The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| A future of thirst: Water crisis lies on the horizon Posted: 12 May 2014 09:31 PM PDT Savour it. Sip by sip. Vital and appreciated as that water is, it will be even more precious to those who will follow you. By the end of this century, billions are likely to gripped by water stress and the stuff of life could be an unseen driver of conflict. So say hydrologists who forecast that on present trends, freshwater faces a double crunch – from a population explosion, which will drive up demand for food and energy, and the impact of climate change. "Approximately 80% of the world's population already suffers serious threats to its water security, as measured by indicators including water availability, water demand and pollution," the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in a landmark report in March. "Climate change can alter the availability of water and therefore threaten water security." Already today, around 768 million people do not have access to a safe, reliable source of water and 2.5 billion do not have decent sanitation. Around a fifth of the world's aquifers are depleted. Jump forward in your imagination to mid-century, when the world's population of about 7.2 billion is expected to swell to around 9.6 billion. By then, global demand for water is likely to increase by a whopping 55%, according to the United Nations' newly published World Water Development Report. More than 40% of the planet's population will be living in areas of "severe" water stress, many of them in the broad swathe of land that runs along north Africa, the Middle East and western South Asia. Yet these scenarios do not take into account changes in rainfall or snowfall or glacier shrinkage caused by global warming. As a very general rule, wet countries will get wetter and dry countries will get drier, accentuating risk of flood or drought, climate scientists warn. But whether people will heed their alarm call is a good question. "When seismologists talk about an area at risk from an earthquake, people generally accept what they say and refrain from building their home there," says French climatologist Herve Le Treut. "But when it comes to drought or flood, people tend to pay less attention when the warning comes from meteorologists." Water squabbles in the hot, arid sub-tropics have a long history. In recent years, the Tigris, Euphrates and Nile have all been the grounds for verbal sparring over who has the right to build dams, withhold or extract "blue gold" to the possible detriment of people downstream. "There will clearly be less water available in sub-tropical countries, both as surface water and aquifer water, and this will sharpen competition for water resources," says Blanca Jimenez-Cisneros, who headed the chapter on water for the big IPCC report. Citing a 2012 assessment by US intelligence agencies, the US State Department says: "Water is not just a human health issue, not just an economic development or environmental issue, but a peace and security issue." Rows over water between nations tend to be resolved without bloodshed, often using international fora, says Richard Connor, who headed the UN water report. However, "you can talk about conflict in which water is the root cause, albeit usually hidden," he told AFP. "It can lead to fluctuations in energy and food prices, which can in turn lead to civil unrest. In such cases, the 'conflict' may be over energy or food prices, but these are themselves related to water availability and allocation." Failing a slowdown in population growth or a swift solution to global warming, the main answers for addressing the water crunch lie in efficiency. In some countries of the Middle East, between 15 and 60% of water disappears through leaks or evaporation even before the consumer turns the tap. Building desalination plants on coasts in dry regions may sound tempting, "but their water can cost up to 30 times more than ordinary water", notes Jimenez-Cisneros. Efficiency options include smarter irrigation, crops that are less thirsty or drought-resilient, power stations that do not extract vast amounts of water for cooling, and consumer participation, such as flushing toilets with "grey" water, meaning used bath or shower water. Above all, the message will be: don't waste even a single drop. – AFP, May 13, 2014. |
