Maude Barlow - former UN Senior Water Advisor, Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, founder of the Blue Planet Project, has spent her life in the service of others. For many years she has been an outspoken critic of the world's water consumption habits, the spreading privatization of water resources and the need to understand the looming freshwater crisis to be every bit as threatening to the survival of mankind as global warming itself.
AlterNet has published the text of a speech Barlow recently gave to an environmental funding group in California. I urge you to follow the link and read it. Here are a few excerpts to pique your interest:
A comprehensive new global study recently reported that 80% of the world’s rivers are now in peril, affecting 5 billion people on the planet. We are also mining our groundwater far faster than nature can replenish it, sucking it up to grow water-guzzling chemical-fed crops in deserts or to water thirsty cities that dump an astounding 200 trillion gallons of land-based water as waste in the oceans every year. The global mining industry sucks up another 200 trillion gallons, which it leaves behind as poison. Fully one third of global water withdrawals are now used to produce biofuels, enough water to feed the world.
The global water crisis is the greatest ecological and human threat humanity has ever faced. As vast areas of the planet are becoming desert as we suck the remaining waters out of living ecosystems and drain remaining aquifers in India, China, Australia, most of Africa, all of the Middle East, Mexico, Southern Europe, US Southwest and other places. Dirty water is the biggest killer of children; every day more children die of water borne disease than HIV/AIDS, malaria and war together. In the global South, dirty water kills a child every three and a half seconds. And it is getting worse, fast. By 2030, global demand for water will exceed supply by 40%— an astounding figure foretelling of terrible suffering.
Barlow goes on to explore what can be done to deal with this pending water crisis. In essence she argues for what I've advocated on these pages for a very long time. We, mankind, simply have to find new rules for living together, rules that place our long-term survival at the top of our priorities.
She echoes the efforts of many, including the Germans, to gain global acceptance of the concept of "commons." These are assets that must be taken to belong to no one and hence to belong to everyone. Two obvious assets are the oceans and the earth's atmosphere. The latter of these illustrates the hurdles we have to clear.
No matter where you are in the world when you look up at the night sky you see the same moon and you see it through the same atmosphere. I imagine not one in a thousand of us can possibly believe that he owns that atmosphere. We can't possess it. It constantly moves as our earth rotates. What's above you today is going to be somewhere else tomorrow and far off next month.
We can't possess the atmosphere yet, with our 19th century economics and geo-politics, we act as though we can and do. That is exactly what we do when it comes to air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Those emissions go into the atmosphere. We now know the limited but, we hope, safe CO2 carrying capacity of our atmosphere and less than half of that capacity remains. The question then becomes who has the right to the remaining CO2 carrying capacity?
The industrialized West's position is that it's ours. For no remotely defensible reason, we tacitly claim priority to emit CO2 into the world's atmosphere. Oh, we don't say that in so many words but that's the inescapable intent of our policies.
Look at it this way. If we, the industrialized West, were to accept the atmosphere as a commons to which all of mankind had an equal interest, our right to emit greenhouse gases would be fixed. It would be our population divided into 6.8 billion times the remaining carrying capacity. Know what happens if you do the math? We would have a very short time, a decade perhaps, to decarbonize our economies and our societies. We would have to launch a Marshall Plan-scale effort to develop and implement non-carbon based energy alternatives.
I suppose we could buy up other nations' carbon quotas but, placed in these terms (the Commons) and subjected to the supply and demand dynamics, the cost to the West would be punishing.
So, let's be honest. We're not going to do it, are we? Nope. But, in rejecting that principle for governance of the atmosphere, we are simultaneously closing the door on peaceful solutions to most other existential threats that face mankind - deforestation, collapse of fisheries stocks and ocean acidification, the freshwater crisis, desertification, air/soil/water contamination, species extinction, disease migration, regional security threats, terrorism and nuclear proliferation.
Barlow cites Einstein's observation that you can't solve problems with the same thinking that created them. That's never been truer than today.
