Introduction
Water is one of the only things humans can seem to agree that everyone needs.
We all drink water, we all need water to live. These are indisputable facts.
This is a project for the Sheridan College journalism program. We asked the question “what is in store for the future of water?”
We have explored plastic in the ocean, ocean levels, groundwater, supply and demand, and desalination of water. We’ve looked at these topics using a combination of past data and expert interviews to show you what the future of human water might look like.
Water is more important to humanity than oil, or wars. This future projection is the real question as we continue to launch into the 21st century.
Here’s what the future might hold:
Plastic Pollution
Plastic pollution is not a new concept, nor is it neglected. All of us, at some point, heard of it. Some took action. Some dismissed it.
Plastic pollution is one of the most pressing environmental issues right now.
It threatens ocean health, food safety and quality, human health, coastal tourism, and affects climate change.
If we don’t take necessary actions, plastic pollution will have an irreversible impact on marine animals, humans, and as a whole on the environment.
In order to help, it’s necessary to get educated on this matter beforehand.
Here are some facts you need to know:
1. Every day nearly 8 million pieces of plastics find their way into the ocean.
2. Plastic pollution is most evident in developing Asian and African nations, where garbage accumulation methods are often inefficient. But the developed countries, especially with low recycling rates, who are also struggling to collect discarded plastics properly.
3. In 1950, a global population of 2.5 billion people produced 1.5 million tons of plastic. in 2016, a global population of more than 7 billion people produced over 320 million tons of plastic. This is expected to double by 2034.
4. In the first decade of this century, more plastic were made than all the plastic in history up to the year 2000. Not something to be proud of right?
5. At current rates, plastic is expected to outweigh all the fish in the sea by 2050.
6. Right now, there are around 5.25 trillion macro and microplastic pieces floating in the ocean, weighing up to 269,000 tones.
This Chart will illustrate the number of surface plastic pieces found in oceans worldwide as of 2014 (in billions)
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Plastic is not all that bad. Actually, it can be incredibly useful. The problem is not plastics. It’s the single-use plastics and the quantities in which they are used, that’s the main issue.
We absolutely need plastic in different forms and shapes. Essentially, it’s vital.
Plastics are made from fossil fuels. They’re robust and flexible, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but that also means it’s not going to breakdown easily.
For instance, a plastic bottle can last for 450 years in the aquatic environment, slowly fragmenting into smaller pieces, which will eventually end up microscopic but never actually eradicate. This implies that every part of plastic that has ever been produced still exist, in some form.
Once the plastic enters the ocean, sunlight, wind, wave action and other natural factors break down plastic scraps into small particles, often less than one-fifth of an inch across, termed microplastics or nano plastics (particles smaller than 100 nm).
According to IUCN, the primary sources of aquatic plastic are land-based, from municipal and storm runoff, beachgoers, sewer floods, inefficient waste disposal, industrial activities, construction and illegal dumping and bins near the coast. Ocean-based plastic originates chiefly from the fishing industry, nautical activities and aquaculture.
The bad news is that the fossil fuel industry plans to increase plastic production by 40 percent over the next decade, which results in more plastic in our oceans.
Most of the deaths of animals are caused by entanglement or starvation.
A considerable number of animals are killed by plastics every year, from fish to birds to other marine animals.
Almost 700 marine species, including endangered ones, have been affected by plastics. Some surveys suggest that at least 100 million marine mammals are killed each year from plastic pollution. Virtually every species of seabird eats plastics.
A lot of animals get entangled or mistake the plastic for food. Those plastics they eat, prevent them from getting hungry moreover eating actual food, so it results in starvation.
Here is a list of the top five marine animals that are dying because of plastic pollution.
The UN report declares: “Human actions threaten more species with global extinction now than ever before,” and concludes that “around 1 million species already face extinction, many within decades unless action is taken.”
Unluckily for the plastics that are already in the ocean, there’s not much we can do since there is a low percentage of the plastics that are floating on the water and the ones that we see on the beach. Most of the plastics sink down, or they have turned into microplastics. What is needed to be done now is controlling single-use plastic consumption in the future.
