Humans now have the power to modify the earth’s basic form and behavior, to destroy whole populations of living creatures, and to alter global geophysical processes once thought invulnerable to human action. We know, for example, that humanity has invented the means of destroying civilization, and have even gone so far as to build the arsenal capable of doing so. We have unintentionally created a hole in the very fabric of the atmosphere that protects us from dangerous ultraviolet radiation from the sun. We are beginning to change our climate with possibly dangerous consequences for the hydrologic cycle and many other natural systems that support us. And humans are appropriating or contaminating an increasingly large fraction of the earth’s freshwater supplies.

It is not surprising that ancient civilizations considered water one of the most basic and important of the elements. Water touches, and is touched by, all of our daily actions, and many serious problems face current and future generations. Among the most disturbing characteristics of our current situation are the following observations:

• Per-capita water demands are increasing and per-capita water availability is declining due to population growth and trends in economic development.
• Half the world’s people lack basic sanitation services. More than a billion lack potable drinking water. In much of the world these numbers are rising, not falling.
• Incidences of some water-related diseases are rising, resistance to drugs is increasing, and ranges are expanding.
• The amount of land irrigated per capita is falling and competition for agricultural water from cities is growing.
• More than 700 species of fish are formally acknowledged to be threatened or endangered; the ecological disasters of the Aral Sea, Lake Victoria, and other bodies of water are now in our textbooks as examples of what we do either intentionally or unintentionally to our aquatic environment.
• Political and military conflict over shared water resources are on the rise in some regions.
• Groundwater overdraft is accelerating.
• Unsustainable groundwater use occurs on every continent except Antarctica.
• The scientific community has acknowledged that human interference in global climate is now evident and that the hydrologic cycle will be seriously affected in ways we are only now beginning to study.

Welcome to the first edition of The World’s Water – a new biennial publication of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security. The past few years have seen a resurgence of interest and worry about the state of the world’s freshwater resources among the public, media, academia, and policymakers. New research programs, publications, and conferences are all manifestations of this growing concern. There remains, however, a serious lack of good information and data about water problems and solutions. I hope The World’s Water will play a part in filling that void.

Two principal factors have led to the increased interest in fresh water – a growing understanding of the role that water plays in maintaining human and ecological well-being and the growing worry that problems with water availability and quality are threatening that well-being. The World’s Water addresses each of these factors by identifying the critical water issues that need to be addressed and by offering updated information and data on those issues.

This first edition of The World’s Water reviews several new and potentially exciting institutional developments in the world of water, describes progress made in defeating endemic, and sometimes epidemic, water-related diseases, reviews concerns about regional conflicts over water and the implications of global climatic change, offers an update on the ongoing debate over large dams with details about the Three Gorges Project in China and the Lesotho Highlands Project in southern Africa, and offers insights into the changing water-development paradigm as the world slowly shifts from supply-side structural developments toward a more comprehensive and integrated look at both water supply and demand. Two chronologies of water-related conflicts are also included: one from the ancient Middle East and one from 1500 AD to the present. This edition ends with a positive "Vision for 2050: Sustaining our Waters" – an essay offering a glimpse at a future worth aspiring to and worth moving toward. In the Water Drops and Water Tables sections, The World’s Water provides a wide range of new and updated quantitative data and includes the complete text of the new UN Convention on Non-Navigable Uses of Shared International Watercourses and the recent India-Bangladesh treaty on the Ganges. A list of water-related Internet sites is also included, where an ever-increasing amount of good information on water can be found.

No single water publication can adequately address all of the issues of interest to water experts, students, or the interested public. The next edition of The World’s Water, to be published in the year 2000, will look at the issues of water and food security, water quality, water and natural ecosystems, and the human use of reclaimed or recycled water. It will also continue to provide updates on water data, treaties, laws, and changes in our scientific understanding of hydrologic processes worldwide.

Peter H. Gleick
Oakland, California

Updated: 03/01/2000
 
(c)1999/2001 Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security