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Why is water such a big issue? Global Water Challenge President Paul Faeth sets us straight (part 1)

Posted by: Maven on June 10, 2009 at 6:35 am

From the TreeHugger blog:

Having given Global Water Challenge a Best of Green award earlier this year for their innovative work on the issues of drinking water and sanitation, it goes without saying that TreeHugger is a fan of their work.

Recently I had a chance to sit down with GWC president Paul Faeth and pick his brain about what water issues we ought to be paying attention to, how bad an impact is climate change going to really have on water supplies, water privatization, desalination, and much more. Both of us being verbose people we went on for some time. This part one of that conversation:

Q. In your opinion what are the main issues that TreeHugger readers should be concerned with regarding water and access to water?

The biggest thing facing us right now is climate change. Studies suggest that right now about a third of people in the world are living in climate-stressed areas. That includes places like California and the desert Southwest, but also places in Latin America and places you’d normally think about in Africa and India. The numbers suggest that as much as two thirds of the human population could be living in water-stressed areas [because of climate change].

Water resources are not growing, and we keep putting more stresses on them. We’re polluting them. So the resources that we do have are running out. Water from aquifers, fossil water, as it’s called…we’re not making anymore of that, and we’re using it up. Fresh water in many places of the world, we’re polluting it, is just going to become more scarce because of climate change.

A huge amount of water also goes into nuclear power. A lot of people are talking about nuclear as a response to climate change, because it doesn’t produce greenhouse gas emissions…there are other issues with it, of course. And one of them is that it uses a lot of water.

The other issue which I think is really important, the developing country aspect, is the issue of safe drinking water. There are a billion people in the world today, who do not have access to a safe source of drinking water. What that means is that nearly 5,000 children a day die from diarrheal diseases, because they don’t have access to that safe source of drinking water. One of the things that’s polluting the drinking water in many of these places is that there’s no sanitation. That spreads human diseases around…there are 2.5 billion people in the world without access to sanitation.

Read more from the TreeHugger blog by clicking here.

June 10, 2009 · Filed Under General Water Issues

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