by DK
Polluting the oceans
Microplastics—tiny fragments of plastic less than 1⁄4 inch (5 mm) across—are even harder to clean up than other plastics. Comprising 90 percent of the plastics in the oceans, they surge through currents like a murky soup. The problem was first identified in 1997 by the American oceanographer Captain Charles Moore, who highlighted it in his 2011 book Plastic Ocean. Sailing home from a yachting competition, Moore came across a vast patch of plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean. Now known to have a bigger surface area than France, Germany, and Spain combined, the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch (GPOGP) comprises 79,000 tons of microplastics amassed by the swirling current known as the North Pacific Gyre.
The GPOGP is one of several oceanic garbage patches—there are others in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean as well as in smaller bodies of water such as the North Sea. Plastic microbeads, introduced by cosmetic companies in the 1990s, add to the problem. Used in personal care products such as soaps, facial scrubs, and toothpastes, the beads travel from wastewater systems into rivers and oceans, where they are consumed by fish and other animals, with the same damaging effects as microplastics (see panel, far right).
Steps to limit plastic
Cleaning up plastic pollution is a gargantuan task. Breaking plastics down into their constituent chemicals requires huge amounts of energy, which also damages the environment. The best solution is to learn to live without plastic. Most countries have banned or are working toward phasing out the use of microbeads in beauty products, and many countries, following the lead of Bangladesh in 2002, are banning the provision of single-use plastic bags. Other measures include banning plastic straws and promoting the use of reusable water bottles and recyclable or compostable packaging.
“The throwaway society cannot be contained—it has gone global. We cannot store and maintain or recycle all our stuff.”
Charles J. Moore
Effects on wildlife
A Northern Gannet is entangled in the plastic rings of a six-pack. Birds that scavenge along the shore such as seagulls are especially prone to being caught in such debris.
Plastics pose a danger to wildlife in many ways. Larger items such as plastic shopping bags can choke or strangle birds and marine animals; if ingested, they can damage their digestive tracts or cause starvation by obstructing the stomach. If microplastics are ingested, toxins can pass into an animal’s fatty tissues, a process that then passes up the foodchain.
According to Greenpeace, nine out of ten seabirds, one in three sea turtles, and more than half the population of whales and dolphins have eaten plastic. Even some of the crustaceans living in the western Pacific’s Mariana Trench, the deepest point in the world’s oceans, are known to have ingested plastic.
Companies are starting to take the need to reduce plastic use seriously. A brewer in Florida, for instance, has found a way to make six-pack rings from by-products of the brewing process, so that seabirds can chew them off if they become caught in them.
See also: The food chain • Humankind’s dominance over nature • Human devastation of Earth • Man and the Biosphere programme
IN CONTEXT
KEY FIGURE
Maude Barlow (1947–)
BEFORE
1983–5 Droughts in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan cause 450,000 deaths.
1990 The desiccation of the Aral Sea is declared the world’s worst ecological disaster of the 20th century by the UN Environment Programme.
2008 The United Nations estimates that around 42,000 people die every week from diseases related to bad water and poor sanitation.
AFTER
2011–17 California suffers one of its worst droughts on record. It impacts on agriculture, nature, and daily life.
2017 Water campaigner Maude Barlow reveals that half of China’s rivers have disappeared since 1990.
In 2008, Canadian activist Maude Barlow argued that water shortage had become the most pressing ecological and human crisis of the 21st century. Stressing that water is a “Commons” (a shared resource) and that access to water is a fundamental human right, she set out how wastage, pollution, and overconsumption meant that the water cycle—the constant exchange of water between Earth’s surface and the atmosphere—could not be relied upon to provide water for evermore. She said that shortage of water was already a crisis in the developing world, where the burden is borne particularly by women and children who collect water—and unless drastic action is taken, the rest of the world will be affected too.
About 1.1 billion people lack easy access to water, and 2.7 billion find water scarce for at least one month of the year. Although 70 percent of Earth’s surface is covered by water, almost all of it is saline ocean water. Only 0.014 percent of the planet’s water is both fresh and easily accessible. It is obtained mostly from rivers, lakes, and underground aquifers (rock containing groundwater). People use water to drink, wash, irrigate crops, and run industry, and since all plants and terrestrial animals require freshwater to live, all are affected by the water crisis.
Indians line up for water in a slum area of Hyderabad in 2007. India suffered a severe water crisis in 2018, and demand is projected to be twice the available supply by 2030.
“Life requires access to clean water; to deny the right to water is to deny the right to life. The fight for the right to water is an idea whose time has come.”
