The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future

by Laurence C. Smith

  205 C. J. Vörösmarty, P. Green, J. Salisbury, R. B. Lammers, “Global Water Resources: Vulnerability from Climate Change and Population Growth,” Science 289, no. 5477 (2000): 284-288. The study identifies “severe” water stress as areas where the ratio of human water withdrawal to available river discharge is 0.4 or higher. The described three maps are found in Figure 3 of this paper. They are slightly deceptive in places like the western United States, where the source areas of water (e.g., mountain snowpack) differ from where the water is used (e.g., Tucson, Los Angeles, etc).

  206 E.g., “Impending global-scale changes in population and economic development,” the authors conclude, “will dictate the future . . . to a much greater degree than will changes in mean climate.” Ibid.

  207 Piped, protected wells or springs, rainwater cisterns, or boreholes.

  208 Ethiopians (22%), Somalians (29%), Afghanis and Papua New Guineans (39%), Cambodians (41%), Chadians (42%), Equatorial Guineans and Mozambicans (43%). Data Table 3, P. H. Gleick et al., The World’s Water 2008-2009 (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2009), 432 pp.

  209 J. Bartram, K. Lewis, R. Lenton, A. Wright, “Focusing on Improved Water and Sanitation for Health,” The Lancet 365, no. 9461 (2005): 810-812.

  210 M. Barlow, Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water (New York: The New Press, 2003), 296 pp.; Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water (New York: The New Press, 2007), 196 pp.

  211 Mission statement of the World Water Council, www.world watercouncil.org (accessed April 5, 2009).

  212 A good account of these battles is the award-winning documentary Flow (2008), www.flowthefilm.com.

  213 P. 189, UN World Water Assessment Programme, The United Nations World Water Development Report 3: Water in a Changing World (Paris: UNESCO, and London: Earthscan, 2009), 318 pp.

  214 Virtually all countries negotiate water-sharing agreements for transboundary rivers crossing their borders. For emerging ideas on how satellites could change the game, see D. E. Alsdorf et al., “Measuring Surface Water from Space,” Reviews of Geophysics 45, no. 2, article no. RG2002 (2007); D. E. Alsdorf et al., “Measuring global oceans and terrestrial freshwater from space,” Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union 88, no. 24 (2007): 253; F. Hossain, “Introduction to the Featured Series on Satellites and Transboundary Water: Emerging Ideas,” Journal of the American Water Resources Association 45, no. 3 (2009): 551-552; S. Biancamaria et al., “Preliminary Characterization of SWOT Hydrology Error Budget and Global Capabilities,” IEEE JSTARS 3, no. 1 (2010): 6-19.

  215 The Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite will also measure oceans. It is a joint venture between the space agencies of the United States and France (NASA and CNES).For more, see http://swot.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm.

  216 E.g., global topography data from SRTM (http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/) and ASTER (http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/gdem.asp); global image data from Landsat (http://www.landcover.org/index.shtml); and many others.

  217 D. Ignatius, “The Climate-Change Precipice,” The Washington Post, March 2, 2007; F. Al-Obaid, “Water Scarcity and Resource War,” Kuwait Times, March 9, 2008; H. A. Amery, “Water Wars in the Middle East: A Looming Threat, The Geographical Journal 168, no. 4 (2002): 313-23; N. L. Poff et al., “River Flows and Water Wars: Emerging Science for Environmental Decision Making,” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 1, no. 6 (2003): 298-306; and others.

  218 P. 19, UN World Water Assessment Programme, The United Nations World Water Development Report 3: Water in a Changing World (Paris: UNESCO, and London: Earthscan, 2009), 318 pp.

  219 P. 163, M. Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2002), 304 pp.

  220 Ibid., p. 139.

  221 Between 1948 and 1999 there were 1,831 interactions between countries over water resources, ranging from verbal exchanges to written agreements to military activity. Of these, 67% were cooperative, 28% conflictive, and 5% neutral or insignificant. There were no formal declarations of war made specifically over water. W. Barnaby, “Do Nations Go to War over Water?” Nature 458 (2009): 282-283; other material drawn from S. Yoffe et al., Journal of the American Water Resources Association 39 (2003): 1109-1126; A. T. Wolf, “Shared Waters: Conflict and Cooperation,” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 32 (2007): 241-69.

  222 See http://biblio.pacinst.org/conflict/ and http://worldwater.org/conflictchronology.pdf and http://www.transboundarywaters.orst.edu/.

  223 J. I. Uitto, A. T. Wolf, “Water Wars? Geographical Perspectives: Introduction,” The Geographical Journal 168, no. 4 (2002): 289-292; T. Jarvis et al., “International Borders, Ground Water Flow, and Hydroschizophrenia,” Ground Water 43, no. 5 (2005): 764-770.

