All the talks of water shortages and foreseeable conflicts, but where does that leave us with dealing with the situation?

For a start, people must acknowledge the water is a finite resource that, without proper and careful management, it will run out. The first step is to make small adjustments in our daily habits that can save water- discard power showers and spend less time in it; save water from baths to flush toilets; make sure taps are tightly closed to avoid dripping… there are many ways in which this can be done and it only requires a little more attention paid to the topic.

What’s hard is actually ensuring that this mentality of saving water is not just empty talk. The Singapore government, with their launch of NEWater back in 2000 (although the plans were drawn out in as early as the 1970s, an idea they referenced from the U.S.) has made good progress throughout the years. Now, up to 86% Singaporeans are prepared to drink water, shedding the mentality that it was once waste water or simply what we flush down the loo. The same initiative must also studied.

Just a day ago, an article on CNN’s website said that it is not hard to desalinate water.In fact, the U.S. National Research Council
is trying to initiate more research done on the area so that it will help meet the nation’s water needs by adopting the method. The report is sponsored by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Of course, the study is to find ways to lower the cost and help evaluate the environmental and ecological impacts from desalination. There is a severe lack of research done in this area which is also one of the main reasons that hinder the further development of this technology. The article also mentioned that at the moment, it is mostly big businesses that are putting money into research in this.

But for countries that may not have the resources to carry out large scale scientific research or build expensive infrastructure for desalination plants (if that is later proven to be the way forward), they may also look into water- saving ways of irrigation. At the moment, irrigation is one area that utilizes most water in many countries. A lot of the time, such amount isn’t even used properly. The reliance of sprinklers working to water plants induce great water loss. The introduction of drip irrigation, where water is slowly fed directly on the soil to reach the roots prove to be a more efficient way to farm. The cost of this is also very affordable.

So far, there is much action from the business world- all with an objective to open up their businesses for more profit. Government action is often limited and people’s awareness is appalling. But does that mean there is nothing that we can do?

I hope that my posts throughout the weeks have given readers a better picture of how water is a global issue, and to also highlight the media coverage is often scarce. I hope that it will also allow us to reflect on some of our actions and to make a change for the better.

As read from headlines today, the UK and the US retailers are limiting consumers’ purchase of food namely rice, wheat, oil and etc. Even during WWII, Americans were only placed limits of purchase of fossil fuels or light bulbs, but not food. Food rationing does not only happen in developing countries but also developed nations, like what Elmy said yesterday.

An interesting webpage loaded into my browser While I was following related news today. It was tracing some kind of historical background of crop yields and prices in the US back in the last century.

William Tracy, head of the Agronomy Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that “we non-farmers who like to eat must encourage farmers to grow products for the market, and cash-crop farmers need a reason to assume the risk and expense of farming”.

On the webpage, it illustrated that Tracy did a look up at historical data on 16 US crops of different genes and found that “almost all showed no yield increase” starting 1860, “and then they started going up in the 1930s.” He added, “[T]his was a social phenomenon. In the 1930s, under the New Deal, the government basically said ‘We need to support farmers, make sure they get paid for what they grow.’”

He added more of his discovery that “The government created price supports, and as soon as farmers realized they could start making money by growing food, crop productivity skyrocketed. The farmers have to get a fair return for what they do, and if they don’t, there is not much sense in buying more nitrogen or irrigation systems.”

Food supplies are more elastic due to demand than I have ever thought.

Most were caught by surprise last month, when the news broke that there are drug residues found in water supplies for over 41 million Americans. The Associated Press (AP) filed the story after a five month investigation throughout the country, checking the water supplies of 25 major areas, “Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville, KY”. They found traces of antibiotics, sex hormones, mood stabilizers and anti convulsants in the waters.

Although the drugs come in very small quantities, insufficient to actually induce any direct health effects as opposed to taking them in normal quantities, it got a lot of people worried what’s in their water and more importantly, how drug residues were traced. Americans are now taking medicines far more than they used to. When drugs are taken, not all of them are absorbed by the body. The rest will be passed down and disposed when people relieve themselves. As waste water treatments are not designed to get rid of the residues in such a small quantity, they remain in the water even after it has been treated. The federal government requires no testing for drugs in water and no safety limit has been set. Having said that, Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said,
“We recognize it is a growing concern and we’re taking it very seriously,”

But really, people should pay more attention to their water supplied regardless of the investigation. Sometimes, it’s not how safe their water is, but how much water they get.

