Water footprints and SE to take our water?

Could water shortages have an even greater impact than Peak Oil?

This an issue that I cannot begin to do justice in this blog entry but try for starters that 16,000 litres are needed for 1kg of beef, 140 litres for one cup of coffee and 900 litres for 1kg of Maize. I will come back to our water footprint but first let's remind us where we are...

Professor Asit K. Biswas, an expert in water use and the 2006 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate, wrote in a report released by the Asian Development Bank (Bangkok Post): "If the present unsatisfactory trends continue, in one or two decades Asian developing countries are likely to face a crisis on water quality management that is unprecedented in human history."

Underwater aquifers are already running dry in China - the consequence of rapid industrialisation and water pollution in China's dash for economic transformation. Aquifers are also running dry in India too. Major water diversion schemes are spoken about but are not a reality - and attempts to create more dams or desalinate water are in danger of being as destructive of ecosystems as the droughts themselves. The US state of Georgia and the southern part of California have suffered serious shortages during the past year due to unusually severe droughts and poor planning. Pollution and profligate consumption patterns point to a coming desperate situation.

Over one billion people have no clean, safe drinking water; 5,000 children die every day from water that is dirty and contaminated. At least 2.2 million people - 1.8 million of them children - are killed each year by water-borne diseases. A further 2.6 billion people have no secure, hygienic toilet facilities, which breeds disease and contaminates ground water. See Peter Tatchell talk on this here.

Yet for a tiny fraction of global military expenditure, everyone on earth could have infection-free drinking water and millions of lives could be saved. The lack of safe water supplies often impacts worst on marginal social groups, such as lower castes and ethnic minorities, who may be denied access to water sources and be forced to pay premium prices to private suppliers. And we should not forget that some tourist developments, such as big hotels and golf courses, result in private companies sinking their own bore holes to extract water from below ground - this sometimes results in the depression of the water table; causing a drying up of wells and consequent water crises in the surrounding villages.

Water shortages and a lack of affordability in developing countries have sometimes been exacerbated by privatisation, which has usually benefited urban dwellers to the neglect of their rural counterparts. With global warming and rising populations, the prospect looms of
future conflicts and wars over insufficient fresh water supplies. A foretaste of such disputes can be seen in the friction between Israel and the Palestinian territories over Tel Aviv's diversion of water from the Jordan River to meet Israeli demand, leaving the West Bank under-supplied.

Water footprint

We've heard of carbon footprints well try water footprint - The water footprint of an individual, business or nation is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual, business or nation.

A couple of blog entries back I noted the impact livestock have on Climate Change - well as my opening paragraph of this entry suggests they also impact on our water resources. We've all heard about embodied energy, but what about virtual water. See this excellent website explore this issue more:
http://www.waterfootprint.org/index.php?page=files/home

On that site you can calculate your footprint, see how much water other products take to be produced and more.

It is certainly time we started to take water seriously...in this country we will not be without serious difficulties - the South East is already stretched - and the BBC has reported that in London leaks from ageing water mains are wasting 300 Olympic swimming pools' worth of water every single day.

SE to take our water?

One suggestion regarding the canal regeneration is that it could be used to transport water to SE - it is being suggested this could save 5 reservoirs being built. This is a completely crazy approach - not least it would be a huge waste of energy pumping water up over Cotswolds.

It will also deprive us of water here in Stroud - and according to one critic, it is a key reason why the Environment Agency has stalled and delayed low head hydro in the Stroud Valleys and why attempts to restore migratory salmonids to Frome catchment are obstructed by the EA, as such a scheme would, like hydro, require our water resources be protected and not nicked in this manner.

There are numerous other ecological reasons, (chemical, microbiological & biological), why this project should never be allowed. It is up to the Thames catchment managers (EA) to properly manage the existing sufficient water resources here. Rather than wasting £110 million on a flood channel round Windsor and another £150 million for the same round Oxford to speed rainwater out to the sea - and then £1000 million on new Oxford reservoir and £200 million on Thames estuary desalination - all this is alot less than an estimated £50 million that could be spent on the type of flood/drought impoundments in the Thames catchment as are being proposed here in Stroud, for much much less - and would fix such problems ... but of course that will deprive 'Big Water' of the type of projects needed for maximum profits.