The parched planet

[demographic]

Unbfortunatly due to copyright issues I have had to remove my initial post, as there have been a few people that have replied with relevent information I managed to find a link to the New Scientist page but unless you are a subscriber it only gives a shortened version of it.

Link to the short bit HERE

Sorry if it's made this thread a bit confusing Regards Scott.

 

[-Switch-]

That's quite an interesting article, thanks

The water crisis isn't localised to India and third world countries though. Alot of people in the south east complain when we have a hosepipe ban here (as we do now) but they don't realise that statistically Britain is the driest country, per person, on the planet
Think about that one - there is more water per person in the sahara than there is in the UK.

That article touched on the issues slightly but I think we're in for some tough times ahead on this planet

 

[Goose]

That is an amazing article, talk about making you stop and think!

 

[Cyclingrelf]

Thanks for publicising a little-known fact - great article!

 

[greg2935]

I've read similar articles elsewhere, there is a really good example in south west Zimbabwe where a certain UK charity sank boreholes in a part of the country that although had a good loamy soil, was very arid. Of couse lots of people moved in, farmed, and once the water ran out, moved away, unfortunately the only thing keeping the trees there were their access to underground water, it therefore turned to desert. The Kalarari has moved almost 100 miles into Zimbabwe since then. In fact all the worlds deserts are exapnding, and seems to be linked to the current changing seasonal patterns.

 

[pierre girard]

There has been a lot of talk in our area of using water from Lake Superior for areas to the south and west of us when their aquifiers dry out.

Here is some information on the subject from an Anishinabe (Ojibwe) point of view:
***********************
The Ogallala Aquifier that runs under the plains states of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and west Texas is being emptied by the thirst of agribusiness at a much higher rate than expected. When the US Army Corps of Engineers checked it out in 1976, water was being pumped out of the Aquifier at a rate of 27 billion cubic metres a year. The Corps recommended it be filled up with Great Lakes water. [Joyce Nelson, Canada Dry, This Magazine, October 1987].

In the early 1980s, the US Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for any state to ban water export across its boundary--to do so would be a restriction of interstate commerce. The Court's rulings have helped to define water as a commodity, and they have helped to discourage a conservation ethic under which people might conserve the water in their own back yards rather than think they can always buy more from their neighbours.

And if their neighbours south of the 49th parallel should run out, then it's time to look to the friendly giant in the north--the one with 90% of North America's surface supply of fresh water.

Canada has done nothing to discourage the US from seeing us as drawers of water. As Brian Mulroney put it in a Fortune interview: "I'm favourably disposed to anything that improves our relationship with our neighbor. If it [water export] happens to make good economic sense and improves the environment, why not?" Or, as Robert Bourassa put it in his Power from the North, "Water is a good, like any other, and can be bought and sold." Or, as Simon Reisman, Canada's negotiator during the free trade talks with the US, said, "America's interest in trading with us has always been linked to something else they wanted from us. I felt water should be looked at in economic terms." [Joyce Nelson, Canada Dry, This Magazine, October 1987]

To the Anishnabek, as we explain later, these statements are highly offensive and could only be said by extremely foolish men.

The St. Lawrence River
The only other place where we might look for the ecological effects of massive displacements of water is in the St. Lawrence River. Here there is more information, much of it being gathered by Warwick Vincent and Julian Dodson of the Départment de biologie, Université Laval, Québec. The following quotes are taken from their paper, "The St. Lawrence River, Canada-USA: the need for an Ecosystem-Level Understanding of Large Rivers" (currently in press in a symposium edition of the Japanese Journal of Limnology (1999):



Discharge plays a pivotal role in the structure and functioning of all flowing water ecosystems including large rivers. According to the analysis by DYNESIUS and NILSSON (1994), the hydrological regime of 77% of the 139 largest rivers in North America and Eurasia has now been subject to modification by dams and other control structures, with deleterious effects (including fragmentation) on habitat quality, land-water interactions and migration corridors for aquatic wildlife. Throughout the twentieth century, the St. Lawrence River has been extensively modified for navigation, flood control and hydroelectricity generation, but little consideration has been given to the ecological impacts of these changes.

Variability in discharge is an important feature that influences the productivity and biodiversity of flood plain environments. The flood-pulse concept draws attention to dynamic character of the floodplain and the importance of periodic flooding for vegetation dynamics, nutrient exchange and access by fish and other animals to wetland habitats as well as to the main stem of the river (JUNK et al., 1989)." ...

