In 2015, United Nations member states adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, which include an imperative to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.” Yet, in the last four years, matters have deteriorated significantly....Project Syndicate
This could spell bad news for Nestle and other corporations seeking to corner the world market on clean water – but it would mean welcome relief for the hundreds of millions of people who have limited access to such a fundamental part of life.
It is well-known that over 70 percent of the earth’s surface is covered by water – yet clean water for drinking and irrigation is one of the planet’s scarcest commodities. In fact, fresh water comprises only about 3.5 percent of the world’s supply. The result of this irony is that places such as California suffer from droughts while there is a huge ocean of water right next door.
Historically, water has been the source of major conflicts, such as the “range wars” of 19th-Century America and the current problems between Israel’s Palestinian and Jewish populations. Although methods of water desalination exist, most of them are not cost-effective.…
The good news is that scientists in the UK have developed a much less expensive method of desalination that could make such equipment accessible and affordable by individuals and communities. It involves what is known as a graphene-oxide membrane, which is capable of filtering even nanoparticles of salts out of water.
This technique, which is being researched at the University of Manchester, is still in the experimental stage – but points the way to quick, efficient, and inexpensive desalination techniques that could improve the quality of life for hundreds of millions....
Because graphene-oxide is easy and inexpensive to produce, it means that such technology will be widely available to everyone...
However you look at it though, if water becomes a contentious issue, it will have geopolitical and military implications. And we would need to solve the water issue to prevent those implications from leading to nationalism and military confrontation.Credit Writedowns
In 2012, the U.S. Intelligence Council issued a report warning that in the next few decades, the fragile ecosystem of international trade and political partnership that America relies on will be threatened as countries that are “important to US interests” come to blows over a single invaluable resource: water. Not oil. “Water is the new oil,” so say economists, business executives and political scientists. Yes, while the majority of the wars of the 20th century were fought over terrain bubbling over with crude, the wars of tomorrow will likely be fought over countries with access to aquifers, canals and fresh water springs....AMERICAblog
Residents of extremely wealthy suburbs in Southern California are claiming that there is a “war on suburbia,” and that they are being “drought-shamed” for their wasteful habits. They believe that if they can afford it, the water should be theirs, and all theirs.
California Farmers to Cut Water Use Voluntarily Amid Severe DroughtA resident of Rancho Santa Fe, an ultra wealthy community that uses five times the statewide average of water, believes that water is not a basic human right to be shared and preserved for all to use, but rather a commodity similar to gas.
People “should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful,” Yuhas wrote on social media.Wait, it gets even better.
“We pay significant property taxes based on where we live,” he told the Washington Post. “And, no, we’re not all equal when it comes to water.”....
“I call it the war on suburbia,” Brett Barbre of Yorba City, another wealthy community facing the same rationing, told the Washington Post.
Barbre then took it even further, telling the newspaper that “They’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands,” referring to his gardening hose and explaining that the water restrictions are infringing on his freedoms.Sending America's message to the world. "Because neoliberalism."
Some may worry about the distributional effects of a higher price of a necessity. But the revenue from a higher price could be rebated to consumers on a lump-sum basis, making the whole system progressive. We would end up with more efficiency and more equality.This involves political decisions in addition to economic factors, so implementing anything in California will be difficult, given a divisive political climate and the political strength of commercial interests.
Two new reports that focus on the global electricity water nexus have just been published. Three years of research show that by the year 2040 there will not be enough water in the world to quench the thirst of the world population and keep the current energy and power solutions going if we continue doing what we are doing today. It is a clash of competing necessities, between drinking water and energy demand. Behind the research is a group of researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark, Vermont Law School and CNA Corporation in the US.PhysOrg
The sharpening international geopolitical competition over natural resources has turned some strategic resources into engines of power struggle. Transnational water resources have become an especially active source of competition and conflict, triggering a dam-building race and prompting growing calls for the United Nations to recognize water as a key security concern.Project Syndicate
According to IBM, the HCPVT is built from unusually low-cost materials, meaning the per area price of setting it up is significantly lower than comparable solar systems, as is the cost per kilowatt hour....
Just one square meter of receiver area in the HCPVT system can provide 30 to 40 liters of drinkable water per day — about half the needed daily amount for the average person, according to the United Nations. The researchers think a large array of the dishes could produce enough fresh water to sustain a town. On top of that, the system can even provide air conditioning, using an absorption chiller rather than the standard compression chiller...
