WEEK 45 Oct 23rd to 29th

   WATER SYSTEMS THREATENED

   Fresh water systems around the world are so environmentally degraded they are losing their ability to support human, animal and plant life, according to a report released Saturday. Their decline will mean increased water shortages for people and rapid population loss or extinction for many other species, the World Resources Institute predicted.
   - The findings are very disturbing, said Jonathan Lash, president of the Washington, D.C.-based policy research center. - We're just using way more water than the earth can afford to give us.
   The report is part of a comprehensive study by the institute on how human activity is changing the world's ecosystems. It was released during the national meeting of the Society of Environmental Journalists at Michigan State University. The report makes no recommendations but serves as a warning to citizens, industries and government, Lash said. He described it as a "physical exam" that produced a poor diagnosis for the patient. Over the next six months, specialized reports will be issued on agroecosystems, coastal areas, forests and grasslands. While many regions have ample water supplies, four out of every 10 people live in river basins with water scarcity, the report says. It predicts that by 2025, at least 3.5 billion people - roughly half the world's population - will experience water shortages.
   Only about 1 percent of the water on the planet is fresh water available for human use, Lash said. Agriculture accounts for 93 percent of fresh water use, producing runoff that degrades water quality with silt and chemicals, the report says. Dams, diversions or canals fragment 60 percent of the world's largest rivers, trapping runoff and sediments. While dam construction has slowed in the United States, the report says many more are being built in the basins of the Yangtze River in China, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the Middle East, and the Danube River in Eastern Europe. Also being depleted is the world's groundwater, the sole source of drinking water for 1.5 billion people, the report says.
   Half the world's wetlands were lost in the 20th Century as land was converted to agricultural and urban use or contaminated with diseases such as malaria, according to the report. Invasive species pose another problem, competing with native species for food and habitat. Twenty percent of the world's 10,000 fresh water fish species have become extinct, threatened or endangered in recent decades.
   The findings are bad news for the environment and the economy, said Carmen Revenga, who helped write the institute's report.
   - We need to value fresh water ecosystems not only for the goods they produce, like fish and clams, but also the services they give, like the filters and nurseries that wetlands provide, Revenga said.