The world's oceans: all that sea water and nothing to drink

Water is connected to all aspects of human survival, including agriculture to grow our food, environmental impacts of climate change, wetland ecosystems, wildlife migration, human health, and the sustainability of our planet.

As polar ice caps, glaciers, and sea ice continue to melt, it has caused some people to theorize that the world should have more water, not less. The problem is, sea water is heavily laden with saline or salt, which is deadly to humans if consumed..

As a result, there is more attention being paid to decreasing the cost of desalinization or the removal of fresh water from the saline water in order to make it drinkable. Currently, it can cost between $1000 to $650 per acre-foot to desalinate seawater as compared to about $200 per acre-foot for water from normal supply sources. Technology is becoming less expensive and may someday be a viable process to transform sea water into drinkable/usable water.

According to studies done by the US Geological Survey in 2002, there were approximately 12,500 desalination plants world wide in 120 countries. However, the production at that time was less than 1% of total world consumption.

In the Middle East, the most prominent users of desalinated water include the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar. In North Africa the main users are Libya and Algeria. The United States was the most predominant industrialized nation to use the desalination process. Particularly in areas of California.

It has been determined that underdeveloped, poor, third world countries, in Africa and surrounding regions, will be the hardest hit by global warming. Since desalinization is so expensive, the process is an unlikely long term solution. The best way to deal with the prospect of current and future water shortages is to reduce greenhouse gases and curb climate change.

Water shortages are already evident in many areas of the world. The Yellow River in China and the Nile River in Egypt, no longer reach the ocean most of the year, as water is drawn off upstream for agriculture and consumption. Water shortages result in food shortages. Especially the staples: rice, grains, and corn.

Fred Pearce, author of When the Rivers Run Dry and environmental consultant for New Science Magazine wrote: The current water shortages should not mark an absolute limit to food production around the world. But it should do three things. It should encourage a rethinking of biofuels, which are themselves major water guzzlers. It should prompt an expanding trade in food exported from countries that remain in water surplus, such as Brazil. And it should trigger much greater efforts everywhere to use water more efficiently.

Water scarcity has increased concerns for our national security, regarding possible conflicts over water.

In July, 2009, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee convened a hearing lead by chairman, Senator John KerryJohn Kerry (D-MA).

Kerry opened the meeting with this introduction (in part):

"Climate change injects a major new source of chaos, tension, and human insecurity into an already volatile world. It threatens to bring more famine and drought, worse pandemics, more natural disasters, more resource scarcity, and human displacement on a staggering scale. Places only too familiar with the instability, conflict, and resource competition that often create refugees and IDPs, will now confront these same challenges with an ever growing population of EDPs—environmentally displaced people. We risk fanning the flames of failed-statism, and offering glaring opportunities to the worst actors in our international system. In an interconnected world, that endangers all of us."

"Nowhere is the nexus between today’s threats and climate change more acute than in South Asia–the home of Al Qaeda and the center of our terrorist threat. Scientists are now warning that the Himalayan glaciers, which supply water to almost a billion people from China to Afghanistan, could disappear completely by 2035."

"Water from the Himalayas flows through India into Pakistan. India’s rivers are not only agriculturally vital, they are also central to its religious practice. Pakistan, for its part, is heavily dependent on irrigated farming. Even as our government scrambles to ratchet down tensions and prepares to invest billions to strengthen Pakistan’s capacity to deliver for its people—climate change is threatening to work powerfully in the opposite direction."

Last week the Boxer-Kerry climate bill was released and it is a stronger version than what was passed in the house. It still has to get passed into a law for the president to sign, hopefully before December, when President Obama goes to the climate summit in Copenhagen."

It is such a dichotomy of nature that so much of the globe is covered in water and ice, but most of it is not drinkable to any living thing, nor usable for any form of irrigation. All that water and nothing to drink.

***Copyright DelilahStarling 2009