Today’s guest, Judy Wyper is a voracious and eclectic reader. She has great interest in science and astronomy, and always loves to share. She lives in my previous hometown of Peachland, British Columbia, where she loves to live a peaceful life, walking her two dogs in the forest, and spending time in contemplation there. She’s also a very dear friend.
It’s great to have her contribution today. Here's Judy! |
One thing that concerns me these days is water insecurity.
Across the planet more and more humans are experiencing water woes. Water is the fabric of our existence, needed daily for people and animals to drink, to nourish agricultural and wild crops, to wet the land for the forests and wild places, to replenish lakes and oceans. But volumes in reservoirs or aquifers are diminishing, rain is coming at the wrong time for crops. Weather patterns are being disrupted. Yet water is a renewable resource. |
There are stories from around the planet of rivers in trouble, reservoirs drying up and aquifers disappearing. It is worrisome to read about the loss of potable water across the globe. In the UK, water use from the Thames has reduced its flow, threatened wildlife preserves, dried up taps for weeks in some small towns.
There is talk of a national water grid to bring water from Wales to London. In the USA, the Colorado River is greatly reduced. California has been in drought for years. |
This is a global issue, the story repeated over and over as fresh water reserves are depleted and agriculture and domestic uses are threatened.
It's nothing new
Jared Diamond, in Collapse, writes about the disappearance of the Chaco Canyon people.
Where did they go? A drought drove them away, and they abandoned the place. It’s a delicious tale, if you like to chew on environmental mysteries. It would have been a hard decision, but bit by bit they trickled elsewhere, to find another welcoming bit of land, or to be assimilated into another settlement. Or to be enslaved, killed, or die en route. |
Farmers of any time period can tell you about rain coming at the wrong time. There are compelling tales from the Dustbowl years in North America. My Saskatchewan relatives are harvesting now and separate quarter sections have received different amounts of rain, and yielded varying amounts of grain.
Crazy schemes
Gadaffi spent millions of dollars to deliver this to the people to foster agriculture. He failed. Oops. Some things kind of fizzle.
Bad planning
African engineers trained in North America have applied inappropriate methods of flood control to the African rivers. These used to flood to fertilize the land in an ancient natural cycle. The Aswan Dam on the Nile River became clogged with silt and the altered floodplain management greatly disrupted agricultural practices.
The Kajaki hydroelectric dam in Afghanistan brings electricity to Kandahar. The reservoir was to link canals for irrigation. Alas, huge amounts of evaporation and poorly planned routes for the leaky canals took six times more water to irrigate a hectare than traditional systems. |
Some solutions
People get ingenious when times are desperate. In 2003 Singapore announced it would top up its main drinking water reservoir with 2.5 percent of recycled sewage effluent. You know, that's what the astronauts on the International Space Station have to do. Raw sewage is increasingly being used for irrigating crops. Fertile and moist, it does the trick. It may not be authorized by the governments of India, China, and Pakistan, but a blind eye is turned. Intestinal tolerance builds up. The supply is more reliable and cheaper than clean water. |
People in India and elsewhere are looking at plans for the diversion of the Ganges floodwaters into a reservoir. Diversions work sometimes, and other times lead to greater difficulties. The point is to find ways to recycle, reclaim the water.
The future
Nowadays, borders have carved up the land and available resources. Drought-stricken people can't easily gather their things and resettle in a better place. Heart-wrenchingly, there are long-standing refugee camps from political, environmental, and disaster zones. The world's population is now 7.3 billion, and we are increasingly living in cities, which certainly complicates delivering safe drinkable water, let alone water for agriculture. Water security is a global issue that requires a global response.
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Yes, there will be tragedies. But there will also be victories because humans are the super-species on the planet. Humans create, engineer, develop. I just feel sorry for all the innocent animal and plant species we may lose, and cultures that may fall by the wayside.