If you are thinking of helping to clean the already polluted areas, please visits 4ocean. The primary purpose of this website is to clean the ocean and coastlines. They are mainly known for their signature bracelets. By purchasing their goods, you’re donating money to help the ocean plastic pollution crisis.
Here are some tips on how to help reduce ocean plastic pollution:
-Bring your own reusable water bottle instead of buying single-use plastic ones
-Do not use plastic straws
-Bring your own reusable bag when you want to go shopping
-Carry reusable containers to work or school
-Bring your own mug when getting coffee
-Avoid products containing microbeads
-Avoid ocean-harming products
-Recycle properly
-Speak up, and demand companies to reduce the plastic footprint
OCEAN LEVELS
The ocean level rose by 11-16 centimeters in the twentieth century and 21-24 centimeters since 1880. With the current emissions and greenhouse effects, the sea level is rising .13 inches or 3.2 mm every year. With the new research surfacing, it has been predicted the sea level will rise by at least one meter by the end of the century. As the Earth continues to warm up in the wake of global warming, the melting ice sheets in the Antarctic and Arctic regions and thermal expansion of water are adding to the rise in sea level at an accelerated rate. As the temperature of the Earth’s surface continues to rise, water loses its density and expands, hence, resulting in rising sea levels.
Global warming and climate change have started shifted the Earth’s model significantly. Rising sea level is one of the effects of climate change. As the Earth continues to produce greenhouse gases, sea levels are affected directly. World’s oceans, which occupy 70 per cent of the Earth’s surface, have absorbed over 90 per cent of the heat from these emissions, hence, impacting the sea level rise.
Why is ocean level rising?
There are three main reasons for the drastic rise in the sea level in the past few years: melting ice sheets, melting glaciers and thermal expansion of water.
Melting Ice-caps in Greenland and Antarctica
Melting polar ice-sheets are responsible for one-third of the sea-level rise. SinceThe Greenland and Antarctica ice-sheets are melting at six times the speed than they were in 1990s. Nasa, in a recent study, predicted that if the ice sheets continue to melt at the same rate, some regions will be in their “worst-case” scenario, and there would an additional 17 centimeters rise to already predicted increase (one meter) in the sea level by the end of the century.
Antarctica is roughly the size of the United States and Mexico combined and is covered with thick ice sheets that run deeper than a mile, and at some places, even three miles. The continent holds 90 per cent of the total ice sheets in the world, and if all that were to melt at once, the sea level would rise by 200 feet, causing floods, hurricanes, and loss of life.
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Antarctica is roughly the size of US and Mexico combined.
We haven’t yet reached a point where we might lose all our ice-caps. But if the trends continue, there will be a drastic rise in sea levels by 3.2 m within next 500 years; and over a meter by the end of the 21st century.
Nasa scientists shared that Greenland (contributing 60 per cent) and Antarctica (contributing 40 per cent) combined lost 6.4 trillion tons of ice since 1990s, which is six times the amount lost in 1990s– 81 billion tons per year. This meltdown added 0.7 inches to the already soaring oceans of the world.
Thermal Expansion
As the planet continues to emit greenhouse gases, it gets absorbed by oceans. The Earth’s water surface acts as a regulator for the planet’s temperature and has been saving the planet from a warmer atmosphere. In 2018, the ocean absorbed 93 per cent of the heat caused by climate change. As the global mean temperature continues to rise, ocean water becomes less dense and expands, hence, contributing to the rise in sea levels. it But that rising heat has a dramatic effect on the ocean. Greenhouse-gas-induced has contributed to 2-5 cm rise in sea level between 1880 and 1985, says a Harvard study.
The Earth’s temperature due to greenhouse emissions is predicted to increase by 0.6 to 1.0 degrees Celcius between 1985 and 2025. If the predictions come true, the sea level would rise by four to eight cm. It should be kept in mind that one degree Celcius requires a lot of energy to heat the whole planet’s oceans. A five-degree drop about 20,000 years ago was enough to push the large part of North America into ice-age, burring it in ice masses.
