Green Economy in a Blue World-Full Report

84 per cent of all municipal water and sanitation systems are publicly vs. privately owned, increasing to 93 per cent in the developing world. In the US, Canada and the EU-15, 62, 67 and 85 per cent of sewage receives secondary or tertiary treatment, respectively. In developed Asia, 67 per cent is treated to primary or secondary levels, compared with only about 25 per cent in Latin America. In the rest of the world only around 5 per cent of waste water is treated to this extent. Global needs for urban waste-water treatment and recovery projects are at least US$52 billion per year compared with current levels of about US$30 billion. About US$14 billion per year of this is spent in developing and transition countries (UNEP, Executive Director, 2004) and rough estimates suggest that of the roughly US$5

10 12 14 16 Megatonnes of Nitrogen per year Dissolved Inorganic Nitrogen export by rivers for world regions 1990 2050

0 2 4 6 8

North America

South America

Africa Europe Northeast Asia

East Asia

South Asia

in a Blue World

Source: Seitzinger et al ., 2002

one in every three workers on Earth employed in the sector. Due in part to the tremendous increases in productivity of the sector (the green revolution) due to technological innovation (fertilizer, irrigation, crop alteration, herbicides/ pesticides, etc.), agriculture accounts for no more than 5 per cent of global GDP or about US$3.58 trillion (nominal) in 2010 (CIA, 2010). However, in many developing countries, agriculture represents both the largest employer and a sizeable portion of GDP, 20 per cent in low income countries and as much as 50 per cent of GDP in some of the world’s poorest countries. China has the largest agricultural output in the world, followed by the EU, India and the US. Agriculture today is one of the more widely subsidized sectors as governments seek to ensure adequate and affordable food supplies for their populations; in some cases, these subsidies can be environmentally damaging by promoting excess pesticide and fertilizer use and inefficient use of water for irrigation. Livestock production occupies 70 per cent of all land used for agriculture. Waste-water management Over the past hundreds of years, waste-water management has been developed and refined with a focus on dealing with larger and larger urban developments and associated waste water volumes. While data at a global level is limited, recent (2009) estimates (Owen, 2010) are that around US$83.5 billion is spent annually on waste-water management including: US$29.7 billion (treatment), US$15.8 billion (sewerage rehabilitation) and US$37.8 billion (sewerage extension). Levels of treatment vary widely across regions and countries. Globally, about

billion per year of development aid committed to water and sanitation in the developing world, only 5 per cent of this has been spent on waste-water treatment. Private sector flows to waste-water treatment in the developing world are also seen to be very low and unlikely to meet more than 5-10 per cent of projected investment needs. Per capita costs of sewage treatment go up roughly tenfold from basic latrines to tertiary treatment of collected waste water (figure to the right). The cost to remove nutrients from waste water averages around €1 per kg N (via denitrification to N2) and €1.5 € per kg P. The traditional northern approach which involves building large sewerage networks and technically sophisticated and energy- intensive waste-water treatment facilities may be prohibitively expensive for many developing countries and as argued earlier, this end-of- pipe approach is inherently inefficient as a process. These figures suggest the opportunity to incentivize, apply and scale up completely different waste-water management models for many parts of the developing world at much lower cost. Fertilizer Production As discussed earlier, the invention of the Haber- Bosch process in 1909 was a key milestone in modern human development as it was a prime driver in the green revolution starting in the 1950s, enabling a rapid increase in the productivity of agricultural land, and supplying sufficient food products to support significant growth in global population. It is arguable that fertilizer production and population growth were synergistic drivers that enabled both to grow exponentially over the last 60 years;

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