Pacific Islands where all aspects of the water debate, from water resources and environmental challenges through to water services and wastewater management are co-ordinated in a holistic manner.
As much attention should be focused on demand management as supply. All sectors of society — governments, the private sector and civil society — must utilise their resources and skills in the pursuit of a common goal — sustainable water management.
The need to reduce water demand is a good example of how all components of the water debate are interlinked.
Reducing water demand will necessitate a need to develop a water conservation ethic within the population through education programmes, making information more widely available and ensuring that all levels of society have a stake in their water management needs.
In addition, reducing water demand will necessitate a new water management infrastructure and a reduction on the pressure of an ageing water supply system, through more rain tanks, leak detection tools and the latest sanitation technology. Whether it be education campaigns or the latest technology, drinking water or sanitation, there is, as always, a common goal.
There is movement at the top as well. At a recent meeting jointly organised by Asian Development Bank and the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC), the Pacific Islands nations agreed on a regional action plan for sustainable water management, which called for a collaborative approach in the areas of water resources management; island vulnerability; education; technology; institutional strengthening and financing.
For the sake of all Pacific Islands people, let us hope that plans, such as these, will allow observers to once again say without bitter irony of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ancient mariner — ‘Water, Water Everywhere, Not any drop to drink...Alone on a wide wide sea.’
