Nick Smith, May 9, 2004

Lack of clean water is perhaps the world’s largest humanitarian problem. An estimated 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water and 2.4 billion lack access to basic sanitation. Three billion people a year suffer from a lack of clean water and over 6,000 of them die every day. This chronic sickness, death, and lack of water for producing food reduce the economic prospects for many countries, contributing greatly to continuing poverty.

Conditions in much of the world are expected to worsen in the years to come. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports that nearly half of the world’s population will live in water-stressed countries by 2015. This has led the United Nations General Assembly and the World Summit on Sustainable Development to call for increasing international cooperation to address these problems.

Water can also be a source of political conflict. I recently chaired an International Relations Committee hearing where competition over water has generated international tension. There are 260 river basins - home to more than 40% of the world’s population - that are shared by two or more countries. In drier areas, disputes over water rights have escalated to war. Witnesses at the hearing identified serious problems along the Jordan and Tigris-Euphrates river basins in the Middle East, the Indus river basin in Asia, and the Nile and Okavango river basins in Africa.

Today, the most significant water problems involve Israel and its Arab neighbors in the Jordan River valley. A widely used rule of thumb is that a population is considered to be in a state of "water stress" if the average annual per capita availability of water is below 1,000 cubic meters. Israel, which has the most advanced water infrastructure and water management capabilities in the region, has an average annual availability of only some 250-300 cubic meters per capita. Jordan, at some 170-200 cubic meters per capita, and the Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza, at some 70-90 cubic meters per capita, are under even greater water stress. By comparison, average annual water availability in the United States is on the order of 7,000 cubic meters per capita.

Water negotiations have been a subject of discussion and a surprising area of compromise and progress. The October 1994 Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace contains an extensive agreement on water issues of common interest to both countries. Similarly, the Israelis and Palestinians have been working together through an Israeli-Palestinian Joint Water Committee on water issues that were addressed in Article 40 of their September 1995 Interim Agreement. The United States has assisted the parties in implementation of their agreements, when requested.

The hope is that desperation for scarce water will lead to greater cooperation and agreement among Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians, as well as in other countries facing water problems. Michigan is blessed with having one-sixth of the entire world’s supply of fresh water. But we see water supply problems and even rationing in the western United States, especially for food production. We need to determine and implement ways to increase the supply of water and to improve the distribution, utilization, and management of current and future water supplies.

Congressman Nick Smith, a Republican, represents Michigan's 7th Congressional District, which includes Battle Creek and the counties of Branch, Eaton, Hillsdale, Jackson, Lenawee, Calhoun, and Washtenaw in south-central Michigan.