Water, Water Everywhere nor any Drop to Drink'

It is perhaps scary to think that William Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a text from the 18th century, may speak of the future for many. With pollution, population growth and climate putting increasing stress on global water resources, just how dry does our future look?

In Short Supply

For many, it's hard to imagine that, on a planet whose surface is almost 70% water, our water supply is limited. But with over 97% of Earth's water being saline, we start to get a clearer picture. Going even further, of the remaining 2.5% that is freshwater, just 1% is easily accessible for human use – the rest being trapped in glaciers and snowfields.

Straining Our Resources

Whilst this 1% may sound small enough, we're rapidly reducing drinkable supplies even further. Water pollution caused by industrial and commercial waste, runoff from pesticides and chemicals used in agriculture, oil spills and marine dumping (just to name a few) is turning once-clean water resources into carriers of water-borne diseases such as cholera and typhoid.

This dwindling supply is also having to supply a booming global, particularly urban, population. Many cities are facing problems from this now; Cape Town, whose rapid population growth parallels that of many African cities, has been dominating headlines in early 2018 in its desperate bid to stop local water supplies running entirely dry. For residents, this means extreme rationing to prevent 'Day Zero', expected in June: the day when supply to suburban homes and many businesses is entirely cut off.

We must also look to climate change. Cape Town's population is booming, but it is also seeing record drought, the kinds of which are only expected once every 300 years[2]. With climate change bringing more frequent extreme weather events, many cities are now considering the durability of their water resources.

Big or Small?

It's safe to say that many large-scale government attempts to solve supply problems have caused new issues, notably in the developing world. Tensions have arisen over water resources such as the Nile, whose supply to nine nations has become imbalanced due to damming in Ethiopia, whilst the priorities of businesses and governments clash with those of environmental groups.

At a local scale, many projects by organisations such as WaterAid have seen great success; small wells and dams, combined with training local people to manage them, provide a far more sustainable solution for small populations. But this is, of course, not sufficient for vastly growing urban populations, with more stakeholders and greater strains on local supplies.

Winning the Water War

To escape a dry future, it's imperative that we play our part to conserve our precious 1%. At every scale, urban or rural, success will take cooperation between governments, councils, businesses, NGOs and local people - something which, though often hard to attain, is not impossible.

1. William Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1834)
2. Piotr Wolski, Climate System Analysis Group, University of Cape Town