JOURNALISTS should put more effort into reporting the problems of sustainable water management, say officials of the Global Water Partnership-Caribbean (GWP-C).

They note that this is especially important since the resource, without changes in current practices might become as rare and as costly as oil as early as 2050.

The call is also being echoed by Patrick Cozier, secretary general of the Caribbean Broadcasting Union, which sponsored a GWP-C media training seminar held at Rockley Beach in Christ Church Barbados on December 9 and 10.

“Water is the single most important element for our species, but we don’t seem to think about it on a daily basis,” Cozier said during his introductory address.

He noted that that Barbados has fallen into the lowest percentile globally for water resources, with 60 per cent of the commodity currently being lost to leakages from old infrastructure. At the same time, both the Government and residents seem unaware of looming scarcity issues.

“There is no discourse. Only six per cent of the global population has access to potable water on a daily basis. We need to pay more attention to this dwindling resource,” Cozier said.

The GWP-C seminar was staged to encourage journalists to engage in the process of encouraging integrated water resources management (IWRM).

Floyd Homer, workshop facilitator of GWP-C, pointed out that the management of water resources in many Caribbean islands was fragmented with the result that forward planning to prevent scarcity was largely lacking.

“We are water poor and it did not just happen overnight. The decision makers do not understand,” he noted.

In many instances, he said, abstraction licences were being granted with little thought of what will happen as removal continues to exceed recharge of existing supplies.

Water scarcity is tied to loose management of the resource even as population growth continues. Only three per cent of the water on the planet is fresh water and of this amount 0.4 per cent is what is accessible to growing populations. The remainder is locked in ice sheets, lying underground and in inaccessible wetlands.

Homer said that the Caribbean, in many instances, displayed a disconnect between research and policy, with information also being hidden to protect the tourism industry.

“Water quality is being degraded, but this is a carefully guarded secret,” he said.

In one cited instance, seven million gallons of raw sewage were emptied into a local bay when a treatment plant broke down, but this was not announced to users of adjacent beaches.

“Decision makers choose to be powerless because the population brings no pressure to bear. It is only when livelihoods are threatened that we see action,” Homer suggested.

He added that the non-implementation of many international conventions relating to water management, quality and availability, which have been signed is also a regional issue to be explored by journalists.

Avril Alexander, regional co-ordinator of GWP-C said that integrated management of water as a resource involves both oversight on land and water activities.

Pertinent issues, she said, involved the correct pricing of water to match the true cost of extraction and also to put funds into sustainable management efforts.