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ROME - With climate change now adding to the pressures, sharing rather than warring over the world's resources of fresh water represents the "challenge of the 21st century," the United Nations said Thursday as it marked World Water Day.

"The bulk of that challenge lies in finding more effective ways to conserve, use and protect the world’s water resources," the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement.
Already 1.1 billion people lack access to adequate clean water and, with the world's population set to grow from the current 6.5 billion to 8 billion by 2030, 1.8 billion people will face water scarcity by then, the Rome-based agency estimated.


That growing population also means that "14 percent more freshwater will need to be withdrawn for agricultural purposes in the next 30 years," the FAO stated.
FAO Director Jacques Diouf said the repercussions of not meeting the challenge would be enormous. "Water conflicts can arise in water stressed areas among local communities and between countries," he told a conference marking World Water Day.

"The lack of adequate institutional and legal instruments for water sharing exacerbates already difficult conditions. In the absence of clear and well-established rules, chaos tends to dominate and power plays an excessive role," he said.

Warming 'raised the stakes'The FAO added that "climate change has raised the stakes" since some studies indicate that warming temperatures might cause more frequent droughts as well as more intense storms and flooding, "which destroy crops, contaminate freshwater and damage the facilities used to store and carry that water."

"Particularly vulnerable to climate variability," the FAO said, are the world's poorest farmers, who "often occupy marginal lands and rely on rainfall to sustain their livelihoods."
In a report on the state of the world's water resources, the FAO concluded that "climate change is expected to account for about 20 percent of the global increase in water scarcity. Countries that already suffer from water shortages will be hit hardest."

The agency also cited a 2006 study by Britain's weather agency concluding that with no mitigation of climate change, the severe droughts that now occur only once every 50 years would occur every other year by 2100.

To improve cross-border cooperation on water use, the 10 countries on the Nile River are negotiating a water sharing agreement that the FAO hopes will be a model for other areas where the scarce resource can be shared peacefully.