Currently 3 out of 10 people on our planet do not have access to drinking water, that figure almost reaches 3 billion people, however that alarming figure could increase drastically in the coming decades as “whole cities dry up”. For example, in 2018 Cape Town, South Africa decreed that it could be the first city to reach its “day zero” that is, 4 million people would be completely without water; and the list expands to other cities such as Sao Paulo, Melbourne, Jakarta, London, Istanbul, Beijing, Tokyo, Bangalore, Barcelona, Mexico City and Monterrey “would suffer their zero day in the coming decades if they do not change their use and waste”
Let’s raise awareness that water is a unique vital resource that has no substitute, and many of us give it as an endless resource like the air we breathe and it is not like that. Actually of the total water on our planet (1234 million billion liters), 97% of it is salt water; 2% is frozen at the poles, so we depend on only 1% fresh water to survive. To this problem we must add that this 1% is not evenly distributed and also most of that water is located in the subsoil and its extraction is highly expensive. Therefore we resort to surface freshwater sources such as rivers and lakes, in fact 90% of the world’s population lives less than 10km from a freshwater source. In Mexico City we have already consumed more than 50% of the subsoil aquifer and if this trend continues it could dry up completely between 2050 and 2070 and the decrease in the level of water in the subsoil causes the earth to compress and the city begins to sink . In fact, Mexico City sinks 23 centimeters every year.
On the other hand, climate change has reduced the levels of snow that in summer fed rivers that are used for agriculture, global warming has extended the levels of drought and the melting of the poles spills into salt water and only causes floods. But let’s take a look at how do we use water?
Human consumption represents only 8%, while agriculture is 70% and 22% in industry. For example, a bottle of coca cola requires 98 liters of water for its production, a glass of beer 74 liters of water, a cup of coffee 130 liters, a cotton t-shirt 2,500 liters; but waters with the meat, since to prepare a hamburger 15,000 liters per kilo are used. The real cost of water is not required by the basic rules of market supply and demand to define a fair price; on the contrary, a ridiculous price is assigned to it as if it were an infinite or inexhaustible product. That is why in the whole world the primary sector (agriculture) is the one that wastes the most water.
But if we assign a real (fair) price/cost to water for agriculture and industry, it would immediately prevent crops from being produced in areas where it is no longer profitable to harvest those crops, since it would be economically unfeasible and in the same way 95% of crops in the world would stop using the flood irrigation method, which is the most inefficient.
And yes, this will effectively cause the closure of many companies, their relocation or renovation and therefore generate job losses and a global economic crisis.
But no economic catastrophe is comparable to the apocalyptic era of running out of water. We can start to change by informing ourselves, I invite you to see the source of this information in the series “in a nutshell” on netflix. Remember that the first step to solve a problem is to know it and the second, to recognize it. Only then can we get started to work together to solve it. Cape Town managed to extend the date of its “zero day” first a few weeks, then months and fortunately today the date remains undefined. If they can, so can we. Water is a universal human right; yes, but only human beings can earn that right.
#waters #water