Water Management and a little something on Megacities

"if the wars of [20th] century were fought over oil, the wars of the [21st] Century will be fought over water"
                                            -Ismail Serageldin, World Bank VP in 1995

This is something I believe is true. Since we are already fighting over one liquid the step to the next should not be so big. We are already seeing that water is a problem in large parts of the world and if the problem continues to grow as it has this far then it would stand to reason the price would go up as the scarcity increases and then at some key point the value is greater than the cost of war. I mean, if there's no oil then we could just use some other energy source but replacing water is not that simple AND let us not forget that we ARE fighting over oil already.

But i digress.

The volume of water is pretty much fixed and only 2,5% of it is fresh water and only 30% of fresh water is available for use. Which means that less than 1% of the blue liquid is readily available for our use. This is something worth thinking about. If you take into account the pollution of water and the growth of the population, remembering that the volume of water is fixed, the future does not look good unless something is done. We really need to reverse the growth of water usage per capita to be able to live on this planet.

Water resources then? Well 70% of the water goes to agricultural use. Perhaps growing crops where they are best suited (or modifying the crops) would decrease this percentage. There are also other usages such as hydropower and fisheries. These do however not necessarily have to compete, they could prove to be synergic if given a chance.

Another problem is that water is not equally divided, neither spatial nor temporal. That adds the dimension of borders (politics) to our problem. The places that will be hit hardest first are the poorer regions between the latitudes of 40 degrees North and 10 degrees North. And there the poor people will be the ones to suffer first and foremost.

One cannot forget that water affects some things and that some things affect water. So water, or the lack thereof, needs to be taken into account when planning (urban planning), it affects energy production and not to forget, it affects the environment. To underline, the big five are: Population growth, (Urban) development, Energy production, Climate change and Environmental degradation.

So are these caused by water or is water affected by these problems? Perhaps it is a bit of both, since water flows through all and thus it stands to reason it would have some effect on that and it would take something with it as it flows away. One might call it the blood of our planet since it is vital to all living things.

IWRM? Integrated Water Resources Management. Sounds important. Well, it IS a binding agreement but how do you enforce it? The general idea is great but it still leaves a lot to be wanted. There is not any clear value designated to certain fields and areas affected by development, i.e. a dam will provide you with energy (monetary value easily calculated) but how do you calculate the value of the fisheries that has to close or the ecosystem that is forever lost? What is a positive effect and what is a negative effect? Well that is up to the person asked. The man who just lost his livelihood says it's negative but the state official might not see it that way.

So as with everything else, water is a political matter. Which essentially means that until the politicians realizes that they should leave the decision-making to the engineers and other people who actually understand the problem, the positive progress will be rather slim.