Currently, quite a few major cities in the U.S. suffer from aging pipes. Again, the situation is similar to the one in Europe. Although developed countries may not suffer from water shortages per se, water pipes laid down centuries ago have not been checked and taken care of on a regular basis (such as New York and Chicago, where some of their pipes were built back in the 1800s). It has also made it more difficult to access them when new skyscrapers or roads have been built on top of the area which leaves no room for repairing the networks deep underground.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “utilities will need to invest more than $277 billion in the next two decades on repairs and improvements to drinking water systems”. Some engineers value the project to cost more, around $480 billion U.S.D.

The high cost of such repair work is due to the large scale of having such pipes and tunnels replaced, as they have much been neglected in the past decades. Moreover, it also has to do with the difficulty of accessing them as mentioned.

People should start to pay more attention to the problems because old pipes waste water by leaking a substantial amount each day, and it is impossible to close a city’s water supply to carry out leakage tests. The problem is not limited to that either. Great dangers are posed when water pipes fail and burst. It has happened across the U.S., when an 84 year old pipe burst in New York; an 80 year old pipe broke and forced gallons of water which created a 25 foot hole in a street in Chicago; sinkhole formed in Denver from another old pipe and similar situation in Cleveland. Again, it’s not just the inconvenience of roads, pipes and facilities having to be repaired but also the threats of large amounts of water that shooting up without warning. The water forces and impacts are huge.

Leaking pipes is not a good sign of plentiful water either. The U.S., like another other state, faces a global water shortage crisis. Dr. James Hansen, a renowned climate scientist at NASA, warned that climate change may cause water shortages in the western part of America which may “render the semi-arid states from west and central Texas through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakota drought prone and unsuitable for agriculture.” This has already led to action being taken to introduce legislation by politicians to help protect America’s water supplies. As extreme as it may sound, the action is backed up by scientific study. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)- an organization that had won the Nobel Peace Prize- found that global warming is applying extra pressure on global water sources so while developed countries may feel secure in the amount of water they enjoy, it actually isn’t the case. Their waters are also becoming more scarce, especially when it comes to fresh water supplies.

Some business people are already eyeing on The Great Lakes in Northeast America to provide an “emergency source of water”. A legally binding compact signed last week between American states, as well as Canadian provinces states that it will aim toward a sustainable use of water in the Great Lakes’ basin. Of course, the compact is not just to secure the ecology but also the tourism industry. The surrounding area hosts some of America’s fastest growing counties, as having acess to the valuable resource.

As the largest group of lakes in North America, with the biggest supplies of fresh water in the region, the Great Lakes generate $55 billion from its tourism industry alone- supporting thousands of families who benefit from related jobs.

It is always upsetting when people only realize what’s happening when financial interests are involved. If only people dug deeper, to understand why it is that companies can make money simply from a group of lakes, what causes water pipes to explode, and how water is being treated, will then allow them to form a better picture that the region they are living in is really no different to other parts of the world. The global water problem is real- and there seem to be no solid action taking place. Rather unfortunately, it’s not even seen as a problem at all. So when water from the Great Lakes is drained to serve as an emergency source, maybe then it will all be too late.

Climate Change is a statistical issue. Debates over the existence of climate change revolve around the show of statistical proof of changes and variances in the earth’s temperature over a given period. Current statistical measures create two problems. One is the lack of a standard statistical measure with widespread recognition in order to support widely accepted statistical data and the other is the lack of a common standard of interpreting statistical data. The development of statistical measures and standards of interpretation would finally settle the debate over whether there is climate change and whether climate change is a problem. This is necessary to shift efforts towards actions.

The Conference on Climate Change and Official Statistics happened in Oslo, Norway on 14 to 16 April 2008 to develop a sound action agenda by the international official statistics community to play its role of providing statistical data on climate change to support policymaking. The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) together with the Statistical Office of the European Communities (Eurostat), World Bank, and Statistics Norway convened the participants of the conference, including the representatives of the official statistical offices of both developed and developing countries. Federal State Statistics Service of Russia, Statistics Canada, and Australian Bureau of Statistics are participants from developed countries and Hungarian Central Statistics Office, National Statistical Coordination Board of the Philippines, and the Ministry of Statistics of India represented the developing countries.

