Climate Change, Water and Security

Grist has an outstanding interview with Stephen Solomon, author of Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization.

Here's one example of the impacts of climate change on water supplies and national security that really paints a concrete (and scary) picture of the costs of not taking bold action now:

One thing that (the problem of water scarcity) leads to is (problems with) national security and failed state issues. I’ll give you one example: Pakistan, where the U.S. has invested enormous resources, is a nuclear-armed state with a rift with the Taliban, and it’s already a bit of a failing state. Soon it’s going to have one third of its water from in the Indus River—its main water lifeline—dry up from the lost (Himalayan) glacier melt. At the same time, its population is increasing by 30 percent. So in the next 15 years, we can imagine a country that’s already on the brink, dealing with a loss of 30 percent of its water while the population increases by 30 percent.

Wow...

We see this coming, we know of the potential dangers that lurk around the corner, and that climate disruption is sure to bring unpleasant surprises.  Yet America, the supposed leader of the free world, is also the world's greatest barrier to action on an issue that threatens to destabilize life as we know it?!

How much better would we feel about America -- and ourselves -- if we were leading on these issues via an Apollo Project-like energy and land use effort?  Such an effort would galvanize the hopes of billions around the world, would revitalize our economy, would revolutionize our security, and perhaps most importantly, would rejuvenate our currently-downtrodden national psyche with a positive, hope-inspiring "we can do this!" mission.

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The Future of the American Southwest: Will It Go the Way of the Hohokam?

Chris Nelder over at GetRealList takes us along for a ride through the desert Southwest, where he contemplates the future of the region's current civilization, and the implications of possible water shortages for America's energy and food production systems:

What is the true carrying capacity of America, if the San Joaquin Valley’s water problems persist? About one-fifth of California’s total electrical power demand is used to pump water; about four-fifths of the water pumped in California is used to irrigate agriculture.

The ability of the state to build sustainable power supply — like those turbines in Tehachapi — has direct implications on the nation’s food supply. Likewise, much of the population of Los Angeles could not exist without the massive aqueduct system that brings the city water from the Colorado River.

How will the little mining towns of northwestern Arizona fare as fossil fuels decline? They’ll still be able to ship their minerals by rail along the freight tracks I paralleled on Route 66, but they’ll need to have alternate sources of revenue if peak oil quenches economic growth.

Supporting those proposed solar arrays and grid connections could mean the difference between thriving and shrinking, which explains why in a parched, windswept, and sun-baked land like Mohave County, the need for local water and energy supply is urgent enough to override the usual political bent and make strange bedfellows of Republicans and renewable energy advocates. Such alliances will become more common in a century of decline. Necessity wins over ideology every time.

In a time of great energy transition, water looms ever larger as an area of our infrastructure and practices that requires a sustainability-based makeover.  As we've blogged here recently, I predict that water will become the next great ecosystem market after carbon.  Herein lies another epic business opportunity to do well by doing good.

I'm interested in hearing about emerging success stories (as well as stories of failure -- such as that of the Hohokam, which are important to learn from), so please do send them my way.  I'm especially intrigued by stories about the emerging use of forests and other healthy ecosystems to provide water provisioning and filtration services.

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Climate Disruption and the Growing Water Risk

Riding home yesterday, a story on NPR talked about growing water shortages and tensions in the Middle East, where diversions in Turkey have apparently left too little water for downstream countries like Syria and Iraq.  Entire villages have disappeared due to a lack of water. 

With climate disruption, it's only forecast to get worse.

In its usual timely manner, it turns out that McKinsey's latest newsletter focuses on charting our water future as a business and security risk.

Water is needed—in vast quantities—for farming, industrial activities, products, and services, but there’s not nearly enough of it, the shortfall is growing, and that might well lead to a global food crisis. Yet like any other problem, water scarcity also presents an opportunity. These articles examine both sides of the story.

Fortunately, a lot of the answers come in the form of efficiency -- doing more with less, which is better for both our own well being, better for the critters who we share the planet's water with, and of course money-saving.

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Lester Brown: Our Global Pyramid Scheme - A Food Bubble About to Burst?

I've always admired Lester Brown because he is a man with a plan for fixing our global sustainability issues, from the climate crisis to the crisis in global land use.

Here, promoting his new 'Plan B 4.0' on Grist, Brown talks about 'Our Global Pyramid Scheme' -- how we are boosting our quality of life today by cheating our children of theirs.

Although the functioning of the global economy and a Ponzi investment scheme are not entirely analogous, there are some disturbing parallels. As recently as 1950 or so, the world economy was living more or less within its means, consuming only the sustainable yield, the interest of the natural systems that support it. But then as the economy doubled, and doubled again, and yet again, multiplying eightfold, it began to outrun sustainable yields and to consume the asset base itself.