The long-term vision is to build arrays in areas of southern Europe, Africa, the Arabic Peninsula, South America, Australia, and the southwestern United States — places that are remote, dry, and in need of both affordable sustainable energy and greater supplies of drinking water.Climate Progress
Brace yourself. You may not be able to tell yet, but according to global experts and the U.S. intelligence community, the earth is already shifting under you. Whether you know it or not, you’re on a new planet, a resource-shock world of a sort humanity has never before experienced.Tom Dispatch
Two nightmare scenarios -- a global scarcity of vital resources and the onset of extreme climate change -- are already beginning to converge and in the coming decades are likely to produce a tidal wave of unrest, rebellion, competition, and conflict. Just what this tsunami of disaster will look like may, as yet, be hard to discern, but experts warn of “water wars” over contested river systems, global food riots sparked by soaring prices for life’s basics, mass migrations of climate refugees (with resulting anti-migrant violence), and the breakdown of social order or the collapse of states. At first, such mayhem is likely to arise largely in Africa, Central Asia, and other areas of the underdeveloped South, but in timeall regions of the planet will be affected.
To appreciate the power of this encroaching catastrophe, it’s necessary to examine each of the forces that are combining to produce this future cataclysm.
The bottom line is that it is becoming much more difficult for the world’s farmers to keep up with the world’s rapidly growing demand for grain. World grain stocks were drawn down a decade ago and we have not been able to rebuild them. If we cannot do so, we can expect that with the next poor harvest, food prices will soar, hunger will intensify, and food unrest will spread.
We are entering a time of chronic food scarcity, one that is leading to intense competition for control of land and water resources – in short, a new geopolitics of food.Inter Press Service
Letter from groups to EU Commission says plan is "economically, socially and democratically flawed"
— Common Dreams staff
Civil society groups Wednesday are slamming the European Commission's continued insistence that privatization of municipal water systems be a condition for receiving rescue funds, a plan the groups describe as "economically, socially and democratically flawed."
"Not only is there is no evidence at all to support the view that the private sector is more efficient, but there is very strong public resistance to privatization. European citizens will not back down quietly on this,” said Jan Willem Goudriaan of the European Federation of Public Service Unions. (Tom Raftery via flickr)
In a letter addressed to Olli Rehn, Vice-President of the European Commission and member of the Commission responsible for Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Euro, 24 groups, including Food & Water Europe, Save Greek Water,Italian Forum of Water Movements and Blue Planet Project, write that the privatization plans are based on supposed virtues of water privatization without any factual substantiation. Because of lack of success of privatizing municipal water, European communities who had privatized their water systems have re-municipalized them, the groups write....Common Dreams
A solar powered toilet that breaks down water and human waste into hydrogen gas for use in fuel cells has won first prize in a competition for next-generation toilets to improve sanitation in the developing world.
The California Institute of Technology in the US received the $100,000 (£64,000) first prize for its design. Loughborough University in the UK took the $60,000 second prize for a toilet that produces biological charcoal, minerals and clean water, and Canada’s University of Toronto came third, winning $40,000 for a toilet that sanitises faeces and urine, and recovers resources and clean water.
The winners took part in a Reinvent the Toilet challenge set by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which asked designers to break with a sanitation model that has changed little since it was developed by Alexander Cummings more than 200 years ago. It is a model that depends on piped water, sewer or electrical connections that poor countries can ill afford.The Raw Story
On Wednesday, the United States intelligence community unveiled a first-ever assessment of global water-security issues.Read it at IPS Inter Press Service
A declassified version of the document, which looks forward through 2040, suggests that "during the next 10 years, water problems will contribute to instability in states important to U.S. national security interests."
According to one of the assessment's lead authors, Major General Richard Engel, water-stressed countries, being forced to focus on pressing internal issues, are increasingly unable to support U.S. policies and strategic interests.
While the assessment does not foresee water being a main instigator of state-to-state violence or state failure in the next decade, beyond that "water in shared basins will increasingly be used as leverage." In addition, "water shortages and pollution probably will harm the economic performance of important (U.S.) trading partners."
The world's energy equation is rapidly changing. Three recent developments have altered energy options, re-calibrated the calculation of supply and transformed the implications for the planet's environment. Unfortunately, renewable, pollution-free energies - although they continue to make advances - are not in this equation....
Early last month, pharmaceutical titan Merck became the latest multinational to pledge allegiance to the CEO Water Mandate, the United Nations' public-private initiative "designed to assist companies in the development, implementation and disclosure of water sustainability policies and practices."But there's darker data beneath that sunny marketing: The CEO Water Mandate has been heavily hammered by the Sierra Club, the Polaris Institute and more for exerting undemocratic corporate control over water resources (PDF) under the banner of the United Nations. It even won a Public Eye Award for flagrant greenwashing from the Swiss non-governmental organization Berne Declaration. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss....
