DK GreenRoots

The World Economic Forum (WEF) issued a report (pdf file) warning that in less than 20 years the world may face a water bankruptcy of fresh water shortages so huge and pervasive that "global food production could crater" as the world could "lose the equivalent of the entire grain production of the US and India combined." The report warns that half of our global population will be affected by water shortages, millions will die, and water wars will increase over shrinking supplies. The gravity of the water crisis is exacerbated by the interrelationship between water and economic growth, political stability, health, food, alternative energy, climate change, human rights and life itself. The WEF report warns that our water bubble is as "unsustainable and fragile as that which precipitated the collapse in world financial markets" and may result in a water "bankruptcy in many places with no way of paying the debt back." The problem is that water is a finite resource, yet government and management policies are based on the erroneous assumption that a renewable resource means the supply is inexhaustible. The reality is policy makers do not evaluate water sustainability within the confluence of population growth, increased irrigation for food, energy water needs, waste, mismanagement and pollution of water supplies. Drought is often discussed in terms of rainfall amounts, but it is the hydrologic conditions (pdf file) in the context of intertwined external factors --- such as environmental mandates, development, population growth --- that create water shortages that may exist even in plentiful wet years. Finite Water Supplies Water is a finite resource of 1.4 million cubic kilometres of water circulating through the hydrological cycle.

Nearly all of this is salt water and most of the rest is frozen or under ground. Only one-hundredth of 1 percent of the world's water is readily available for human use.

The only renewable source of freshwater is rainfall which provides an annual global water supply of 40,000 to 50,000 cubic km, but annual global population increases of 85 million decrease the amount of water available per person. The world today generally has the same quantity of water that was available when dinosaurs roamed our earth. One major difference is that we now have 6.7 billion people drinking from the freshwater supplies that were plentiful for the 300 million global population of Roman days. Peak water is not based on the loss of water molecules -- except for issues like groundwater usage outrunning natural recharge – but water sustainability. Water Bubble In the past 50 years, regional water "bubbles" that supported economic growth are now popping in parts of China, the Middle East, southwestern U.S. and India. In California, water bubbles were created by allowing development or projects based on inflated and unrealistic paper water entitlements rather than real water supplies and without consideration of climate change impacts that decrease water availability.

The 80-year average for Delta water is 29 million acre-feet annually. The state and feds wrote contracts promising 130 million acre-feet: 4 1/2 times reality. Other contracts bring total export contracts to an insane 245 million acre-feet, an ocean of paper water promised to people who gauged their farms, businesses or urban water consumption accordingly.