Maude Barlow
Wasted water
A larger human population uses more water, and a large proportion of that is wasted, especially in developed countries, where people on average use about 10 times more than those in the developing world. Sources of freshwater have dried up (for example, much of the Rio Grande between Mexico and the US) or are becoming too polluted to use. The Ganges in India and the Citarum in Indonesia are two of the most polluted rivers in the world. At the current rate of consumption this situation will deteriorate further. By 2030, two-thirds of the world’s population may face shortages. Ecosystems will also suffer.
Easily accessible freshwater is a very fragile resource. Only a tiny fraction of the total amount of water available on our planet is immediately fit for human consumption.
MAUDE BARLOW
Born in Toronto, Canada, in 1947, Maude Barlow is an activist and water policy critic. She is the author or coauthor of 18 books, including the bestseller Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water. Barlow formerly served as an adviser on water to the United Nations, and led moves to have water recognized as a basic human right. In 2012, she helped found the Blue Planet Project, which campaigns for the right to water. Barlow chairs the Council of Canadians social action group, and was one of the “1000 Women for Peace” nominated for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize. In 2008, she received the Citation of Lifetime Achievement, Canada’s highest honor for environmentalism.
Key works
2002 Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water
2007 Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water
2014 Blue Future: Protecting Water for People and the Planet Forever
Increased demand
Human use of freshwater has tripled since about 1970, and demand is increasing by 2,260 billion cubic feet (64 billion cubic meters)—due in part to the population growing by 80 million people each year. The rise in demand has also been driven by changing lifestyles and eating habits that require more water per person. The production of biofuels has also risen sharply, with significant impact on water demand. Between 260 and 1,060 gallons (1,000– 4,000 liters) of water are needed to make about 1⁄4 gallon (1 liter) of biofuel.
In the last century, half of Earth’s wetlands have disappeared to make way for farmland or development, or because groundwater has been removed from aquifers faster than it has been replaced. A reduction in wetlands means plants and animals dependent on them are also gone. Nearly half of all drinking water comes from aquifers. About 240 cubic miles (1,000 cubic km) is taken every
year. Two-thirds is used for irrigation, 22 percent for domestic use, and 11 percent for industry. However, most aquifers replenish much more slowly than they can be emptied, so water yields reduce with use. If the water table falls, some lakes and rivers dry up. About half the total length of China’s rivers has been lost since 1990. In North America, the Great Lakes are shrinking, Lake Winnipeg is threatened, and the massive Ogallala aquifer is being depleted. There are even water supply problems in Brazil, which is the most water-rich nation on Earth. As the situation worsens, it becomes a growing source of conflict.
This map illustrates the average exposure of water users to water stress—the ratio of total withdrawals to total renewable supply in a given area. A higher proportion of withdrawals means that more water users are competing for limited supplies.
The desiccation of the Aral Sea
A stranded ship on the dried-up bed of the Aral Sea. The loss of such a large body of water has had a devastating effect on agriculture, climate, and the local fishing industry.
The disappearance of most of the Aral Sea, once the world’s fourth-largest lake, in Kazahkstan has been a huge ecological disaster. In the early 1960s, the two main rivers that fed the lake were diverted to irrigate millions of cotton plants across central Asia. In June 2004, the UN warned that the lake could dry up completely unless measures were taken to save it. It was then receiving only 10 percent of the water that it once did, had divided into several smaller lakes, and contained only one-tenth of its 1960 volume of water. Large areas are now desert. Most of the lake’s fish and other aquatic life disappeared with its water. Once fishermen here could catch Syr Darya sturgeon, but its numbers declined sharply when the lake shrank and became more saline. Efforts to replenish the waters have achieved an increase in surface area and depth, and fish populations are now increasing.
Water scarcity
There are two types of water scarcity. Physical water scarcity affects regions that naturally do not have plentiful water, such as North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, large areas of central and south Asia, northern China, and the southwest United States. In contrast, economic water scarcity occurs when water is available but the infrastructure does not exist to utilize it. This is the situation in much of sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Central America. People living in these areas may have to spend hours each day walking to the nearest supply of water. Many children miss out on an education because they are collecting water.
“The world has not really woken up to the reality of what we are going to face in terms of the crises as far as water is concerned.”
Rajendra Pachauri
IPCC Chair
Wildlife concerns
The water crisis is bad for humans and can mean extinction for some animals and reduction in numbers for others. Populations of the Amazon river dolphin, which lives in the Amazon and Orinoco river basins in South America, for example, have been much reduced, partly by the increase of heavy metal pollution from mining but also by the construction of dams, which restrict the migration of fish, the dolphins’ food, to their spawning grounds. Elsewhere, in China, the world’s largest amphibian, the Chinese giant salamander, has also become critically endangered by dams being built for water storage and hydroelectric power. Such engineering works change the natural flow of rivers, upsetting the creature’s habitat.
