Citing a number of contemporary issues, evaluate pressures on water and discuss the means by which the resource might be better managed in the future.
Citing a number of contemporary issues, evaluate pressures on WATER and discuss the means by which the resource might be better managed in the future. Water, after air perhaps, is the most precious resource available for use. Humans cannot survive much more than 5 days without drinking water, we need it to grow crops and feed animals, for cleaning and cooking, and for processing all man made goods and the provision of services. Although water is abundant on earth 96.5% of the water is saline (Pennington & Cech, 2010) which is undrinkable and unsuitable for agriculture and industry. A further 1.7% is stored as frozen water. So when discussing water as a resource, in this case, it is the 1.7% that exists as groundwater, in rivers, lakes, wetlands and soils that is being referred to, although not all of this is accessible. Currently the population of the world is over 6.8 billion (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010) and population growth worldwide is about 1.17% per year (Google, 2008). Life expectancy is increasing and coupled with these population factors are advancements in human society which are increasing our demands on water resources. In 2005 it was estimated that 48.6% of the world's population lived in urban areas (Encyclopedia of Earth, 2009) with this number constantly on the rise. Urban water provision usually depends on inefficient infrastructure which is susceptible to
"Environmental degradation is neither the inevitable price of, nor a desirable path for, economic development
"Environmental degradation is neither the inevitable price of, nor a desirable path for, economic development." (UNDP, et al, 2005) Introduction Environmental degradation is now apparent on a global scale. In addition to the deterioration of what were once considered free goods (such as air and water), escalating scarcity of natural resources, deforestation, desertification and threatened bio-diversity are now commonplace across the spectrum. There are certainly no reservations over the scale of this degradation, however there is much controversy concerning the apparent environmental degradation - economic development nexus. Many have argued that short-term tradeoffs exist in the form of environmental degradation, for superior long-term economic gains. One of the positions put forward is that environmental degradation is the result and inevitable price of economic development. This viewpoint is based on the Environmental Kuznets Curve, regarding environmental degradation as the 'necessary evil' for achieving 'economic development' and suggesting that environmental assets are degraded in the early stages of economic development, only to improve after some income threshold has been passed at a later point. In the last decade, extensive literature has argued that a direct link between environmental degradation and economic development is too simplistic and that the