The loss of land and water to industry and urbanisation

Introduction

If setting up plantations is one means of obtaining the foreign exchange deemed necessary for economic development, providing cheap electricity in order to attract foreign investment in local energy-intensive industries (such as aluminium smelting) is another.

As we have seen, dams provide extremely cheap electricity - so long, of course, as one does not translate into economic terms (in so far as this is possible) the social and ecological problems they must give rise to. Small wonder, then, that 'hydro-industrialisation' has become something of a buzz word amongst those who would promote the building of large dams - the assumption being that by using hydropower to industrialise, Third World countries will increase local standards of living and thus (in theory) eliminate the poverty which is seen as the primary cause of hunger, malnutrition and disease.

Space does not permit us to analyse that assumption in the detail we would need to refute it - to do so would require a book in itself. We have therefore chosen to limit ourselves to a discussion of one consequence of hydro-industrialisation which is particularly relevant to our concerns: namely, the inevitable competition that arises between industry and agriculture for both land and water.

By providing electricity for industrial development, one cannot avoid reducing the amount of land available for feeding people: like it or not, agricultural land will of necessity be lost to housing estates, factories, shopping centres, office blocks, roads, motorways and the rest of the physical infrastructure of an industrial society. So too, industrial development will inevitably degrade (for reasons that we shall consider in Chapter 15) a further amount of land in the areas surrounding industrial centres. The net result is a reduction in the amount of land available for growing food - and food, not industrial goods, is the commodity most needed by the rural poor of the Third World.

It is worth considering, then, how far that process of land loss has gone in a few selected countries - beginning first with those in which it is farthest advanced and proceeding to those developing countries where its effects are now beginning to make themselves felt. This loss of land is in addition to that lost to erosion and desertification. According to UNEP's 1977 Report on the State of the Environment, it is possible that between the years 1975 and 2000 there will be a worldwide net loss of some 400 million hectares of cultivated land to erosion.

The loss of land to urbanisation and industrialisation in the USA

Increasing amounts of agricultural land are being lost in the United States of America to urban and industrial encroachment. The problem is particularly serious in some Eastern states where farmland is disappearing at phenomenal rates: indeed if current trends continue, then, by the year 2000, New Hampshire alone will have lost essentially all its prime farmland to development. [1]

Although that loss of farmland might not seem an immediate problem, it poses a long-term threat for future generations. As Carrying Capacity, a Washington-based environmental group, points out, "if lack of energy for transporting food necessitates a return to regionalised food production, highly urbanised areas may find themselves in serious trouble." [2]

Just how much land is being lost to urbanisation in the US is hard to quantify. David Pimentel of Cornell University puts the loss at 2.5 million acres every year. [3] Drs. Brewer and Boxley put the annual figure at 2.9 million acres: of that total, "about 700,000 acres are cropland, 2.2 million acres are pasture, range and woodland and other lands that also have high and medium potential for conversion to cropland." [4]

In 1981, Dr. Neil Sampson, President of the Soil Conservation Society of America, puts the 'cropland resource pool' of the United States at 540 million acres. Of that total, 413 million acres were used for producing crops and 127 million acres were available for conversion to cropland. At the then current rates of conversion to other uses, Sampson estimated that the 'pool' would be reduced to 437 million acres by the year 2000 and to 302 million acres by the year 2030. [5] Less pessimistic projections have been made, but have assumed action to preserve croplands at local, state and national levels. Unfortunately, there is no sign so far of such action being taken.

As Sampson argues,

"Shrinkage at such rates would, of course, result in a serious problem in view of the estimates by the US Department of Agriculture as to the cropland needs in the future."

He went on to warn:

"The courses we are on today, in terms of energy use, land use, land management, and water use, are simply untenable in the future. And the future is not very far away." [6]

Loss of land to urbanisation in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, the situation is very similar to that in the US - although perhaps more serious in view of the much more limited amount of agricultural land available per head of population.

As far back as the 1930s, the alarming rate at which valuable agricultural land was being lost to urbanisation was already a cause for concern. As a result, a committee (under the chairmanship of the famous geographer, Sir Dudley Stamp) was set up to study the problem and propose measures for solving it. The committee's report, The First Land Utilisation Survey, was published in 1933. [7] The report was so alarming that the Government decided to set up a special department with the explicit brief of reversing the trends which the Stamp Committee described.