Certain freshwater fish species have life cycles that are intimately linked to the hydrological cycle and variations in the St. Lawrence. For example, the year class strength for lake surgeon in the river appears to be strongly determined by hydrological conditions in June, the time of year when the larvae drift from their spawning grounds and begin exogenous feeding (NILO et al., 1997).

A major impediment to a full understanding the pathways and effects of contaminants in the St. Lawrence is the lack of information about food web relationships and biogeochemical cycling processes in this system. Even for the base of the food web our understanding of in situ production processes is still rudimentary.

In certain parts of the world, considerable funds are now allocated towards the process of "renaturalization" of heavily modified streams and rivers. For example, the Danube River has been subjected to large-scale hydraulic modification for more than 100 years. All the meanders have been cut off from certain reaches thereby shortening the channel by c. 20%, resulting in an increased hydraulic gradient. This in turn has led to more rapid erosion and a lowering of the river by 2.5 m in some places with the concomitant of a lowering of the water table and loss of wetland habitat. The German government has allocated 100 million DM for the rehabilitation of a 160 km stretch of the Danube involving re-adjustment of water levels, re-activation of old meanders and the retention of the straight channel sections for flood control. This trend towards renaturalization has been strengthened by environmental laws in most of the German states (LARSEN, 1995).



We have quoted at length from the Vincent-Dodson paper in order to make one, crucial point: the ecosystems of large bodies of water and tremendously complex and extremely fragile. The best scientists admit our scientific knowledge of their complexity is shallow. No one can say with certainty what will or won't happen when those ecosystems are thrown out of balance. It begs the question: "If we don't know, what do we do?"

Our answer is: "Nothing. Let it be."

The taking of water offends the spirit and is a violation of Anishnabe values


This we know: the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth ... Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. --Chief Seattle to the President of the United States, 1854





What is happening right now not only affects us native people because we are very close to the earth .. we take pity on Mother Earth. But it really affects us, the responsibility, the total responsibility of all people in Canada is to take care of the earth. ... We are all in this together. Where the Mother is at is where we have put her. the state where she's at is our responsibility.


--Pauline Shirt, Aninishnabe elder in conversation with Nawash Band member
Lenore Keeshig-Tobias, Earthkeeper vol. 2, issues 3 & 4, 1992.

****************

PG

 

[Rob]

It is a fine line to walk and what do you do once the population is relying on pumped water and growing in size.

If the power was not subsidised or pumping was controlled then you would only delay the inevitable - although you might push people in a different direction.

I am in two minds about rain harvesting. A couple of years back I was amazed that after 4 months of no rain in Victoria, the water that people had collected from gutters etc was just running out. This low level harvesting is great and I think that the law over here should make sure that all new builds have this kind of facility built in to them. More organised rain harvesting can cause problems too. The more you divert from getting to the water table, the lower the table will be. Imagine what will happen when some villages are pumping water and others are harvesting. You just know that they wont replace one with the other.

Less people is the answer. But most societies dont work in a way where we live within the boundaries set by nature - we push our luck and then wonder why either people are starving / ill or we have made another area uninhabitable - well, for cow herds and townies anyway.

 

[bushtuckerman]

Perhaps microgeneration needs to be adopetd in every sense, so that instead of relying on out of town plants, local communities supply some of their water by puryfying their own waste. i really don't know how practicable that is now but we may be forced to try. That doesn't, of course, mean that the problem is solved because there is still water needed for agriculture. But if there is much more local control over water supply then each area can decide for itself how it wants to manage it, and if water prices go up, they go up, and people will start to think a bit more about how much water they waste. Perhaps water for people's gardens could be sourced from water you normally send down the kitchen sink, and if people started using more garden space to grow food rather than flowers then the pressure would be taken off of the agricultural industry? And if more food was supplied locally then you wouldn't need so much of it to go to supermarkets where so much is wasted. I don't think we are any where near running out of usable water, we just use far too much inefficiently.

It all boils down to the concept of supply and demand. We have backed ourselves into a corner because we prize availability over sustainability. If you take, for example, the energy crisis this country and others are facing, you can't expect people to believe that turning off the light, or the heating every now and again is going to make any difference in itself, it is a rediculous idea, since there is still the same amount of power at the source being produced, it is varied to demand a bit but not significantly, and it's aim is always to cover the demand, so the same amount of energy is consumed, be it by your heater or not. Unless you turn this concept on it's head, and say, right, this is how much energy, or usable water we can supply sustainably, and this people, is your quota for the month! Unless you do that i don't think we do have a chance.

I don't know. I just think people need to think for themselves a bit more, but it's difficult to do so in the current state of affairs.