"The challenge of water has been with us for a long time. So why has it suddenly propelled itself onto the radar of senior industry figures and in the past few days become a top agenda item for multi-national corporations?," asked Zahedi at a meeting of the European Parliament Climate Change Committee on 29 January 2008.
The committee's thematic session gathered MEPs and experts to discuss the links between global warming, water scarcity and sustainable economic development.
Answering his own question, Zahedi said that the sudden interest comes from previously experienced and predicted economic impacts and the financial implications of the water challenge for corporations.
"Currently, at least 24 nuclear plants in the south-eastern United States face shutdown or drastically limited operations because severe drought conditions have lowered the levels of lakes and rivers that supply cooling water - that's 23% of the nation's 104 nuclear power plants. Last year in Italy, the River Po ran so low there were plans to shut down power plants there," he said, listing examples. "Only a few weeks ago, big ships marooned as a result of the drought in China," he added.
Regarding the contribution of biofuels to water stress, Zahedi said that even though some consider them to be a "silver bullet in terms of combating global warming [...], biofuels urgently need sustainability criteria". He noted that it can take 1,000 litres of water to make a litre of biofuel.
Zahedi said that biofuels should not simply be quickly banned but "we should have full information on the implications of our decisions". "A full life-cycle assessment of biofuels" will be one of the first tasks of the recently established International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, he added.