Whatever else that new department achieved, it clearly failed to stem the loss of agricultural land to urbanisation. Indeed, in 1976, the Second Land Utilisation Survey (under the chairmanship of Dr. Alice Coleman) reported that, since 1933, England and Wales had lost 1,250,000 acres of farmland - that is, 30,000 acres a year - to urbanisation. More serious still, Coleman warned that the rate of farmland loss was increasing and "may accelerate still more with the emphasis on greenfield sites for acquisition under the Community Land Act." [8]

In fact, as Alice Coleman points out, the damage done by urban sprawl and industrialisation is much worse than official government figures suggest. During the Second World War, the amount of land under cultivation actually increased. Indeed, it was not until 1960 that the total cultivated area dropped back below its 1939 level. The net loss of land referred to in the Second Land Utilisation Survey is thus the result of the industrialisation which has taken place from 1960 onwards: in effect, the real rate at which farmland is being lost is 60,000 acres - not 30,000 acres - a year.

Even taking that factor into account, the official figures still do not give an accurate picture of the real loss of productive agricultural land in Great Britain. If, for instance, an acre of good grade land is lost whilst an acre of poor grade land is converted to agricultural use, then the loss and the gain are taken to cancel themselves out. The true amount of productive land which has been lost is therefore much higher than the official figures suggest.

Moreover, because the figures only reflect the quantitative loss of land in terms of acres, they give no indication of the quality of the land which has been lost. The Kyloe Hills in Northumberland provide a case in point, reports the Second Survey.

"Between 1933 and 1972 the area classified as 'farmscape' went up from 67.7 to 75.5 percent, and that classified as 'marginal fringe' from 11.7 to 13.1 percent, whilst that classified as 'wildscape' fell, during the same period, from 20.6 to 10.2 percent."

The figures do not reveal, for instance, that the bulk of the land which has been lost since the war lies in the fertile valleys of Southern England and the Midlands, whilst the land which has been gained is largely low quality scrubland in the Uplands. Fourth or fifth grade land has thus replaced high quality land - a serious qualitative loss which is masked by the official figures.

Finally, the official figures gloss over the amount of land which has been lost to 'fragmentation'. Anarchic patterns of urban growth have rendered unproductive much land which has not actually been paved over - largely by exposing it to trespassers and to damage by vandals. (We learn, for example, of boys from a housing estate at New Addington climbing into an adjacent field and cutting off the tails of all the cows grazing there.)

According to Alice Coleman, at least 22 percent of agricultural land in England and Wales is now affected by such fragmentation. [9] The result is not only a reduction in yields but also the abandonment of otherwise good agricultural land in and around towns and cities. Still more land is lost in such areas due to farmers 'reclassifying' their holdings in order to get them approved as development sites - a move which, if successful, can earn a farmer more in a single transaction than he could ever have hoped to earn in a lifetime of farming.

The extent to which urban development impinges on agricultural land is well illustrated by Alice Coleman's own study of the pattern of land-use in some 850 square miles of the Thames Estuary. Thus she tells us that:

"for every unit of land used for providing homes and shops, six have been used for factories, sixteen for roads, fifteen have been turned into 'tended space' (i.e. lawns, gardens and play areas) and nine have become derelict, whilst sixty-one have been turned into wasteland."

Such wasteful patterns of land-use are usually attributed to bureaucratic inefficiency. In reality, however, they also reflect the intense pressures applied on local councils by developers and government agencies to obtain what they regard as prime sites for their particular development projects - regardless of how unsuitable these sites might be in the context of a sensible policy for preserving as much agricultural land as possible for feeding people.

According to Alice Coleman, if government and local councils had not been subjected to such pressure, much of the building in the area she studied would have been carried out on pre-existing wasteland - and the loss of agricultural land would thus have been relatively small.

On the basis of past experience, however, one can predict that such pressures will be intense in an industrial society - whether that society is run on capitalist or communist lines. The apparently avoidable loss of land is not, therefore, in reality avoidable: indeed, it should be regarded as part of the normal cost of economic development.

Indeed, land is now being lost at such a rapid rate in Britain that, on current trends, the last acre of agricultural land in England and Wales will have been either cemented over or transformed into 'tended space', derelict land or wasteland by the year 2157. [10] Since - well before then - the world's cereal producers (and, in particular, Canada and the USA) are unlikely to be in a position to export food, it is very difficult to see where the English and the Welsh will get their food from.

