PEOPLE / QUALITY OF LIFE
CLEAN WATER
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TO DO ... update images to be more relevant to the subject matter
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Cruise ships
Queen Elizabeth
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AIR POLLUTION IS AN ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARD
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GO TOP
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Navigation for issues related to WATER
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MDIA and WATER
There is more water than land on planet earth, but only a small part of the water is potable freshwater. Most is saline in the oceans. Water is vital to life. A human will die after three days without any hydration and freshwater is increasingly scarce.
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METRICS FOR WATER
Every person on the planet needs water to survive. This may be in liquid form or as a part of the food we eat. For men, it's about 125 ounces a day (or 3.7 liters). Depending on the diet, about 25% of the water consumed comes from food. Most people get enough water in the foods and liquids they consume, including less healthy drinks like caffeinated beverages such as soda, coffee and tea. Without any source of hydration a person dies in about 3 days. In a year, about 600 litres of water is required for a person to stay alive. The value of water expressed in Standard Life Units (SLUs) may be thought to be 1,000,000 / 600 or 1,330 SLUs/litre. The price of water is going to depend on supply and demand. The willingness of consumers to buy 'bottled water' suggests that the price of drinking water can be in excess of $1.00 for just 8oz. The willingness of companies to set up supply chains for bottled water suggests that the money cost of bottled water is substantially less totherwise there would not be corporate investment in this product line. Corporations, however, do not concern themselves with any metrics beyond the profit metric and ignore impact on all the externalities.
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WATER EXCESS MANAGEMENT METRICS
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TOO MUCH WATER
Water in excess can do big damage. The seriousness of floods has been with us for all of history. There is a flood in the Bible ... and floods through all of history. Too much rain and rapid snow melt causes floods. Undersea earthquakes can cause tsunamis which bring destruction and danger from the sea. Water to drink is good, but too much water from waterboarding is torture. These problem have been recognized for a long time and big flood control systems have been put in place ... in the Netherlands, for example ... On the Thames River in the UK ... on various river systems in the USA ... and so on.
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WATER SHORTAGE MANAGEMENT METRICS
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WATER SHORTAGE
There are many degrees of water shortage. No water at all, and human life is not possible. Drought causes vegetation to die, and then livestock and then people. Most agricultural and industrial activities require water, and without water the process fails. Precipitation ... rain and snow ... is the main source of water. Increasingly this source of water is being supplemented by 'mining' water from ancient aquifers. Using precipitation as a source of water is sustainable, mining water from ancient aquifers is not. Water is a constraining factor in the modern enviro-socio-economic system. Climate change is likely to include significant changes in the patterns of precipitation and therefore the availability of water.
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WATER QUALITY MANAGEMENT METRICS
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WATER QUALITY
Life requires water to have certain properties. Most living organizations cannot live in water that is too alkaline or too acid. Waste water from most industrail activities contains compounds that result of too much alkalinity or too much acidity, together with dissolved metals and other toxins that are damaging to natural life. Water quality can be improved by a variety of interventions so that the water will sustain life and be used for other purposes, including domestic use which includes drinking water. For much of the industrial revolution rivers were used as open sewers to dispose of industrial (liquid) wastes. Agriculture is another source of water pollution because of the various chemicals now used on a massive scale that flow as runoff into streams and into the broader watershed.
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WATER USE MANAGEMENT METRICS
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WATER USE
When water is abundant, the use of water is convenient, probably profitable and the negative impact, inconsequential. When water is scarce there is a different dynamic. In this situation water use in one place has a consequential impact in another place. It is vital to rethink the water dynamic so that water use is optimized for all users and not merely the most powerful users or the intitled legacy users. There are two flows in water use through most processes, one is the flow that results in a consumption of the water, and the other is the flow that results in an outflow of water in a more or less polluted condition. The value arising or the value destruction associate with both these flows is material.
