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Page added on April 2, 2016
Asia Likely to Face Severe Water Crisis by 2050
Asia, the continent that houses roughly half the world’s population, will face a “high risk of severe water stress” by 2050 if the current environmental, economical and population growth persists, warns a new study.
The study points out that water shortages are not simply the results of climate change and environmental stress.
“It’s not just a climate change issue. We simply cannot ignore that economic and population growth in society can have a very strong influence on our demand for resources and how we manage them,” said one of the researchers Adam Schlosser, a senior research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in US.
“And climate, on top of that, can lead to substantial magnifications to those stresses,” Schlosser added.
The findings, published in the journal PLOS One, showed that the median amounts of projected growth and climate change in the next 35 years in Asia would lead to about 1 billion more people becoming “water-stressed” compared to the present time.
To conduct the study, the scientists built upon an existing model developed previously at MIT, the Integrated Global Systems Model (IGSM), which contains probabilistic projections of population growth, economic expansion, climate, and carbon emissions from human activity.
They then linked the IGSM model to detailed models of water use for a large portion of Asia encompassing China, India, and many smaller nations.
The scientists then ran an extensive series of repeated projections using varying conditions.
In what they call the “just growth” scenario, they held climate conditions constant and evaluated the effects of economic and population growth on the water supply.
In an alternate “just climate” scenario, the scientists held growth constant and evaluated climate-change effects alone. And in a “climate and growth” scenario, they studied the impact of rising economic activity, growing populations, and climate change.
The study gave the researchers a “unique ability to tease out the human (economic) and environmental” factors leading to water shortages and to assess their relative significance, Schlosser said.
The IGSM model also allowed the team to look at how, under the same variables, scenarios change according to countries. This is particularly useful to come up with country-specific strategies, in order to avoid water stress.
“For China, it looks like industrial growth (has the greatest impact) as people get wealthier. In India, population growth has a huge effect. It varies by region,” explained lead author Charle Fant, researcher at MIT.
Other variables, such as water supply networks into and out of the different areas, and the way population is distributed around said supplies should be examined, the researchers said.
“We are assessing the extent to which climate mitigation and adaptation practices – such as more efficient irrigation technologies – can reduce the future risk of nations under high water stress,” Schlosser said.
33 Comments on "Asia Likely to Face Severe Water Crisis by 2050"
Davy on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 6:02 am
Asia is already in water stress so 2050 is a meaningless projection. Asia has 4.5BIL people which is 4BIL too many per a postindustrial carrying capacity, see a brick wall? Significant populations live on the coast that will begin to flood which is another “water” issue. If Asia continues to consume more and grow population water will be needed for energy and food production that is a no brainer. This is at a time Asians are already at limits so something will give and soon. The Asian economy is faltering and stagnating with China center stage so there will be less money to pay for all the efforts to overcome water shortages.
Asia is on an unsustainable path worse than the west primarily because of overpopulation and all the ills that come with too many people. The rebalance of population per the sustainable is too drastic. The Asian population crisis is beyond reasonable mitigation. It is instead a tragedy waiting to explode. How long do they have is variable per locations. The mega urban settlement pattern cannot continue to grow without issues. The destruction of the land in development will become problematic when global food production efforts decline. A big Asian food exporter Brazil is heading into a depression and or collapse. There are no positives for Asia at any level.
No one in the west should feel smug because Asia is too big to fail for the global system so its decline and decay will mark the end of globalism. The west has become habituated to complex living patterns that put it in the unsustainable. The west’s only advantage over Asia is a much lower population. The west outsourced and invested itself far too much in Asia to decouple. Too much of the worlds products are now produced in Asia for the west to look on as Asia collapses economically. It was China that kept the quality of life and world production up so the western unsustainable way of life could continue.
makati1 on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 6:16 am
By taking a ruler and extending the past into the future and … Wallah! … we get new numbers to post on the internet for the uneducated to chew on.
Maybe the above will come true. Or maybe it won’t. How many times have the climate scientists upgraded their predictions in the last few years? Answer: Many times. That more ‘studies’ will change anything is a joke.
Notice how China just happens to be the topic of choice although there are about 100+ other countries that will be water stressed, including the Us. It mentioned India but then, the article is sourced in India and should be the main topic, not a brief mention.
