Question

Man has taken water for granted, for water is by and large, a free commodity. The rate at which man has been
consuming this raw material will sooner or later exhaust the entire stock of water in certain parts of the world.
It, therefore comes as no surprise that the World Bank proposes a water tariff. It should, in the opinion of many
experts, be commensurate with the relative abundance or scarcity of water in the location, the relative usefulness
of water intensive process or product, and the degree to which it causes water pollution. A water tariff should
be designed to make the users pay for waste or the polluters for pollution.
A steeply progressive water tariff has a tremendous ripple effect upon our entire economic system. Presently,
water-no matter how vital to industry-accounts for a mere 0.4% of the total plant cost, on an average. This ration
varies from 0.01% to 2.8% including recycling, purification and the like. Many industries guzzle water. It takes
25 litres of water to produce one litre of beer; 150 litres to produce a kilo of steel; 300 litres for a kilo of paper;
700 litres for a kilo of bread and 2000 litres for a kilo of synthetic rubber.
Agriculture is no less thirsty. It requires 50 litres to produce a kilo of spinach; 1500 litres for a kilo of wheat;
4500 litres for a kilo of rice; 10,000 litres for a dozen large eggs and 30,000 litres for a kilo of prime beef.
These are of course average, but they are most impressive, for what would happen to their costs when the price
of water reaches to a penny a gallon, or whatever it may turn out to be in the end. That is why we must not
consider the water conference as ‘water over the dam’. Relaxing in their scented blue swimming pools, policy
makers and opinion leaders should visualise the African woman, who on an average spends one hour a day to
fetch 10 to 20 litres of water from a far away stand pipe or well. They should visualise the nomads of the Sahara
belt, suffering from thirst, while underneath the Sahara there may be more water than all the world’s lakes
combined contained.
They should envision the murky rivers polluted with toxic chemical compounds and the giant loss of badly
needed irrigation water due to leaks in pipes, canals and reservoirs. They should be able to jointly raise the
water tariff so that funds can be collected to develop appropriate technology for the two thirds of the world,
including rainwater catchment tanks and wind driven pumps for de-salting water.

Answer 1

Answer:

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