The overall issue addressed by the conference is the dominating ad hoc treatment of the official statistics community of climate change. Some official statistics departments continuously provide statistical data to national decision makers. Most of the official statistics departments created only engage in analytical activities by focusing only on one aspect of climate change or provide data on a limited area of climate change as requested by national governments. Other states have not even created or delegated statistical divisions to monitor climate change efforts. A more specific issue is clarifying the role of official statistics in supporting the goals of adaptation and mitigation discussed in the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali in December 2007. Another specific issue is the development of standards and frameworks for official statistics on climate change. This is necessary to support and tie-up the individual actions of states in line with their commitments to contribute efforts in addressing climate change.

While there is common agreement that official statistics play an important role in decisions and policies pertaining to adaptation and mitigation aspects of climate change efforts, the development of statistical standards and frameworks involves difficulties especially since the official statistics community operate on different frameworks based on their contextual experiences of climate change. There is need to develop a uniform but encompassing framework for official climate change statistics. A greater difficulty is the lack of official statistics departments in many states that is necessary in monitoring adaptation and monitoring efforts in addressing the climate change problem and its impact.Without statistics, states would never know the effectiveness of efforts in addressing cimate change.

Today is Earth Day.

U.S.-Thousands picked up garbage, turned in old cellphones and computers and took nature walks. Environmental leaders are aiming for a big effort on Earth Day, when they hope 1 million Americans will call their congressional representatives to lobby for legislation to fight global warming.On a more modest scale, grocery stores in Los Angeles will give away 50,000 reusable bags, and, starting Earth Day, Whole Foods Market stores will no longer offer plastic bags.

Taipei and Hong Kong-On Earth Day, the EPA (Environmental Protection Administration) announced a “lights-out campaign” to combat global warming. Under the banner “Save Our Sky,” the EPA went on to urge people and businesses to get involved by turning off their lights and elevators for one hour on Earth Day.

Beijing-In celebration of Earth Day, a Canadian in Beijing is spreading a movement to raise awareness of sustainable development through a distinctive hand sign.

But these activities and celebration are just for Earth Day! It is not good.  The most important thing is how to increase our “greenness” in daily life, not only Earth Day.

Some analysts say that greenness can be expensive.

Products that help people use less energy — or leave a smaller “environmental footprint,” as green advocates say — often are more costly than their alternatives, causing some to argue that going green is only for those who can afford it.

Those in older homes have to pay several thousands of dollars to replace windows with energy-saving, double-paned glass. Organic food, grown without chemicals potentially harmful to land, water, wildlife and people, costs more. So do hybrid vehicles and electricity generated by wind turbines or solar panels.

In a CBS News/New York Times poll last year, fewer than half of the respondents said they had bought a costlier, “eco-friendly” product during the past year.”The fact is, most of these products sold as ‘green’ cost more than the alternative,” says Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank that dismisses climate-change warnings as scare tactics not based on sound science. “You’re already pricing people at the lower end out.”He cites a study by an automotive research group, CNW Marketing Research in Bandon, Ore., that calculated total energy use for several car models. Ebell says the overall energy outlay for the Prius — from design to the junkyard — is costlier “than for an SUV like my Chevy TrailBlazer. It takes a huge amount of energy just to fabricate those batteries.”

Matt Golden heads a San Francisco firm that does home-energy audits to examine power use and heat loss and recommends ways residents can save.”We don’t have to live like cave people,” Golden says. “You don’t have to give things up. You just have to get smarter” about what it takes to run high-tech gadgets and appliances.

When Golden examined the home of Cliff and Monica Knudson in San Jose, Calif., he found that their plasma TV, with a digital video recorder and DVD player, drew 100 watts of power when turned off — the equivalent of burning a 100-watt light bulb 24 hours a day. Golden’s solution: Plug everything into a power strip that can be turned off when the TV is not in use.

Several websites such as alittlegreener.com have popped up to offer advice to consumers about how to save energy, recycle and green up their lives — without being fanatic about it.”It needs to be easy. It needs to be OK to start small,” says Meredith Thomas of San Francisco, who launched alittlegreener.com last year as a guide for the not-so-eco-savvy consumer.

Astrid Usong of Redwood City, Calif., went to Thomas’ site to find places to recycle building materials from a house she is remodeling with her husband, Patrick Weston. What she found there “touches every facet of your life: food, baby, family, work, vacation,” says Usong, 29, a designer for a financial website.Big gaps in awareness

The USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows wide differences over what the government should do about global warming. About two-thirds favor spending many billions more on research into new sources of energy. But just one-third are comfortable with land-use restrictions to curb suburban sprawl, which necessitates more car trips. Only about a third favor imposing tough restrictions on U.S. industries and utilities.

An article from the New York Times last week put up a direct link between Australian farmers and global soaring rice prices plus food shortages.

