Mulholland's World

World leaders and water managers are at the World Water Forum in Mexico City to confront what the UN's Kevin Watkins, writing in the International Herald Tribune, calls "global Mulhollandism," after the man who engineered LA's water grab and turned what had only recently been a dusty outpost into one of world's largest and most productive cities.

Water grabs, unfortunately, are not uncommon on the world stage, but now the resource -- endlessly renewable but also limited -- is strained as never before as the population increases and underground aquifers are depleted, waterways polluted and aging infrastructure degraded. Mexico City is a fitting poster child for the crisis, says Watkins. The megacity's aquifer is being drained twice as fast as it can be replenished. Meanwhile, the city atop it is sinking at half a meter per decade. Here in the US, farmers are drawing off the Ogallala aquifer at eight times the recharge rate. The problem is truly global: From the Aral Sea to Lake Victoria to the Yellow River, the world's water woes are real and pressing.

What's needed, Watkins argues, is a new direction that recognizes the limits on the resource (by, for starters, ending subsidies that encourage waste) and by "putting social justice at the center of water management."