Water Scarcity and Nutrition: Spotlight on the Asian Food Crisis

Some of the largest food-producing regions in Asia have recently faced many crises.  Russia has had devastating heat waves and fires, Thailand has endured severe drought, and Pakistan and China have suffered from flooding.  This has led to a drop of 63 million mega tons of grain on the world grain market, and many of these countries are imposing export bans on rice and grain in order to provide enough food for the people in their own countries.   This has had a combined effect on the global price and availability of rice and grains, causing grain prices to soar.  With Asia currently inhabiting over half of the world’s hungry people, this could become a grave concern.  If their stocks run low and they face the need to import food from other regions, the price will be too high for the poorest, and most vulnerable, populations to afford. 

Asia is one of the world’s largest producers of food, contributing to the production of 90% of the world’s rice, but with the global population expected to rise above eight billion people by the year 2030, they will need to produce at least 50% more rice than they are currently producing in order to keep pace with the demand.   

Climate change has contributed to rising sea levels along the many miles of Asian coastline, and the impact has been most noticeable in the Mekong Delta.  Severe drought has left the Mekong River at its lowest level in more than 50 years.  This, accompanied by rising sea levels, has caused an increased salt concentration in the river, leaving tens of thousands of hectares of farmland vulnerable to destruction, as rice is strictly a fresh water crop.

In addition to rice and grains, another major staple of the Asian diet comes from fish.  Currently, the water shortages and an increased need for energy have led to the construction of hydroelectric dams.  While the dams can control the amount of water provided for irrigation during the dry season and can provide energy to the region, they have a significant negative impact on the fish population.  The fish need to swim upriver to spawn, but they are stopped at the dams and cannot migrate upstream. 

Asia is already facing difficulties in finding adequate sources of fresh water for their crops and consumption.  Current rice production uses between 24 and 30% of the world’s freshwater resources.  To grow 1kg of rice, they are typically using about 3,000 liters of water, but only half of that is actually consumed by the plant.  The pressure to increase crop production for both cash and to ward off food insecurity has led farmers to cut down forests to use the land for farming.  However, much of this soil is poor in nutrients, and without the forest to hold the soil, heavy rains during the wet season cause significant erosion, further leaching the soil of nutrients, and sending huge amounts of sediment down streams, rivers, and lakes.  In addition, increased use of fertilizers and pesticides have polluted fresh water and made the declining local fish populations unsafe to eat, which has also contributed to food scarcity. 

In order for Asia to meet the food needs of their population and still be able to provide exports for world trade, they must take a deep look at the way they use their water sources. 

Sanitation needs for school girls in developing nations

Another article written for The Water Project:

In America, girls joke about “The Curse”, but for schoolgirls in developing nations, it is no laughing matter. Every 28 days, their education may be interrupted for as many as five days. UNICEF estimates that one in 10 school-age African girls either skips school during menstruation or drops out entirely because of lack of sanitation. Without access to adequate sanitation and clean water at school, menstruating girls are forced to stay at home, losing precious days of education, and contributing to a plethora of reasons why it is difficult to remain in school. In Uganda, more than half of the girls who start primary school will drop out before they sit for their primary school-leaving exams. The highest rate of dropout is seen in girls between the ages of 11 and 13.

There are many social taboos surrounding the loss of blood, and in some cultures, menstruation also means that a girl is ready for marriage.  To encourage girls to stay in school, it is important for them to have access to private sanitation facilities that have a source of clean water.   Some schools have the latrines, but fresh water has to be carried to them in buckets, resulting in taunting from boys about what may be going on behind the closed door.  Some girls even prefer to risk their safety by walking far into the field around a school to take care of their business, just to avoid the public embarrassment.  Staying home from school saves the girls from the embarrassment of not being able to care for themselves at school, especially if they cannot afford the proper sanitary materials.

What schools need are private latrines that have roofs and locking doors, with a supply of fresh water so the girls can wash themselves.  Keeping girls in school is crucial to ending the cycle of poverty.  Providing them with safe and sanitary methods to keep them attending school all month long will help them overcome just one of many gender-based hurdles that these girls will face in their lifetimes.