Thermal expansion of the ocean was the main yet silent reason during the initial 100 years of the industrial revolution. Now the burden is being shared by the melting ice-caps too. Nevertheless, both have one thing in common: Global warming.
What would the world look like if predictions come true?
Sinking Cities
With ice-caps melting at six times the usual rate, the researchers have predicted a much worse future for many coastal cities, especially the ones situated in the low basin area. Low basin areas under the sea refer to the contours and mountains situated below water. These contours control the direction of water gained from the melting ice-caps.
Previous studies had predicted relatively lower levels of sea-level rise. The severity of climate change is measured in Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP). Scenarios are listed under RCP to predict the carbon emissions between 2000 and 2100. RCP2.5 is considered the least fatal possibility, considering low levels of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming; and RCP8.5 the worst-case scenario for human lives with irreversible damages caused to the environment.
The new study published in 2019 shows that the world is gearing up in its carbon emissions and is now at RCP8.5. This has in fact, altered the previous forecasts and shown us an even dire succeeding situation if we don’t limit our carbon emissions.
The dire situation will be the sinking of coastal cities. The study shows that rising sea levels would affect three times the number of people by 2050 than the previous predictions.
It has been said that the rising sea levels would swallow up some of the world’s coastal cities by the end of this century, whereas, some would lose a large number of land by 2050.
Source: Climate Central, basins of New York city at risk of sinking.
The US coastal regions– Miami, New York, and New Orleans are under the risk of getting perished. Japan’s Osaka, Brazil’s Rio De Jenario, Indonesia’s Jakarta, Egypt, Iran, and Vietnam are also some of the coastal regions in the risk of losing large parts of their lands over the following decades.
The worst-hit regions will be the Asian cities since it lies in the lower basin of the sea level, and a large number of population in those areas.
The forecast predicts that China’s Shanghai, the economic capital of the country, would be lost to the rising sea levels in the coming decades,
By the end of this century, a large portion of Bangladesh, with its capital city Dhaka included, is predicted to sink as the sea level is expected to rise by 1.5m along the coastal lines. Unusual high tides and storms will be more frequent, and the lands will grow salty and unfit for the growth of crops.
With the continuing trends, a part of Thailand’s capital city Bangkok would inundated, losing land which is home to 10 per cent of the population at the moment. Previously, it was thought to have affected just one per cent of the population.
Mass migration and loss of human lives
Three decades from now, the world would face a catastrophic effect of global warming and rising sea levels. By 2050, over 300 million people residing in the low-level coastal regions will be forced to migrate from their homes. Those regions- India, Vietnam, China, Bangladesh, and Thailand-, unfortunately, are the most populated regions in the world.
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Over 300 million people will be forced to leave their homes and migrate by 2100. Source: Climate central
The rise in sea levels will not only displace a large number of people but will also lead to a number of issues like salinity of soil, lack of food and basic necessities, lack of freshwater, urban poverty, and probably, wars over water and land.
Is Canada at risk of losing land to the ocean?
The increasing greenhouse gas emissions and rising ocean levels have put at least 69 Canadian coastal communities at risk of losing their lands.By the end of the century, the sea level is expected to rise at least 150 cm around Halifax, Vancouver, parts of Quebec and La Grande 1.
GROUND WATER
There’s an oft-cited statistic that humans are anywhere from 80% – 95% water. What seems inescapable is that water is an incredibly important part of daily life. People die when they cannot access it.
In this section, we will be discussing the availability of fresh, drinkable water.
Much of the surface of our planet is covered in water. At first glance, this may seem like a good thing and that water is a resource that will never leave us high and dry. Unfortunately, the vast majority of surface water is undrinkable for one reason or another. Maybe it’s full of contaminated ocean salt, or it’s frozen on one of the poles.
This means there are only a few, relatively rare places fresh, drinkable water can be found. Freshwater rivers and lakes, and groundwater reservoirs.
The question we’re asking on this site about each of the different aspects of water is “how will this affect the future of water?”
For drinkable water, we can split it into two categories:
Renewable and non-renewable
Technically, freshwater is a renewable resource. As water evaporates, it can lose its salination, and as it falls back onto mountains it replenishes the rivers and lakes of freshwater.
However, water purity is highly tied to atmospheric pollution and depending on smog levels and chemicals used for farming, many toxic chemicals end up in rain more often that is healthy (this is part of the reason why you should boil any rainwater you plan to drink).
Many ground-water aquifers are non-renewable water resources and will theoretically be depleted with time.
One example of a groundwater reserve that is a key battleground is in Aberfoyle, Ontario.
Water activists believe that water is a human right since it is one of the only things all humans universally need to survive, but like most other resources, water extraction has been privatized in many places.
The township of Aberfoyle is in Wellington county. Conflicting municipal jurisdictions give approval of land-resource extraction to the county. In 2000, Wellington county, through the Province of Ontario, leased an underground aquifer to Nestlé. From this bottling facility, Nestlé packages, and distributes bottled water, pop, and La Croix. The jurisdiction of municipalities is separated by “watersheds”
In 2006, when the Nestlé contract was up for renewal, the Province began fielding complaints about Nestlé’s business practice, distribution of the resource, and the amount Nestlé was paying for the water.
“The Ontario government is responsible for issuing “Permits to Take Water”.” said former MPP for Guelph, Liz Sandals. “Permits to Take Water are approved only after thorough scientific and technical reviews demonstrate that a water taking will not have adverse effects on the water supply or other water users.”
“The rules for granting a ‘Permit to Take Water’ apply equally to all applicants – agricultural operations, municipalities or Nestlé.” Sandals said in an email. “The overarching criteria is that water taking must be sustainable. In order to ensure sustainability, the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change (MOECC) has ordered the monitoring of the water table in over 25 test wells in the area around Nestlé’s well.”
Sandals added that in times of drought in Ontario, The Grand River Conservation Authority has the authority to order Nestlé to stop pumping the water.
As a final comment, Sandals assured me, in context of the Guelph chapter of the WWW, that Guelph and Nestlé are in different watershed jurisdictions.
However, based on this image from the Ontario Conservation authority, the statement “Guelph and Nestlé are in different water sheds and do not compete for water.” is visibly untrue.
In an interview with CBC in 2016, Maude Barlow, the head of the Council of Canadians, said “If Nestlé gets the next permit fulfilled, they’re going to be taking over six million liters of water a day from the Grand River watershed”
For years, groups like the Wellington Water Watchers (WWW), have been arguing for a less commodified extraction of water, and a return of local watersheds to community control.
The WWW is a local activist group founded in 2007 when local activists became aware of the Nestlé plant in earnest. Some of their founding members discovered that water being bottled in Aberfoyle could be found everywhere from South America to Europe. The community-minded thinkers in Wellington County and the City of Guelph put together a local advocacy group to contest Nestlé’s claim to the Grand River Watershed.
Kayla Weiler is a member of the WWW community. She got involved with the group during her undergrad at the University of Guelph and is passionate about water for a very personal reason.
Weiler is from Walkerton, Ontario. She was in Kindergarten when the area was hit with a dramatic e-coli outbreak due to mismanagement and underfunding of water filtration systems on the Bruce Peninsula. Weiler was infected with e-coli as a child.
“That dramatic experience that I had when I was five and six years old where, you know, people in my community had gotten sick and seven people died,” said Weiler. “This practice of water use it had affected how I see the water, and it was for a really long time that I was actually very afraid, of water as a kid.”
“Having had that experience, I took that fear and I changed it to advocacy and fighting for water protection,” Weiler added. “It’s taken me from just talking about local water systems, to also having those conversations about how corporations use water and sell it for profit and how water is for the public good, and it’s for communities, not for corporations.”
As a member of the Wellington advocacy group, Weiler is well versed in the local fight, and the push to drive Nestlé out of the area.
“When we see companies like Nestlé as well as other major companies that instigate concerning amounts of water taking.” Weiler said, “What you’re seeing is that they’re taking more than they’re allowed, and can get away with it.”
The conflict between the groups is ongoing, but it is not the only argument of its kind in the world, as bottled water becomes the source of water for countries and states increasingly facing drought, it becomes a business that’s hard to give up.
