FIRM U.S. WATER POLICY COULD HELP THE WORLD BY AMBASSADOR TIBOR P. NAGY, JR. Ambassador Tibor P. Nagy, Jr., now Associate Vice Provost for International Affairs at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX, deplores the lack of a firm United States water policy. Strong water quality legislation, enforced for purity, lack of disease and chemical intrusion, as well as availability for agriculture and human consumption could help guide the rest of the world, now struggling to combat a range of water-related problems. The distinguished US Foreign Service Officer served as Ambassador to Ethiopia where he observed in depth, some of the significant elements of the world’s water situation. “Prime Minister Meles Zenawi,” he said in a recent interview, “I consider to be, probably, the smartest head-of-state I ever worked with.” The Ethiopian Prime Minister, Nagy continued, “maintained that, immaterial of their famine, immaterial of their war with Eritrea, immaterial of terrorism, the biggest issue facing their 60-some million people is water.” This primarily involves the Nile Basin, Nagy added, over which Egypt and Ethiopia have almost gone to war. There are nine countries involved there. Nagy served as the State Department’s Diplomat in Residence at the University of Oklahoma during the 2002 academic year. “The University of Oklahoma is very heavily involved on water issues in the Middle East -- in Palestine, Israel,” he explained. “I found it very ironic that water, which tends to be an extremely controversial subject, was the one issue on which they could work with a technical approach that would get everybody together. “That’s kind of my perspective. I spent 25 years in Africa,” Nagy said. “Clean water is a huge issue. When Paul O’Neill, came to Ethiopia during his stint as Secretary of the US Treasury, one of his points was that the way to develop Africa was, number one, make sure everybody had access to clean water for as many people as possible. And for O’Neill, clean water was his number one, the basic thing that if you’re going to do anything at all in a country, if you have limited resources but if you can spend, spend it on clean water, because without clean water, none of the other things matter. People are going to be sick, they’re going to be weak, they’re not going to be able to go to school, they’re not going to be able to work, they’re not going to be able to go vote. So you work on clean water, and then that will at least get things, you know, prime the pump.” There are contrasts, not exclusive to the United States, or to the poor of the third world, but they can be shocking, Ambassador Nagy said, as they show waste among groups who should know better. “If you have flown into Phoenix, Arizona, or Las Vegas, Nevada,” he said, “you have to shake your head when they’re selling swimming pools for $10,000 a whack and they’re reproducing Kentucky fescue or whatever it is, you know, constant watering. That almost borders on insanity. “Some of the Arab countries have gone to desalinization in a big way,” he pointed out, explaining that this process has problems of its own. The question is what to do with the residue? The water that is left behind has greatly increased salinity. Those are technical issues. The first time Nagy had a tour in the Seychelles, he said, “The Indian Ocean was sparkling clear, you could see a hundred feet down. And then, when I went back, it was not nearly as clear. The fishing tonnage was being reduced dramatically.” Working in Lubbock, Texas, far from any shore, Nagy said, there is still acute concern for the supply of water and how to save, increase and ensure it. His perspective, he added, is largely directed by his 25 years in Africa, where “Clean water is a huge issue.” “I’m very pessimistic about what’s going on now,” he admitted. “On the other hand, of course we can do something. I know you have the global statistics. You know that 1.1 billion people today lack safe drinking water, and that about 2.7 billion are estimated to be facing severe water shortages within the next 25 years; and that water is at the root of the majority of past conflicts and probably future ones as well.” Ambassador Nagy recalled that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in Africa in July 2005. “She made a visit to Sudan, and to some of the refugees in Darfur,” he said. “Darfur is one of the major conflicts that the world has been talking about for the last couple of years. Well, at the root of the conflict of Darfur is the lack of access to water, which very few people have focused on. “Sometimes that gets lost. You know, sometimes you worry about the refugees, the genocides, the rapes, everything like that. But then you forget that at the root of the issue is a historical conflict in Africa between herders and farmers. At the root of the issue, whether there are different ethnic groups, different religions, is water. And as that part of the Sudan started drying out, the herders were going further and further south with their animals, and they ran into the farmers, and you couldn’t have both of them existing on the same piece of land because they both needed the water, one for the crops, one for the animals, and the herders chased away the farmers, and now you’ve had this horrendous conflagration.” The weather used to seem quite predictable, he said. “But whenever there are hiccups, for example, if it did not go as far north as it should, it’s very similar to the Indian monsoons. If it did not go as far north as it should, then, like this year, there’s severe famine in