Loss of land to industrialisation and urbanisation in Japan

Despite having less arable land than the United Kingdom and almost twice as many people to feed, Japan sacrificed an average of 50,000 hectares (120,000 acres) a year to urbanisation and industrialisation between the years 1968 to 1974 - a rate of land loss almost twice as high as in Britain. [11] How long that shrinkage of Japan's agricultural base can continue before her food producing capacity is reduced to zero is hard to tell - but it cannot be for many decades more.

The failure to take land losses into account

One cannot, of course, blame all the loss of fertile land in the UK, the USA or Japan to the building of large dams per se . After all, much of the industrial and urban development which has been responsible for that loss of land has been powered by thermal and nuclear energy. The same is not true, however, for many other countries - and, in particular, for the majority of Third World countries where the electricity used to power development is largely provided by hydro-electric schemes .

In such countries, the agricultural benefits to be derived from water development projects - and in particular the increased yields due to irrigation - should be weighed against the reduction of food supplies as a result of the loss of agricultural land to the development spawned by hydro-industrialisation.

Unfortunately, such 'land loss budgetting' has never been carried out. If it had been, it would have undoubtedly revealed that the net gain in food production due to water development projects is often very slim indeed - and, in some cases, negative. Let us consider the case of the Aswan Dam in Egypt.

The Aswan Dam and the loss of agricultural land in Egypt

Noting how serious the loss of agricultural land to urbanisation has been in Egypt over the last few decades, Asit Biswas writes:

"The magnitude of the problem can best be realised by considering the fact that total irrigated land has virtually remained the same in Egypt during the last two decades, in spite of the thousands of hectares of new irrigated land developed due to the building of the Aswan Dam. In other words, Egypt has continued to lose good arable land to urbanisation as fast as she has brought new land under irrigation, at tremendous investment costs." [12]

Dr. Khalil El Mancey also notes the widespread loss of land to urbanisation. He tells us that the Aswan Dam has made it possible to convert about 293,000 hectares of previously basin-irrigated land to perennial irrigation, permitting three crops a year instead of one. In addition, 526,000 hectares of desert have been reclaimed and are now under perennial irrigation. Unfortunately, however, "about an equal amount of land has been lost to urban sprawl during the same period. [13] " Presumably, by "equal amount of land" he refers to the 526,000 hectares only.

Mohammed Kassas comes to a similar conclusion - although his figures are different. He writes:

"Nationwide programmes to reclaim new land (river-control schemes, the irrigation of desert lands, etc.) brought a total area of 372,000 hectares under cultivation during 1955-1975 but the loss of prime croplands of the fertile Nile Valley and delta due to urban expansion was 400,000 hectares." [14]

In fact, the loss of land to industry and urban sprawl in Egypt is very much worse than suggested by either Biswas, El Mancey or Kassas. One reason is that the official figures for land losses (like the official figures in the UK) only provide a quantitative comparison between the amount of land gained and the amount lost. No account is taken of the quality of the land involved.

Thus, the greater part of the 526,000 acres which have been reclaimed from the desert is of extremely poor quality - so much so that it cannot conceivably compensate for the high quality land which has been lost in the Nile Valley where most of the urbanisation in Egypt has taken place. Given that the overt reason for building the Aswan Dam was to relieve Egypt's problem of chronic malnutrition, that loss of good quality land to urban and industrial sprawl is particularly ironic: indeed, without the power provided by the High Dam, it would never have occurred.

The issue of land losses has been explored in greatest detail by John Waterbury. The picture he paints is not a reassuring one. To begin with, he points out, the amount of land effectively reclaimed has been grossly exaggerated by the Government. For some years after the building of the Aswan Dam, we were told that 1.2 million feddans had been reclaimed. Later, in 1972, when reclamation efforts came to a halt, it was admitted that a gross area of only 912,000 feddans had been reclaimed of which only 770,000 feddans represented a net "cultivable surface". [15]

Even those figures are misleading, however, since they include land reclaimed before the High Dam came into operation. In addition, 80,000 feddans in the New Valley were reclaimed using groundwater for irrigation rather than water from Lake Nasser. Moreover, only 600,000 feddans had actually been brought into production by 1972, and of that area only 345,000 feddans "had reached marginal levels of production."

