H2+O= Life
Today i come up with one of the most important natural resources if is not the most important, the WATER.
I want to introduce you into the problem that probably we will live really some, with some data, and finally show you an example of good management of water.
The Earth, Water, and Fres Water
The 70% percent of the earth surface is cover by water but if we convert the water in a ball and we compare it with the size of the Earth we can see in the image how is the comparison, it is surprising, Moreover of the total amount of water on the World only the 3% of it is fresh water, and even that only the 0,08% of all the water is suitable for consumption, Shocked??.
The world population has increased in the last 70 years from 2.5billions until more than 7billions, but the water consumption has increased even in a higher rate, multiplying the consumption in the 40th by 5 in hour days from 50km3 to 250km3 by year, and as a consequence 1billion people don’t have access to drinking water and a high rate of people need to walk more than 3 hours each day to obtain it.
This problem is getting worse with the climate change and the increase of the temperature, also problem like the desertification (that we are suffering in Spain) made that the water issue cannot be ignored.
So as we cannot produce the rain, even if you try the rain dance like the American Indians, we should try to improve our efficiency, and second try to continue improving the technology to reuse the water, until the point that we can use it again as drink water (as Windhoek is doing1), because right now it is possible to drink it again but people that have try say that it is not the same and also that doesn’t have the same chemical characteristics.
But talking about efficiency I wanted to show to you the example of the entertainment capital of the world or maybe more easy, Las Vegas, placed in the middle of the Arizona desert, with more than half a million of inhabitants plus 39 millions tourists per year.
As you can imagine it is required a high quantity of water, and find it in the desert is not an easy task, the main supply comes from the Lake Mead, but in the 90th the prediction was terrible for this lake so they began with policies and good management of water for maintaining a sure supply.
They used the private sector as change-makers and as an example for the people, the set good incentives for good management of water, they made a wakeup call for the population, and also set fees for using water and fines for the ones that not follow the new water policies. Now they reuse almost 98% of the water that they use in their resorts, and they can be seeing as good managers of water2.
As conclusion I want to alert that these kinds of problems are already happening around the world and they are going to be worse, so are we going to wait until is too late? I think we must be proactive in this issue an tackle the problem as soon as possible, because as I have read, the water the most important resource in the next century.
REFERENCES
1- http://wp10918324.server-he.de/wabag/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Water-management-in-Windhoek-2007.pdf
2-http://www.lasvegasgmp.com/html/about_index.html
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water
- http://www.worldometers.info/water/
Comments Off on H2+O= Life /
12 Feb 2014
por
marioescamilla
IMSD /
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