We're living with global consumption obesity. A U.N. study this week confirmed what others have been saying for some time - mankind now consumes resources fully one and a half times the rate at which the earth can replenish them. How is that even possible? The proof is right before your eyes. The vanishing fish stocks are the result of over-exploitation. Same thing for the spreading deforestation. We're cutting those trees faster than nature can replace them. Desertification is the same story. We're working the land to exhaustion, turning it into useless desert. Freshwater - again the same story. When we fell short of surface water we went to the ground, draining our aquifers far faster than nature could replenish them. Is it really that surprising that we're doing the same thing to the atmosphere itself? Surely not.
My point is that this global consumption obesity is happening right before our eyes. It's visible. It's tangible. It's unquestionably dangerous to our survival. Why, then, do the people into whose hands we entrust our welfare and that of our children and grandchildren, the very future of Canada itself, why do they stand mute? Why do they have no vision to meet these enormous challenges? You can ask them. Maybe you'll have better luck than I did.
-----------------------
Postscript
As indicated above, I have written our leaders but in vain. Therefore I'm going to continue thrashing away at these problems here in hope that you and others will come to grasp the seriousness of these issues and, collectively, demand change. I'm reasonably optimistic that I'll be able to get through the remaining fifteen to twenty years of my lifespan without feeling the lash of these threats. It's my kids and their kids and yours too and the future of our country that I worry about. I can't let it go without a fight and I hope you can't either.
Showing posts with label freshwater. Show all posts
Showing posts with label freshwater. Show all posts
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
CTV - "Canada Losing Water at 'Troublesome' Rate"
The Oil Heads and Tar Sanders of Parliament Hill should finally listen up - the impacts of climate change are hitting Canada and they're hitting hard. Even the Conservative Television Network gets it:
A Statistics Canada study of southern Canada's water yield – the amount of water that falls as rain, melts from snow and ice packs and flows through rivers and streams – found that it has declined an average of 8.5 per cent since 1971.
The Statistics Canada study looked at water yields between 1971 and 2004 across southern Canada, where 98 per cent of Canadians live.
Heather Dewar, an analyst for the agency, said water yield does not include large existing bodies of water like the Great Lakes.
"It's all the water that flows into the system," she said in an interview with CTV.ca.
Gary Sprules, a biology professor at the University of Toronto who specializes in the ecology of lakes, said that decline represents a serious shortfall in our water supply.
"I think that's a significant loss," he said. "That's close to 10 per cent in a generation and a half and that's troublesome."
He said much of the loss is likely due to the global warming trend, which has changed spring runoff patterns across the continent. "Global climate change has led to changes in rainfall patterns in our part of the world and the amount and time of ice cover on our lakes and rivers."
Hey Iggy, now do you get it? Climate change, anthropogenic global warming, the earth-changing phenomenon being driven by fossil fuels which, I'm just guessing here, probably includes the world's filthiest fossil fuel - the Athabasca Tar Sands.
Now, personally, I happen to live in the coastal rainforest zone. In fact our Rain Festival is probably going to start in just a couple of weeks and carry on until, say, May or June. So don't worry about us. We're okay for water so long as it stays cold enough to build a healthy snowpack on the local mountains. But as for you mainlanders I guess it's a different story. Oh well, you can't say you weren't warned. Then again your friends to the south are really parched and they figure you've got it good - maybe a bit too good.
A Statistics Canada study of southern Canada's water yield – the amount of water that falls as rain, melts from snow and ice packs and flows through rivers and streams – found that it has declined an average of 8.5 per cent since 1971.
The Statistics Canada study looked at water yields between 1971 and 2004 across southern Canada, where 98 per cent of Canadians live.
Heather Dewar, an analyst for the agency, said water yield does not include large existing bodies of water like the Great Lakes.
"It's all the water that flows into the system," she said in an interview with CTV.ca.
