Category — Water wars

Only about 4% of the world’s oceans remain undamaged by human activity, according to the first detailed global map of human impacts on the seas.

A study in Science says climate change, fishing, pollution and other human factors have exacted a heavy toll on almost half of the marine waters.

Only remote icy areas near the poles are relatively pristine, but they face threats as ice sheets melt, they warn.

The authors say the data is a ‘wake-up call’ to policymakers.

Lead scientist, Dr Benjamin Halpern, of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, US, said humans were having a major impact on the oceans and the marine ecosystems within them.

‘In the past, many studies have shown the impact of individual activities,’ he said. ‘But here for the first time we have produced a global map of all of these different activities layered on top of each other so that we can get this big picture of the overall impact that humans are having rather than just single impacts.’

(Via BBC News)

The label on Aquafina water bottles will soon be changed to spell out that the drink comes from the same source as tap water.

A group called Corporate Accountability International has been pressuring bottled water sellers to curb what it calls misleading marketing practices.

Aquafina, from Pepsi, is the single biggest bottled water brand, and its bottles are now labeled “P.W.S.” The new labels will spell out “public water source.”

Surprised? They’re now after Coca Cola.

The Queensland government says the state’s south-east could be drinking recycled waste water as early as next year, whether they want to or not.

Premier Peter Beattie and his deputy Anna Bligh announced the government has scrapped its controversial plans for a $10 million referendum on the issue, involving 18 councils.

Mr Beattie said south-east Queensland residents would get recycled water as the drought and subsequent low dam levels had left the government with no choice but to introduce treated sewage.

He said the fact Wivenhoe-Somerset Dam system’s water levels currently was less than 23 per cent had convinced him and Ms Bligh to abandon the March 17 plebiscite.

“Inflow to the dam system is currently 20 per cent lower than the worst on record,” Mr Beattie told reporters in Brisbane.

Hobart, the capitol city of Australia’s island state, Tasmania, has experienced its driest year on record.

The city’s total rainfall for 2006 was just 343mm, well below the long-term annual average of 619mm, Weatherzone meteorologist Matt Pearce said.

This made it driest year on record, with significantly less rain than in the previous driest year, 1979, when 390mm fell.

“The very dry conditions can be largely put down to the El Nino pattern which was in place during the second half of 2006,” Mr Pearce said.

This year will go down as the driest year in history in many parts of Tasmania. Hobart, Burnie and Devonport are all set to register their driest year on record.

It has also been exceptionally dry in Launceston - but not as dry as in 1972.

Some Northern centres, like Burnie, have received only 40 per cent of their average annual rainfall.

“2006 will stand out in the record books,” Bureau of Meteorology spokesman Ian Barnes-Keaghan said.

“For instance, about 250mm of rain would need to fall in Ulverstone over the next 10 days to even meet that town’s previous driest year on record.

Our early 21st century civilization is being squeezed between advancing deserts and rising seas.

Measured by the land area that can support human habitation, the earth is shrinking.
[Read more →]

BBC News reports arsenic-contaminated water can be made drinkable cheaply and simply using tiny crystals related to rust.

Scientists at Rice University in Texas say that particles of iron oxide can bind themselves to large amounts of arsenic in water. When mixed into contaminated water, the tiny crystals became coated with the poison and began behaving like iron filings.

When a strong magnet is placed above the particles, they clump together and are simple to remove.

If confirmed it could help nearly 60 million people in Bangladesh who drink water with dangerous arsenic levels.

The researchers from Rice University’s Centre for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology report their work in the journal Science.

*Or why we should all worship the ground we walk on

Tamsyn Jones has written an evocative cover story for the latest issue of E/The Environmental Magazin which succinctly argues that our future depends on our looking after it. [The photograph is an outtake from the cover photoshoot by Jon Moe.]

“It’s one of nature’s most perfect contradictions”, says Tamsyn, “a substance that is ubiquitous but unseen; humble but essential; surprisingly strong but profoundly fragile. It nurtures life and death; undergirds cities, forests and oceans; and feeds all terrestrial life on Earth.” [Read more →]

Of all the water on earth, only 2.5% is fresh, and less than 0.007% is readily available to people through rivers, lakes, and streams.

As worldwide populations surge, temperatures rise, climates changes, and diseases spread, clean water will become ever more essential (and ever more rate).

In 2000, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned that national rivalries over water could harbour “the seeds of violent conflict.”

Are Water Wars coming? This infographic, below, from the International Networks Archive puts it all in perspective.