Water is Life, yet over 1 billion people have no access to safe drinking water and over 2 billion lack basic sanitation. As you know, due to increasingly lower availability of water in many parts of the world, water has more and more become a political commodity.
In fact, quite a few conflicts have been fought because of water. With the horrid news of Mount Kilimanjaros's imminent loss of snow caps and the inexorable march of desertification coupled with inane and unchecked deforestation, political leaders will have to start addressing the question of water shortages sooner than later.
UN says Kilimanjaro could be snow-free by 2020:
Africa - Some of Africa's most famous natural features are at risk of vanishing forever as a result of global warming, revealed the newest world atlas released by the United Nations Environment Program. The atlas features a series of satellite images of more than 100 landmarks taken over the course of the last 35 years. In Tanzania, Mount Kilimanjaro's legendary snow caps could vanish by 2020 and the glaciers on Uganda's Rwenzori Mountains have dwindled by 50% since 1987. Source
Pentagon to secure access to Canadian water:
The Pentagon, as well as various U.S. security think tanks, have decided that water supplies, like energy supplies, must be secured if the United States is to maintain its current economic and military power in the world. And the United States is exerting pressure to access Canadian water, despite Canada’s own shortages. Under the name, "North American Future 2025 Project," the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) brought together high level government officials and business executives from Canada, the United States and Mexico. Source
China's Shoreline Waters Seriously Polluted:
China - Vast stretches of China's coastal waters are seriously polluted and the country's coastal wetlands and mangrove forests are vanishing, reported Beijing's Xinhua news agency. Luan Weixin, a professor at Dalian Maritime University in Dalian, Liaoning Province, confirmed that 50% of inland coastal wetlands had disappeared and 80% of coral reefs and mangrove forests had been destroyed over the past 50 years. Source
Kiribati likely doomed by climate change:
At an international conference on climate change held in Wellington, New Zealand on World Environment Day, 5 June, President Anote Tong of Kiribati, a low-lying chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean, announced that his nation was doomed by rising sea levels. Source
Drought, tourism endanger Marrakech palm grove:
In 1929, Morocco's then-French rulers measured the palm grove at about 40,000 acres — an area nearly 50 times that of New York's Central Park. By 1998, it had declined to nearly 30,000 acres. Since then, the grove has shrunk by nearly half, to an estimated 16,000 to 19,000 acres. Water is a major problem, for both the trees and the people who have long lived under them. Source
Packaged food industry asked to reform labeling:
Packaged food should carry labels saying how much water was used in its production, an international water conference has been told. Economist James Hazelton: "Most of our water usage is embedded in the products we use, rather than drinking or showers and in the garden and so on. The community has a right to information about users of assets such as water." Source
Sustainability of the World’s Outputs of Food, Wood and Freshwater for Human Consumption:
I urge you to read this article, it discusses in great detail the sustainabilities of the world's outputs of food, wood and freshwater. It also considers that sustainability is mainly culture-dependent. Source
__________________________
