Prof. (Dr.) Sohan Raj Tater
WHEN we think about water scarcity, then, we should not be focusing on an absolute shortfall between the total needs of the earth’s population and the available supply, but on where the useable water is and what it costs to bring enough clean water to where people are.
Applying market principles to water would facilitate a more efficient distribution of supply everywhere. Analysts at Harvard Middle-East Water Project, for example, advocate assigning a monetary value to fresh water, rather than considering it a free natural commodity. They say such an approach can help mitigate the political and security tensions caused by water scarcity.
Falling prices in membrane filtering technology (reverse osmosis) and advances in ultraviolet and ozone disinfection have led to a wide array of off – the shelf water technologies. Large companies such as GE, Simens and Dow developed these technologies for consumer markets in industrial countries, spurred by the exploding market in bottled water, but they offer interesting spin–offs in developing countries.
As individuals, we can also reign in our own water use to help conserve what is becoming an ever more precious resource. We can hold off on watering our lawns in times of drought. And when it does rain, we can collect rain water in barrels to feed garden hoses and sprinklers. We can turn off the tapes while we brush our teeth or shave, and take shorter showers. In other world, “Doing more with less is the first and easiest step along the path toward water scarcity.”
As a reliable and affordable technology, desalination has come of age in the last two decades. For Iceland cities such as Singapore, or for a new five star hotel on a Pacific atoll, a desalination plant is now standard technology. The cost of desalination has come down rapidly and now ranges from $ 0.5 – 1.00 per cubic meter, depending upon price of energy. This is a reasonable price for drinking water in a developed urban area or hotel where the impact on room prices will be only a few dollars per day. For agricultural purposes, however the value of water ranges from several cents per cubic meter to grow crop such as corn, wheat, rice or sugar cane, to half a dollar for intensive flower or vegetable production. Desalination is clearly not an economical option. Desalination is similarly impractical for poor people who live on less than $ 1 or $ 2 per day.
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