The World in 2050_ Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future - Laurence C. Smith [50]
Surveying the debate coolly from arm’s length, one can appreciate the benefits of the private-sector model. If countries cannot or will not deliver clean water to their citizens who desperately need it, and neither will the World Bank, then why not let private capital have a go? On the other hand, something does feel creepy about transferring control of life’s most basic requirement—clean drinking water—from local to overseas control, to corporations whose fiduciary responsibility lies first and foremost with their shareholders. Paying for water works fine in the developed world, but where people earn a dollar per day? Is water property, or human right? This battle continues on fronts all over the world, with no clear best path forward.
World population will grow by 50% in the next forty years, nearly all of it in the developing world and mostly in places that are already water-stressed now. This new population will also be wealthier and eat more meat, thus requiring higher per capita food production than today. To meet this projected demand for food and feed, we must double our crop production by 2050. Finding enough freshwater to support this, plus more industry, plus billions of new apartments, all while keeping the water clean as it cycles endlessly between our kidneys and the environment, is very likely the greatest challenge of our century.
The Information Revolution
Breakfasts at high-powered NASA meetings in Washington, D.C., were much less glamorous than I’d hoped. Rather than sampling astronaut food in a gleaming high-tech boardroom, I was hunched in a bland carpeted hallway at the Marriott, poking a half-empty platter of stale bagels. But I didn’t mind. I grabbed the last poppyseed and a cup of coffee and ducked into the cramped meeting room. My old grad-school roommate Doug Alsdorf, now a professor at Ohio State, was bellowing at us to take our seats. I found one and sat quickly. One of the smartest men I have ever known, radar engineer Ernesto Rodriguez from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was preparing to give us another update on our half-billion-dollar idea.
The water crisis is about more than failing crops and unsanitary conditions. It is also about information—or more precisely, the lack of it—for effective water management. Water is constantly on the move, but unbelievably, we have hardly any idea of where, when, or how much we have at any given moment. Our knowledge of Earth’s hydrology is extraordinarily data-poor. Other than large rivers, few streams are measured. Outside the United States and Europe, the vast majority of water bodies receive no hydrologic monitoring whatsoever. We have basically zero information for small lakes, cattle ponds, and wetlands. Even the water levels behind dams, while monitored by their operators, are seldom released to the broader public in many countries.
Because of this information gap, millions of people have no idea whether next week will bring lower water levels in their river or lake, or a raging flood. Emergency workers don’t know when a flood has peaked or how high it will go. Along many rivers even the weather isn’t a reliable predictor because upstream reservoirs release