2040 A planet without water
2040 A planet without water
The availability of water resources, a question directly linked to climate change, is one of the most urgent problems to tackle.
All this emerges from the latest report published by the World Resources Institute. In fact, in the next 25 years, according to WRI researchers, drought will increase in drought and the water resource will be an increasingly precious and contested asset.
The most important thing (and at the same time disturbing) is that these environmental changes will radically redefine the social and productive structure of the States. To the point to unleash in the most densely populated areas, real struggles for the control and management of water reserves.
Unfortunately these are not new and unexpected data. In an analysis carried out in 2012 by the United Nations, it should be noted that as early as 2030 about half of the world’s population would have had to face water shortages in one form or another.
The countries that will be most affected by the problem are those in the Middle East area, which today faces the need for water thanks to underground rivers or the desalination of the seas. The most interested states will be: Bahrain, Kuwait, Palestine, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Lebanon. For example, a state like Saudi Arabia risks having to survive on imported water in the coming years. However, the fate of European countries such as Spain and Italy and those of America such as Chile or Mexico is of concern.
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These changes will impact even more on everyday life and on economic systems, generating a series of migratory flows between countries that have greater stocks of water and those that are gradually becoming impoverished.
The revolts of Syria and the tensions between Israel and Palestine are part of this delicate emergency. In short, they are the preambles of what can be expected if the governments do not work concretely on the problem.
This is why, in view of these changes, a radical rethinking of energy management becomes even more decisive, and a real shift towards criteria and methods that make energy and water resources more efficient is becoming more and more vital.
But what seems to be a question that most interests some areas of the Planet is instead involving, in a dramatic way, the United States. Among its states, California in the lead and then Colorado. Here the seasons of the fires have lengthened and become more dramatic, making it more extensive and difficult to delimit the burned areas. The great coastal state, the seventh or eighth economy in the world, with agriculture that is the most dynamic in the country (and an occupational basin of 417 thousand people in 2014) is holding a drought for four years.
In short: climate change, poor management of resources, wrong culture of exploitation of resources, lack of distribution of water resources between agriculture, civil and industrial uses, latent political interest of many states; these are the real issues to work on without alarmism but with great attention and conscience.
Guido Bissanti