·
'Nessun
dorma', 'Nessun
dorma' (Let no one sleep!), starts the aria
by the same name of one of the best known and the most sung operas by Giacomo
Puccini, belonging to the third act of Turandot. It can foretell a restless
sleep related to the management of a resource which is as essential as it is
scarce in some parts of the world; when figures place us in an uncomfortable
position, it seems as if we just woke from an
eternal sleep.
In this
article we will highlight some of those figures and data that should make us be
alert, very alert, abandon our ongoing complacency and look at the future. We
live in the present, thinking it is better than the past, but not thinking that
there must be a 'tomorrow': we must point out some tools to provide society
with a basic and essential resource, emphasising the eleven sustainable
development goals that were discussed in the UN Sustainable Development Summit
of 2015. Goal number 6 refers to clean
water and sanitation, whereas goal number 11 focuses
on sustainable cities and communities. Cities where suburban areas, home to 828 million people, are a major challenge. For instance,
Renzo Piano, Italian architect and senator (winner of the Priztker Price, the
Nobel Prize of architecture), spends his senator salary towards studying how to
improve Italian suburbs with a hired team of young architects. Cities
are 2% of the planet but consume from 60 to 80% of the energy and generate 75%
of CO2 emissions. This rampant urbanisation has put huge pressure on drinking water supplies,
on waste water treatment, with lack thereof, and also on public health, since
nowadays more than 1.5 million children die every year as a result of
water-borne diseases, according to UN data.
Therefore,
the first question would be, can a
world with 7 billion people, where since 2007 more than half the population
live in cities, be a sustainable world? British
film maker Peter Weber and Stephen Emmott, university professor, Director of
Microsoft Research in Cambridge and visiting professor in Oxford University,
wondered about this. They estimated that by 2100 there would be 10 billion
people on Earth, and made a documentary as a wakeup call, stressing
the issue of where are we headed and whether such excessive population growth
is sustainable. Concerning water resources, they note
that to date, there are still 1 billion people with no access to 'quality'
drinking water and that 70% of drinking water is used for agricultural
purposes. And they let us take a glimpse of the new concept 'hidden
water', to which we will come back in a
while.
Chart 1. Number of people facing low, moderate,
significant, and severe water scarcity during a given number of months per
year, for the average year in the period 1996 –2005. [1].
The table
above reveals that Weber and Emmott were right in their documentary ‘Ten
billion’ (Oxford Productions); only a paradigm shift and a change of mentality
can 'wake us up' on time, and as Mekonnen and Hoekstra, authors of the
article cited, highlight freshwater
scarcity is at risk of increasing, and three fourths of the world's population
live below the minimum conditions at least one
month of the year (half of them in India and China).
From the
British Isles we go to the land of tulips, to the University of Twente in
Enschede (eastern Netherlands, almost at the border with Germany), where in
2002 the late Arjen Hoekstra had a brilliant idea. He thought it would be
interesting to measure how much water was needed to manufacture a product, for
instance a pair of jeans, a cotton T-shirt, or food. He also calculated how
much water gets polluted as a result of manufacturing those foods or products
in the production chain (Table 2). Adding up those two amounts, he obtained
what he referred to as the 'water footprint'. This expert in efficient water resource management noted that 90% of the
world's drinking water is used for agricultural purposes, and if only
1-4% goes to human consumption, we have to
focus on improving technological innovation in fields and crops, because our
current way of doing things has 'negative externalities' making cropland a real sink for water that is used with no control.
Therefore, we
have to analyse production processes and the water performance of industries,
and encourage industries that reduce their water footprint in
order to trigger a change in mentality and raise awareness, noted professor Hoekstra, because, on top of that, most foods are imported
from countries that suffer water scarcity.
Figure
1. The average water footprint per day of a
consumer in Spain. Source: Makonnen & Hoesktra. National Water Footprint
Accounts. UNESCO-IHE [5].
Figure 1
shows the average footprint of a consumer in Spain in 2011 according to
professor Hoesktra, where we can see that 64% of the water
consumption corresponds to meat, vegetables, milk and cereals. Therefore, we have to focus on improving agriculture and livestock
production, and improve the food industry, in order to decrease the amount of
water consumed, and thus reduce the water footprint of these sectors which are
so important for citizens.