Women and Water: Inequality in India

Nearly 40% of the world’s population lacks access to adequate sanitation systems.  In India alone, roughly 450,000 children under the age of five die each year from diseases contracted by drinking contaminated water.  Most of these deaths are due to enteric illnesses caused by bacteria, protozoans, and viruses in water that has been contaminated with human and animal feces.  Women and children bear the brunt of water-borne illnesses, due to social and cultural inequality.  Most societies rely on women and girls for the majority of water collection and household sanitation.  In rural India, some women walk for several hours a day to fetch water, which is used for cooking, cleaning, bathing, washing, care of animals, food production, and waste disposal. 

The implications from lack of clean water go beyond immediate health issues. With so much time spent for water collection, many girls are unable to attend school, and they are at risk for increased violence as they travel rural areas in search of water.  In addition, they may suffer from malnutrition, as the diseases they contract from contact with contaminated water can deplete the body of precious nutrients.

The Water Project is helping women and girls to overcome the barriers they face by providing access to clean water in schools and villages across India and Africa.  When women spend less time collecting water, they spend more time working on income-generating microenterprises, and girls are able to regularly attend school.

The start of a new semester

I am only one week into the Fall semester, and already I am in full swing!  My internship this semester is with The Water Project, and they have just kicked off a new portion of their website called My Water Project.  It is full of interesting articles and really shows you how you can make a difference.  With each action that you participate in, you receive impact points.  I feel like I haven't done anything substantial, and I already have 169 impact points (which puts me in the top 10!!).

Our group of interns is looking into developing a campus organization dedicated to clean water awareness, and we hope to be able to incorporate some of TWP's Water Challenge activities into our events.  It takes a lot more work than I realized to create a student organization.  Right now we are in the process of writing a constitution and finding students who might be interested in joining. 

The past few days have been filled with research on TWP, in addition to reading articles and researching topics that I will be writing articles on.  Two article topics are: Wastewater management and sanitation practices in rural and urban Africa, and India with a focus on gender inequality. 

I have so many ideas that it is hard to contain them all and keep focused on the internship tasks at hand.  I hope to make big strides this semester, honing my research skills, developing water education resources, getting my voice heard through articles and campus events, and mostly, helping to provide clean water to those who are most in need.

Lori Lewis's Fundraising Page on myWaterProject.

Water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink

The devastation caused by the flooding in Pakistan has left millions of victims without access to clean drinking water, and with more refugees seeking shelter in existing camps, overcrowding and poor sanitation threaten to increase morbidity and mortality.  Of those at risk, the threat is especially high for infants and the elderly. 

Diseases such as cholera are transmitted when there is lack of access to clean water and adequate sanitation systems.  Cholera is caused by a bacteria that attaches itself to the lining inside the intestine and secretes a toxin that destroys the lining.  This prevents the absorption of water and nutrients, and leads to severe watery diarrhea, for which the treatment is usually oral rehydration therapy and to let the disease run its course.  However, with overcrowding and lack of sanitation systems, the disease can spread to those caring for the sick, and community-wide when the waste is improperly disposed of.  The best case scenario for any illness is prevention, which is a difficult task given the severity of conditions that the people of Pakistan, and the aid workers, are facing.

To see photos of the devastation, click here for a link to Oxfam's photo gallery.

A busy couple of weeks!

Two weeks worth of activities to wrap up into one post:

June 16: Shannyn and I met with Kelly Jimenez and Patty Dietz to learn a little more about our project and how it ties in to the Chesapeake Bay restoration project.  We learned that the E. coli counts we are doing help Prince William County track where pollution may be entering the waterways.  These counts are also useful because every county needs to have a permit to discharge storm water, and this monitoring is one of the requirements for obtaining the permit.  What this also tells us is if there is any illegal dumping occurring along the waterways.  If the Department of Environmental Quality sees a hotspot from our citizen monitoring they will do an in-depth study in that area. 

