It’s not a widely published fact, but that’s no reason why it should not be a widely acknowledged problem. The world’s supply of fresh water is slowly running dry. Forty percent of the world’s population is already reeling under the problem of scarcity.
Most of the diseases plaguing the world are water-borne. And while there is a child born every eight seconds in America, there is a life taken every eight seconds by some water-borne disease in other parts of the world.
Is it the lopsided distribution of fresh water that is causing climate change, or is it the climatic change that is causing this lopsided distribution? The fact is that there is a significant climate change, and as a consequence of this change, some regions are becoming drier while others are getting wetter. Some parts of the world are experiencing greater desertification, while others are suffering category 4 and 5 hurricanes.
According to the United Nations, water scarcity is amongst the most serious crises facing the world. And things are only getting worse.
Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan of the erstwhile USSR, Chile, Mexico, Paraguay, Argentina, Peru and Brazil in Latin America, parts of China and the Middle East especially Iran, and more than 25 countries of Africa are all suffering from varying degrees of desertification.
Global weather has gone awry. It is making poor countries poorer. Countries that are already facing drought and famine are getting less and less water. For how long can these countries run on dry?
Nowhere is the situation worse than in Africa. Almost 40 million people in 19 countries are facing imminent food shortage. Much of the livestock there will perish. The growing water shortage will make food scarcer, potable water less accessible and water-borne diseases even more rampant. And the number of people who will suffer all this is expected to touch more than 500 million by the 2025. And the global consequence: A greater dependence on international aid.
And this problem is not just limited to Africa. No one can tell which part of the globe will be next.
Blame this on nature. It’s most convenient. But fact is, much of the blame belongs to increasing consumption and improper usage.
At every opportunity nature reminds us by what it does and what it doesn’t, that it is one of the forces we have little control over. So there’s no way we can stop the rain or start it. But what we can do is become more water-efficient - get more from every gallon of water. And the only way to do this is to recycle and reuse waste water. Water is the giver of life. It has no substitute. And every drop counts!
Many believe that the next world war is likely to be fought on the issue of water. Even though the world is two-thirds water, most of it is not potable, and much of it is not usable for any other purpose as well.
And we are busy consuming and contaminating whatever is left of it, as if it were a non-depletable resource. In this blog, I shall make an attempt to identify ways to make the best use of water, an increasingly scarce resource, by recovering it from wastewater, whether we intend to reuse the water so recovered or let it just charge our ground water reserves.
This is aimed at a wide cross-section of people involved in taking corrective action across the world policy makers, administrators, municipal engineers & scientists, engineers & administrators in industries vested with the responsibility of wastewater treatment and management, industrial & residential property builders, academics, students and just about everyone who cares about posterity.
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Comments
April 23 2008
Nice post,Treatment facilities simply compress the organic decomposition processes which take place in nature. This is performed by a combination of physical, biological, and chemical treatment stages. Nature (receiving waters) can only accept small amounts of sewage before becoming polluted, that is, natural bacteria feed on the sewage organics and create an abnormal amount of dissolved oxygen uptake. Dissolved oxygen which exists in minute amounts (10 parts per million @ 20ºC), is required by all marine life for survival.