“I and my water science colleagues are raising a warning flag that significant investment in both R&D and water infrastructure development are needed, if dire consequences are to be avoided.”

If dire consequences are to be avoided, more will need to be done than investment in just those areas.

Ethiopia is given a mention, as it should. It is a country of 79 million people now in 2008; and of 158 million in 2035 if its present rate of increase holds.

Back in 1994 the world got together in Cairo and came up with a plan for significant investment to avoid the dire consequences which the author fears. It is a pity that the Vatican, and the fundamentalists who have such leverage in US politics, prevented that plan’s implementation by all of the signatories. That plan was to enable women access to both education and control of their own fertility.

Colin Chartres waves his own International Water Management Institute warning flag in a way that obscures that more important one of fertility control which was raised 14 years back. Why – is it politically incorrect in his circle? What a wimp

Another one getting it wrong.

There is climate change; there is a shortage of water, and there will be a shortage of food.

However, if the population had not been allowed to grow to size it is, none of the above would have had much effect on a sustainable population

But colinsett and Mr Right, a greater population is probably sustainable without the ever increasing use of the worlds resources by those with the money.
If the developed world was not extravently converting about 8 per cent of the worlds grain to fuel, your unstainable population argument would not be as potent.
You would put a lid on population but you do not put a lid on the per capita use of resources of the rich.
I think they are connected.

Geoff,

Take a look at any of the environmental footprint sites like Redefining Progress, and you will see that, with present technology, it would take the resources of approximately 3 Earths to sustainably give everyone worldwide a modest European standard of living, even if the resources were all divided equally. It would take 5 or 6 Earths to give them all our standard of living. There is a graph showing this explicitly on p. 10 of the 7/10/07 New Scientist. I once calculated that if the population of the US disappeared altogether and their resources were divided among everyone else, the average person would still be considered poor, and the present level of misery would be restored by population growth in about 20 years.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6178&page=0#89070

Of course waste and inequality make the mess worse, but it is wrong to think that eliminating them alone can solve the problem.

I am surprised that the author did not mention the pumping dry of aquifers under major grain producing areas in the US, North China, and North India. Some of these aquifers represent fossil resources that are simply being mined. Others are being pumped down faster than they are being recharged.

Yes it is all looking rather grim. I suspect we'll end up with lots of desal plants as that is the easiest political solution. The Murray will dry out and when the farmers have gone broke it could be restocked with some wild life but will never be the same again.

The Rhine has been biologically dead several times in the 70s and 80s after chemical spills by the swiss. Each time it took several years to flush out and then got restocked with fish again.

I wouldn't like to see that happen here but I don't think any of our politicians have the guts to do anything else.

What is more worrying is that the Tibetan glaciers are melting. These feed the Indus, Bramaputra, Irrawaddy, Mekong and Yangtse and thus Pakistan, Northern India, South East Asia and Central China. That would be a fair few boat people.

Goeff, I do not deliberately misinterpret or misquote you from your posted comment:
“You would put a lid on population but you do not put a lid on the per capita use of resources of the rich.”

In an honest world you would accord me the same courtesy in regard to my comment on this subject.

“I think they are connected” you say of population and per capita use of resources. Of course they are.

Nowhere have I pleaded for a continuance of the apartheid which presently exists regarding access to world resources.

However, I do plead for a cessation of what seems to be a proliferation of “blind eye to Nelson’s telescope” when it comes to the absolute necessity of incorporating the minimization of causes of population increase when there is debate about necessary actions.