Sustainable development blog : ecology and humanitarian aid

"Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink" Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge This is what the sailor, lost at sea, says when he realizes he's going to die from thirst in the middle of the ocean. And so shall we say when fresh water supplies will have disappeared...

According to a recent article I read (click here to read it), 70% of sustainability experts think that

dwindling water supplies is as serious a problem as carbon emissions. Actually, 54% of them assert that the world will run out of water before it runs out of fuel ! This is quite serious since England's groundwater should begin decreasing by 2025 and its rivers' overall amount of water could be reduced by 15% by 2050. Not to sound alarmist but only 2.5% of Earth's water is fresh water and 1% of the world's fresh water (~0.007% of all water on earth) is accessible for direct human uses.

Maybe we can find other ways to make our cars move (solar ? wind ?) but what solutions would we have coping with a world lack of water ? If we can do without a car, we can't do without water, of course. Maybe Canada (3300 km3 annual renewable water ressource) or Brazil (8233 km3) have nothing to worry about for now but Europe (from England 160 km3 to France 189 km3) will be among the first hit, not even to mention dry countries of Africa (Tunisia 4.6%, Zimbabwe 20% or South Africa 50%). Those figures come from the very interesting Pacific Institute's website (click here to visit).

One last thing, international security experts curiously tend to ignore or belittle the complex and real relationships between water and security. One can think of water poinsoning of course, which is a very well-known war tactic to weaken/kill the ennemy BUT MORE SURELY the conflicts to come to get access to the remaining fresh water supplies will be worse than the actual international tension zones concerning fuel supplies.

Maybe it is time to think of a way to avoid this...