Gary Sprules, a biology professor at the University of Toronto who specializes in the ecology of lakes, said that decline represents a serious shortfall in our water supply.
"I think that's a significant loss," he said. "That's close to 10 per cent in a generation and a half and that's troublesome."
He said much of the loss is likely due to the global warming trend, which has changed spring runoff patterns across the continent. "Global climate change has led to changes in rainfall patterns in our part of the world and the amount and time of ice cover on our lakes and rivers."
Hey Iggy, now do you get it? Climate change, anthropogenic global warming, the earth-changing phenomenon being driven by fossil fuels which, I'm just guessing here, probably includes the world's filthiest fossil fuel - the Athabasca Tar Sands.
Now, personally, I happen to live in the coastal rainforest zone. In fact our Rain Festival is probably going to start in just a couple of weeks and carry on until, say, May or June. So don't worry about us. We're okay for water so long as it stays cold enough to build a healthy snowpack on the local mountains. But as for you mainlanders I guess it's a different story. Oh well, you can't say you weren't warned. Then again your friends to the south are really parched and they figure you've got it good - maybe a bit too good.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Water Is the New Oil
A new study has been released documenting the projected sustainability of America's freshwater resources by the year 2050. The conclusion is that 70% of American counties will experience water shortages by 2050 with about 30% suffering severe to extreme water shortages. The map below shows those parts of America expected to be hardest hit.
Read the full report here.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Egyptians have taken to the streets to protest water shortages. This comes at a time when Egypt is locked in a dispute with countries of the Nile headwaters over entitlement to that resource. From IRIN:
“Water scarcity will be even worse in the future,” Riad Aldamk, head of a water studies project at Cairo College of Engineering, told IRIN.
He said Egypt’s total water consumption had increased by 17 percent in the last five years, according to studies conducted by the college. Hotter summers were partly to blame.
A recent report by the state-run Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) said annual water resources would decline by 15.2 billion cubic metres by 2017 - from a required 86.2 billion cubic metres to a projected 71.4 billion cubic metres.
The report said Egypt, where average per capita consumption was 700 cubic metres of water a year - was one of 15 Arab countries under the global water scarcity mark of 1,000 cubic metres per capita. The global average is 6,750 cubic metres per person annually.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Egyptians have taken to the streets to protest water shortages. This comes at a time when Egypt is locked in a dispute with countries of the Nile headwaters over entitlement to that resource. From IRIN:
“Water scarcity will be even worse in the future,” Riad Aldamk, head of a water studies project at Cairo College of Engineering, told IRIN.
He said Egypt’s total water consumption had increased by 17 percent in the last five years, according to studies conducted by the college. Hotter summers were partly to blame.
A recent report by the state-run Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) said annual water resources would decline by 15.2 billion cubic metres by 2017 - from a required 86.2 billion cubic metres to a projected 71.4 billion cubic metres.
The report said Egypt, where average per capita consumption was 700 cubic metres of water a year - was one of 15 Arab countries under the global water scarcity mark of 1,000 cubic metres per capita. The global average is 6,750 cubic metres per person annually.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Draining India
India and its increasingly perilous freshwater supply are a formula for no end of trouble.
Ever since Western science brought India the blessings of the Green Revolution, the "world's largest democracy" has been rapaciously consuming its freshwater resources, mainly for irrigation. The problem is that Indian farmers, just like farmers around the planet, have become dependent on water resources, especially groundwater, that nature simply cannot replenish.
It's easy to grasp. If you're irrigating your fields from water pumped out of an aquifer at the rate of 10X per year but precipitation trickles back into that reservoir at only 1X per year, you're on a one way road to the very bottom of that reservoir. Eventually your agricultural production, that has become dependent on 10X per year of water is going to find itself with but a small fraction of its needs. That's when agriculture craters, leading to food shortages, triggering social unrest.
From BBC News:
Parts of India are on track for severe water shortages, according to results from Nasa's gravity satellites.