| Two WW2 soldiers – one French, one German – united in will to remember Posted: 12 May 2014 06:55 PM PDT Today, 91-year-old Gautier and his friend Johannes Boerner, 88, are two of the dwindling number of veterans of the Allied D-Day landings and the ensuing nearly three-month battle of attrition that began to push German forces back from the western front of Nazi-occupied Europe. Time and understanding have forged a bond between the former French elite commando and the German parachutist from Leipzig, who as neighbours in the Normandy town of Ouistreham celebrated Christmas together in 2012, and will both attend ceremonies next month marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day. "We're like brothers now, it's just great for both of us," said Boerner, who took French citizenship in 1956 after marrying a local Norman woman. It is one of the vagaries of history that both men live today in the same town where Gautier landed on D-Day, Tommy gun in hand and a year of training under his belt, one of Commander Philippe Kieffer's 177 French soldiers who battled the machine gun fire, landmines and barbed wire of Sword Beach as part of the No. 4 British Commando unit. Besides the unforgettable sight of the armada of boats filling the sea, Gautier recalls rechecking his ammunition cartridge and his grenade just before landing, and how the photo of his wife Dorothea in his pocket got "a little wet". "It was OK, though, I fixed it later," he said. "I still have it." Shells from German bunkers rained down on Gautier and his commandos even before they reached land, but months of training and a surge of adrenaline outweighed their fear of the "Boches", the derogatory term used by the French for their enemy. "Commander Kieffer had told us what would happen to us: 'It's possible that not even 10 of us will come out alive'." The surprise amphibious attack – along with those by US, Canadian and British forces on the now-legendary beaches of Utah, Omaha, Gold and Juno – roused Boerner from his sleep far away in Brittany, setting him and the rest of the elite 2nd Fallschirmjaeger (parachute) unit on a 220-mile march to Normandy to shore up German defences and try to break the Allied bridgehead. "The night of the 6th of June we were woken up with an alarm – 'The Allied troops are landing in Normandy!'," Boerner said. "We left for Saint-Lo, but we went on foot – 350km." Gautier and Boerner were never in the same place at the same time in Normandy, but they retain kindred memories – the impenetrable hedgerows that snared tanks and hid snipers, hearing the voice of the enemy just metres away, the mosquitoes that infested the flooded valleys, the small green apples that were too sour to eat, and the smell of human corpses rotting in the heat. Forced to evacuate Saint-Lo on July 17 with the approach of the Americans, Boerner and his German unit began a series of retreats to the interior, eventually finding themselves trapped in the "Cauldron", the Battle of the Falaise Pocket, encircled by Allied forces. "The approach to Falaise was horrendous. They were all around us with their tanks, especially their planes, they just didn't let up," said Boerner. "There were bodies everywhere... there were 10,000 dead on the approach to Falaise." Hungry, lice-ridden and demoralised, Boerner and his comrades from dispersed German units rifled the pockets of dead soldiers for cigarettes or food. "We had nothing left. Our uniforms were dirty, in tatters... How were we going to get out of this?" On August 21, after days of aerial and artillery bombardment, and unable to escape eastward through a narrow gap the Germans dubbed "the corridor of death", Boerner was taken prisoner by the Canadians. He was one of the lucky ones – of Boerner's original company of 120 men, only nine survived. "Falaise was one of the greatest killing grounds of the war," General Dwight Eisenhower later wrote in his memoirs. "It was literally possible to walk for hundreds of yards at a time, stepping on nothing but dead and decaying flesh." For Boerner, prisoner of war camps and forced farm labour were his life until 1947. The Leipzig of his youth now in ruins and under Soviet control, Boerner decided that his new chapter would find him right where he already was – in Normandy. Gautier was shipped back to Britain after three months of fighting in Normandy, one of only 25 French commandos to escape death or wounding in the Battle of Normandy. Deployments in Britain, France and even Cameroon preceded a permanent move home to France for a career as a claims adjuster. After retirement, he moved to Ouistreham, and met Boerner at the latter's restaurant in the town, the "Chateaubriand". A book about the two men, "Ennemis et frères" (Enemies and Brothers) by Jean-Charles Stasi, was published in 2010. Boerner, his living room decorated with a cuckoo clock and beer steins, still has a full head of hair and the same gentle look that he had in his eye when he was photographed in his Luftwaffe uniform at the start of the war. "I hope we never see another war like this because it's just not possible... The young men, the young men on the front there, shooting machine guns, it's just not possible. Freedom and peace, that's all I can tell you." Gautier thinks about the flowers that he'll be laying on his fallen comrades' graves next month. "For the young people – they need to know all about this," he said. "It cannot happen again. We have to be vigilant." – Reuters, May 13, 2014. |
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