  224 W. Barnaby, “Do Nations Go to War over Water?” Nature 458 (2009): 282-283.

  225 Water “withdrawal” refers to the gross amount of water extracted from any source in the natural environment for human purposes. Water “consumption” refers to that part of water withdrawn that is evaporated, transpired, incorporated into products or crops, consumed by humans or livestock, or otherwise removed from the immediate water environment. Global “blue water” withdrawals from rivers, reservoirs, lakes, and aquifers are estimated at 3,830 cubic kilometers, of which 2,664 cubic kilometers are used for agriculture. Pp. 67-69, Water for Food, Water for Life: A Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture (London: Earthscan, and Colombo: International Water Management Institute, 2007), 665 pp.

  226 The term virtual water was coined by J. A. Allan in the early 1990s, e.g., “Policy Responses to the Closure of Water Resources,” in Water Policy: Allocation and Management in Practice , P. Howsam, R. Carter, eds. (London: Chapman and Hall, 1996).

  227 The global transfer of virtual water embedded within commodities is estimated at 1,625 billion cubic meters per year, about 40% of total human water consumption. A. K. Chapagain, A. Y. Hoekstra, “The Global Component of Freshwater Demand and Supply: An Assessment of Virtual Water Flows between Nations as a Result of Trade in Agricultural and Industrial Products,” Water International 33, no. 1 (2008): 19-32. See also pp. 35 and 98, UN World Water Assessment Programme, The United Nations World Water Development Report 3: Water in a Changing World (Paris: UNESCO, and London: Earthscan, 2009), 318 pp.

  228 R. G. Glennon, Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America’s Fresh Waters (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2002), 314 pp. Windmills and other early technology could lift water from a maximum depth of only seventy to eighty feet, but the centrifugal pump, powered by diesel, natural gas, or electricity, could lift water from depths as great as three thousand feet.

  229 Figure 7.6, UN World Water Assessment Programme, The United Nations World Water Development Report 3: Water in a Changing World (Paris: UNESCO, and London: Earthscan, 2009), 318 pp.

  230 U.S. Geological Survey, “Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2000,” USGS Circular 1268, February 2005.

  231 Other materials can also make good aquifers, for example gravel or highly fractured bedrock.

  232 See M. Rodell, I. Velicogna and J. S. Famiglietti, “Satellite-based Estimates of Groundwater Depletion in India,” Nature 460 (2009): 999-1002, DOI:10.1038/nature08238; and V. M. Tiwari, J. Wahr, and S. Swenson, “Dwindling Groundwater Resources in Northern India, from Satellite Gravity Observations,” Geophysical Research Letters 36 (2009), L18401, DOI:10.1029/2009GL039401.

  233 Also known as the High Plains Aquifer, the Ogallala underlies parts of Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and South Dakota. Other material in this section drawn from V. L. McGuire, “Changes in Water Levels and Storage in the High Plains Aquifer, Predevelopment to 2005,” U.S. Geological Society Fact Sheet 2007-3029, May 2007.

  234 Human drawdown averages around one foot per year, but natural replenishment is less than an inch per year. Telephone interview with Kevin Mulligan, April 21, 2009.

 
; 235 “Useful lifetime” is projected time left until the saturated aquifer thickness falls to just thirty feet. When the aquifer is thinner than thirty feet, conventional wells start sucking air, owing to a thirty-foot cone of depression that forms in the water table around the borehole. The described GIS data and useful lifetime maps for the Ogallala are found at http://www.gis.ttu.edu/OgallalaAquiferMaps/.

  236 LEPA drip irrigation systems create a smaller cone of depression, allowing water to be sucked from the last thirty feet of remaining aquifer saturated thickness. Therefore a switch to LEPA can prolong the usable aquifer lifetime another ten to twenty years, but cannot stop the outcome.

  237 Notably the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Austria. P. H. Gleick, “Water and Energy,” Annual Review of Energy and the Environment 19 (1994): 267-299. This is not to say all of the water used is irrevocably lost; most power plants return most of the heated water back to the originating river or lake. See note 225 for withdrawal vs. consumption.

  238 This is the legal maximum in the European Union, but recommended “guideline” temperatures are lower, around 12-15 degrees Celsius in the EU and Canada. Ibid.

  239 See also his book on wind power. M. Pasqualetti, P. Gipe, R. Righter, Wind Power in View: Energy Landscapes in a Crowded World (San Diego: Academic Press, 2002), 248 pp.

  240 The reason for this is the very large water losses that evaporate from the open reservoirs behind hydroelectric dams.

