Water as a Sustainable Resource (by Melissa Fedrigo)

Water is the foundation of all life. Without the ability to rapidly renew itself, nature would not be able to exist. Since humans are part of nature, the responsibility to maintain water quality and quantity imperative for future existence. Sustainability is an ideal method of ensuring the future of water as a renewable resource. As water scarcity continues, international debate has aroused over the adoption of sustainable concepts in water scarcity projects.

With contrasting opinions and perspectives from developed to less developed countries, the adoption of sustainable activities remains a continuous conflict. Commonly, the concept of sustainability ensures the future quality and quantity of water by altering human economic, environmental and social impacts. Water scarcity is an urgent global concern resulting from human negligence towards its enduring depletion. Future water resources depend on immediate human comprehension and implementation of sustainable concepts into water-preserving schemes. Through highlighted geographical case studies, the concept of sustainable development from the reduction of human economical, environmental and social impacts on water scarcity will be addressed.

The early concepts of sustainability stemmed from the 1972 United Nations (UN) conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. This conference focused on the different viewpoints of industrialized First World countries compared to Third World countries regarding concerns of technology and pollution. The concept of sustainability was introduced in the 1987 Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, as the continued economic growth of humanity without compromising the environment. The exact definition of sustainability was termed as “developments that meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Both the definition and report drew immediate attention to the need for “global multilateral co-operation between rich and poor countries to achieve development” and led to the 1992 UN Conference of Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Tension rose throughout the conference as underdeveloped and developed countries deemed different global issues more urgent than others. Underdeveloped countries stressed poverty and environmental issues while industrialized countries placed emphasis on biodiversity loss, deforestation of the tropics and change in the global atmosphere. In an open conference manner, both developed and developing nations were able to discuss current human impacts and what changes are necessary to facilitate future generations.

Over the duration of the Rio conference, many agreements were signed but the most influential agreement for the future of sustainability was the adoption of Agenda 21 and its impact regarding water scarcity. Agenda 21 clearly identifies the three main tenets of sustainability as changing social, economic and environmental impacts in order to provide later generations with adequate resources. Through Agenda 21, sustainability was stressed to bring equilibrium between humans and the environment. Economic hardships resulting from exploiting renewable resources were not overlooked, for meeting current needs have to be considered before providing for the future.

Although humans use multiple renewable resources, the most vital is water. Without it, humans would not exist, nor would other biotic and abiotic ecosystems. Current trends will lead to further water scarcity due to social human impacts, which is why emphasis is placed on the need for sustainable concepts to be adopted. Through altering the current human environmental impacts by properly caring for and maintaining water-dependent ecosystems, the availability and usage of water will become more sustainable. Careful economic consideration is crucial to determine if the funding input for major water projects will equal a sustainable output. Sustainable measures help humans understand their social, environmental and economic impacts on water scarcity and actions necessary to ensure water remains a renewable resource.

As a renewable resource, humans need to alter unsustainable uses for purified water sources to ensure better quality of water. Many humans in industrialized countries are using clean water sources for indulgent, and sometimes unnecessary, activities such as washing cars. By adopting recycling methods, purified water sources will be plentiful, allowing future generations to benefit from a larger, better quality water source. In the small Jewish village of Yodfat, sewage from a seven-thousand citizen Arab village called Kfor Manda, is stored in small reservoirs for irrigational purposes. The recycling of wastewater for drip irrigation prevents the depletion in water quality that would arise if such contaminated water were discharged into clean water supplies. The ‘life-cycle’ approach of water usage allows for wastewater recycling at point sources to be carefully considered. Sustainable efforts to control the quality of available water can be implemented through the reduction of dumping of waste into purified water systems. Through the management of waste disposal, recycling contaminated water allows for sustainable usage of already scarce water supplies and increases the quality of water by preventing waste contamination of clean, available water sources.

