Causes of water stress at Higher Level: This statement is Higher Level only. You compare why water stress is rising in two different kinds of society: an emerging economy and a low-income country.
Practise this as you read
- List the factors that raise water stress.
- Compare China and Yemen.
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Same problem, different causes: Water stress is rising in rich and poor countries alike, but for different reasons. A society's wealth and stage of development decide which causes matter most.
What can increase water stress
- More demand from a growing population: homes, farms and industry.
- Richer lifestyles: more showers, gardens, and meat-rich diets that need more water.
- Intensive farming: more irrigation, pumping more than is refilled (over-abstraction).
- Thirsty crops grown in dry places, such as cotton or rice.
- Water moved out of the basin by canals or pipelines, or taken upstream by other countries.
- Pollution of rivers and aquifers, and deforestation of the catchment.
- Drought or less rain than before, from climate change or El Nino.
It must be a change: 'Low rainfall' or 'a dry season' alone does not explain an INCREASE in water stress: that is just the normal climate. Say what has changed: less rain than before, a longer drought, more demand.
Real example: from the 1960s, the two rivers feeding the Aral Sea were diverted to water cotton farms in the desert. By 2007 the sea was about a tenth of its former size, and the water left behind was salty and polluted with farm chemicals.
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In an emerging economy, the main driver is the push to industrialize.
Emerging economy: industrialization
- Industrialization: factories, mines and power stations need water for cooling and processing.
- Cities grow as people move from farms to factory jobs, so demand rises fast.
- Irrigation expands to feed the cities.
- Pollution from industry spoils water that is there, adding to stress.
- The economy can pay for fixes: rules, treatment plants, huge water transfers.
Real example: China's Yellow River runs through its northern industrial and farming heartland. As cities, factories and farms upstream took more and more of its water, in 1997 no water reached the sea on 226 days, and the river was dry for up to 704 km from its mouth. From 1999 a river authority set limits on how much each province could take, and the river has kept flowing since.
In a low-income country, the main driver is often population pressure, with too little money to store, pipe or clean water.
Low-income country: over-abstraction
- Population pressure: a fast-growing population needs more water every year.
- Over-abstraction: wells pump groundwater far faster than rain refills it.
- Most water goes to irrigation, much of it for qat.
- Little money for pipes, storage or treatment, so the cheapest source is pumped dry.
- Conflict since 2015 has damaged pumps, pipes and fuel supplies.
Remember it as: Rich: factories drink it. Poor: wells drain it.
Real example: Yemen has about 200 cubic metres of water per person per year or less, far below 1,700. Around the capital, Sana'a, wells pump about five times as much water as rain puts back, and the water table falls by about 6 metres a year. The city's population grows by over 4% a year.
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Put the two side by side. The same words, 'rising demand', mean different things in each.
| China (emerging economy) | Yemen (low-income country) | |
|---|---|---|
| Main driver | Industrialization and city growth | Population pressure |
| Biggest user | Industry, cities and irrigation | Irrigation, much of it for qat |
| How water is lost | Over-use and pollution | Over-abstraction of groundwater |
| Ability to respond | Can pay for rules and transfers | Little money; conflict since 2015 |
Show the perspective: Name the context (emerging economy, low-income country) and link each cause to it: why does THIS society's situation make this cause important?
How this comes up: Paper 2: identify factors that may increase water stress in an area [3]; Section B: outline or explain causes in two contexts, or discuss how far causes depend on development [9].
China's Yellow River failed to reach the sea on 226 days in 1997, while around Sana'a in Yemen the water table falls by about 6 metres a year.
Outline how the causes of increasing water stress can differ between an emerging economy and a low-income country.
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