The poor record of reclaiming land in Egypt is usually attributed to the incompetence of the state bureaucracy. Waterbury, however, considers that the determinant factor must be the low quality of the soil in the areas 'reclaimed'. No serious soil survey of the land to be reclaimed was undertaken prior to the initiation of reclamation work. Indeed, it was only in 1964 that a joint FAO-Egyptian survey analysed the soils of some 14 million feddans: by that time, Egypt had already begun reclaiming 600,000 feddans. [16]

The soils surveyed were classed in six different categories, ranging from excellent (I) to poor (IV) to uncultivable (VI). Significantly, much of Egypt's 'old lands' (where most of the urban development has occurred) was classified in categories 2 and 3. The 'new lands' surveyed, on the other hand were classified as follows:

More recently, a USAID Mission notes:

"Of the 500,000 (reclaimed) feddans now producing crops, about 70 percent are Class IV, 25 percent Class III and the remaining 5 percent are Class II. Soil Classes III and IV have severe limitations for crop production, particularly Class IV which requires special soil treatment to obtain moderate yields at relatively high cost."

Because of the low quality of the 'new lands', efforts to reclaim them have not only taken longer than expected but have also required very much more water than anticipated - thus adding considerably to costs. Moreover, much of the land has (predictably) fallen victim to salinisation: as a result, reports Waterbury,

"while old lands are going out of cultivation at the rate of at least 20,000 feddans a year, owing to urban and village sprawl, large chunks of the new lands have returned to a state of nature - 160,000 feddans by one observer's estimate." [17]

The implications for further large-scale economic development in Egypt are clear.

Loss of water to industrial and domestic uses: The United States experience

Quite apart from paving over agricultural land, the urbanisation and industrialisation powered by the hydro-electricity a dam provides also leads to a loss of water. Water requirements for different industries are given in Table 9. As will be seen, they vary considerably from one manufacture to the next, but are generally very high.

Although water conservation and the development of recycling technology is likely to bring industrial water use in the US down to as little as 36 percent of total fresh water consumption, that saving could well be obliterated by increased demand for domestic water. Indeed, it is now estimated that the average US family of four consumes some 126,000 gallons a year (or 340 gallons a day). In the US as a whole, domestic and municipal water consumption now eats up 8.5 percent of total freshwater supplies - and that figure is expected to rise to 12.1 percent by the year 2000.

It would thus seem that in 1975 as much water was used in America to satisfy the requirements of industry and the domestic consumer as was required for agricultural purposes - 52 percent of fresh water supplies going for industrial and domestic consumption as against 47.5 percent for agriculture. By 2000, the comparable figures are expected to be 48.1 percent as against 51 percent. [18]

In areas of high rainfall, such high rates of water consumption for industrial and domestic purposes may well be tolerable. In hot areas where rainfall is low and evaporation rates are high, however, they can prove disastrous - particularly when, as the Southwestern US, water is already proving a limiting factor on food production.

• In Pinal County, Arizona, for example, 100,000 acres of agricultural land have recently been taken out of production due to a lack of irrigation water. [19]
• So too, land is steadily being withdrawn from cultivation in the Texas Panhandle as groundwater levels sink lower and lower and the cost of pumping water from ever deeper wells becomes correspondingly more expensive.
• In Kansas, the situation is particularly severe: indeed, on current trends, 75 percent of existing irrigated cropland will have been taken out of production due to lack of water by 2025. [20]

Under such conditions, the water abstracted to satisfy industrial and domestic requirements can only result in a corresponding decrease in agricultural production. Unfortunately, when such competition occurs, water tends to go to the highest bidder. Invariably, industry wins out for it can afford to pay incomparably higher prices for water than agriculture. Indeed, water charges represent from 0.005 to 2.58 percent - with the average being 1 percent - of total manufacturing costs for the five most water-intensive industries (food and kindred products, pulp and paper, chemicals, petroleum, coal products and primary metals). [21]

Thus is it not really surprising that a Californian utility should recently have paid $1,750 per acre-foot for water in Utah where local farmers were only paying $25 per acre-foot. As Stokes notes,

"Allocating a scarce resource such as water solely through the market-place may work against society's broader interests by encouraging some farmers to sell all their water and stop producing food."

Apparently, some farmers have already made that choice. Indeed, in certain parts of Arizona, the lack of water is so acute that entrepreneurs wishing to set up new mining enterprises have actually bought up farms and then closed them down in order to have access to their water supply.