The demand for clean water sources increases in proportion to world population increases, especially in areas where more than one nation shares a common water source. In order to balance agricultural yields and the need to feed growing populations, there must be an abundance of clean water sources. In the Middle East, a “water crisis” occurs between Israel and Jordan as Israel exceeds renewable levels of water by fifteen percent from the shared Jordan River Basin. With Jordan’s population increase at rates of almost three and a half percent annually and Israel’s excessive water use, the already scarce water in this basin is being stressed by a forty percent increase in demand. In the social context of shared water resources, the increased need for water causes water extraction levels to sometimes unsustainably exceed minimum replenishing periods. Geopolitics becomes a pressing social factor as Israel’s domination of the West Bank Yarqon-Tainim aquifer region since 1967 allows Israel the authority to control the sustainability of water over Jordan. Through local agreements rather than large global solutions, shared regions are able to outline levels of safe water consumption to maintain a sustainable quantity of water. As social human impacts affect the quality and quantity of water, the concept of sustainability highlights the necessary changes to human activities. By recycling wasteful water instead of contaminating clean water sources and implementing government agreements to control geopolitical dominance of water between nations, water sustainability becomes a realistic initiative.

The continuous system of the water cycle highlights the importance of reducing human environmental impacts currently altering the quality and quantity of water. Contaminating the water cycle with acidic pollution decreases the quality and sustainability of water. The pollution caused by motor vehicles emitting nitrous and sulfuric oxide into the air is combined with water and hydrogen particles to produce nitric and sulfuric acid. When these toxins enter the water cycle, they cause the precipitation to become acidic. Affecting groundwater and surface water, acid rain falls to earth and enters water sources, polluting and reducing the water and making it unsustainable. The concept of sustainability encourages humans to introduce emission control on automobiles, adopting the Clean Water Act to give pollutants enough time to dilute in water, and control emissions from burning fossil fuels in an effort to decrease the production of acid rain. By adopting these measures, many countries have significantly reduced harmful emissions over the past twenty years and thus can continue to prevent further contamination rendering poor quality water.

The quantity of water is highly dependent on how quickly humans deplete available water sources, especially those used for irrigation. In arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas of the world, irrigation relies on groundwater sources of aquifers. By adopting the concept of sustainability, humans can ensure that irrigation is accurately measured to prevent water removal from exceeding the rate of replenishment. In the semi-arid southern Great Plains of the United States, the Ogallala aquifer irrigates one fifth of the United States farmland but is quickly diminishing due to limited sources that refill the aquifer water levels. Without constant sources of clean water, the continuous extraction of water will cause the aquifer to dry out. Surrounding landscapes and climates must be considered when irrigation systems are implemented to ensure that there are sustainable sources of water. As humans have a large impact on the environment, the lack of sustainable efforts to maintain proper quality and quantities of vital resources, like water, merely limits future existence.

By altering natural ecosystems into more economically productive synthetic ecosystems, urbanization drastically decreases the quality of water. From common rural settings, people migrate into cities that provide better services with ecologically advanced designs. With more than half the world’s population living in cities, some of the world’s fastest growing demands are for water, although only ten percent of total water exists in these communities. Domestic water uses in urban cities are increasing due to the influx of large populations and are returning larger amounts of pollution into clean water sources. The development of impervious surfaces such as buildings and paved roads that follow industrialization increases the ground’s impermeability and increases runoff of fresh water into saline oceans. In Slovakia, the rapid and intense transition from rural countryside to overbuilt landscapes has rendered more than nine billion cubic feet of fresh water as salty due to runoff into oceans. Similarly, global urbanization is increasing ocean water levels by five millimeters annually, demonstrating the effect of wasted clean water sources. For economically strong nations, desalination is technically feasible by the use of more than seven thousand desalinating plants, but it requires a large amount of energy and funding. Changes to human economic activities are feasible by analyzing the effects of urbanization on water quality to ensure a clean and sustainable water source for a prolonged period.