Anyone guessing the future 34 years from now should know better. At least coach it in the terms of: “this is how we see it today, but we may be wrong.”
This is from a researcher looking for grant money so he doesn’t really have to work for a living. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Davy on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 6:27 am
Reality is a bitch for some especially when their life depends on it.
claman on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 7:02 am
Makati said:
“It mentioned India but then, the article is sourced in India and should be the main topic, not a brief mention.”
“This is from a researcher looking for grant money so he doesn’t really have to work for a living. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
I sometimes scan an indian site called tehalka, and they are often very worried about the peasants conditions and water rights. But they NEVER mention potential catastrophies when aquifers and tradewinds start to fail.
I guess it is a great tabu in India to even talk about the possibility of major starvations in the future.
PS. where do I find good initiated information about the Indian water situation ?
Kenz300 on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 8:02 am
Every year the population grows and demands more water……………..
Too many people……….create too much pollution and demand too many resources….
China made great progress in moving its people out of poverty…….one reason was slowing population growth…..
If you can not provide for yourself you can not provide for a child.
CLIMATE CHANGE, declining fish stocks, droughts, floods, air water and land pollution, poverty, water and food shortages all stem from the worlds worst environmental problem……. OVER POPULATION.
Yet the world adds 80 million more mouths to feed, clothe, house and provide energy and water for every year… this is unsustainable… and is a big part of the Climate Change problem
Birth Control Permanent Methods: Learn About Effectiveness
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/birth_control_permanent_methods/article_em.htm
Practicalmaina on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 9:54 am
Kenz you should have mentioned a move away from fossil fuels as well. Eliminate subsidies for fossil fuels and all of the sudden both the water being wasted on them and sewage not being used as a resourse and just being dumped in Indias water supply would end quickly.
Bob Owens on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 11:26 am
Anything that projects 35 years into the future is a canard. Just look at our current level of social disintegration in the ME and you can see our world isn’t going to look like anything normal a decade from now. The population in Yemen could easily be down to 5 million from its current 25 million. What will SA look like after a civil war there? Or Iraq? Or (fill in the blanks)? Any projections more than 5 years out can safely be ignored.
Boat on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 12:10 pm
Davy,
“Too much of the worlds products are now produced in Asia for the west to look on as Asia collapses economically. It was China that kept the quality of life and world ”
North America could decouple if needed. As the electric age takes over oil imports are the major hurdle. Nat gas semi’s is a doable alternative. Electric cars will have a major impact within 15 years. Times are changing.
GregT on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 12:54 pm
Too much of the natural world has been decimated and manufactured into consumer products ultimately destined for landfills. There will be no decoupling from the Planet Earth. We do not have the time, technology, or knowhow, to travel to the nearest known possibly habitable planet. Manmade energy production, and all of the things that we use it for, is destroying the one and only planet that human beings will ever know. Climate change will have a far greater impact 15 years from now, than it already has today. Times are changing, and there isn’t a damn thing that we can do to stop that change, other than to put an end to that destruction now, and learn how to adapt to a much less hospitable world. If that is even a possibility any more.
Apneaman on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 1:01 pm
2050 what a fucking joke. Most apes will be gone by 2050. Doesn’t anybody realize how many tipping points we have crossed?
The Stark Realities of Baked-In Catastrophes
http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2016/04/02/the-stark-realities-of-baked-in-catastrophes/
Apneaman on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 1:10 pm
2050? How about right fucking now?
Two killed in Philippines as police disperse drought protest
The two gunshot fatalities were male farmers in their 40s
http://gulfnews.com/news/asia/philippines/two-killed-in-philippines-as-police-disperse-drought-protest-1.1702427
WITH VIDEOS | 3 dead, 87 missing, 116 hurt as police fire on Cotabato human barricade
“(UPDATE 21 – 11:30 p.m.) MANILA, Philippines – Three persons died after security forces opened fire as they dispersed farmers and lumad who have been blockading the Cotabato-Davao highway in Kidapawan City late Friday morning.”
http://interaksyon.com/article/125901/breaking–security-forces-open-fire-on-cotabato-human-barricade
Apneaman on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 1:11 pm
2050?
