The Global Water Crisis

Nature has always had the capacity to clean and renew water resources in underground aquifers, rivers, and lakes so that mankind did not have to worry about cleaning and treating water after it had been used. Nature had a self-sustaining and self-optimizing system for Renewable Water.

The Industrial Revolution drove rapid population growth, concentrated populations via urbanization and increased per capita water consumption because for public health reasons, piped water to the home for bathing daily and water-borne sanitation was a necessity in high-density urban environments.

Despite the introduction of wastewater treatment works, residual contaminants in treated wastewater have been one of the main drivers of the degradation by eutrophication of global freshwater resources over the last half-century.

Population growth has meant a similar increase in water use for food production and the consequent runoff of fertilizers from fields and manure from livestock farms provides another constant source of contaminants into our water resources.

Now urbanization in emerging economies is creating a second wave of exponential growth in the demand for water, which will accelerate the degradation of water resources because the Water Cycle, being a natural biotic system is subject to the exponential effects of feedback loops.

Eutrophication causes bulk water resources to become contaminated and infested with algae and aquatic weeds that die off seasonally and recycle the nutrients that fuel their growth again. Such positive feedback loops in natural systems can rapidly lead to the complete collapse of the system.

This accelerating downward spiral in the quality and quantity of useable water resources is at the heart of the Global Water Crisis, making resolving this Crisis a race against time.