  241 For example, see P. W. Gerbens-Leenes, A. Y. Hoekstra, T. H. van der Meer, “The Water Footprint of Energy from Biomass: A Quantitative Assessment and Consequences of an Increasing Share of Bio-energy in Energy Supply,” Ecological Economics 68 (2009): 1052-1060.

  242 Telephone interview with M. Pasqualetti, April 14, 2009.

  243 T. R. Curlee, M. J. Sale, “Water and Energy Security,” Proceedings, Universities Council on Water Resources, 2003.

  244 For climate model simulations of Hadley Cell expansion, see J. Lu, G. A. Vecchi, T. Reichler, “Expansion of the Hadley Cell under Global Warming,” Geophysical Research Letters 34 (2007): L06085; for direct observations from satellites, see Q. Fu, C. M. Johanson, J. M. Wallace, T. Reichler, “Enhanced Mid-latitude Tropospheric Warming in Satellite Measurements,” Science 312, no. 5777 (2006): 1179.

  245 P. C. D. Milly, K. A. Dunne, A. V. Vecchia, “Global Pattern of Trends in Streamflow and Water Availability in a Changing Climate,” Nature 438 (2005): 347-350.

  246 G. M. MacDonald et al., “Southern California and the Perfect Drought: Simultaneous Prolonged Drought in Southern California and the Sacramento and Colorado River Systems,” Quaternary International 188 (2008): 11-23.

  247 The medieval warming was triggered by increased solar output combined with low levels of volcanic sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere, whereas today the driver is greenhouse gas forcing. The comparison between the medieval warm period and today is imperfect because the former saw temperatures rise most in summer, whereas greenhouse gas forcing causes maximum warming in winter and spring. Still, the medieval warm period is the best “real world” climate analog scientists have for examining possible biophysical responses to projected greenhouse warming. For more, see G. M. MacDonald et al., “Climate Warming and Twenty-first Century Drought in Southwestern North America,” EOS, Transactions, AGU 89 no. 2 (2008). For more on the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, see G. M. MacDonald and R. A. Case, “Variations in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation over the Past Millennium,” Geophysical Research Letters 32, article no. L08703 (2005), DOI:10.1029/2005GL022478.

  248 R. Seager et al., “Model Projections of an Imminent Transition to a More Arid Climate in Southwestern North America,” Science 316 (2007): 1181-1184.

  249 P. C. D. Milly, J. Betancourt, M. Falkenmark, R. M. Hirsch, Z. W. Kundzewicz, D. P. Lettenmaier, R. J. Stouffer, “Stationarity Is Dead: Whither Water Management?” Science 319 (2008): 573-574.

  250 The confusion arises from the fact that the “hundred-year flood,” “five-hundred-year flood,” etc., are simply statistical probabilities expressed as a flood height. This leads the common misperception that a hundred-year flood happens only once every hundred years, a five-hundred-year flood happens only once every five hundred years, and so on. In fact, the probability is 1/100 and 1/500 in any given year. The likelihood of enjoying a hundred consecutive years without suffering at least one hundred-year flood is just (99/100)100 = 37%.

  251 For example, it now appears likely that climate change will increase risk uncertainty with crop yields. B. A. McCarl, X. Villavicencio, X. Wu, “Climate Change and Future Analysis: Is Stationarity Dying?” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 90, no. 5 (2008): 1241-1247.

  252 P. C. D. Milly, J. Betancourt, M. Falkenmark, R. M. Hirsch, Z. W. Kundzewicz, D. P. Lettenmaier, R. J. Stouffer, “Stationarity Is Dead: Whither Water Management?” Science 319 (2008): 573-574.

  253 D. P. Lettenmaier, “Have We Dropped the Ball on Water Resources Research?” Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management 134, no. 6 (2008): 491-492.

  254 The company, State Farm Florida, sent cancellation notices to nearly a fifth of its 714,000 customers after failing to win a 47.1% rate hike from state regulators. In the same year Florida’s Office of Insurance Regulation projected that 102 of the 200 largest Florida insurance carriers were running net underwriting losses. “State Farm Cancels Thousands in Florida,” February 23, 2010, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35220269/ns/business-personal_finance/.

  255 P. W. Mote et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 86, no. 1 (2005): 39-49.

  256 T. P. Barnett et al., “Human-Induced Changes in the Hydrology of the Western United States,” Science 319 (2008): 1080-1083.

  257 J. Watts, “China Plans 59 Reservoirs to Collect Meltwater from Its Shrinking Glaciers,” The Guardian, March 2, 2009; “Secretary Salazar, Joined by Gov. Schwarzenegger, to Announce Economic Recovery Investments in Nation’s Water Infrastructure,” U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Press Release, April 14, 2009; “California to Get $260 Million in U.S. Funds for Water,” Reuters, April 15, 2009.