Nevertheless,
in our global economy it is possible to obtain cheaper products wherever water
is not valued or appreciated, and often is wasted, either because it is a wet
country, or because water is free or subsidised in the last step of integrated
water cycle management, in contact with citizens, companies, farmers, etc.,
pointed out Hoekstra, restating that in a circular economy, the water footprint
is zero. In this context, another tool emerges, the
circular economy, that could be defined as a social science
that studies the effective and efficient allocation — in terms of
sustainability — of production factors, leading to a production process or
provision of services that does not cause negative externalities affecting the
ecosystem- If we introduce this concept into European policy, according to the
Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the GDP
of the European Union could grow by 11% by 2030, and escalate to 27% by 2050,
instead of the current projected growth of 4% and 15% [6] with our linear economy system. European institutions have
committed to this paradigm shift, to encourage a change towards a circular
economy and more sustainable economic growth that will create new jobs (an
estimated 2 million) as well as increase competitiveness.
Figure 2. Circular economy and the integrated water cycle. Source: Reutilización de agua en usos urbanos [Water reuse for urban uses] [7].
Moreover, as
can be seen in Figure 2, we must introduce reuse as one of the integrated water
cycle processes, as Antonio Sánchez from Aguas de Alicante explains, to apply
the principles of the circular economy to all processes: from water
abstraction to waste water treatment and reuse, since water can be reused for
many purposes, such as street washing, cleaning the
sewerage system, irrigation of olive tree crops and parks and gardens,
ornamental fountains, etc.
We delve into
the application of this concept to integrated water cycle management: we must
'compel' our leaders to close the cycle by putting into operation the waste
water treatment plants required to comply with the European Directive, without
further delay. As the 7th report of the EC has pointed out, we have not yet
achieved 100% treatment of pollutant loads, and, even more serious, there
are still important European capital cities which do not adequately treat their
waste water effluent, so we cannot yet fulfil the indications of the EC in its
circular economy package [8] on the measures to
facilitate water reuse, including a legislative proposal on the minimum
requirements of reused water, for example for irrigation and aquifer recharge.
Introducing water reuse permanently into the integrated water cycle is something essential,
because thanks to it we would not depend on groundwater withdrawals and
precipitation patterns, in such a way that we would reduce the water footprint
of our technological and industrial processes, reducing that 'hidden water' we
mentioned before, and providing our fields with technological innovation to
reuse every drop of water. As Antonio Castillo, hydrogeologist at the
University of Granada and Spain's Science Research Council (CSIC), puts
it: 'water is life, it is our landscape, our
culture, it is leisure, recreation, tourism, it provides food and drink, and it
is an economic engine'. This way, we can completely
turn around our production and economic system, participating in a change of
mentality of those that steer the course of this ship called Earth.
Going back to
Puccini and his masterpiece Turandot: 'All’alba,
vinceró'. We will succeed with the dawn of a
new way of doing things for all of us that work in the management of such a
vital resource as water; even though it might be complex and difficult, the
effort will be worthwhile, and as Igor Stravinsky wrote in Poetics
of Music, 'whatever
diminishes constraint, diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes,
the more one frees oneself of the chains that shackle the spirit'. The more difficult our goal, the more we are compelled to row in unison
towards the same objective: a more liveable and fair world. Hopefully
when dawn comes we will be all 'awake'.
In
memoriam of proffesor A. Hoekstra.
References
[1] M. M.
Mekonnen, A. Y. Hoekstra, Four billion people facing severe water scarcity.
Sci. Adv. 2, e1500323 (2016).
[2] Weber, P. Ten
billion. Oxford Films Productions. (2015).
[3] Hoekstra, A.
'Una economía circular implica una huella hídrica igual a cero en las
industrias'. iAgua Magazine no 10. pages 84-89. 2016.
[4] Water Foot Print.
[6] Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
Hacia una economía Circular. Motivos económicos para una transición acelerada.
[7] Sánchez, A.
Reutilización de aguas urbanas. Presentation at CONAMA 2016. Aguas de Alicante.
[8] European
Commission. Factsheet. Circular Economy Package. Questions and Answers.
December 2015.