The author of the article wrote that “[t]he collapse of Australia’s rice production is one of several factors contributing to a doubling of rice prices in the last three months — increases that have led the world’s largest exporters to restrict exports severely”, and led to “violent protests in countries” which are largely impacted, including Hong Kong.

The agricultural industry so suffered, and rice yields in Australia drop because of drought. “Some farmers are abandoning rice, which requires large amounts of water, to plant less water-intensive crops like wheat or, especially here in southeastern Australia, wine grapes.”

This article is drawing quite some Australian media’s attention. As quoted from news.com.au, “[a]ccording to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, Australia’s biggest harvest of rice in the past ten years was in 2001″, accounting for less than 0.3% of the world’s total for that year, even before the drought. A spokesman for the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics said “I don’t think we’re going to contribute too much to a global food shortage” given the minute segment of the world’s rice market.

Also on the New York Times article, “Australia’s total rice capacity has declined by about a third because many farmers have permanently sold water rights, mostly for grape production” …”Even with the recent doubling of rice prices, to around $1,000 a metric ton for the high grades produced by Australia, it is even more profitable to grow wine grapes. All told, wine grapes produce a pretax profit of close to $2,000 an acre while rice produces a pretax profit around $240 an acre.”

Farmers are actually making a better living for themselves, for survival only. Aren’t they?

Accoding to the study by researchers at the University of California, China has already surpassed the United States as the world’s largest carbon polluter.

The report, written by economic professors Maximilian Aufhammer of UC Berkeley and Richard Carson of UC San Diego, is to be published next month in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.

Researchers compiled information about the use of fossil fuels in various Chinese provinces and forecast an 11 percent annual growth of carbon emissions from 2004 to 2010.”Our best forecast has China’s CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions correctly surpassing the United States in 2006 rather than 2020 as previously anticipated.” the study reported.

The researchers predicted that by 2010, “there will be an increase of 600 million metric tons of carbon emissions in China over the country’s levels in 2000.”

As a developing country, China is not obligated to meet targets set by the Kyoto Protocol, under which 38 industrialized countries must reduce their GHG emissions by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels, during the period 2008 to 2012.

Actually, I think one thing the US and developed countries can and should do is  offering help:

• Over the next 20 years, half the world’s new buildings will built in China. US or developed countries should share expertise so that those buildings will be energy-efficient-that’s a productive way to reduce energy consumption and pollution.
• US should work to open the Chinese market to energy-efficient American industrial and consumer goods. It will help reduce emissions.
• US should also push to export smokstack-scrubber technology and clean-coal technology.

What’s more, I believe a growing Chinese middle class will be the most potent force for clean air and water. But thar group of people is only 80 milllion out of near 1.4 billion people now.

As 2012 approaches, doubts loom over the ability of the states, which gave them commitment, to cutback certain percentages of their greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless, to continue and enhance efforts, talks over the possibility of a post Kyoto Protocol treaty occured in the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali held in December 2007. The talks specified areas of weakness such as the failure of states to implement policies needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and expansion of the commitment to countries such as India and China. The talks ended with the parties extending their commitments to cooperate and participate in succeeding negotiations for a post Kyoto Protocol treaty.

Three months later, the Bangkok Climate Change Talks occured in Bangkok from March 31 to April 4, 2008 to determine future goals for the negotiation process that should culminate in a final treaty before the end of 2009 during the climate change conference in Copenhagen. The final treaty will cover long-term commitment and enhanced action to mitigate climate change, adapt to the effects of climate change, and optimize finance and technology to support sustainable targets.

There is anxiety over the achievement of a formal post Kyoto Protocol treaty by 2009. Yvo de Boer, a top official of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, commented that 2009 is just one and a half years away, a very short period for formalizing a treaty as a continuation of the Kyoto Protocol, when this involves complex issues and negotiation processes. Achieving this requires the states to keep to their commitment and comply with their expected contribution to the negotiation process.

There might be cause for anxiety since during the Bangkok talks, the United States raised the recognition of efforts to address climate change on an international scale made outside of the United Nations climate change framework through the various domestic and bilateral agreements. This has a dual implication. On one hand, the United States could be suggesting the integration of efforts made within the United Nations climate change efforts with the efforts of the states outside of this framework in order to achieve a broader goal. On the other hand, this could suggest the intention of the United States to place the weight of its efforts towards bilateral and multilateral agreements instead of the post Kyoto Protocol treaty. The United States did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol even if it made a commitment on its own to cutback greenhouse gas emissions. The intention of the United States would become apparent through its activities now until the next conference in 2009.

