Water woes
The Earth’s supply of water is dwindling. Giles Crosse looks at the issues, and what it might take to solve them.
PIC Cred: Jody Valente / Water for the People
Unfortunately, growing populations and associated growth in the need for resources is putting global waters under unprecedented pressure.
The problem is that industry needs more water, polluting the remaining existing resources. Rivers are being dammed, upsetting natural balances, and damaging these fragile ecosystems.
There’s also the need for drinking water for animals for our food, or for irrigation to help crops grown to feed you and I. It’s a trend which has received some attention, but relatively little compared with the coverage given to global warming or melting ice.
The World Water Council (WWC) was put together in 1996 as a multi stakeholder platform to address concerns about global water and trigger meaningful action. Some of its figures on the situation show the scale of the issues.
‘In developing countries, 80 per cent of health problems are linked to inadequate water and sanitation,’ explains WWC. ‘In Africa alone, up to 5 per cent of GDP is lost annually to water-borne diseases and poor sanitation.
‘One dollar invested in sanitation can save between US$3 to US$34 in medical costs and lost productivity. Agriculture represents 70 per cent of total water use, but 50 per cent of food is wasted between farm and fork. Investing in food chain efficiency is crucial.’
And according to WWC, some 3 billion people depend on the sustainability of 263 river basins and hundreds of underground water reservoirs shared by several countries.
The important thing about this is that the only way to solve issues of dwindling supply and pollution will involve global cooperation, because rivers and oceans don’t conform to international boarders or boundaries.
“The first challenge we must face today is demographic growth, especially in Africa with one billion inhabitants today and twice as many in 2050,” said Loic Fauchon, President World Water Council, at the 15th African Water Association Congress on 15 March 2010.
“The second challenge lies in controlling rapid urbanization and growing tensions in coastal areas, with increasingly large and numerous megacities. These megacities have enormous domestic and industrial water needs which create severe and hazardous pollution downstream, so many time bombs that cannot be easily defused.”
This is another problem. Water pollution rarely damages at source, but can impact on communities miles away who had no hand in causing the initial harm.
“The third challenge is obviously the food crisis. Population growth, improving living standards, changes in eating habits, all contribute to an increase in water demand in agriculture. This results in significant wastewater production and overall water loss which adds to increasing tensions over water resources,” he said.
Warming water
So what can actually be done to solve all of this, and what areas need to be prioritised? Dr. Julian Caldecott, Ecologist and Advisor to Our Future Planet, assesses the situation:
“Climate change has the potential to cause severe adverse impacts on rainfall patterns, agricultural potential, water resources, and terrestrial, wetland, aquatic and coastal ecosystems, besides increasing the range of disease vectors and rendering coastal areas vulnerable to inundation and salt intrusion,” he explains.
“These impacts are now becoming well documented as real phenomena, and predictions of the pace and scale of change are quickly becoming both more immediate and more severe. There are also worrying indications of non-linearity in the climate response system, e.g. the release of methane - a potent greenhouse gas or GHG , from melting permafrost, sea bed methane hydrate deposits and decaying peat-swamps.
“These could dramatically accelerate climate change and its impacts. Given that the effects of climate change certainly have the potential to reduce the viability and sustainability of human livelihoods, they may be expected to increase poverty,” he continues.
“Hence they may undermine all the development gains that have been achieved through the MDG process. Under these circumstances, one might ask what might be the quantifiable effect on global poverty of a given increment in GHG emissions, or its prevention.”
Climate change may not seem the most obvious issue when it comes discussing pollution in rivers or lack of water for food. But as Caldecott says, its rise will only put more pressure on when ‘peak water’ comes, plus many associated impacts on the amount of usable water about, so it’s going to be a vital part of the challenge we’re facing to get global water back on track.
“If the answer is significant, then the next question is whether a country like the UK might be able to achieve more gains on poverty by investing solely in reducing emissions in its partner countries, coupled with adaptation measures targeting the poor, than through the diverse array of foreign aid interventions that it currently supports.
“This might be especially the case over the next two to three decades, when humanity may, or may not, become committed to a disastrous path, depending on the decisions and investments made in the near future.” Caldecott concludes. But no matter what individual countries do to minimise warming and to help with poverty, we still need specific water based solutions.
Scientific salvation
Plainly it’s better to use less water than spend billions on new technologies to solve a problem caused by wastage. However science will have a role to play in trying to get the future on the right path.
The Water Corporation supplies water solutions in Australia. Among its more successful projects is Perth’s seawater desalination plant, Kwinana.
Australia is a good example of a country struggling to provide enough water into its cities. Of course desalination technology is only suitable for nations with the available coastlines, but there’s evidence it could still be a useful tool.
The Perth plant produced almost 48 billion litres of water, two billion litres more than its design capacity in the last year. According to peakwater.org, desalination plants are set to supply almost a third of Australia capital city supplies within the next couple of years.
One of the issues with desalination plants can be the volumes of energy required to run them. But Australia’s Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts explains Perth’s solution is powered by renewable energy from a wind farm cited close to the facility.
It sounds like the kind of solution that balances environmental concerns from the top down, and whilst Australian taxpayers may begrudge potential higher costs from this kind of technology, the reality is we will all have to pay if we want a safe, sustainable global supply of water.
However, there are claims that one of the outputs from desalination processes, brine, is damaging marine ecosystems off Gulf States like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Iran. This may in part be down to the volume of plants operating from a relatively small area of water, which doesn’t circulate rapidly, failing to shift the brine passed back into the sea.
There is a certain irony that much of the desalinated water has previously been used to landscape deserts into verdant communities for the millionaire rich in places like Abu Dhabi. Corals in the sea may now be paying the price for forcing all this salt back where it originally came from.
It’s a good example of how even a positive environmental move needs to properly balance its impacts, and that it’s nigh on impossible to take from the environment without some form of repercussion.
Finding the best solutions to the global water crisis, if it’s to be done through technology, will need systems that are really created with a true sense of even the tiniest impacts they create.
What are your views? Not sure? Read the resources below for more information. Add your comment below. We welcome your thoughts and proposals. Not a Planetary Citizen? Sign up to Our Future Planet today!
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Resources:
Desalinisation Western Australia Water Corporation, Perth
The sustainability of desalination plants in Australia - is renewable energy the answer?
Peak water - Conceptual and practical limits to freshwater withdrawal and use
D A T A T A B L E 1 - Total Renewable Freshwater Supply, by Country
D A T A T A B L E 2 - Freshwater Withdrawal by Country and Sector