That trade-off between development and food production may make short-term sense in a country like the United States which still has a considerable food surplus; it is clearly nonsensical, however, in the countries of the Third World where every scrap of food is needed to feed their massive and generally malnourished populations. In such countries, industrialisation can only be achieved at the expense of decreased agricultural production. It is a trade-off which cannot be avoided. It is also a trade-off which - despite the denials of Third World governments and development agencies alike - can only result in the death of many more people through starvation.

By way of example, let us look again at the Egyptian experience.

Table 9: Water requirements for selected industries (USA)

From: Asit K. Biswas et al (eds), Water Management for Arid Lands in Developing Countries, Pergamon, 1980, p18

Egypt: water for food or water for industry?

Despite Egypt's poor economic performance over the last few years, the Egyptian government foresees the economy booming in the decades to come. To that end, there are ambitious plans afoot both to expand industry (in particular, petrochemicals, iron and steel production, aluminium smelting and fertiliser production) and to set up various large-scale agro-industrial projects such as sugar refineries and canning plants.

The government concedes that those development schemes will increase considerably the demand for electricity. According to 1979 estimates, for instance, industry will require 85 billion KWh by the year 2000 - 17 times the amount consumed in 1973. To provide that power, the government announced plans in 1979 to build a number of nuclear power stations.

In addition, a 100 km canal is to be built from the Mediterranean to the Qatarra Depression - the plan being to generate 50 billion KWh (five times the output of the Aswan High Dam) as the water flows through a series of turbines on its way down the canal. The Qatarra Depression itself will be transformed into a vast salt lake with an area of 19,500 square kilometres. [23]

Despite those plans for industrial expansion, the Egyptian government insists that the rate of industrial water consumption will remain constant at 1 billion cubic metres (m3) a year until the end of the century - a figure which also includes domestic water consumption. [24] Quite how the government justifies that figure is hard to fathom. If its development plans materialise, then, as Waterbury points out, industrial water consumption is likely to be "far in excess of anything the Ministry of Irrigation is willing to contemplate." [44]

Indeed, Waterbury himself estimates that by 1990 industry alone will consume 3 billion m3 : if he is right, then 6.5 billion m3 are likely to be needed by the same date in order to cover all Egypt's non-agricultural water needs. [25] Professor El Kinawy estimates that 4.5 billion cubic metres will be needed to cover non-agricultural water needs by the year 2000. USAID's figures of 4 billion cubic metres is lower still.

So too, domestic water consumption is almost certain to rise dramatically as Egypt's urban elite (those who will be the first to benefit from any economic growth which occurs) begin to install the material trappings of affluence - the dishwashers, washing machines, swimming pools and other water-intensive symbols of economic success.

Nonetheless, the Egyptian Ministry of Irrigation remains adamant that domestic water consumption will remain constant until the end of the century at an unspecified percentage of the 1 billion m3 which the government estimates to be the joint requirement for both domestic and industrial use. It is surely difficult to find a more blatant example of wishful thinking.

That same element of wishful thinking is evident in other official assumptions as to Egypt's future water budget. Thus, the government - anxious to allay fears of a trade-off between industry and agriculture - insists that there will be sufficient water available to satisfy the needs of both sectors of the economy. In fact, it claims, there will be enough water to enable a further 4,625,000 feddans to be reclaimed and irrigated by the end of the century. [26] That claim, however, is based on a number of shaky assumptions as to the likely availability of water:

Firstly, the government takes for granted the 'official credo' that the amount of water released at Aswan is 55 billion cubic metres. That figure rests on the questionable premise that water losses to evaporation and seepage at Lake Nasser are as low as 11 billion m3. Waterbury, however, considers that the true rate of water loss is closer to 15 billion m3. [27]

The government's figures are based on the further assumption that an extra 7 billion m3 will be made available by various minor water development projects in Upper Egypt, the Sudan and Ethiopia. Those schemes include seasonal storage dams on the Siwi, Yei and Busseri Rivers: and embankment, channelling and diversion projects on the Yei, Naam, Jel, Jelimar, Jur, Jeti, Pongo, Jol and Hehr-el Arab.

It is also assumed that 4 billion m3 will be provided by the massive water storage scheme being planned on the Upper Baro River in Ethiopia. [28] Those water projects - together with the widening of the Jonglei Canal in order to double its discharge - are expected to increase the water yield at Aswan by 18 billion m3, with half of that yield being made available (in theory at least) by the end of the century. [29]

But will the various schemes be built in time to stave off a water shortage in Egypt? Where will the money come from to pay for the projects? And, even if they are, will they provide enough water for Egypt's growing needs? All those questions are fraught with uncertainties. Indeed, Waterbury argues that, of all the proposed projects, only the Jonglei Canal Scheme is likely to be built by the turn of the century.