  258 Melting glacier ice and the thermal expansion of ocean water as it warms are the two most important contributors to sea-level rise. Thermal expansion of ocean water is a relatively sluggish process that is still responding to warming of past decades and will continue in response to more warming in the pipeline. To date, roughly 80% of the heat from climate warming has been absorbed by oceans. A very recent post-IPCC study estimates that over the period 1900-2008 thermal expansion caused 0.4 ± 0.2 mm/yr of sea-level rise, small glaciers and ice caps 0.96 ± 0.44 mm/yr, the Greenland Ice Sheet 0.3 ± 0.33 mm/ yr, the Antarctic Ice Sheet 0.14 ± 0.26 mm/yr, and terrestrial runoff 0.17 ± 0.1 mm/yr. C. Shum, C. Kuo, “Observation and Geophysical Causes of Present-day Sea Level Rise,” in Climate Change and Food Security in South Asia, ed., R. Lal, M. Sivakumar, S. M. A. Faiz, A. H. M. Mustafizur Rahman, K. R. Islam (Springer Verlaag, Holland: in press). Construction of twentieth-century impoundments may have trapped back ~30 mm sea level equivalent in total, an average of -0.55 mm/yr. B. F. Chao, Y. H. Wu, and Y. S. Li, “Impact of artificial reservoir water impoundment on global sea level,” Science 320 (2008): 212-214. However, the trapping effect of human impoundments has since slowed or even reversed. D. P. Lettenmaier, P. C. D. Milly, “Land Waters and Sea Level,” Nature Geoscience 2 (2009): 452-454, DOI:10.1038/ngeo567.

  259 S. Rahmstorf et al., Response to Comments on “A Semi-Empirical Approach to Projecting Future Sea-Level Rise,” Science 317, 1866d (2007). (See erratum for updated sea-level rise rates.)

  260 M. Heberger, H. Cooley, P. Herrera, P. H. Gleick, E. Moore, “The Impacts of Sea-Level Rise on the California Coast,” Final Paper, California Climate Change Center, CEC-500-2009-024-F (2009), 115 pp., available at http://pacinst.org/reports/sea_level_rise/report.pdf.

  261 The 2007 IPCC AR4 “consensus estimate” of 0.18 to 0.6 meters by 2100 may be too low. Other estimates suggest a possible range of 0.8-2.0 meters (W. T. Pfeffer et a
l., “Kinematic Constraints on Glacier Contributions to 21st-Century Sea-Level Rise,” Science 321, no. 5894 2008: 1340-1343) and 0.5-1.4 meters (S. Rahmstorf, “A Semi-Empirical Approach to Projecting Future Sea-Level Rise,” Science 315, no. 5810 [2007]: 368-370, DOI:10.1126/science.1135456.)

  262 The main reason for this is that hurricanes and typhoons are fueled by sea surface temperatures. The Fourth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates their intensity is “likely” to increase, meaning a >66% statistical probability. IPCC AR4 (2007).

  263 Calculated from Table 2 of R. J. Nicholls et al., “Ranking Port Cities with High Exposure and Vulnerability to Climate Extremes: Exposure Estimates,” OECD Environment Working Papers, no. 1 (OECD Publishing, 2008), 62 pp., DOI:10.1787/011766488208. See also J. P. Ericson et al., “Effective Sea-Level Rise and Deltas: Causes of Change and Human Dimension Implications,” Global and Planetary Change 50 (2006): 63-82.

  264 Monetary amounts are in international 2001 U.S. dollars using purchasing power parities. Ibid.

  265 Short for “Water Global Assessment and Prognosis.” See Center for Environmental Systems Research, http://www.usf.uni-kassel.de/cesr/.

  266 The climate-change component of this particular simulation is from the HadCM3 circulation model assuming a B2 SRES scenario. For more on other, nonclimatic assumptions, see Alcamo, M. Flörke, and M. Marker, “Future Long-term Changes in Global Water Resources Driven by Socio-economic and Climatic Changes,” Hydrological Sciences 52, no. 2 (2007): 247-275.

  267 P. Alpert et al., “First Super-High-Resolution Modeling Study that the Ancient ‘Fertile Crescent’ Will Disappear in This Century and Comparison to Regional Climate Models,” Geophysical Research Abstracts 10, EGU2008-A-02811 (2008); A. Kitoh et al., “First Super-High-Resolution Model Projection that the Ancient ‘Fertile Crescent’ Will Disappear in This Century,” Hydrological Research Letters 2 (2008): 1-4.