The Grace mission discovered that in the country's north-west - including Delhi - the water table is falling by about 4cm (1.6 inches) per year.
The finding is published two days after an Indian government report warning of a potential water crisis.
That report noted that access to water was one of the main factors governing the pace of development in the world's second most populous nation.
..."We looked at the rainfall record and during this decade, it's relatively steady - there have been some up and down years but generally there's no drought situation, there's no major trend in rainfall," said Matt Rodell, a hydrologist at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center near Washington DC.
"So naturally we would expect the groundwater level to stay where it is unless there is an excessive stress due to people pumping too much water, which is what we believe is happening."
The Indian government is right, this is a genuine crisis. For, bad as the groundwater problem is, India also faces two other problems - disruption of the Monsoon rains and the headlong retreat of the Himalayan glaciers. When the country's food supply depends on pumping groundwater at plainly unsustainable levels and the mountain headwaters that supply its main rivers are in jeopardy and the Monsoon has become unpredictable/unreliable this is a house on fire.
India's dream of its own Industrial Revolution is little more than a dream without an abundance of water. Manufacturing of almost any sort demands massive amounts of freshwater, massive and reliable. To that add the wastewater problems - pollution and other contaminants that can render other surface water resources unfit for human or agricultural use. That's what China has been doing for many years.
Forget oil, water is the key. Water is life itself and the more densely populated the nation the more that's true. We know the Indians have a major water crisis in their cities. Some of the secondary cities haven't had municipal water since April and the current drought isn't going to make that any better. Residents have to rely on trucked water, creating the inevitable supply and demand pricing which is bad news for cities with a lot of urban poor. The UN maintains that the minimum freshwater requirements for hydration, cooking and hygiene is 20-litres daily. What if you can only afford half that?
Without plenty of water, India's dream of economic superpowerdom slips straight through its fingers - and down the drain.
Ever since Western science brought India the blessings of the Green Revolution, the "world's largest democracy" has been rapaciously consuming its freshwater resources, mainly for irrigation. The problem is that Indian farmers, just like farmers around the planet, have become dependent on water resources, especially groundwater, that nature simply cannot replenish.
It's easy to grasp. If you're irrigating your fields from water pumped out of an aquifer at the rate of 10X per year but precipitation trickles back into that reservoir at only 1X per year, you're on a one way road to the very bottom of that reservoir. Eventually your agricultural production, that has become dependent on 10X per year of water is going to find itself with but a small fraction of its needs. That's when agriculture craters, leading to food shortages, triggering social unrest.
From BBC News:
Parts of India are on track for severe water shortages, according to results from Nasa's gravity satellites.
The Grace mission discovered that in the country's north-west - including Delhi - the water table is falling by about 4cm (1.6 inches) per year.
The finding is published two days after an Indian government report warning of a potential water crisis.
That report noted that access to water was one of the main factors governing the pace of development in the world's second most populous nation.
..."We looked at the rainfall record and during this decade, it's relatively steady - there have been some up and down years but generally there's no drought situation, there's no major trend in rainfall," said Matt Rodell, a hydrologist at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center near Washington DC.
"So naturally we would expect the groundwater level to stay where it is unless there is an excessive stress due to people pumping too much water, which is what we believe is happening."
The Indian government is right, this is a genuine crisis. For, bad as the groundwater problem is, India also faces two other problems - disruption of the Monsoon rains and the headlong retreat of the Himalayan glaciers. When the country's food supply depends on pumping groundwater at plainly unsustainable levels and the mountain headwaters that supply its main rivers are in jeopardy and the Monsoon has become unpredictable/unreliable this is a house on fire.
India's dream of its own Industrial Revolution is little more than a dream without an abundance of water. Manufacturing of almost any sort demands massive amounts of freshwater, massive and reliable. To that add the wastewater problems - pollution and other contaminants that can render other surface water resources unfit for human or agricultural use. That's what China has been doing for many years.