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WATERSHED MANAGEMENT METRICS
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WATERSHED MANAGEMENT
One of the characteristics of water is that it is a fluid and it flows. When pollution enters into a stream in a watershed, the pollution flows with the water down through the watershed doing massive damage to the ecosystem as it moves through the system. The need for watershed management has been understood since ancient times. The River Nile is an early example ... because of its great importance to the prosperity of Egypt, the use of Nile water as it flowed from Ethiopia dn Uganda through Sudan (and now South Sudan) was limited. In the United States the Colorado River has been fully exploited, so much so that water no longer reaches the ocean. Water used in New York City comes from a pristine watershed and is great drinking water, while the water flowing into the Chesapeake Bay comes from a watershed that includes abandonned coal mines and other industrial sites and is dangerously polluted ... though less so now than thirty years ago.
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Water wars: 21st century conflicts?
AlJazeera English ... Features ... As almost half of humanity will face water scarcity by 2030, strategists from Israel to Central Asia prepare for strife.
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The Fracking Process
What are risks and advantages of 'fracking' ... Fracking Company Cuts Off Clean Water Shipments to Community They Contaminated
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Water is more important than oil
AlterNet / It's No Longer Enough to Regulate Corporate Greed: The Global Water Crisis Demands a Paradigm Shift
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What exactly is the World Water Forum
Access to Sanitation Reserved for the VIPs at World Water Forum ... It's a perfect statement about the World Water Forum's agenda serving the rich and powerful while the poor are denied access to water.
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Ecosystems ... Coastal wetlands
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Ecosystems ... Coastal wetlands
Arup’s Rory Canavan and the Environment Agency’s Dr Sue Manson explain how the two are working together to better manage the ecosystems services of the Humber estuary.
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Pacific Institute ... Bottled water factsheet ... 2007
'http://www.truevaluemetrics.org/DBpdfs/Water/BottledWater/Pacific-Institute-bottled_water_factsheet-2007.pdf'
| Open PDF ...
Pacific Institute ... Bottled water factsheet ... 2007
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Bottled Water
Sustainable Stupidity ...
What is good about bottled water? Profits ...
The advertising industry has done an amazing job of misinforming and confusing the public. The goal of advertising is to create unnecessary wants that are profitable while essential needs go unsatisfied.
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Storm water pollution
Loving the Puget Sound to Death ...
Four decades after the passage of the Clean Water Act, regulators haven’t kept up with the pollution pressure that growing populations put on America’s shorelines.
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Open file 9212
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Corporate Performance ... Water
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LEQA ... Livestock Environmental Quality Assurance Program
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UN-GLAAS ... UN-Water Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking Water
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SWFF ... Securing Water For Food
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Securing-Water-for-Food-Reel-Gardening ... 150213
A potentially valuable small initiative ... and likely to fall off the radar very quickly
'http://www.truevaluemetrics.org/DBpdfs/Water/SWFF/Securing-Water-for-Food-Reel-Gardening.pdf'
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Securing-Water-for-Food-Reel-Gardening
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Issue ... Water
USAID and SIDA ... Securing Water For Food: A Grand Challenge For Development
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Open file 6110
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LinkedIn Dialog
Impact Investing Forum
Water Innovators: Apply now to Securing Water for Food: A Grand Challenge for Development for a chance to win $100k-$3M
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Open file 6111
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Issue ... Water
Coro Strandberg ... It's time for transformational corporate water leadership
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Open file 9388
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Burgess Note ... Response to LinkedIn Pulse Post
Coro Strandberg ... It's time for transformational corporate water leadership ... March 8, 2015
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Open file 9389
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Issues ... Water and Sanitation
Post-2015 Consensus: Water and Sanitation Assessment, Hutton
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Open file 9448
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CCC-water-sanitation-assessment-paper-Guy-Hutton-2015
'http://truevaluemetrics.org/DBpdfs/Initiatives/CCC/CCC-water-sanitation-assessment-paper-Guy-Hutton-2015.pdf'
| Open PDF ...
CCC-water-sanitation-assessment-paper-Guy-Hutton-2015
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