A holistic view of ecosystem management is crucial to prevent the water crisis from getting much worse. For example, a sewage treatment plant run on “clean” energy can provide the wastewater needed to fertilize biofuel crops, which in turn can be used to purify the water—without emitting greenhouse gases.
Drinkable waste water
New technologies can also convert wastewater directly into drinkable water—a process that has been energy-hungry in the past. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stresses that water management policies can lead to higher greenhouse gas emissions. However, that is not the case if the conversion is fueled using solar energy, which is starting to take over from oil to power desalination plants in the Middle East. In parts of the world, there is seasonal heavy rain—for example, in countries with a monsoon—but it runs off into polluted rivers and cannot be used. Rainwater catchment and storage schemes would help.
Other helpful initiatives include reducing pollution, cutting irrigation and industrial wastage, providing new technological solutions for developing countries, and reaching international agreements—after all, water catchments do not stick to national boundaries.
“There is no water-rich country in the world that is not facing problems.”
Maude Barlow
Salisbury Water
Salisbury’s recycled water has environmental benefits including reduced demand on existing water resources and improved biodiversity through the newly created wetlands.
In Adelaide, South Australia, an innovative water recycling system in use in the suburb of Salisbury has reduced extraction from the Murray River and aquifers by about a half. Wastewater from the local sewage treatment works and rainwater from drains are treated, and then directed into a series of 50 wetlands. These contain reedbeds and other aquatic vegetation that further clean the water. The recycled, nondrinking water from the wetlands is then piped to the inhabitants of Salisbury to use for flushing toilets, watering gardens, washing cars, and filling ornamental ponds.
In addition to providing a more sustainable source of water, the system has boosted biodiversity within the newly established wetlands. Among the birds that are currently resident or visitors are ducks, spoonbills, herons, pelicans, cormorants, and migratory waders, along with species of amphibians and fish, and many aquatic invertebrates.
See also: The ecosystem • Pollution • Acid rain • Overpopulation • Depletion of natural resources
INTRODUCTION
Early in the 17th century, English philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon wrote of the need to control and manage nature. By the end of the 18th century, in contrast, English vicar Gilbert White was writing in favor of a peaceful coexistence between people and the natural world. Yet in his lifetime, powerful new steam engines unleashed the ravages of industrialization—the reaction against which would later provide a major impetus for the environmental movement.
Possibly the first systematic analysis of humanity’s destructive impact was American diplomat George Perkins Marsh’s 1864 book, Man and Nature. Marsh warned, among other things, that deforestation could lead to the creation of deserts, and he pointed out that resource scarcity was generally the result of human actions rather than natural causes.
Renewable and clean
Before the Industrial Revolution, most energy had been renewable—the energy of human and animal labor, wind- and watermills, and sustainable wood. From the mid-18th century there was a dramatic shift to coal. The most efficient fuel for firing furnaces and factories, it came at a price—choking pollution and the then-unknown rise in atmospheric greenhouse gases.
In the 1880s, however, the key to a new form of renewable energy was provided by American inventor Charles Fritts—a photovoltaic cell, which could convert solar power to electricity. German industrialist Werner von Siemens soon saw its potential for producing limitless energy, but it took a century for solar power to be widely adopted. “Clean” hydroelectric power was the first sustainable source capable of generating electricity on a large scale—joined in the late 20th century by modern wind power, and tidal, wave, and geothermal energy.
An environmental ethic
In 1937, following the devastating “Dust Bowl” caused by intensive farming in the US, President Franklin D Roosevelt wrote, “A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself.” In 1949, American ecologist and forester Leopold Aldo articulated a recurring theme in environmental thought, by advocating a “land ethic,” a responsible relationship between people and their local environment.
The post-war period saw many governments legislating to ensure the quality of air and drinking water and establish national
parks and other protected areas. In 1968, the world first found its collective voice, when UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) held the Paris Biosphere Conference. This resulted, three years later, in the creation of the Man and Biosphere Programme.
Growing awareness
Public concern for the environment was marked by the establishment of major conservation organizations. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature had been established in 1948, and it was followed by the World Wildlife Fund (1961), Friends of the Earth (1969), and Greenpeace (1971). After the 1969 massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California, US senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea of a national event to highlight the varied threats to the environment. On the first Earth Day, which took place on April 22, 1970, millions turned out on marches across the US. The scale of the event helped the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts and led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
In 1973, German economist Ernst Schumacher used the term “natural capital” in his best-seller Small is Beautiful to describe how ecosystems provide us with complex services. The concept inspired American environmentalist Gretchen Daily and others, who argued that ecosystems are capital assets which, when properly managed, provide a flow of vital goods and services.