Water, without which any living creature on the planet Earth would not be able to survive, plays an essential role and is definitely a daily necessity in our life. It is not an unfamiliar word to us Homo sapiens no matter what language we use. However, plenty of global problems nowadays are threatening the sustainability of our water resources.
From my personal background, getting exposed to one of the world’s most advanced water reclamation and wastewater treatment technologies during high school in Singapore, studying environmental geoscience in London, as well as having an in-depth laboratory research on land subsidence associated with groundwater abstraction in Tokyo have drawn my attention to the water-environment field and have also facilitated me to have a better understanding of the sustainability of water resources worldwide.
The main purpose of this blog is to explore whether global water resources are sustainable, to be more specific, how they are linked to the environment and climate change in particular, how people in different countries manage their water resources, what effects global warming exert on water resources, as well as what we can and should do to secure the limited water.
Water Facts & Dimensions
Water is a broad and complex term as it is connected to everything in the world, yet a precondition for the sustainability of our mother Earth.
Figure 1.1: Water Definition
However, the water we drink and use may not be in this case - colourless? Transparent? Odourless? It seems that 'water' from nature is no longer the same as what it is supposed to be in the dictionary, which we should ponder over for its current state and future.
In my opinion, water can be subdivided into different categories based on their compositions, geological location and movement, hydrology aspects and many other standards. For instance, freshwater vs. saltwater, groundwater vs. surface water, etc. UN Water Facts have also explored multiple dimensions of water, with climate change being the biggest challenge, along with disasters, ecosystems, financing, gender, human rights, quality and wastewater, scarcity, transboundary waters, urbanization, sanitation, food and energy. Various factors and proxies have been taken into account, including temperature, precipitation, evaporation demand, other weather conditions (rainfall, snowmelt, river flows and groundwater), flood and drought. (Climate Change and Water: IPCC Technical Papers VI Chapter 3)
Water Availability & Sanitation
Water availability and sanitation are two major aspects to concern when it comes to sustainability. 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water and 4% is freshwater, most of which is locked in ice sheets and glaciers; while only 0.5% of that is available for human consumption. Statistically, according to High Level Panel on Water (HLPW), two fifths of the world’s population are affected by water scarcity; 263 million people spend more than 30 minutes in order to collect water every day, indicating much less time on education for them; over two billion people drink water contaminated by feces, which can result in diarrheal diseases and kill one child every minute globally.
Quite a few nations in the world, especially those in Southeast Asia and Africa, have little or limited access to hygiene water, which makes water sanitation an urgent issue. Additionally, water resources vary geographically due to latitudinal differences. The current status of rising demand and dwindling per capita water resources (Jones 2012) also illustrates that, among the top 20 best-resourced countries, nine own significant ice- and snow-melt resources, the rest have humid tropical climates, and some have both. While at the bottom of the list, 13 out of the 20 nations with the lowest per capita water resources are in the Middle East-North Africa (MENA), and the rest seven are islands, including Singapore where I grew up.
Figure 1.2: current status of rising demand and dwindling per capita water resources
Water Sustainability
Figure 1.3: Sustainable Development Goal 6
As stated in the SustainableDevelopment Goal 6, “ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” calls for access to safe water and sanitation and sound management of freshwater ecosystems."
Water's Promise
There is a still a long way to go in order to conserve and sustain our reliable and limited water resources, and I shall discover and research more in the next following weeks!
Do you think there is a realistic way to more equitably distribute ownership of freshwater resources amongst the world's nations? I'm curious to your thoughts on how that could be achieved, in light of the fact that the aim is to ensure availability of water and sanitation for all..
ReplyDeleteObviously same as all other natural resources, water is not evenly distributed nation by nation in the world due to different geographical locations, climate, environmental conditions and many other factors; so it is for freshwater. I think absolutely there is difficulty in sharing freshwater equitably between countries, but we could possibly find a solution similar to ‘carbon credit’, let’s name it, say ‘(fresh)water credit’. My concept is, countries with more freshwater credits mean that they possess a larger amount of freshwater resources than the others do. Those with more freshwater credits could sell their excessive credits to those with less ones and the trade would allow freshwater-rich nations to share their resources with countries and regions where inadequacy and poor hygiene of freshwater as well as droughts are more likely to be found.
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