Fighting global water scarcity
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Maude Barlow, the author of a new book “Blue Covenant”, and the leader of an international water justice movement has drawn attention to the half-hearted efforts to protect water. Waste and abuse of water could lead to serious consequences that could be at par with those of greenhouse emissions. It is depleting underground water tables, aggravating desertification, and even interrupting the circulation of water around the world.
Barlow has argued that people are mining underground water way faster than it can be replenished. Where farmers are using technology to pull water from deep underground, they fail to realize that water took thousands of years to fill aquifers.
Barlow is at loggerheads with the point of view shared by financial players, politicians and non-profit workers which suggests that virtual water trade and trading credits generated by not polluting water could be the best bet. According to her, tougher laws placing harsh penalties on polluters and increasing the amount of the world’s urban greenery such as green roofs or forest and meadow zones may be a better approach. In a world increasingly given to urbanizing mores, we are fast losing many of the meadows and green spaces that absorb water, while in coastal megacities, much of the rain water flowing straight into the ocean is evaporating and reaching the atmosphere.