the country of Niger and other countries in the Sahel, the countries just below the Sahara. It never, ever reaches the Sahara. But Sudan, Chad, Mali, Niger -- those countries really depend on it. Then, as the stress goes south, it eventually hits the countries of Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi. And there again, if it doesn’t quite go far south enough, those countries face shortages and famine. “As I found out in Ethiopia, -- I got a real education -- that so many people live on the margins, and they absolutely have to have a minimum of 400 millimeters of rain a year to produce the barest of crops. If they get 399 millimeters a year, they starve to death. "If they get 401, they’ll be able to feed their families. “But even there, if everything happens perfectly, they work their tails off, they till the soil, they get the rains -- and this is not only a water issue -- but many times the quality of the soil is such that they can only feed their family through six, seven, eight, or nine months. So much of the world’s population is living on that edge, where one millimeter of water falling from the sky is the difference between life and death.” The United States seems not to have solutions for these difficulties, in the Ambassador’s opinion, because “Fundamentally, there is not a US government global water policy. There is not a US blueprint for addressing global water issues. And the problem is – we use the term US government, but that’s literally like trying to nail Jello to the wall because the government is composed of so many individual agencies. “What should we, the United States, do?” The Ambassador said that he knows there are many water conferences, but “I don’t know how much is accomplished.” “If there is a presidential commission, and if a presidential commission sets down a policy internationally, I don’t think there would be much to dispute. I think the real hot-button political issues for any administration would come up to domestic water policies, and that I don’t know much about, except that there is a tremendous controversy at times. “But on the international side, you could look at this as two different issues. Do the easy one first, and that’s an international water policy. And go for the obvious things about helping how many people have access to clean water, making it an element of development assistance in those countries that really need it, whether you want to use it through USAID or the current administration’s approach to the Millennium Challenge Corporation. But just put it in there. What the overall goals are: increasing the access to water; increasing clean water; the quality; where it would be workable, helping with technology for desalinization. “I think people don’t realize that one of the most staggering numbers is that, of all the water in the world, only 2 percent is fresh water. And then what really astounds one is that, of that 2 percent, only 1 percent of that 2 percent is available from lakes, rivers, and underground sources, that the rest of it is all iced up. So we’re not talking about that great quantity of water. But, I mean, it’s obvious that -- you know, the train is coming down the track, and we always get caught by these ‘international crises,’ you know, the petroleum crises, the energy crises. Well, I predict -- and I’ve had a number of heads of state in Africa tell me -- that the next huge global crisis may very well not be about petroleum and oil and energy; it may very well be about water. “We just always have this tendency to fight the last battle or to respond to the last crisis.” Now, he said, “we’re all convinced that the terrorists are going to fly airplanes into big buildings, when in fact they are planning the next thing, which will be totally unexpected, Terrorists won’t repeat something that happened before. “When I think that about 260 major rivers cross international borders, and populations are growing, access to clean water is shrinking, water is such an essential that you’re going to have Darfurs all over the globe.” Darfur, Ambassador Nagy said, is in what is, for the Western world, a relatively obscure area. It does not impact on the ‘developed’ world. But what if this is happening between two nuclear powers? “Let’s say if it happens between India and Pakistan, if there’s a horrendous drought on the subcontinent, the monsoon doesn’t develop, some of the water streams that flow between Pakistan and India or Pakistan and Bangladesh diminish. India, being the big boy on the block, says, ‘Well, sorry, folks, but I’m just going to take all of that water,’ and Pakistan says, ‘No, you’re not.’ And proceeds to incinerate Delhi or Bombay or Calcutta. “You can do without certain things, but if you’re sitting there as president of Pakistan and your countrymen are starting to die of thirst, then you’re certainly not going to hesitate to push the nuclear button. That’s just a theoretical scenario, but it’s not out of the question. That could happen at some point.” Because of grim possibilities, the Ambassador said, “I think the U.S. government desperately needs to support an international water policy to make resources available. This is not money as much as leadership, technology, coordinating others.” The United Nations has set down a set of millennium goals for improving the human condition, he explained. “I don’t know all of them. The one on water is to reduce, by 2015, by half the number of people who lack access to fresh water. The US has NO comparable activity. “I keep thinking of the women walking seven hours with those very heavy