The Future is Now
The struggle for sufficient water, a longstanding issue in developing countries, has now become a harsh reality in the US where legal battles over water rights have extended all the way to the Supreme Court, even along the well-watered Eastern Seaboard. Similar battles in the West have threatened to escalate to armed conflicts. Families are losing their livelihoods; critical wildlife populations are dying from habitat loss, stress and diseases; and entire ecosystems are being destroyed, all from insufficient water. Even natural protections against variable weather conditions are failing. In short, the long-predicted disaster has already arrived, with summer temperatures soaring across the northern hemisphere, and deadly heat waves becoming all too common. Doomsday predictions feel less and less like the work of fiction as the crisis spreads and affects the average citizen even in highly developed countries.
Water Rights in the US
Different Climates, Different Rights
Water rights evolved differently in the US, closely tied to the predominant climate. In the Eastern US, where water was plentiful, water rights were tied to proximity to surface water. Basically, if you lived nearby a river, stream, or lake, you had a right to use that water. In the West, where water was scarcer, territories, and later, states developed a “first come, first serve” model for rights. Settlers could simply begin using water from the source of their choice, regardless of the distance and if they were the first to use it, they had primary rights. Before changes in weather, before irrigation, before industrialization and thirsty urban centers, this seemed to work fairly well. But now the supply of water is often inadequate to serve everyone who has the time-honored right to access it. Under this doctrine, the person with the oldest water right gets all the water they’re entitled to first.
Western US: Klamath Basin
Last year, the US Bureau of Reclamation closed “A Canal,” the main irrigation canal serving farmers in three counties in Oregon and Northern California. This shutdown followed a decade of struggles to balance water rights and environmental needs in the Klamath Basin. Downstream Native American tribes who legally hold primary rights to water in the Klamath River fought to maintain river levels high enough to support local fisheries that have historically been a mainstay for food, livelihood, and represent both a center of cultural and religious identity. In practical terms, higher river levels were also necessary to support important ecosystems and broad populations of salmon and migratory birds.
However, the shutoff of irrigation water directly jeopardizes a multimillion-dollar cattle ranching industry, centered in the Klamath Basin, where irrigation is critical to grow grass and alfalfa to feed beef cattle. The upper Klamath Basin typically experiences hot, dry summers where rainfall averages only 4” from April through September, and ranchers are highly dependent on irrigation for their success. But competing claims for available water coupled with the effect of reduced snowpack in the Cascade mountain range mean that even a good, wet year won’t solve any of these problems. It’s a simple fact that water scarcity is now the new normal in the western states, characterized by increasingly frequent extreme droughts, accompanied by decades of chronically dry conditions.
In the Klamath Basin, managing all competing interests for water has become impossible, so the Bureau of Reclamation is forced to consider the unthinkable, including taking agricultural land out of production.
Eastern US: Chattahoochee River
Even in the Eastern US, which enjoys a humid subtropical climate and consistent year-round rainfall, water management is a significant challenge. As dense urban areas like metropolitan Atlanta expand, the demand for water for municipal and industrial activities increases. When the city drains the nearby reservoir, water levels on the Chattahoochee River drop, leaving less and less water for downstream residents in Alabama and Florida. Conflicts over access to this water have persisted for more than 22 years and escalated all the way to the Supreme Court.
Regardless of how the affected communities eventually resolve their conflicting needs (if they eventually do), the ultimate lesson here is that there simply isn’t enough water to go around, and the problem will only get worse as populations and associated human activity expands. Fundamental changes are needed in order to reach a sustainable level of water use in the region. More important, is the realization that water conflicts on the Chattahoochee River aren’t unique and are becoming more and more common.
Farmland as a Global Resource
Water scarcity is a problem affecting every continent (except Antarctica, but agriculture isn’t a major presence there… yet). In fact, as areas of productive, arable land shrink, water problems worsen. As cities expand, wealthy countries the world over are beginning to recognize their vulnerability. In response, they’ve begun to buy up vast tracts of productive farmland across Africa with access to plentiful freshwater reserves. In one example, South Korea recently acquired 1.3 million hectares in Madagascar, representing 50% of the country's arable land.
This is an extreme example of neo-colonialism, where countries pressure less wealthy nations to make long term sacrifices of rich resources for short term cash benefits. The long-term viability and morals of such a project is highly questionable. How can a nation, bereft of its capacity to feed its own growing population, achieve economic independence and social stability?
In another, more subtle example, Saudi Arabia banned the cultivation of animal-feed grasses like alfalfa, for the simple reason that it consumed water at an unsustainable rate. The demand for dairy products is high in that country, though. A multinational company based in Saudi Arabia promptly purchased large tracts of farmland in California and Arizona, setting them to grow alfalfa, a famously thirsty crop centered in some of the most water-stressed regions of the country. Just as in Madagascar, it’s perhaps naive to believe that foreign owners of US farmland are going to have the long-term well-being of the nation, its ability to feed its people, and its environmental health at top of mind.
Changing Food Habits
Saudi Arabia’s acquisition of farmland with the intention to grow alfalfa is an example of a related concern. Historically, as cultures and their populations begin to gain wealth, the first changes they make are to their diet. Moving from low-nutrition subsistence diets consisting of grains like rice, wheat, and corn, people begin to consume more meat and dairy, which require much higher levels of resources to produce. As the wealth of a population increases, even more resource-intensive foods are consumed. Affluent populations consume primarily fats, drinks, and other foods derived from animal sources. The resource demands for this type of diet are dramatic. On average, 1000 gallons of water are needed to produce 1 gallon of milk. Even more alarming, it requires 1,847 gallons of water to produce a single pound of beef. In contrast, the water footprint for soybeans and corn is 206 gallons and 108 gallons respectively. Rising production of resource-intensive foods across the globe will continue to increase pressure on limited freshwater sources.
The long-term question of agricultural sustainability and our ability to feed the human population is likely to hinge on our ability to foster fundamental changes to diets across the world: sustainable use of resources, balanced by sufficient nutrition, to ensure fundamental levels of health and well-being.
