arthur richards

This post was written in honor of Blog Action Day.

Water is a ubiquitous chemical substance that is composed of hydrogen and oxygen and is essential for all known forms of life. (In case you didn't already know - and thanks Wikipedia.) We all know that you cannot survive without access to clean water. Yet as watersheds around the world become dangerously polluted and bodies of water dry up due to climate change and misuse, our most precious resource is becoming increasingly scarce.

increasing scarcity of a vital resource

While rivers and lakes are shrinking (think the Rio Grande, the Colorado River, the Aral Sea, Lake Chapala, etc.) and becoming increasingly polluted, some believe that by 2025, more than half of the world's population will be facing water-based vulnerability (see A Global Outlook for Water Resources to the Year 2025). Through lack of biodiversity, over/misuse of water (eg flooding fields for irrigation, growing water-intensive crops in arid regions, golf courses in the desert, etc.), desertification is on the rise, crops are failing, poverty/hunger are increasing in predominantly arid regions... Beyond just facing "water-based vulnerability", some also believe that water scarcity may be the basis for another great war (and not just hippies! Former World Bank vice president Ismail
Serageldin has said "The next world war will be over water.").

Private companies (some with the assistance of the IMF and World Bank) have been hip to the growing scarcity of clean water for a long time and have been trying to take control of municipal water supplies as well as taking control of properties with some sort of water source. Beyond this obvious privatization of water, industrial waste makes it's way into our water sources (directly and indirectly) - sometimes contaminating them to truly unsafe and unusable levels. Any student of economics can tell you, as a resource or commodity becomes more scarce, it's value increases. As clean water becomes increasingly scarce, it becomes the new gold. And when private companies take control of municipal water supplies and attempt to profit off of this resource, the people who cannot afford it are utterly screwed (see this report for some case studies).

ok, so if we're so screwed, what can we do about it?

Like Sarah pointed out on the Adapting to Scarcity blog, we've been waiting far too long for our governments to do something about water issues and climate change in general. The massiveness of the problems coupled with fear mongering have paralyzing affects on us.

As always, we have tremendous people power and have the capacity to institute our own changes and innovations. Communities around the world who have already been dealing with extreme water scarcity are already discovering solutions. Some of these solutions include bio-remediation, ecosystem restoration, rainwater harvesting and 'tankas' - a natural reservoir for catching/storing rainwater.

We all already know that we should turn off the tap while we're brushing our teeth, but personal water conservation is only a small piece of the puzzle. Agriculture uses around 70% of the world's freshwater resources - and most of that gets used for mono-culture crops in places extraordinarily far from where the food is destined to be eaten. For instance, it takes "25 gallons for a portion of rice, 40 gallons for the bread in a sandwich . . . 130 gallons for a two-egg omlet . . . 265 gallons for a glass of milk . . . 1320 gallons for a small steak . . . 37 gallons for a cup of coffee . . . 66 gallons [for a glass of beer or wine]" (Fred Pearce, When the Rivers Run Dry). Most of us tend to buy food that comes from places incredibly far away - when you consider the water it takes to generate that food, think about where that water is coming from as well. Bought an avocado from Chile? The water that was required to grow that avocado is Chilean water. Eating a Harris Ranch steak? That beef was likely raised in an incredibly arid region of California and the water it took to raise it came from there as well. Besides containing virtual water, most of our food is grown with incredibly wasteful and unsustainable agricultural practices - flooding fields rather than using drip irrigation, mono-crops that destroy biodiversity (a leading cause of desertification), growing water-intensive crops in arid regions, and so on. So try to consume food grown with more sustainable practices in your local food/watershed.

This really is just meant as a crash-course introduction to water scarcity - the issues are complex, but the solutions don't have to be! There are a myriad of ways people are trying to educate one another, put pressure on local/national governments and organize amongst one another to adapt to the growing scarcity of water. Take a look at some of the resources below and use Google to educate yourself more. When you're done, be sure to get off the computer and get out in the streets/fields/deserts/etc. and make your own change!

Resources

Adapting to Scarcity - This is a shameless plug. This is the organization I am working with to empower and connect communities adapting to water scarcity. The project is in fledgling stages, but we are working to build a web-based multimedia library of solutions to water scarcity around the world.
GroundwaterUp
La Red Vida
Food and Water Watch
International Rivers
Pacific Institute
Occidental Arts and Ecoology Water Institute
Global Water
Earthwatch Institute
Village Earth
Potters for Peace
Todd Ecological
Aguanomics
Water Solutions
Save the Rain
Black Smith Institute
And books by Maude Barlow, Fred Pearce, Jacque Leslie.