Meanwhile, bilateral agreements persist. The U.K. and France signed on March 27, 2008 a declaration containing their joint commitment in addressing climate change. The EU-US “Open Skies” Air Transport Agreement, signed on March 30, 2008 contained a provision on technical cooperation for climate change. The U.S.- Russia Strategic Framework Declaration, signed on April 6, 2008, covered energy use and climate change. More bilateral agreements will happen in the future. These could either support the formalization of a post Kyoto Protocol treaty or overshadow it.

In last week’s blog post, I wrote about the droughts that south eastern Spain faced a couple of years back. The country is facing a similar problem, only this time in the more northern part in Barcelona. The second largest Spanish city, and capital of Catalonia is now facing the worst droughts in almost a hundred years and the government has already announced plans to import water from France and other areas in Spain. It is reported to cost 22 million euros just to satisfy a five day consumption amount to Barcelona. Such importing of water will carry on for at least six months until rainfalls resume to its normal levels that can end the water shortage there. For the past 18 months, Spain has suffered a rainfall shortage where rainfalls are only a third of what it would normally be.

In an AFP article, it is said that,

“The drought has hurt crops and hydroelectric power production as water reserves have dropped to 46.6 percent of capacity, a 20 percentage point drop over the level recorded a decade ago. [and] The situation is especially critical in the northeastern region of Catalunya whose capital Barcelona is a top tourist draw.”

Not that tourists visiting the modern city- where much of its transformations took place only in 1992 from preparation works for Olympics that year- are realizing the severity of drought and how the situation may escalate. My friend Jacqueline Wong only came back from Barcelona a couple of days ago. She was there on a holiday with her university friends just before the final exams. When I asked her about Barcelona and its water problems, she said they were not informed at all. They had however, noticed that all the fountains and water displays were dry though and found it a bit strange. Not that most tourists would really care to be honest. Like Jacqueline, most are heading there to enjoy a sunny holiday, so it is only to their delight that the city does not get a single drop of rain. Even if they had known about the drought problems, their activities are unlikely to be restricted. I know from Jacqueline, their’s haven’t. The government there takes high measures to ensure that the droughts are not stopping tourists from visiting in the prime vacation seasons. It’s understandable though, for the tourism industry is a key part of Barcelona. In the first two months of 2008, it attracted over 1.4 million tourists. The number is projected to increase substantially in the summer.

For locals however, it presents a rather different story.

Upon reading about Barcelona having to import water, I spoke on instant messenger to Helena de Puig, a friend who lives in the city. She said that the government has introduced fines to families who are using water excessively, which includes washing their cars or filling up their swimming pools. While Helena said that no one she knows have been fined and that the warnings are not taken very seriously, but still, they are aware of the problems they face. She was quite surprised to know that the city water shortages also made international news. But should she be? Afterall, this isn’t a problem that the region has only just started facing. It’s been going on for some time and as big water consumers, they should be made aware of the consequences of their actions. I’m glad that at least something is being done, or is attempted.

But Helena did say something that I was not aware of, and not mentioned in any of the articles I read on the topic. She said that Barcelona faces hill fires every summer because of the heat. It’s not going to be any different this year. The fact that Barcelona does not have water, or will only have enough water to cover normal consumption would pose challenges to firefighting hill fires later on. She predicts that hill fires will spread and it doesn’t seem like anyone is doing much to prevent that. Of course it remains to be seen whether sudden heavy rain will bring some much needed relief to the situation. But for now, both locals and tourists should be made aware of the problems- for I don’t think this is one self contained issue. Environmental issues are bound to spread- they are just transnational in nature. Why should tourists be spared from knowing the truth- and how is economic gain the a reasonable justification for people to ignore environmental problems when all the signs are there- it is blatantly a serious problem that no one is taking seriously.

It has made headlines in England that the Severn Trent- one of the biggest water companies in the United Kingdom, is to pay a ￡35million fine after being found out for delivering false information to regulator and poor customer services.
Millions of customers ended up having higher water bills as a result of unreported leakages back in 2001 and 2002. The court will make sure that the heavy fine will not be diverted back to customers. But the court can only do so much in providing protection for the many in the U.K. who suffer from water problems.

The prevalent image of England as a rainy and damp country helps disguise its drought problems very well to foreigners. To the locals though, it’s becoming an evermore concern over the past decade. In April 1997, England faced the longest dry spells since it began to keep records in 1769. Alan Gustard, