Sydney Trip (and then I digress back into water)...
SYDNEY TRIPA big thank you to Sydney for looking after me during my random trip! I was only there two and half days but in that time I had a day in the office, saw how induction was managed at a city-based LC, went to a Brazilian (read: Spanish) cultural dinner and saw Regional Board elections for 2007!
Thank you…
Jakey for putting up with me last minute, hours before your election and just before you left for Poland. Manny for keeping me entertained – we will have chocolate croissants and SPM’s! And finally, Daz – thank you for convincing me to do something completely random and jump on a plane!
The best part of my trip? Easily the look on Mel Mel’s face when she saw me at elections. CLASSIC. Mel had been speaking to me in ‘Queensland’ only hours earlier…
WATER
I was checking out newspapers (as I always do when procrastinating) and I came across this article: “Cost of water shortage: civil unrest, mass migration and economic collapse.” (the Guardian, August 17th 2006)
“Cholera may return to London, the mass migration of Africans could cause civil unrest in Europe and China's economy could crash by 2015 as the supply of fresh water becomes critical to the global economy. That was the bleak assessment yesterday by forecasters from some of the world's leading corporate users of fresh water, 200 of the largest food, oil, water and chemical companies. Analysts working for Shell, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Cargill and other companies which depend heavily on secure water supplies, yesterday suggested the next 20 years would be critical as countries became richer, making heavier demands on scarce water supplies.
"Globally, water usage has increased by six times in the past 100 years and will double again by 2050, driven mainly by irrigation and demands of agriculture. Some countries have already run out of water to produce their own food. Without improvements ... the consequences will be even more widespread water scarcity and rapidly increasing water prices," said Frank Rijsberman, director of the institute. The institute, funded by government research organisations, will report next week that a third of the world's population, more than 2 billion people, is living in places where water is overused - leading to falling underground water levels and drying rivers - or cannot be accessed.
According to the institute's assessment, Egypt imports more than half of its food because it does not have enough water to grow it domestically and Australia is faced with water scarcity in the Murray-Darling Basin as a result of diverting large quantities of water for use in agriculture. The Aral Sea in central Asia is another example of massive diversion of water for agriculture in the Soviet era causing widespread water scarcity, and one of the world's worst environmental disasters.
Three visions of the future
1. Misery and shortages in the megacities and drought in Africa
2. China leads recycling rush as world moves to a new hydro economy
3. Water is the means of social control as floods and disease devastate world
This is a pretty heavy article. With some pretty damn huge implications. I’ve only been considering the water issue in reference to Australia’s situation. Somewhere in the back of my mind I’ve always know that it was a global issue, but it was only after reading this article that the scale is starting to sink in. Sounds like we should all be buying shares in Mount Franklin and Evian.
posted by Jess @ 5:04 AM
1 Comments:
i miss you to pieces.. but love you more to bits.
xoxo
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