Thursday, November 29, 2007By GILLIAN WONG
APSINGAPORE -- Developing Asian countries will face an unprecedented water crisis in as little as a decade if they are unable to better manage their supplies of the precious resource, a team of water experts reported Thursday.
A study commissioned by the Manila-based Asian Development Bank said policymakers in many developing nations have so far paid insufficient attention to the way they supply water, manage wastewater and fight water pollution.
"If the present unsatisfactory trends continue, in one or two decades, Asian developing countries are likely to face a crisis on water quality management that is unprecedented in human history," wrote Prof. Asit K. Biswas, who led the international group of water specialists in preparing the report released in Singapore.
One contributing factor to wastewater management problems is massive and rapid urbanization, such as that seen in megacities like Dhaka, Bangladesh; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Karachi, Pakistan, the report said.
Wastewater collected from cities is often discharged to nearby rivers, lakes or oceans with little or no treatment, which heavily contaminates water bodies around urban centers and is already causing health and environmental problems.
"By diluting seriously the definition of access to clean water and considering sanitation only in a very restricted sense, developing countries, including many in Asia, are mortgaging their future in terms of water security," wrote Biswas, who heads the Mexico City-based Third World Centre for Water Management.
The report said governments should step up efforts to build new wastewater treatment facilities on a massive scale to reduce contamination. It recommended a target of quadrupling access to wastewater treatment facilities to 50 or 60 percent of the population of Asian developing countries.
"This will not be an easy task, and yet this must be the real target for Asian countries," Biswas said.
"Water quality management has mostly been a neglected issue in Asian (developing member countries)," he wrote, adding that the problem likely costs the region's economies billions of dollars annually.
The report noted, however, that progress in urban water management was being made in some parts of Asia, such as China, which has some of the world's most polluted waterways and cities after two decades of breakneck industrial growth but is making efforts to reduce the contamination.
Official awareness of the importance of providing clean drinking water and proper wastewater management services is increasing to the point that the issues have become priorities for policymakers on many levels, it said.
For example, the government is constructing a massive network of canals to supply its dry north with water from the wetter south. In the southern industrial city of Shenzhen, officials have introduced measures to conserve freshwater by flushing toilets with seawater.
The report also urged officials to study "success stories" such as Singapore, which despite a lack of internal water resources, has harnessed technologies in recycling water and desalination to provide continuous, high quality drinking water to its dense, urban population.
Similarly, Cambodia's Phnom Penh Water Authority has managed to reduce unaccounted for water from about 90 percent in 1993 to about 8 percent now, and provides a continuous drinking water supply.