Forget oil, water is the key. Water is life itself and the more densely populated the nation the more that's true. We know the Indians have a major water crisis in their cities. Some of the secondary cities haven't had municipal water since April and the current drought isn't going to make that any better. Residents have to rely on trucked water, creating the inevitable supply and demand pricing which is bad news for cities with a lot of urban poor. The UN maintains that the minimum freshwater requirements for hydration, cooking and hygiene is 20-litres daily. What if you can only afford half that?
Without plenty of water, India's dream of economic superpowerdom slips straight through its fingers - and down the drain.
(The map at top shows agricultural water use by nation. The darker the red, the greater percentage of the existing water resources is taken for agriculture. The darkest red represents 90% +. India is shown in the 75-90% range. Unfortunately this is based on normal precipitation and doesn't account for the current droughts or the looming problem from the disappearing Himalayan glaciers. Every country in the two darkest colours is facing an eventual freshwater crisis. Nations in the second-lightest colour - such as the United States - are facing freshwater problems. Take a look at what's left - Northern Europe, Russia and Canada.
The map below shows current drought regions. When you match up water use from the map above with drought shown below, it gives you an idea which countries are burning the candle at both ends.)
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Mad From Thirst
Thirst - conjures up scenes of lost souls crawling across deserts or adrift on the ocean in lifeboats. It always produces an intense feeling of human vulnerability.
What we are going to have to start thinking of is thirst on a national, even regional scale, thirst that besets hundreds of millions of people. That's beginning right now, in India and China. The Reuters news agency reports that India may soon be forced to buy freshwater for some of its people. For some time now residents of some major Indian cities have been dependent on privately operated water trucks, their municipal water systems hopelessly overwhelmed. Now it's the really poor people in the countryside that are awaiting the sporadic arrival of the water trucks: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/124270350152.htm
The situation is worse in India's next door neighbour and emerging superpower rival, China. Like India, China faces a general water shortage that's only going to continue to worsen as the Himalayan glaciers recede. But China treats its already limited surface water as an industrial waste disposal system, rendering enormous amounts of what remains unsafe for human consumption, some of it unfit even for irrigation.
Faced with an immediate problem, China is resorting to a massive, 'go for broke' solution that may not work and risks severe ecological blowback in the future. The report from today's Guardian delivers a sense of silent desperation, even recklessness, on the part of China's government: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/18/china-water-crisis
What emerges from these stories is that neither country really has a viable, long-term response to its growing freshwater crisis. India seems bogged down in bandaid measures. Yet Mubai seems the least worrisome at the moment. For all we see China as a totalitarian state, it is remarkable how feeble is Beijing's control over its own provinces, their governments and industries. There's a really eerie element of institutional anarchy suggesting that China has all but lost control over its industrial revolution.
What we are going to have to start thinking of is thirst on a national, even regional scale, thirst that besets hundreds of millions of people. That's beginning right now, in India and China. The Reuters news agency reports that India may soon be forced to buy freshwater for some of its people. For some time now residents of some major Indian cities have been dependent on privately operated water trucks, their municipal water systems hopelessly overwhelmed. Now it's the really poor people in the countryside that are awaiting the sporadic arrival of the water trucks: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/124270350152.htm
The situation is worse in India's next door neighbour and emerging superpower rival, China. Like India, China faces a general water shortage that's only going to continue to worsen as the Himalayan glaciers recede. But China treats its already limited surface water as an industrial waste disposal system, rendering enormous amounts of what remains unsafe for human consumption, some of it unfit even for irrigation.
Faced with an immediate problem, China is resorting to a massive, 'go for broke' solution that may not work and risks severe ecological blowback in the future. The report from today's Guardian delivers a sense of silent desperation, even recklessness, on the part of China's government: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/18/china-water-crisis
What emerges from these stories is that neither country really has a viable, long-term response to its growing freshwater crisis. India seems bogged down in bandaid measures. Yet Mubai seems the least worrisome at the moment. For all we see China as a totalitarian state, it is remarkable how feeble is Beijing's control over its own provinces, their governments and industries. There's a really eerie element of institutional anarchy suggesting that China has all but lost control over its industrial revolution.
