Peak Water II

Peak Water

When we use the term Peak in regard to any resource we are declaring that we have reached our local, national, regional, or international maximum production of that resource. It also marks the point of declining production from that point on. We have declared Peak Oil in the United States already, in fact some specialists suggest that we reached the US Peak Oil point more than a decade ago. And there are indications that we have now reached Peak Oil globally.

Worse than Peak Oil …Peak Water… worse first because we need water to survive, and next because we have alternative energy to replace oil, even if we are not yet ready to do that. For many regions we are at or approaching Peak Water now and our alternatives for fresh water are not as easy to deliver as we would hope. At this point we should note that there is a vast amount of water on the planet, but our sustainably managed water is becoming scarce.

The term Peak Water is a concept intended to help understand growing constraints on the availability, quality, and use of freshwater resources. The clearest definitions of the term were laid out in a 2010 peer-reviewed article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Peter Gleick and Meena Palaniappan. They define peak renewable (surface and renewable groundwater), peak non-renewable (contaminated or non-renewable groundwater), and peak ecological water.

Globally, some nations are undeniably suffering from the impact of peak renewable water, where entire renewable flows are being consumed for human use (residential, industrial, and agricultural), peak non-renewable water, where groundwater aquifers are being over pumped (or contaminated) faster than nature recharges them (this example is most like the peak oil debate), and peak ecological water, where ecological and environmental constraints are overwhelming the economic benefits provided by water use.

According to the UN, more than 100 nations are at some important level of Peak Water today. If present trends continue, 1.8 billion people will be living with absolute water scarcity by 2025, and two thirds of the world population could be subject to water stress. Ultimately, peak water is not about running out of fresh water, but about reaching physical, economic, and environmental limits on meeting human demands for water and the subsequent decline of water availability for our use.

Step one: Conservation and effective water management…locally (that means all of us), nationally, and internationally…or we will see water at the center of conflict in the near future.

Step two: craft an international plan for water conservation, reclamation, and effective global management.

Step three: Make the plan work…and adjust the plan as needed along the way.