“There are so many different water advocacy groups, not just seen in the Guelph/Eramosa area but also across Canada and across the World that are fighting for water resources.. I think that we’re going to see more and more people join us in that fight when the conversation about climate change presents new challenges.”
In another area of concern, in the future, groundwater may be the only source of water left to humanity.
Due to rain pollution, groundwater is some of the cleanest fresh water left on the planet.
In the future it seems renewable water could go one of two ways.
The first is the continued privatization and cost of renewable water. This will eventually cause a class division among the population of those who can afford access to publicly cleaned water, or private bottled stock, and those who cannot.
We’re already seeing something of this sort with boil water advisories in Canada.
Some of the poorest communities do not have access to publically funded water decontamination facilities, or access to a renewable water source and are forced to boil the water they use for cleaning and drinking.
“I’m somewhat fearful for the future of water in Ontario. There are still a lot of myths that Canada and Ontario have too much water, or we have so much water that we’re fine.”
The other possibility for the future is a de-privatization. A return of all watershed aquifers to public spheres and the legal decommodification of water as a resource.
“There actually was one point in Bolivia where there was a war over water.” Weiler said, “And I think that that’s a scary future and what could happen is we could have, you know, really dramatic conflicts over water because it is such a valuable resource.”
SUPPLY & DEMAND
While the future is difficult to predict, available freshwater resources will certainly decrease in the coming years due to the increasing demand of a growing world population. Water covers 70% of our planet, and it is easy to think that it will always be plentiful. However, freshwater – the stuff we drink, bathe in, irrigate our farm fields with – is incredibly rare. Only 3% of the world’s water is freshwater, and two-thirds of that is tucked away in frozen glaciers or otherwise unavailable for use.
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Global demand for water is projected to grow dramatically over the next 30 years while the natural water supply is expected to remain unchanged. The planet would need to find ways to allow more effective use of water to keep the supply up to demand. Maintaining the current water supply system also forms an important part of the management of water supplies. Well-maintained municipal water systems are projected to lose about 10-30 percent of the water they carry.
Water is important to human life and various industries. Although the oceans’ saltwater is by far the largest body of water on Earth, freshwater is needed for the majority of human activities. Much freshwater, however, is trapped in glaciers and polar ice caps. Water supply is primarily drawn from rivers, lakes, and groundwater.
Predicted water availability per person in 2025. (United Nations Environment Programme)
The global rate of depletion from groundwater has tripled over the past 50 years. Importantly improving food production and expanding rural areas. This is now a significant source of human consumption water providing nearly half of the world’s total drinking water.
The availability of water depends also on its consistency. Contaminated water can not be used for drinking, bathing, industrial or agricultural purposes. Over 80 percent of wastewater worldwide is projected not to be collected or treated, and human settlements are the major source of point source contamination.
The availability of freshwater supplies varies between countries. The United Nations keeps an ongoing database that calculates the amount of water available per person in 193 countries.
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Two-thirds of water losses are compensated for by farm irrigation and 85 percent of users worldwide. Industry accounts for 20 percent of worldwide water withdrawals. Industrial water withdrawals in some less-developed nations range from up to 70 percent in countries with a lot of manufacturing to less than 5 percent. Domestic water use accounts for 20 percent of worldwide water withdrawals.
Many of the world’s freshwater supplies are being depleted faster than they are being replenished, according to a Nasa-led report. Of the big aquifers in the country, 21 out of 37 are receding, from India and China to the USA and France. India’s Ganges Basin is depleting by an average of 6.31 centimeters per year due to population and irrigation demands. Meanwhile, Built on ancient lake beds, Mexico City is now sinking at a rate of nine inches a year in some places.
Readily available freshwater supplies are especially crucial following natural disasters, as seen here in Bangladesh, following Cyclone Sidr in 2008.
Water-related challenges
- 2.2 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water services
- Over half of the global population or 4.2 billion people lack safely managed sanitation services.
- 297,000 children under five die every year from diarrhoeal diseases due to poor sanitation, poor hygiene, or unsafe drinking water.