Monday, March 17, 2008
The Big Melt
This might not be a good time to complain about melting to those of you shovelling snow from your roofs back East but - can't be helped.
Contrary to the nonsense being spun by the hoax climate (i.e. denialist) industry, the world's glaciers are melting faster than ever.
The outfit that knows is aptly called the World Glacier Monitoring Service. As its name suggests, it keeps tabs on glaciers around the world and it's not in the business of creating smokescreens for the fossil fuel industry.
The latest WGMS report says the world's glaciers are melting faster than at any time in the past 5,000 years. From The Guardian:
"Based on historical records and other evidence, the rate at which the glaciers are melting is also thought to be faster that at any time in the past 5,000 years, said Professor Wilfried Haeberli, director of the monitoring service. 'There's no absolute proof, but nevertheless the evidence is strong: this is really extraordinary.'
The problem could lead to failing infrastructure, mass migration and even conflict. 'We're talking about something that happens in your and my lifespan. We're not talking about something hypothetical, we're talking about something dramatic in its consequences,' he said.
Lester Brown, of the influential US-based Earth Policy Institute, said the problem would have global ramifications, as farmers in China and India struggled to irrigate their crops.
'This is the biggest predictable effect on food security in history as far as I know,' said Brown."
The Himalayan glaciers feed the main rivers of both India and China, providing water essential for agriculture in those massively populated nations. The loss of these glaciers is expected to turn the once mighty Ganges into a seasonal river, dry except during the monsoon season when water isn't needed for irrigation anyway. The same situation could afflict major agricultural areas of China also.
It's not just people and rice paddies and wheat fields that need reliable volumes of water. Industry consumes enormous amounts of water and both China and India are moving to industrialize on a massive scale that will only compound their water needs just when those resources are becoming unstable.
Before long, water may be the new oil. Maybe then those of us in coastal British Columbia will stop whining so much about it.
Contrary to the nonsense being spun by the hoax climate (i.e. denialist) industry, the world's glaciers are melting faster than ever.
The outfit that knows is aptly called the World Glacier Monitoring Service. As its name suggests, it keeps tabs on glaciers around the world and it's not in the business of creating smokescreens for the fossil fuel industry.
The latest WGMS report says the world's glaciers are melting faster than at any time in the past 5,000 years. From The Guardian:
"Based on historical records and other evidence, the rate at which the glaciers are melting is also thought to be faster that at any time in the past 5,000 years, said Professor Wilfried Haeberli, director of the monitoring service. 'There's no absolute proof, but nevertheless the evidence is strong: this is really extraordinary.'
The problem could lead to failing infrastructure, mass migration and even conflict. 'We're talking about something that happens in your and my lifespan. We're not talking about something hypothetical, we're talking about something dramatic in its consequences,' he said.
Lester Brown, of the influential US-based Earth Policy Institute, said the problem would have global ramifications, as farmers in China and India struggled to irrigate their crops.
'This is the biggest predictable effect on food security in history as far as I know,' said Brown."
The Himalayan glaciers feed the main rivers of both India and China, providing water essential for agriculture in those massively populated nations. The loss of these glaciers is expected to turn the once mighty Ganges into a seasonal river, dry except during the monsoon season when water isn't needed for irrigation anyway. The same situation could afflict major agricultural areas of China also.
It's not just people and rice paddies and wheat fields that need reliable volumes of water. Industry consumes enormous amounts of water and both China and India are moving to industrialize on a massive scale that will only compound their water needs just when those resources are becoming unstable.
Before long, water may be the new oil. Maybe then those of us in coastal British Columbia will stop whining so much about it.
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