Venezuela to cut energy output if key dam falls to critical low
Venezuela will reduce power generation if the key Guri dam, which supplies around half of the blackout-hit country’s electricity, falls below a minimum level that is fast approaching, an official said on Friday.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/venezuela-to-cut-energy-o/2659006.html
onlooker on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 1:15 pm
Just read those Stark Realities. Just to gain an even deeper realization of how utterly hopeless the situation really is. We stand on a precipice and as a species are about to fall. I can only bear witness and thank the Cosmos for my time here. I do wish though I had lived in a more benign and sane world.
penury on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 2:01 pm
The only purpose of forecasting out past the next six months is to keep the people happy, and fearful for the future to keep BAU as long as possible, I forget the exact length of time (short memory) studies have shown that the average American (US) voter has a memory span of less than three weeks. After that time they cannot remember who voted for what or what the predictions for the outcomes of programs were. Which is why the re-election rate for incumbents is slightly higher than 90 per cent.
Apneaman on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 2:10 pm
Earth Embalmed
“There are so many calamities – fish kills in Florida and birds falling out of the skies, epic floods and droughts, the slowing of the ocean currents – that when I prepared the 26th Dispatch From The Endocene I left out a major incident I had intended to include – the abrupt and near total coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. The fact that it is just one item on the roster of grotesque environmental disasters that will catalyze NO change whatsoever in the engine of human civilization – even though it has to be the most egregious, most atrocious, most stunningly heinous example of anthropogenic ecocide – is astonishing. It is proof, were any to be needed, that nothing – nothing, not an ice free Arctic, not a huge ice shelf breaking off Antarctica raising sea levels a foot in a week, not thousands of deaths in a heat wave, not storms so violent they lift boulders from the bottom of the sea – NOTHING will stop people from availing themselves blindly and greedily to the bounteous largess of Earth…until it is all gone, and there is none left. The debacle in the reef is the latest example of humanity ceaselessly rendering the biosphere into a morgue. It’s as awful as though all the forests were dying, and we managed to ignore it.”
http://witsendnj.blogspot.ca/2016/04/earth-embalmed.html
Apneaman on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 2:17 pm
California’s drought: Get used to it, scientists say
http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/California-s-drought-Get-used-to-it-7223819.php
onlooker on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 2:26 pm
Meantime US candidates for Presidency are advocating violence on each others supporters and talking about such inane trivial stuff like who has bigger hands. Wow, beyond freakish and absurd.
Truth Has A Liberal Bias on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 5:34 pm
We don’t have to wait for a ‘severe water crisis’ for things to go to total shit. ‘Moderate water stress’ is all that’s really needed if the community/population/society, whatever you want to call it, is vulnerable or lacks resilience. So back of the envelope thinking may indicate severe water crisis by 2050, preceded by moderate water crisis by 2040, preceded by moderate water stress by 2030, preceded by relative water stress by 2020. You get the idea. Stress and crisis are a matter of degree and things usually proceed in increments. The Mekong delta needs about 18 inches of sea level rise to be rendered useless as far as rice production goes. That’s about 50% of Vietnams rice production as well as many other agricultural products. It’s a home to millions and over time produces food for billions. It is about 4% of global rice production. Once Vietnam goes from rice exporter to rice importer it will impact world markets and drive up prices. While many fret about ‘several meters of sea level rise by 2100’ and ‘our coastal cities being uninhabitable’ it seems to me that long before that global food production will be severely impacted and the result will be famine. Beach front real estate will be the least of anyone’s worries in 2100.
Boat on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 5:54 pm
Truth,
How long till 18 inches takes out the delta.
claman on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 7:34 pm
boat: Because of upp stream dams that prevent sediment to flow freely, the Mekong delta will disappear by it self.
A lot like the mississippi delta, where big central canals lead sediments directly to the golf, instead of spreading it out over the whole delta in the mangrove.
Apneaman on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 9:19 pm
Dry climate squeezing city’s water supply
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/sindh/23-Mar-2016/dry-climate-squeezing-city-s-water-supply
Go Speed Racer on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 1:14 am
There’s no shortage of water. Countries that don’t have enough, can just take it out of the ocean.
Apneaman on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 3:52 pm
Karachi, Pakistan Water Shortages
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYGqwcEZovQ
dooma on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 11:15 pm
Can anyone in the US please explain what (if any) water saving measures are in place to react to the severe drought that the Lower West of the country is experiencing at the moment? It is just that I watched a Tube Video on it and at the time, they were still running fountains in Vegas. This to me seems absolutely crazy considering the severity of the problem.
