Prometheus 6

Unnatural Disaster
Record floods and drought are devastating South Asia, but man is as much to blame as nature
BY ALEX PERRY | PATNA

…Droughts and floods account for more than half of the world's total deaths from disasters, according to the United Nations. But unlike many other catastrophes, most water crises are man-made. Nature may bring the occasional monsoon downpour or dry spell, but environmentalists agree that global warming, dams, deforestation and slash-and-burn farming exponentially exacerbate these seasonal weather patterns. Inept and corrupt water management also contributes to the problem, allowing plentiful water to run off to the seas or leaving it to lie in floods on the land, while a few hours away, crops wither in parched fields. South Asia's water woes are hardly unique. China faces simultaneous floods and droughts every year, as devastating surges down the Yangtze River cause hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, while deforestation turns farmland north of Beijing into desert. In Uzbekistan, the Soviets created one of the world's worst environmental disasters by using the Amu Darya to irrigate massive cotton farms, shrinking the Aral Sea by half and, as pesticide run-off evaporated and poisoned the air, creating a cancer cluster the size of England. Meanwhile, China's plans to build a series of dams across the upper reaches of the Mekong are expected to halve water flow on the river that provides employment, transport and income to 65 million Southeast Asians. These kinds of water controversies could spark ugly international disputes. Security experts have warned of flash points along the Nile, the Jordan, the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Mekong. As long ago as 1995, the then World Bank vice president Ismael Serageldin predicted: "If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water."