Green Water: Cut Conflict with Nature to Achieve Sustainability

Every hydrology textbook contains the basic estimates of global water sources. Freshwater (inclusive of fresh groundwater, water in ice caps and glaciers, and rivers and lakes) constitutes only 3% of the total water resources. While in absolute terms the fresh water available in earth is around 35million cubic kilometers, accessible fresh water for human consumption is around 11 million cubic kms. 

The rest is water in the ocean.

Water stress and water scarcity will become more common in the next few decades. Water stress occurs when water supplies drop below 1,700 cubic metres per person, per year. Water scarcity is defined as less than 1,000 cubic metres per person, per year and absolute scarcity is defined as less than 500 cubic metres.

There is no more water on earth now than there was 2,000 years ago, when the

Population was less than 3 percent of its current size. 

The world is adding around 75million to the population every year which has a direct impact on water and energy demand. Though the rate of growth of population may not be a concern at this point of time, still the absolute numbers on the increment is alarmingly dangerous. India and China the two Asian giants alone will contribute around 35% of the incremental world population every year.

Humans cannot live without energy. The demand supply gap of energy continues to be widening, causing stress on the global economic stability. All types of energy sources consumes large amount of water as a part of  power generation.

As the world’s population grows, demand grows with it, and no two demands are more pressing than those for fresh water and energy. If nothing changes, an increase in energy production will continue to involve an increase in water consumption and an increase in water collection and distribution will involve an increase in energy use.

Water is a renewable resource. The recycling of water is a natural system. All the water that we consume has to come back into the global system through natural process, which means we should not have any water scarcity by law of nature.

We have three problems:

 

-      Uneven distribution of fresh water, making it expensive for tapping

-      Lack of system to preserve rain water, resulting in ocean absorption

-      Increasing demand for water consumption from energy resources

 

The continuous onslaught on the nature through global warming is making the natural recycling system becoming dysfunctional slowly.

Mankind is facing two important stress factors:

• -      Ever Increasing Water-Energy Interdependence for sourcing
• -      Ever Increasing Nature-Human Conflict in the name of development

The combination of constraints in accessing fresh water and the stress the mankind is building on the planet are causing the mess on water situation across the globe.

Instead of coordinating with the nature on sustenance, we are challenging the same through our intelligence in the name of science and technology.

Instead of preserving the fresh water and optimizing its utilization we have moved to Ocean for solution. Desalination has been the answer for the nature’s fury though desalination has been an expensive proposition and also energy dependent.

By this we are again aggravating the global warming.

Desalination remains an energy-hungry industry relying almost entirely on fossil fuels. Consequently, only rich nations or countries with abundant and cheap domestic energy supplies have been able to effectively deploy the technology. To date, that list includes Saudi Arabia (the world leader in desalination by volume), the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Australia, Israel, and increasingly, China and India.

Greening the Water for Sustenance:

We have a responsibility to our future generation. The responsiveness on Water and Energy Security comes from the way we align ourselves to the nature for sustainability.

Water harvesting through rivers, ponds and lakes should be mandated globally across Cities, Towns and Villages depending upon the density of Population

Every constructed building should have rain water harvesting system as part of the building plan

Every Building should have a compulsory Water Recycling plant to treat waste water and Sewage water for reuse

Every building across the world should move towards solar and LED lighting solutions progressively but within a time frame of 5 -10 years depending upon the affordability.

Nations should encourage people to invest on domestic Water and Energy Security and incentivize, through cut on future taxes or deferred social benefits apart from easy capital support to build infrastructure.

Conventional energy based desalination should give way to solar powered desalination for environmental sustainability.  

There is a collective responsibility on the part of People and the State to get away from the precarious situation or else water can become proximity cause for the next war across the world. 

T Margabandhu