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Our planet is 70 percent covered in ocean – 98% of the
world’s water is in the oceans. Which makes 98% of the world’s water unfit
for drinking, or irrigation.
Just 2% of the world’s water is fresh. The vast majority
of our fresh water, 1.64%, is in its frozen state and locked up in the polar
ice caps, Greenland’s ice sheet and glaciers. Once it melts its contaminated
by seawater, either by melting directly into the oceans or running to the
world’s oceans through a stream or river.
Our available freshwater, .36% of the water on the
planet, is found underground in aquifers and wells, and on the surface in
lakes and rivers.
After the glaciers melt many of our rivers will
cease to exist, and a vast number of lakes will no longer be filled by
anything more than melting snow – runoff - and rainfall. Refilling our lakes
and aquifers by relying on only precipitation, in a warming and much drier
climate, does not sound efficient or dependable.
“In many parts of the world, in particular in the
dry, mid-latitudes, far more water is used than is available on an annual,
renewable basis. Precipitation, snowmelt, and stream flow are no longer
enough to supply the multiple, competing demands for society’s water
needs. Because the gap between supply and demand is routinely bridged
with non-renewable groundwater, even more so during drought, groundwater
supplies in some major aquifers will be depleted in a matter of decades. The
myth of limitless water and the free-for-all mentality that has pervaded
groundwater use must now come to an end. NASA
Jet Propulsion Laboratory hydrologist James Famiglietti, Nature Climate
Change
Freshwater aquifers are one of the most important natural
resources in the world today, but in recent decades the rate at which we’re
pumping them dry has more than doubled. These fast shrinking underground
reservoirs are essential to life on this planet. They sustain streams,
wetlands, and ecosystems and they resist land subsidence and salt water
intrusion into our fresh water supplies.
GRACE
NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE)
satellites measure anomalies in the Earth's gravity brought about by changes
in water supplies.
Hydrologists combined the information from GRACE with
soil moisture and other data to isolate changes in groundwater storage. They
built a renewable groundwater stress (RGS) ratio that compares the rate at
which the groundwater is being used to its availability as reflected by the
rate at which the aquifer is being replenished. Of the 37 aquifers studied,
16 showed positive accumulating trends and 21 showed declining trends.
Twenty-one of the world's 37 largest aquifers are losing
water at a greater rate than they're being refilled.
They include:
- The Arabian Aquifer System, which
supplies Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen
- Yhe Murzuk-Djado Basin in northern
Africa
- The Indus Basin of India and Pakistan
- The Central Valley Aquifer
System in California
Most of the unstressed (the 16 accumulating water)
aquifers are located in remote forested and rain fed regions. Most of the
stressed (21 losing water) aquifers were located in regions with high amounts
of rangeland and cropland.
Out of the 21 aquifers losing water, eight were found to
be overstressed – meaning there is almost no natural replenishment while five
more were extremely stressed signifying they had some water flowing back into
them.
The Arabian Aquifer System is an important
water source for more than 60 million people and it’s the most overstressed
in the world. The Indus Basin aquifer of northwestern
India and Pakistan is the second-most overstressed, the Murzuk-Djado Basin in
northern Africa is third. California's Central Valley, used heavily for
agriculture and suffering rapid depletion, was labeled extremely stressed.
 
For most, a no fresh water planet
There are currently 7.3 billion of us sharing the world’s
fresh water resources. By 2050 the United Nations (UN) expects the world’s
population to reach 9.7 billion. Feeding everyone
in 2050 could require 50% more water than is needed now.
Already approximately 1 billion people go to bed hungry
each night.
Almost 1 in every 15 children in developing countries
dies before the age of 5, most of them from hunger-related causes. Somewhere
in the world someone starves to death every 3.6 seconds - most are children
under the age of five.
An estimated 90% of the people expected to be added to
the population, by 2050, will be in developing countries.
This means hundreds of millions more marginalized people
will feel the extreme pinch of shortages in what those people need the most –
water, food and clothing – the bare essentials necessary for survival.
Conclusion
Human life, on our one and only planet, is based on
sourcing fresh water.
Most of the aquifers in India and the shallow aquifer
under the North China Plain are replenishable. When these are depleted, the
maximum rate of pumping is automatically reduced to the rate of recharge or
refill.
For fossil aquifers - such as the vast U.S. Ogallala
aquifer, the deep aquifer under the North China Plain, or the Saudi aquifer -
depletion brings pumping to an end.
Scientists do not know how much water is left in the world’s
aquifers - they can discern trends but they cannot yet determine the total
volume that exists.
We need a coordinated global effort to determine how much
is left, how much we can take on a yearly sustainable basis from each aquifer
and put an actionable, by ALL, conservation plan into place.
Sounds like a lot to do but…
The consequences of a major percentage of our global
population running out of fresh water for drinking and irrigation, and how
soon we could all be living in a no fresh water world, should be on all our
radar screens. Definitely on mine, is it on yours?
If not, it should be.
Richard Mills
aheadoftheherd.com
Richard lives with his family on a 160 acre ranch in
northern British Columbia. He invests in the resource and biotechnology/pharmaceutical
sectors and is the owner of Aheadoftheherd.com. His articles have been
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Richard Mills has based this document on information
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