Thirdly, the government estimates that 12 billion m3 of drainage water can be recovered for agricultural use, as against the 2.5 billion m3 recovered at present. Re-using drainage water, however, poses considerable problems - not least because it is highly saline and must therefore be diluted with fresh water before being applied again on the land. Waterbury considers that the total amount of water which can be recovered through improved drainage schemes will not exceed 4-6 billion m3 - that is, half (and possibly a third) of the figure projected by the government. [30]

Fourthly, the government's calculations assume that the lining and covering of irrigation canals will reduce seepage and evaporation losses by 3.5 billion m3 - from 11.2 billion m3 to an estimated 7.7 billion m3 . Waterbury, however, doubts that such a reduction will be achieved, largely because of the vast expense involved in lining and covering canals. Moreover, if the area under irrigation is expanded (as the government intends) then the losses due to seepage and evaporation are likely to increase still further.

On the demand side, too, the government's figures are questionable. The government foresees having 11.3 million feddans under cultivation by the end of the century, with 39.9 billion m3 of water being required for irrigation. In fact, the water requirements for irrigating 11.3 million feddans are likely to be far higher than the government forecasts.

One reason, according to Dr. I. Z. Kinawy, is that the extent of 'on farm wastage' (and thus the amount of water required per feddan) has been generally underestimated. Waterbury agrees: indeed, he argues that if the government's plans to irrigate 11,333,172 feddans come to fruition, then (on the basis of El Kinawy's figures for 'on farm wastage') the total water requirements for Egypt's agricultural sector could be 43.3 billion m3 - as against the 39.9 billion m3 projected by the government. [31]

In fact, if the poor record of past reclamation schemes is anything to go by, it would seem probable that the amount of land under cultivation at the end of the century will be far lower than the government plans. Water needs for agriculture are thus likely to be lower than predicted. USAID, for example, considers that no more than 6.2 million feddans will be under cultivation and that water requirements will not exceed 26 billion m3 . El Kinawy sees 10,837,000 feddans under cultivation.

It should also be noted that the type of crops which the government intends to cultivate (cotton, for example) consume far more water than traditional subsistence crops.

The Egyptian government's 'water budget' for the next two decades would thus seem wildly optimistic. Put bluntly, Egypt is unlikely to have enough water to pursue its dual programme of industrial and agricultural expansion. At the very least, argues Waterbury, the country will be faced with a 'water deficit' of 7.7 billion m3 by 1990. At worst - and Waterbury considers this a more realistic possibility - that deficit is likely to be as high as 14.1 billion m3, a figure that takes into account both domestic and industrial consumption. [38]

Clearly, the Egyptian government is trying to have its cake and eat it. It is surely only a question of time before the government is brought rudely down to earth by growing water shortages. As Waterbury puts it:

"Egypt cannot have it all ways. Cities in the desert, population transfers, millions of new cultivated acres, more intense use of old acres, heavy industrialisation, self-sufficiency in basic foodstuffs: all bear water prices in excess of what Egypt can pay."

In particular, future plans for industrial development make it almost inconceivable that Egypt will achieve its goal of self-sufficiency in food supplies by the year 2000 - a goal which, according to Mustapha al-Gabali, a former Minister of Agriculture, would require a cropped area of some 22 million feddans. As Waterbury writes,

"There is simply no way to find fresh water for that kind of acreage (assuming that one could find the acres) at acceptable costs. Egypt must begin to weigh all projects in awareness that water is already a limited resource. That fact has only just begun to sink in, and many misconceived projects may be launched before it influences policies." [33]

Waterbury's point is even more relevant to India. We have already noted that there are large parts of India which are officially referred to by the Ministry of Agriculture of 'drought-affected'. Those areas, Malin Falkenmark notes, "contain 56 million hectares of cultivated land out of the country's total of 160 million hectares." [34] What is more, they are inhabited by 100 million people - most of whom, it might be added, already suffer from varying degrees of malnutrition.

Unfortunately, on the basis of current Government plans, there is to be a massive increase in water use for wasteful large-scale irrigation projects and, also, for urban and industrial use (see Table 10).