With a rapid water cycle to sustain the quality of water, concerns for water quantity are quickly developing as irrigation sources and aquifers are depleting. While water scarcity worries were thought to have been solved through commissioning water dams, the economic strains do not always equate to an ultimately sustainable outcome. Dam production is focused on creating hydroelectric energy, irrigation, supplies to industry and drinking water. These goals were the driving force to commission the world’s largest intervention program on the Yangtze River of China, the creation of the Three Gorges Dam. For twenty-eight billion US dollars, six hundred thousand kilometers of flooded farmland and over one million people relocated; the dam was a symbol of China’s attempts to modernize. While understanding dam construction, it is important to recall the concept of sustainability as a means to preserve present day resources and ensure for future generations the ability to meet their own needs. The unsustainable impacts of dams, especially the Three Gorges Dam, is the contribution to global warming through greenhouse gas emissions, large scale flooding and ecosystem alteration. Humans need to focus on what sort of sustainable outcomes will develop from these projects and at the very least, “bring the dam industry under democratic control”. The large number of people who were relocated as well as the devastating loss of land affects the water quality in the area. Without utilizing sustainable concepts, negative results will jeopardize future generations from benefiting from the efforts and technology of present day civilizations.

The sustainability of the quality and quantity of water is greatly affected by the social, environmental and economic impacts of modern society. Pressing issues of should be analyzed with the concept of sustainability always in mind to ensure the future availability of such resource is not in jeopardy. As human impacts on water scarcity are carefully analyzed, the definition of sustainability is continually changing; the most important aspect is ensuring human decision-making processes do not affect future access to the basic resources of life. Humans may not fully comprehend their impact on future generations now but by maintaining the quality and quantity of water, there is at least the assurance of existence. The quality of water is easily sustainable by proper methods of waste removal and recycling whenever possible. Politics are always a consideration when understanding social human impacts; however, making agreements over consumption levels will ensure the quantity of water will be available in the future. As water is crucial to the environment, water contamination through toxic emissions into the atmosphere is important for humans to control and minimize. The implementation of irrigation systems to ensure future water availability must be located not solely for human convenience, but where a sustainable water source is available. Economies will thrive where population increases and urbanization occurs, however, these human impacts will cause salinization and poor water quality without careful consideration of fresh water runoff. With available funding and resources, large water preserving projects can be performed, however sustainability of water is most crucial in the planning stages of such endeavors. Without the promotion of the concepts of sustainability and its social, environmental and economic impacts on ecosystems, the quality and quantity of water would surpass scarcity; it would not exist.

Sources

Barlow, Maudie and Clarke, Tony. Blue Gold: The Battle Against Corporate Theft of the World’s Water. London: Earthscan Pulications Ltd., 2002.

Brown, Lester R. State of the World 1998: The Future of Growth. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998.

Caplan, Ruth. Our Earth, Ourselves. New York: Bantam Books, 1990.

Chapman, J.L, and Reiss, M.J. Ecology: Principles and Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Cloke, P., Crang, P. & Goodwin, M., eds. Introducing Human Geographies. London: Arnold, 1999.

Elliott, Jennifer A. An Introduction to Sustainable Development. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1999.

French, Hilary F. State of the World 1998: Assessing Private Capital Flows to Developing Countries. Ed. Lester R. Brown. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998.

Goudie, Andrew. The Nature of the Environment. 4th ed. USA: Blackwell Publishers, 2001.

Hunt, Constance Elizabeth. Thirsty Planet: Strategies for Sustainable Water Management. New York: Zed Books, 2004.

Montgomery, Carla W., and Dathe, David. Earth: Then and Now. Illinois: Wm.C.Brown, 1991.

Postel, Sandra. The Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity. London: Earthscan, 1992.

Ward, Stephen V. Planning the Twentieth-Century City: The Advanced Capitalist World. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002.

[ issue contents ] [ fmm home ] [ send feedback ]