WATER cuts imposed earlier this year have managed to reduce total consumption by almost a quarter. With the supplies from Greece finally flowing smoothly, this means Cyprus should be able to scrape through this critical period of drought until a new desalination plant comes online next spring, allowing the government to put an end to the inconvenience of water rationing. If all goes according to plan (and that does remain a big ‘if’), Cyprus should no longer be dependent on rainfall by next summer.
End of story? The mobile desalination plant due to be completed in a few months’ time will be followed by more, fixed, units, and the island’s population will no longer be hostage to increasingly hostile weather patterns. We can go back to watering our lawns, hosing down the streets (some of us have never stopped, it seems), planting water intensive crops and promoting golf courses to kick start our faltering tourism industry. Indeed, the last time our water crisis was ‘solved’ in 2001 through a combination of desalination and heavy winter rains, water consumption soared by more than a third.
We cannot allow a repeat of such a scenario. One of the British government’s chief scientific advisers warned this week that the world should prepare for dangerous climate change of as much as 4 degrees Celsius, an increase which would translate into a 30-50 per cent reduction in water availability in the Mediterranean. Hence the dependence on desalination, you may argue. And it’s not just Cyprus: from the Persian Gulf to Spain, from California to Australia, governments are increasingly investing in ever larger desalination units, with global production expected to more than double by 2016.
But desalination is not a panacea. While production costs continue to fall with improving technologies, it remains an extremely expensive means of producing water (though of course much cheaper than shipping in water from abroad), clocking in at about €0.65 per cubic metre. Requiring huge amounts of energy, the cost of desalination is also at the mercy of international oil prices, making Cyprus even more vulnerable to the wild increases we have seen over the past six months. What’s more, with its high CO2 emissions, and plans for several more plants in the pipeline, Cyprus is almost certain to breach its emissions targets, resulting in substantial fines from the EU, all adding to the total cost of water.
In fact, while it may offer a short-term solution, desalination is a significant contributor to the long-term environmental problem. In a report entitled Desalination: Option or distraction for a thirsty world?, the World Wildlife Fund last year warned that “desalinating the sea is an expensive, energy-intensive and greenhouse gas emitting way to get water”, adding that the process “poses a potential threat to the environment that could exacerbate climate change”.
So what is the answer? While an island like Cyprus clearly needs desalination as an emergency backup to ensure its population a continuous water supply, far more attention needs to be devoted to cutting down the amount of water we use. The recent months have proved that we can significantly reduce our water consumption if forced to do so: the question is how to maintain that once the water is again running freely in our taps.
If we do not want to return to rationing, and we cannot rely on a collective sense of responsibility, then the only form of pressure is through pricing. Above a certain level, the price of water must become not just expensive but prohibitive to deter people from the kind of waste that has become second nature.
But if the public are to be asked to show responsibility, then the authorities must do the same. A shocking 30 per cent of the water in the network is lost through leakage, a precious commodity worth millions of euros simply running into the ground.
Local water boards point out that repairs are difficult and expensive, but compared to the mammoth operation of bringing water from Greece, such costs and complications pale into insignificance.
And here is the nub of the problem: water management is parcelled out to myriad of local authorities, for which such infrastructure works are indeed daunting, and which invariably put the interests of their communities above the national good.
Cyprus needs a national water authority, which can set national priorities, national prices, and which would have the ability and the financial muscle to weigh up decisions in a responsible way. Until that happens, we can do no more than crisis management, scrambling around for short-term solutions in the face of ever greater problems.
