EVERYONE agrees that we are in the midst of a global freshwater crisis. Around the world, rivers, lakes, and aquifers are dwindling faster than Mother Nature can possibly replenish them; industrial and household chemicals are rapidly polluting what's left. Meanwhile, global population is ticking skyward. Goldman Sachs estimates that global water consumption is doubling every 20 years, and the United Nations expects demand to outstrip supply by more than 30% come 2040.

In the coming decades, as growing numbers of people live in urban areas and climate change makes some regions much more prone to drought, water will become an increasingly scarce resource. By 2030, nearly half of the world's population will inhabit areas with severe water stress, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development.

Unfortunately, Bangladesh is one of the countries that will suffer the most. In the Himalayas, the storage of precipitation in the form of snow and ice (in glaciers) over a long period provides a large water reservoir that regulates annual water distribution in the greater Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna (GBM) basin areas. The majority of rivers originating in the Himalayas have their upper catchments in snow-covered areas and flow through steep mountains.

By and large, dry-season flow in the major Himalayan rivers in a given year results from the monsoon rainfall of the previous year. If there is any climatic change in the mountain hydrological regimes, it is likely to alter these resources, and severely affects lower riparian Bangladesh that depends on this water resource. From the decadal trends in the rainfall variability in Bangladesh, it has been observed that significant deviation of monthly rainfall from one decade to the other has occurred, and the variations of total seasonal rainfall, the timing of onset, peak, and recession have changed considerably. As a result, the scarcity of pure drinking water is gradually increasing at a dramatic pace in both urban and rural areas in Bangladesh.

The rush to control water resources is gathering speed around the planet. In Australia, brokers in urban areas are buying up water rights from farmers. Rural residents around the U.S. are trying to sell their land (and water) to multinational water bottlers like Nestlé. Companies that use large quantities of the precious resource to run their businesses are seeking to lock up water supplies. One is Royal Dutch Shell, which is buying groundwater rights in Colorado as it prepares to drill for oil in the shale deposits there.

The other recent initiative of private-public partnership control of water is in Sitka, Alaska, which is home to one of the world's most spectacular lakes. Nestled in a U-shaped valley of dense forests and majestic peaks, and fed by snow-pack and glaciers, the reservoir, named Blue Lake for its deep blue hues, holds trillions of gallons of water so pure that it requires no treatment. The city's tiny population -- fewer than 10,000 people spread across 5,000 square miles -- makes this an embarrassment of riches. Every year, as countries around the world struggle to meet the water needs of their citizens, 6.2 billion gallons of Sitka's reserves go unused. That could soon change. In a few months, if all goes according to plan, 80 million gallons of Blue Lake water will be siphoned into the kind of tankers normally reserved for oil, and shipped to a bulk bottling facility near Mumbai. From there it will be dispersed among several drought-plagued cities throughout the Middle East.

The project is the brainchild of two American companies. One, True Alaska Bottling, has purchased the rights to transfer 3 billion gallons of water a year from Sitka's bountiful reserves. The other, S2C Global, is building the water-processing facility in India. If the companies succeed, they will have brought what Sitka hopes will be a $90 million industry to their city, not to mention a solution to one of the world's most pressing climate conundrums. They will also have turned life's most essential molecule into a global commodity.

Now the question is, if water is the kind of precious commodity that oil became in the 20th century, can delivery of clean water to those who need it be the same sort of powerful force as the environmental movement in an age of climate change? And, in another sense of green, is there money to be made in a time of water scarcity? The answer to both questions, according to environmental activists watching a global forum on water, is yes. So, what happens to those who can't pay for it? It is an absolute human need -- people can live as much as 30 days without food but only seven without water. Now, while the World Bank is arguing higher prices (even for water) are a good thing, others are nervous! Right now, no public utility anywhere prices water based on how scarce it is or how much it costs to deliver, and that, privatisation proponents argue, is the root cause of such rampant overuse. If water costs more, they say, we will conserve it better.

In the late 1990s, the World Bank infamously required scores of impoverished countries, most notably Bolivia, to privatise their water supplies as a condition of desperately needed economic assistance. The hope was that markets would eliminate corruption and big multinationals would invest the resources needed to bring more water to more people. The multinational corporations came and invested huge sums of money. They increased water rates to more than double. As a result, it left thousands of Bolivians who couldn't pay without any water whatsoever. The company said price hikes were needed to repair and expand the dilapidated infrastructure. Critics insisted they served only to maintain unrealistic profit margins. By 2000, Bolivian citizens had taken to the streets in a string of violent protests and the protesters sent the companies packing. But, by 2001, the public utility had resumed control.

So what do we do now? On the one hand, most of the world views water as a basic human right (the U.N. General Assembly voted unanimously to affirm it as such). On the other, it's becoming so expensive to obtain and supply that most governments cannot afford to shoulder the cost alone. Ultimately, both public and private entities will have to work together, and they need to start it now! Unless we manage our water better now, we will run out. When that happens, according to above Newsweek article, no pricing or management scheme in the world will save us.

The writer is a Principal Research Scientist, Pacific ENSO Applications Climate Center (PEAC), University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA.

(Email: rashed@hawaii.edu).