Landsats Aff

Water – Impact – India Economy

Access to water is crucial to India's economy—the market will exhaust resources if left alone, changing management practices is crucial to solving.
Brooks 7 (Nina, Arlington Institute, http://www.arlingtoninstitute.org/wbp/global-water-crisis/606, accessed 7/6/11) CJQ

Water is both an important input for many different manufacturing and industrial sectors and used as a coolant for machines, such as textile machines. Cheap water that can be rapidly pumped from underground aquifers has been a major factor in the success of India’s economic growth. For example, the garment industry in Tirupur, a city in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, was growing faster than anyone thought possible for several decades. By 1990’s, however, the town was running out of water, which is a critical input for dyeing and bleaching.[14] Despite the many benefits from a thriving economy, industrial waste is largely responsible for the high levels of pollutants found in India’s rivers and groundwater. Many corporations end up polluting the very water they later need as an input. According to the Ministry of Water Resources, industrial water use in India stands at about 50 billion cubic meters or nearly 6 per cent of total freshwater abstraction.[15] This demand is expected to increase dramatically in the next decade, given the enormous forecasts of 9% growth for 2007 alone.[16]

Water – Impact – India

India will hit the crunch by 2020 but there's still hope—management changes can successfully gauge water. Failure to resolve the crisis triggers international water wars, crashes the global economy and leads to worldwide famine.
Brooks 7 (Nina, Arlington Institute, http://www.arlingtoninstitute.org/wbp/global-water-crisis/606, accessed 7/7/11) CJQ

India is facing a looming water crisis that has implications not only for its 1.1 billion people, but for the entire globe. India’s demand for water is growing even as it stretches its supplies. Water infrastructure is crumbling, preventing the government from being able to supply drinking water to its citizens. Pollution is rampant due to unfettered economic growth, poor waste management laws and practices. Although many analysts believe that demand will outstrip supply by 2020[48], there is still hope for India. Water scarcity in India is predominantly a manmade problem; therefore if India makes significant changes in the way it thinks about water and manages its resources soon, it could ward off, or at least mollify, the impending crisis. India has had success with water infrastructure development, which allowed the country to take advantage of its water resources in the first place and achieve food security. These projects did enable the expansion of urban and industrial sectors and increased availability of safe drinking water, but then they were allowed to dilapidate. India needs to make water supply a national priority the way it has made food security and economic growth priorities in the past. India’s need for a comprehensive management program is so severe because of its rapidly depleting water supply, environmental problems, and growing population. If the country continues with a business as usual mentality the consequences will be drastic. India will see a sharp decrease in agricultural production, which will negate all of the previous efforts at food security. India will become a net importer of grain, which will have a huge effect of global food prices, as well as the global supply of food. A rise in food prices will aggravate the already widespread poverty when people have to spend larger portions of their income on food. In addition to devastating the agricultural sector of India’s economy, the water crisis will have a big effect on India’s industrial sector, possibly stagnating many industries. Finally, India could become the stage for major international water wars because so many rivers that originate in India supply water to other countries. India has the power to avoid this dark future if people take action immediately: start conserving water, begin to harvest rainwater, treat human, agricultural, and industrial waste effectively, and regulate how much water can be drawn out of the ground.

Water – Solvency – China

Chinese water management is obsessed with displays of strength—focus on building dams rather than accurate analysis kills biodiversity, causes poverty and loses water.
CNN 10 (http://articles.cnn.com/2010-09-13/world/china.water.crisis_1_water-shortages-water-supplies-drinking-water?_s=PM:WORLD, accessed 7/7/11) CJQ

Management of China’s water resources has been extremely inefficient, leading to extensive water loss. Water is highly subsidized by the central government, making it practically free for users thereby leaving no incentive to save water. The general attitude towards water use is to use as much as possible as fast as possible. China’s irrigation system, choice of water intensive crops, obsession with dams, and overexploitation of surface and groundwater resources have all contributed to the highly inefficient use and management of water resources. The irrigation system is “less than 50% efficient which can mean that 8.5 % of the world’s water is being wasted.”[32] Much of the water in open channel irrigation systems leaks back into the ground before it can be utilized, although unfortunately not fast enough to replenish groundwater resources. According to China’s Ministry of Construction, inefficient irrigation has led to a loss of 400 million cubic meters of water every year.[33] In addition to an inefficient irrigation system, many crops that China grows are impractically water-intensive, such as wheat and rice. Many will have to leave grain production altogether, or at least stop planting of rice, wheat and other water-intensive crops. For decades farmers and politicians have ignored all warnings and done practically nothing to fix the system. The government also relies on dams to manage the water resources and to reach its stated goal of becoming the largest producer of hydroelectric power in the world.[34] Not only are many of these dams poorly constructed, but there has been a move away from the use of large dams after the 2000 World Commission on Dams issued a critical report. The report announced that many “large dam projects had fallen far short of their physical and economic targets, resulting in huge losses of forest lands, wildlife habitat, and aquatic biodiversity. All existing dams should be reviewed and no more should be built without the agreement of the people likely to be affected by them.”[35] Dams destroy fish runs, flood agriculture lands, displace local communities, dry up and pollute downstream wetlands, and are extremely inefficient because significant amounts of water are lost due to evaporation. In spite of this report and the resulting shift by many developed countries away from dams, China now openly boasts of owning over half of the world’s dams.[36] China is also overexploiting both its surface water and groundwater resources significantly faster than they are being replenished by rain. According to the Ministry of Water Resources, the utilization rate of water resources is around 60% for a number of rivers, including the Huai, Liao, and Yellow, and as high as 90% for the Hai River. These numbers are all notably above international standards, which are set with the intention of conserving water, of 30-40%.[37] As rivers become increasingly polluted and run dry and lakes disappear with escalating pace, China will be forced to rely even more heavily on its underground aquifers, unfortunately using up today what should be tomorrow’s water.Although increasing the efficiency of water use will not solve the underlying problem of water scarcity in China, it will buy them considerable time to tackle the bigger aspects of this issue.