Towards Global Water Security: A Departure from the Status Quo?
Published on by Dr Cecilia Tortajada, Honorary Professor at the University of Glasgow, UK in Academic
Water resources are, and have always been, a multidimensional resource that crosses all social and economic sectors.
Globally, growing population and urbanisation have increased the pressure to meet the water, energy, and food demands of larger populations with higher expectations. As a result, both developed and developing countries seem to be racing against the clock to respond to the needs of societies in which inequalities continue to grow.
Representative image, Source: Pixabay
Water resources are scarcer and more polluted; their management, governance, and development increasingly depend on decisions that are made in other sectors, many times without sufficient coordination; and their availability is more than ever threatened by issues, such as climate variability and change, that impose nothing but uncertainty.
These factors have led to water resources being seen through the lenses of risk and security. The security of water resources necessitates a departure from the status quo, to an innovative system that is able to understand and appreciate how different natural, policy, and political variables interact and affect each other.
This system requires a wholesome perspective that is able to propose alternatives that consider the complexity and that are adaptive to an uncertain future. A departure is necessary because the status quo has proven unable to respond to the present needs and expectations, much less to future ones.
Cecilia Tortajada and Victor Fernandez
Chapter of the book ‘Global Water Security’, World Water Council (Editor), 2018, Springer, Singapore, pages 1-19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7913-9_1
Find the full paper in the description
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Taxonomy
- Drinking Water Security
- Water Security
- Resource Management
- Urban Water
- Water Security
- Urban Resource Management
- Urban Water Supply
- Urban Drainage System
- Urban Water Infrastructure
- urban water security
1 Comment
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While it is unfortunate that we waste more than 90% of the water we take from the land, via a one-way pipe from city to ocean, only to destroy marine habitats IT IS THIS mismanagement which offers immediate, practical opportunity to achieve Global Water Security. And even though my/our efforts to implement such change is widely met as one of philanthropy, I/we do hope that better judgement will prevail. To learn more, please visit www.baleen.com