HAMILTON, ONTARIO — The planet faces a crisis over the supply and quality of fresh water for drinking, growing food and manufacturing, officials at a global conference here said yesterday.
Canadian Environment Minister David Anderson told participants in the Managing Shared Waters conference that "water will be overwhelmingly the issue of the 21st century, of the 100 years we are entering," the Toronto Star reported.
Margaret Catley-Carlson, a former Canadian diplomat who now heads the Global Water Institute, said water tables are dropping and major rivers such as the Colorado in the United States and the Yellow in China now dry up before reaching the sea, the newspaper reported.
She said 1 billion people lack consistent access to fresh water, 2 billion have no access to sanitation, many freshwater species are in peril as deltas and wetlands disappear and water quality is declining everywhere, the article said.
Increases in population and urbanization will make the situation worse in coming years, a stance repeated at other worldwide groups, including the United Nations.
Michael Donohue, president of the Great Lakes Commission, whose members include Ontario, Quebec and the eight US lake states, said developing countries face the most desperate problems, but the word crisis applies also to the developed world, "specifically the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region," the Star reported.
While the Great Lakes Basin is one of the world's wealthiest places and holds one-fifth of Earth's fresh surface water, it faces threats to divert, export or otherwise consume water to an extent beyond its sustainable capacity, officials said in the article.
The newspaper said the conference, which ends Friday, has drawn more than 400 people from 30 countries to the Hamilton Convention Centre. It is sponsored by Pollution Probe, Coastal Zone Canada and the Hamilton-based United Nations University International Network on Water, Environment and Health.
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