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Ed Webb

Environment Magazine - September/October 2013 - 0 views

www.environmentmagazine.org/...case-of-water-full.html

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • the Chinese drive for water security may spark a series of actions that others may interpret as threats even while inside China they may be technical responses to very real risks
    • Ed Webb
      Ed Webb on 26 Feb 14
       
      Akin to the classic security dilemma: efforts to ameliorate environmental problems may be misconstrued as hostile or their unintended consequences read as intentional.
  • The regional security difficulty lies not only in Tibetan politics, but in the fact that the Yarlung-Tsangpo becomes the Brahmaputra once it crosses into India in Arunachal Pradesh, a territory disputed by India and China and heavily militarized. Diversions affecting the Brahmaputra would imperil India's own water security, including hydropower and irrigation projects, and would have further impacts downstream in Bangladesh. Although China may see its water projects as increasing its own security, India and Bangladesh view the Chinese actions as a direct threat to their national security. Specifically, China's actions have the potential to increase the risk of water-related population stresses, cross-border tension, and migration and agricultural failures for perhaps a billion people in India and Bangladesh, and its actions may be interpreted as a security threat by India
  • Many systems rely on predictable delivery of water, and too much or too little at the wrong time can spell catastrophe for agriculture, power, transport, or other critical systems linked around the globe
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  • The connections between extreme heat/drought in Russia in the summer of 2010 and the subsequent Arab Spring revolts in late 2010 are an example of where changes in one system (in this case, water/moisture for food production) may contribute to existing instability in a far different geographical region.
  • The topic of environmental security also raises questions about what or who is driving policy priorities and how science is (mis)communicated to policymakers.
  • Complex risk assessments must take into account the multidimensional and interdisciplinary nature of the strategic environment. Providing adequate resources for these complex assessments requires knowledge not only of climate and weather systems, but of particular geographical, cultural, and socioeconomic factors that make environmental hazards unique to each region and community
Ed Webb

NASA - NASA Satellites Find Freshwater Losses in Middle East - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...grace20130212.html

water MENA Turkey Syria Iraq climate environment

shared by Ed Webb on 23 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • during a seven-year period beginning in 2003 that parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates river basins lost 117 million acre feet (144 cubic kilometers) of total stored freshwater. That is almost the amount of water in the Dead Sea. The researchers attribute about 60 percent of the loss to pumping of groundwater from underground reservoirs
  • "GRACE data show an alarming rate of decrease in total water storage in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins, which currently have the second fastest rate of groundwater storage loss on Earth, after India," said Jay Famiglietti, principal investigator of the study and a hydrologist and professor at UC Irvine. "The rate was especially striking after the 2007 drought. Meanwhile, demand for freshwater continues to rise, and the region does not coordinate its water management because of different interpretations of international laws."
  • the Iraqi government drilled about 1,000 wells in response to the 2007 drought, a number that does not include the numerous private wells landowners also very likely drilled
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  • "The Middle East just does not have that much water to begin with, and it's a part of the world that will be experiencing less rainfall with climate change," said Famiglietti. "Those dry areas are getting dryer. The Middle East and the world's other arid regions need to manage available water resources as best they can."
Ed Webb

Could Water Bring Jobs Back to the U.S.? - 0 views

www.psmag.com/...ing-jobs-back-to-the-u-s-42008

water environment economy future

shared by Ed Webb on 21 May 12 - No Cached
  • No less than Morgan Stanley Smith Barney declared “peak water” the challenge of the century last December in a report upholstered with authoritative graphs showing the heating of the world and the shrinking of water resources. Words almost failed report writers as they declared, “Water may turn out to be the biggest commodity story of the 21st century, as declining supply and rising demand combine to create the proverbial perfect storm.”
  • McKinsey estimates that by 2050 the world will need a 140-percent increase in its water supply—which, the management consultancy adds, is obviously impossible
  • Mention Big Water, or a coming age of water, and most of us visualize drought, migration, and mayhem. But some parts of the U.S. are strikingly water-rich, and the water century, if it comes, has the potential to remodel the country, economically and ecologically.
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  • the U.S. hasn’t fully absorbed the importance of virtual water, but China and India, where drought and population pressures are more extreme, recognize the crucial relationship of water to GDP growth. As of last October, 80 Indian companies had spent $2.4 billion buying East African land in areas where water is abundant to grow and export water-hungry crops. China has also been actively buying land, and has reportedly considered buying rice (a pound contains 650 gallons of virtual water) from the U.S. Virtual water has created an unnoticed trade flow from water-rich countries to the water poor. In world terms, the U.S. is an enormous exporter of water
  • in places where water is abundant it has no price and where it’s scarce, it’s very expensive
  • A state like Pennsylvania, with abundant water and lots of nearby natural gas will become reindustrialized as companies from around the world relocate. “The chemical industry is repatriating to the U.S. for the abundance of water and cheap energy. We’ve got enough water for 5 to 20 years.” Cheap labor in places like China is becoming a nonissue, Brennan says, while companies chase the chance to have access to resources again. What he describes—a new life for once-abandoned, resource-rich places like Bellingham, Washington—sounds like the Industrial Revolution all over again. In fact, a similar shift occurred after the 1973 energy crisis, when many manufacturers relocated from the Northeast to the South, where they could spend less on energy and (in some cases) labor.
  • Environmentalists’ efforts to limit the damage from extracting resources in the U.S. during the last 30 years have been enabled by globalization, which allowed U.S. consumers to buy cheaper resources abroad. But when the U.S. has some of the world’s cheapest water, how will we protect it as a natural resource?
  • For the “creative classes” on the coasts, the idea that parts of the U.S. economy are living on resources (rather than their wits), may seem a bit “third world,” or at least a step backwards from the service-and-brains paradigm the country has embraced over the last two decades. The paradox is that in order to get business to treat water well, we may need to put a price on water—an idea that runs counter to our American sentiment that water should be free.
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