Unquenchable

By 2030, nearly half of the world’s people will be living in areas of acute water shortage. The world needs to act urgently to avoid a global water crisis due to increased population, rising living standards, dietary changes and more biofuels production, the United Nations warned last week.

The impact could be large for some countries, including China and India, and for some regions of large countries, such as the United States, the report says.

The report jointly produced by more than two dozen UN bodies and titled, "Water in a Changing World," made "clear that urgent action is needed if we are to avoid a global water crisis."

Needless to say, as water availability goes down, so will food production. Do we realize the enormity of the prediction?

The population growth rate means demand for fresh water is increasing by 64 billion cubic meters a year. Most of North Africa and the Middle East have already reached the limits of their water resources. Migration to cities, increasing consumption of meat, biofuels, etc are seen as some of the reasons of rising water use.

This is where the connection between energy and water comes in. Just as energy is a component of the water distribution and access, water plays a crucial role in the way most of our energy is generated. Just as 2,500 liters of water is needed to make 1 liter of biofuel, our thermal plants require a large quantity of water. It becomes important then to look at energy sources that require less water.

‘Water policies play a big role but in many countries water policies failed to make any impact because key decisions affecting water were made in other sectors of the economy.’ When giving permits for tech parks, is the concerned ministry taking into account the demand on water from these? NO. Isn’t it time these aspects are given their due importance?

Is it enough to go by demand side management or should we adopt a price-based management of water? That is a question worth pondering over.

As we have covered in this blog earlier, if we are to manage water better we need to inventories water usage in every sector. There are no such records as of now. Can we begin the process, at individual households to various sectors?