- 2 billion people live in countries experiencing high water stress.
- 80 percent of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused.
Some nations have worked out solutions to the scarcity of available freshwater. For example, The Shafdan Wastewater Treatment Facility near Tel Aviv provides around 140,000,000 cubic meters of water each year for agricultural use, covering 50,000 acres of irrigated land, by recycling effluent water like household sewage. Effluent water now provides over 40 percent of Israel’s agricultural water needs.
As warmer temperature increases the demand for water, the amount of fresh water available may decline and increase competition for water resources in some areas. To survive shortly, although some institutions and companies like WWF, H20 for Life, NEEF, etc. are taking necessary steps those are not enough. Everyone needs to come ahead and take the necessary steps immediately.
DESALINATION
Water scarcity is a huge future problem for our world. Many world conflicts will revolve around the need for fresh water. As critics point-out, while most obvious solution may seem like desalination, it is an extremely costly measure at such a large scale.
But an other problem persists. Desalination can cause a toxic by-product called brine. As facilities ramp up their desalination efforts, more brine is pumped in back to the sea.
A more attractive option is to use saline groundwater, also known as brackish water than pure seawater for future desalination attempts.
The Two Methods of Desalination
The Thermal Method –
Traditional desalination is done through thermal energy plants. Essentially boiling water, to get pure vapor and pour the resulting brine back into the sea. Thermal desalination is not as efficient as Reverse Osmosis – a membrane method – as it could leave 75 per cent of its water intake as brine.
However, building desalination facilities are costly and places that have already invested heavily in the technology such as many countries in the Middle East. While most of the world has switched over to Reverse Osmosis (RO), the thermal plants will likely continued to be used by these countries who have the resources to fund them.
The Membrane Method –
The membrane method is essentially using pressure to push out all of the salt water through a process called Reverse Osmosis. This has lead to more success in filtering brackish water – salinated water that is not seawater, such as contaminated groundwater.
The Mismanagement of The Aral Sea – 10 % of its original size.
According to Blue Gold by authors Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, Dam reservoirs have flooded about a million square kilometers globally and hold a volume six times larger than all the world’s rivers.
The problem with reservoirs is that they require the land to be flooded and submerged. The drowning of land vegetation creates the habitat required by bacteria to absorb any mercury that happens to be in the soil. The reservoirs convert this mercury into a form that fish can eat and mercury then enters the food chain. 64 percent of the Cree in northern Quebec ingested dangerous levels of mercury, and was the topic of an article featured in the New York Times back in 2016.
Therefore reservoirs can cause mercury by diverting the water.
Reservoirs can also cause greenhouse gases. Submerged and decomposing vegetation can release carbon dioxide and methane.
Dams can also cause salinization. Dams multiply surface area of water that evaporates, and industrialization causes once freshwater to convert into salinated water as the runoff evaporates from city streets.
Freshwater or the lack of it, have also played an important role in geopolitics.
According to the Jordan River’s Wikipedia page:
“Until the first decade of the 21st century, the waters of the Jordan River had been the largest water resource for Israel; lately, desalinated sea water from the Mediterranean has taken over this role. Israel’s National Water Carrier, completed in 1964, has delivered water from the Sea of Galilee to the Israeli coastal plain for over four decades, until prolonged drought led to abandoning this solution in favour of desalination. “
So, access to fresh water is global problem and has been one of the part of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, even leading to the Six-Day-War in 1967.
Conclusion
While we can’t know what the future holds, we can make some educated guesses.
Ultimately, we are able to look at trends from the past, compare them to where we are now and look forward to where we will be.
There are some changes we can make in the present that might stop some things from ever happening. As a society, we’ll need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and cut down on the kind of pollution that causes smog to prevent the ice caps from disappearing on us, Continuing to advocate for the public, clean water systems will help preserve the water we have left for future generations, and reduce the commodification of water, and we can cut back on the way we discard single-use plastics to get a head start on cleaning up the mess we’ve already made.
But you knew all of this already, right?
So get out there,. go to the beach, but make sure you bring a reusable bottle.