jugs on their heads,and I suggested -- and it was not in jest -- that the next time we have an international water conference, we should get one of those ladies over here to sit in front of the assembled powerful and, you know, the academically enlightened and just tell them what her day is like. “So the next time they have to wait an extra 15 minutes to get into Outback Restaurant, they’ll be ashamed of themselves thinking that’s a hardship. So, anyway, that’s kind of my perspective.” As it is, “Now you’re seeing Las Vegas, Nevada with record temperatures; Phoenix, Arizona, with record temperatures; people dying of heat; water levels down in Lake Mead; perpetual drought in southern Idaho; forest fires out of control. The trends are not good. “The time to pay attention is not when the water doesn’t come out of the spigot. "Here in America, people have not had that happen. Overseas, where I have lived, I have visited places which were having such a bad drought that at night, when we checked into the hotel, we got a bucket of water, and that was going to do both for washing and for toilets. "So that’s what we had for one night, was a bucket of water in our hotel room. And so basically, my shower consisted of putting a little bit of that water, filling up, you know, a teakettle with water, and I used that to take my shower. And the water went right back into a container so that we saved all of that water. We used that in the morning to flush the toilet. "Yeah. Anyone who experiences a couple of nights out on the road like that, and then get back to your house in the capital city and you have your water and things, and then you realize just what a luxury it is to be able to take as long a shower as you want to. "At eye level, you see the tremendous effort it takes in people’s daily lives just to have the minimal water they need to exist on, and that gives you a totally different perspective. “And then what’s even more painful is being in front of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone, you get to a place where people are desperately waiting for the thunderstorm it to arrive, and you can look to the south and see it, but where you’re standing, there has not been a drop of rain for eight months. People have put the seeds in the ground; the animals are almost dead; the grain from last year is just about gone. So if those storms come north in the next couple of days, then all will be well and they’ll be rejoicing. But if those storms stay to the south, then people are looking at each other and looking at famine. "It could happen in a lot more parts of the world. “I’m not saying it’s going to happen here in the US in 25 years, but it can impact more and more areas, and you will see more and more Darfurs, because the herders are not going to give up their animals because that’s their way of life; the farmers are not going to give up their crops because that’s their way of life. So the only way to solve the situation is for one group to overcome the other. Or to figure out a way to share with the other, which may be more difficult because of the different ethnic groups, different religions, different cultures. So conflict mitigation is going to take on a whole new term, because the sources for conflict are going to become much greater. “For example, nine African countries have gotten together on this Nile Basin initiative, you know, the nine African countries that are touched by one of the two Nile Rivers, and they’re trying to do their best to come together for an agreement. But you could have a devastating war between Egypt and Ethiopia, because Ethiopia is where the headwaters are. That’s where all the rain catchment is, and every Egyptian depends for life on the water in the Nile. And now Ethiopia has a growing population, and Ethiopia needs to be using its own -- I mean, their attitude, very correctly, is the rain falls here, so we should certainly benefit from it. And Egypt’s attitude is, though, we agreed back in 1930 that all the water comes to Egypt, and if you touch it, there will be very severe consequences. “Well, we need to be diplomatically supporting efforts like that, not just with lip service and not just with junior people who attend a meeting, but on a policy level, because a full-out war between two countries whose populations are around 60 million people would be a lot more serious than a lot of things we consider crises today. “I don’t mean to be alarmist. This is just how it is.” This is how it is, Ambassador Nagy emphasized.. “When you’ve seen and talked to women who’ve walked seven hours one way to get water for their family, then that kind of makes an impact.” The problems are complicated by side developments, he explained. Local plant materials in formerly lush areas have been decimated by introduction of destructive types of growth by self appointed scientists who tried plants without proper study. The use of charcoal leads to the denuding of dry areas. The same errors apply to livestock, he said. Goats are inexpensive to keep, and are fine providers of milk and meat. But they destroy the environment under certain conditions He repeated; “You know, the United Nations has the U.N. Millennium goals of reducing by one half, by 2015, the total number of people who lack access to fresh water. I wish them well. I’m not sure if this is going to happen, but I wish them well.” “So, I think the US government desperately needs to have an international water policy to make resources available. This is not money as much as it is leadership, technology and coordinating others.” # # #