With the passing of the Chesapeake Bay Act, more attention is being focused on sediment and nutrients than on bacterial contamination, but our work is integral in helping the state of Virginia determine TMDL for tributaries that will eventually become the source of drinking water for Prince William County, and ultimately end up in the Bay.  We learned a great deal about the new regulations and some new ideas for helping to protect the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. 

We also learned some great information on how development is affecting water pollution levels.  One of the major factors is that more development means less absorption of precipitation into the ground.  The runoff from parking lots and streets runs directly into area streams via the storm water drains.  Patty also educated us on some of the issues dealing with stormwater management, including the fact that older neighborhoods were built before any regulations came forth on stormwater management.

June19: PWSWCD had a booth at the Farmer's Market in Occoquan on Saturday.  We had a lot of fun teaching kids and their parents about ways to reduce water contamination using Kelly's fun Watershed Model.  We also took buckets of water from the Occoquan River and let kids test the water for dissolved oxygen, pH, temperature, and clarity.   

We had a wide age range of participants, which was fun because it offered more of a challenge in trying to figure out how to talk about all of this science so they would understand.  Since we were dealing mostly with fairly young kids, we had to ask questions like: How to fish breathe under the water?  What if there isn't enough air to breathe?  What if the water is too hot or too cold?  By looking at this water do you think they can see where they are going?  Do they have enough air to breathe?  Do you think they could live if they had to swim in acid?  We got some pretty great answers and made some contacts with other people interested in water quality.  Overall, I'd rate the day 9 out of 10, and only because it was so blazing hot!

June 26: Macroinvertebrate Identification class held in Manassas.  Here I met Nancy Berlin, a Master Gardener and Save Our Streams coordinator.  SOS volunteer taught us how to identify different macroinvertebrates that live in area streams.

After the lecture, we got to try our hand at identifying many different bugs, all in various stages of life.  Somehow I can't seem to stay away from the microscopes, even on the weekends!  Eden and Kelly really got into the spirit of things, and we all had a great time.

My favorite bug was the Caddis Fly because of the interesting cases they make.  I remember as a kid, helping one of my 4H friends tie a caddis fly to be used as a fly fishing lure.  It is still my favorite strange little water creature!


The next few weeks are a little slow leading up to our next water collection July 13-14.  It will be a good time to do some research and write an article or two.

June Water Testing

Last week I went out and collected our twelve water samples for the month of June.  The water was much lower everywhere, and in some places there was grass growing right where we had sampled from last month!  Shannyn and Eden couldn't make it this time, so I roped my trusty fiance into coming along.  Two orange vests are better than one!

I noticed a lot more fish, frogs, tadpoles, and snails than the last time we were out.  It must have to do with the water being more shallow.  I scooped up a bunch of snails that were just floating on top of the water at one site, thinking they were dead.  I took pictures of them, and when I went to pour them back into the water, they had suctioned onto the plastic pitcher.  I guess they were just floating the river until I came along!  We saw a beautiful crane, but by the time I took the picture, it had flown just past the viewfinder...leaving me with a picture of a crane...the irony!  We also saw a gorgeous blue heron, lots of geese, and some other very pretty, very noisy, unidentified water birds.

After a marathon dash of collecting samples, we went back to Shannyn's house to set up the cultures.  She and Eden took over from there, and handled the incubation and coliform counts.  Not surprisingly, we saw more coliform contamination with this set.  The weather is getting warmer, the water is getting shallower, and the E. coli are living large!

On Wednesday this week Shannyn and I are going to visit the Prince William Soil and Water Conservation District, where I will finally meet Kelly Jimenez who has been leading us on this project.  Then on Saturday from 9am until noon we will all be down at Occoquan, volunteering to help interested folk test the water that comes from their river.  We will end the day with the 4th Annual Duck Splash, a fun event where rubber duckies are purchased and set loose along the Occoquan River (race begins at 1:30pm) in a race to the finish line!