Those plans are, of course, totally unrealistic; the water required will simply not be available. Indeed, according to Falkenmark requirements will exceed dependable flow very quickly in some states (Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra) and later in others (Arunachal and Andhra Pradesh) but it will do so in all states by 2000. [35] (See Table 11).

As this occurs, one can predict that in the ensuing cut-throat competition for ever scarcer water supplies, the latter will be made available (as in the USA) to the highest bidders - and that means to the urban and industrial sector first, to the export-oriented large plantations next, and to the peasants who make up the vast bulk of the population last. The result can only be large scale famine - a prospect which is admitted privately by many in government circles.

Table 10: Estimated water use and projected water requirements in India

Source: Carl Widstrand (Ed), Water Conflicts and Research Priorities, Pergamon, 1980.

Table 11: Approximate year when water demand in India will exceed ultimate utilisable resources

Source: Carl Widstrand (Ed), Water Conflicts and Research Priorities, Pergamon, 1980.

References

1. Carrying Capacity: Report on the Carrying Capacity of the USA, unpublished, undated, Chapter 6, p.26.
2. Ibid, Chapter 6, p.26.
3. David Pimentel, quoted by Peter Freeman, Environmental Considerations in the Management of International Rivers: A Review, Threshold Foundation, Washington DC, 1978, p.14.
4. Michael Brewer and Robert Boxley, The Potential Supply of Cropland, Paper presented at RFF Symposium on the Adequacy of Agricultural Land, Washington DC. Quoted by Neil Sampson, 'Land for Energy or Land for Food?' The Ecologist Vol. 12 No. 2, 1982, p.69.
5. Neil Sampson, 'Land for Energy or Land for Food?', The Ecologist Vol. 12 No. 2, 1982, p.69.
6. Ibid, p.67.
7. Edward Goldsmith, 'Planning for Starvation', The Ecologist, Vol. 7 No. 2, March 1977, p.42.
8. Alice Coleman, 'Is Planning really necessary?', The Geographical Journal Vol. 142, part 3, November 1976. Quoted by Edward Goldsmith, op.cit. 1977, p.42.
9. Alice Coleman, op.cit. 1976, paraphrased by Edward Goldsmith, op.cit. 1977, p.44.
10. Alice Coleman, op.cit. 1976. paraphrased by Edward Goldsmith, op.cit. 1977, p.42.
11. Asit K. Biswas, 'Loss of Productiver Land', Ecologist Quarterly, Autumn 1978, p.210.
12. Ibid, pp.210-211.
13. John M. Bradley, 'Nile Studies finds high dam did more good than harm', World Environment Report, February 28, 1983, p.1.
14. Mohammed Kassas. The same point is made by Susan Walton though her figures are again different. She writes "In addition to the acreage converted to year-round cultivation, about 950,000 acres of desert land have been reclaimed for agriculture. But since this gain is partially cancelled out by the loss of 600,000 acres to urban expansion - and by additional acreage lost to shoreline erosion along the Mediterranean - the net gain of agricultural land is slight." (see Egypt: After the Aswan Dam, Environment Vol. 23 No. 4 May 1981,
15. John Waterbury, The Hydropolitics of the Nile Valley, Syracuse University Press, 1979, p.138.
16. Ibid, p.139.
17. Ibid, p.140.
18. Not too much importance should be attached to these figures as water policy in the USA will have to be seriously reconsidered in the forthcoming years.
19. Carrying Capacity, op.cit. (undated), p.28.
20. Ibid, p.30.
21. Asit K. Biswas, 'Water: A Perspective on Global Issues and Politics', in Asit K. Biswas et. al. (Eds), Water Management for Arid Lands in Developing Countries, Pergamon, Oxford, 1978, p.18.
22. Bruce Stokes, Bread and Water: Growing Tomorrow's Food, unpublished Paper prepared for the Worldwatch Institute, Washington DC, undated (circa. 1980), section 3, p.7.
23. John Waterbury, op.cit. 1979, p.150.
24. Ibid, p.223.
25. Ibid, p.224.
26. Ibid, pp.226-227.
27. Ibid, p.225.
28. Ibid, p.215.
29. Ibid, p.216.
30. Ibid, p.216.
31. Ibid, p.220.
32. Ibid, p.226.
33. Ibid, p.231.
34. Malin Falkenmark, 'Water and Land: Interdependent but manipulated resources' in Carl Widstrand (Ed), Water Conflicts and Research Priorities, Pergamon, Oxford, 1980, p.54.
35. Ibid, p.54.