|
|
STREAMS / STRANDS / STRINGS
WATER
WITHOUT WATER THERE IS NO LIFE
POSSIBLY THE MOST IMPORTANT SUBSTANCE ON THE PLANET
|
“Only what is rare is valuable, and water, which is the best of all things…is also the cheapest.” – Plato.
The failure to be clear about the difference there is between cost, price and value has been with us for a very long time. This quotation from Plato illustrates the problem. A component of natural capital that is abundant because of nature has little conventional money cost, but that does not mean that it has little value. Value is independent of cost.
Of course, when Plato was alive the global polulation was not nearly 8 billion people but more like 100 million, and the fresh water demand from this population is quite modest compared to what is needed in the modern world.
|
MDIA and WATER
There is more water than land on planet earth, but only a small part of the water is potable freshwater. In fact only about 2.5% of the total is potable water. Most of the water is saline in the oceans. But even the potable water, very little is accessible because it is trapped in snow and glaciers.
Water is vital to life. A human will die after three days without any hydration and potable freshwater is increasingly scarce in the modern world
|
|
MANAGEMENT METRICS for WATER
|
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
|
|
|
|
|
