Mr. Gleick was called "one of 15 people Obama should listen to"... I would have to agree.
What if the world runs out of water?
In a session titled Water Scarcity and the Human Right to Water at the Skoll World Forum, water experts Peter Gleick, Gary White, and Gidon Bromberg discussed the very real problem of water scarcity in the world.
Nearly a billion people in the world don't have access to clean water right now, and some are drinking muddied water from nearby streams because the good kind is either too far, too dangerous to get to, or inaccessible due to the lack of knowledge or wells. Gleick — whom Wired called , spoke about the need to rethink and reframe the water problem.
We have the impression that we'll never run out of water, but that simply isn't true — like oil, water can be over-pumped and its supply can peak, bringing us to a point where the next gallon of water will cause more harm than good. He points out that, in the 20th century, we focused our water efforts on "hard" solutions, technology and infrastructures that could improve water delivery. Now, he says, we have to think of "soft" solutions, economic and social aspects that complement the tech. "The population is growing too rapidly, but we still need to provide people with water and food," he said. "The good news is I think we can do it."
Peter Gleick, co-founder and president of the Pacific Institute ... how we can make sure the world doesn't run out of water.
How are we going to sustain our water supply if the population of the world continues to grow?
I'm a big believer that we have to deal with population, and we don't talk about it enough. But I also believe that, no matter what the population is, we have a responsibility to meet basic human needs for water. We have to look through a much broader lens than saying this is only a population problem.
What can we do to save water? One of the panelists mentioned that eating bananas in the winter is bad for the world water supply, for example.
All sorts of things that we do have water implications that we often don't understand. It takes a lot of water to grow food. That water often comes from regions that don't have much water, like the Middle East. They grow a lot of bananas in Jordan, one of the water poorest countries in the world. Should Jordan be spending its limited water supply to grow bananas for rich people to eat in the winter? I'm not going to answer that, but there are water implications in everything we do.
Here's another connection people don't make. It takes a lot of energy to provide the water goods and services we demand. It takes a lot of energy to move water, to collect and treat water, and to use water. One of the things we realized in the last couple of years is that some of the smartest ways to save energy and reduce climate change may be to save water — to rethink the way we use water in our homes, industry, and agriculture.
How important is it for individuals to participate in the water scarcity problem? Or is this an issue that has to be addressed from the top down?
Without a doubt, we need top down policies for dealing with climate change and sustainable water management. But we need bottom up strategies equally, and these are proving to be much easier to accomplish and much more effective than waiting for the world community to do anything. The climate issue and the water issue are so big that we need to tackle these problems from every direction.
The other thing about bottom up is that, even if someone doesn't care about saving the planet, there are good personal reasons to use water, energy, and carbon more efficiently — it saves money and resources.
Right now, we don't pay the true cost of water — the cost of building infrastructure, treating water, and delivering it; and also, the environmental cost. Those are real costs, but they're what we call externalities — they're not included in the price we pay for goods and services. The price we pay for water doesn't reflect its true cost. If it were more expensive, we would be more thoughtful about how we use it. It's certainly true in our homes, and in our agriculture as well. 80% of water in California goes to agriculture. How about the way we seem to waste potable on water on things like toilets or the car wash?
We have one set of pipes coming into our house, and it delivers high quality potable water. That's the infrastructure we built. In California and elsewhere, we're starting to build dual piping systems with one for potable water and one for high quality treated waste water. The potable system is hooked up to showers and faucets, and the treated waste water system is hooked up to toilets and gardens. It's expensive to retrofit old homes, but some new developments in Florida and California have dual piping.
The other way is gray water systems. Right now we have a single waste water system — gray water systems would capture some of our waste water that's slightly contaminated from washing machines, shower, and dishwashers for reuse in gardens. There are new laws in California that permit that; they regulate and define how to do it properly.
Many developing countries have gray water systems, but we built our system on the assumption that water is cheap and readily available. In the 21st century, we're going to have to think differently about water.
Are you optimistic? I have no doubt that we can solve our water problems, even the bad ones. We can meet basic human needs for water for everyone on the planet. We have the technology and the money. I'm less optimistic that we will solve our water problems quickly enough to prevent a lot of human suffering and environmental damage. That's the difference between practical realty versus the world we want to live in