05-15-2014, 01:48 PM
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Confirmed User
Industry Role:
Join Date: Nov 2002
Posts: 2,637
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Excellent article by The Guardian about the global water shortages and the long term implications
http://www.theguardian.com/environme...eat-terror-war
A couple of quotes
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The United Arab Emirates, faced with a growing population, has invested in desalination projects and is harvesting rainwater. At an international water conference in Abu Dhabi last year, Crown Prince General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan said: "For us, water is [now] more important than oil."
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That's quite a statement!
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The losses of water reserves are staggering. In seven years, beginning in 2003, parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers lost 144 cubic kilometres of stored freshwater ? or about the same amount of water in the Dead Sea, according to data compiled by the Grace mission and released last year.
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Quote:
"We are standing on a cliff looking over the edge and we have to decide what we are going to do," he said.
"Are we just going to plunge into this next epic drought and tremendous, never-before-seen rates of groundwater depletion, or are we going to buckle down and start thinking of managing critical reserve for the long term? We are standing on a precipice here."
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Regions at risk
1) California
2) Brazil
3) Middle East
4) North Africa
5) South Asia
6) China |
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