I am quite interested as we went through a 13 year drought here in Australia and implemented what some people would call “draconian” water saving measures. But we really had little choice. We were down to about 30% in our catchments. In fact the drought has returned after only one big flood year. It just does not seem to rain anymore. As a kid in the 80’s, Easter time meant looking forward to camping in non stop, good soaking rain.
So any info would be of interest to me.
Thanks.
Apneaman on Sun, 3rd Apr 2016 11:33 pm
dooma, not a hell of a lot. Some residential restriction, but ya Vegas is BAU and so are golf courses in the US SW. I have read many comments and bloggers talk about using many of the tricks y’all developed over that 13 years.
Apparently this is supposed to help;)
California Farmers Irrigate Crops With Chevron’s Oil Wastewater in Drought-Stricken Central Valley
http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/10/farmers-irrigate-crops-oil-water/
dooma on Mon, 4th Apr 2016 12:34 am
Thanks for the info. It totally leaves my speechless that it is BAU. But I guess that they don’t want to deep six Vegas any further than the GFC did. And the water drains are just an underground “housing estate” anyway. So rain would put MANY people back on the streets which would make the leaders blush.
I have a pathological hatred for golf courses. All of that water to hit a tiny ball around. We are so stupid.
makati1 on Mon, 4th Apr 2016 12:46 am
FYI: “According to the Golf Course Superintendents of America, there are 2,244,512 acres of golf courses in the U.S. That’s the equivalent of 3,507 square miles.”
http://danoshinsky.com/2009/07/02/how-much-space-do-golf-courses-take-up-in-america/
That number is dwarfed by the amount of useless grass lawns there are in the us, many which require a lot of water and fertilizer to exist.
“According to a new study from NASA scientists in collaboration with researchers in the Mountain West, there is now an estimated total of 163,812 square kilometers, or more than 63,000 square miles, of lawn in America — about the size of Texas.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lawn-largest-crop-america_us_55d0dc06e4b07addcb43435d
Americans are #1 in waste.
Apneaman on Mon, 4th Apr 2016 1:00 am
Golf courses and golfers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4w7H48tBS8
Davy on Mon, 4th Apr 2016 5:11 am
Dooma, Las Vegas is not a good example. There is little being done in the US from the top down in places like Vegas or southern California. These places were getting close to doing something then El Nino saved there ass for a short time. Crisis is the only thing going to force change and with a La Nina shaping up there are likely going to get it next year. Las Vegas is a doomed city that will pay the price for overconsumption and reality dodging. At some point the place will depopulate and it will be a hell of a crisis. Few Americans have respect for the place and that is why many love going there. It is a place of sin and excess. There are localized effort all over this country of people taking the initiative to change overconsumption and take responsibility for their own survival. Is it enough, no, but for some it give them hope and a meaningful life.
dooma on Mon, 4th Apr 2016 5:13 am
This may be so mak, but golf courses are still a major waste of water. At least a football stadium can hold up to 100,000 fans for it’s size.
I totally agree with you about lawns. Also did you know that when you cut your nice green lawn, you release a shitload of greenhouse gasses as well?
Not to mention, the petrol/diesel that is wasted. What ever happened to good old push movers, no wonder we in the western world have such a diabetes and obesity problem.
dooma on Mon, 4th Apr 2016 5:17 am
Apneaman, thanks for the YouTube link. He is a legend of a comedian. Just like Bill Hicks IMO.
I had a good laugh..
makati1 on Mon, 4th Apr 2016 9:07 am
dooma, as I do not have a lawn nor have had one for the last 15 years, I am not guilty. My last home was in a wooded area and zero grass. I also never wasted my time hitting a ball and walking after it. Or riding after it as the obese do these days. I always thought that was a stupid waste of time and money, although it was part of the physical education at the college I attended so I did learn the basics.
Dooma on Mon, 4th Apr 2016 4:10 pm
mak, I totally understand where you are coming from.
Yes golf carts completely go against the reason/benefits one is supposed to derive from the exercise of walking 9 or 18 holes. Just another labour saving device which actually makes us fatter and lazier.
I was forced to go to a snobby school and they tried to make a gentleman out of me. But I hated their elitist mentality and always behaved against the grain.
I realise though that sometimes you have to do what you have to do….