In a 2002 study published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a team of scientists concluded that humanity’s collective demands first surpassed the earth’s regenerative capacity around 1980. As of 2009, global demands on natural systems exceed their sustainable yield capacity by nearly 30 percent. This means we are meeting current demands in part by consuming the earth’s natural assets, setting the stage for an eventual Ponzi-type collapse when these assets are depleted.

As of mid-2009, nearly all the world’s major aquifers were being overpumped. We have more irrigation water than before the overpumping began, in true Ponzi fashion. We get the feeling that we’re doing very well in agriculture—but the reality is that an estimated 400 million people are today being fed by overpumping, a process that is by definition short-term. With aquifers being depleted, this water-based food bubble is about to burst.

What I like about Brown's work is that  although the above scenario sounds pretty dire, the part about "The Problem" is only the first half of Plan B 4.0.  The whole second half details a range of policy, land management, water efficiency and other solutions.  They're not necessarily perfect, but they are a very good plan.  And that kind of vision is tremendously important for driving the quest to figure out how humanity can live more in balance with our planetary home.

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Is food the weak link on the global economy? And how can we protect the water supplies needed to grow food?

Sobering, but important piece by Lester Brown.  Water is the next oil, and without water, there is no food.

Brown's points are a good reason I've been thinking a lot lately about the need to develop innovative land management schemes that protect the water provisioning services provided by healthy forests and other ecosystems.

Water Shortages in Africa
This on my mind, I ended up watching a documentary the other night about how the Mara River of Africa -- famed for its Wildebeast Migrations and Crocodiles -- is drying up due to deforestation and water diversion for wheat farming.  It was eye opening to watch, and see just how closely the fate of the region's people and wildlife alike depends on protection of the area's headwaters forests.

Water Shortages in the U.S.
Bringing the issue home to America, this piece by the N.Y Times outlines how the water supply problems that the Southeastern U.S. experienced during the 2005-2007 drought were tied to population growth, not climate change.  On one hand, that's good news.  But on the other hand, it raises the specter of just how bad it could get when climate change does begin to impact the southeast's water supplies...

Over in California, lots of work is being done on restoring water systems -- to protect and restore both river systems themselves and the fish that depend on them (and the fishers who depend on the fish to make a living...).  This week's Living on Earth covered the restoration of the San Joaquin River.

Is Water the New Carbon?

Is water the new carbon?

This question posed by an outstanding recent article in Sustainable Industries Journal:

Today, carbon trading...is estimated to be a nearly $790 billion marketplace with individual, corporate and government participants. Now at least one member of the Chicago Climate Exchange sees a similar future in solving a more immediate environmental challenge: water pollution and shortages.

“When I got involved in carbon offset development, it became obvious that water was potentially a bigger market than even carbon,” says John Regan. Regan founded the Environmental Credit Corp., a carbon-credit supplier on the Chicago Climate Exchange; he is also the chairman of Biofinancial Corp., a Santa Cruz, Calif.-based family of hedge funds.

“Carbon reduction is a relatively slow evolution,” Regan says. “It takes 25 to 50 years before you see the impact of what you do today. If you don’t solve the water impacts in five years, you’ll have a crisis on your hands.”

As I see it both globally and nationally, two major challenges for this type of market will be to buffer:

1. the loss of the glaciers that provide water for over 1 billion people around the world - and are predicted to disappear in the next few decades; and
2. the shrinking of snowpacks in the Sierra Nevada, Rocky, and Cascade Mountains, which poses a considerable threat to agricultural and drinking water supplies in the Western United States.

A major key will be to use proceeds from this type of market to reward landowners for implementing land management strategies that maximize the capacity of ecosystems to generate, store, and filter water.

Sustainability for Security's Sake

Among the most important benefits of society's current push toward sustainability is security.

It is now quite apparent that society's dependence on fossil fuels for energy supplies is threatening not just the environment, but also to plunge the world into deadly energy wars.

Already the U.S. has spent hundreds of billions of Americans' hard-earned tax dollars to (who's kidding who) position itself to defend oil reserves in the Middle East. Even a couple of years ago, people were already starting to realize that if the U.S. had invested the money it's spent on the Iraq War into clean, efficient renewable energy and energy conservation technologies and infrastructure, we could have set ourselves on the road to energy independence (and greatly enhanced our security, as well as the health of our environment and the stability of our economy!). Woops.

Now ENN has posted an intriguing article titled, "Where Are the World's Looming Water Conflicts?" The importance of this predictive article cannot be understated, especially given that 2002 predictions of a water war between Israel and Lebanon have now born themselves out.

The ENN article provides yet another reminder that whether through new techologies that conserve water (and save money!), or through improved land management practices that protect, purify, and store drinking and agricultural water supplies (i.e., management practices that protect the ecosystem service of water purification), sustainability is about much more than protecting the health of the environment.

It is about protecting and improving our security, the safety of our children and families, the stability of our economy, the public's health, and our overall quality of life.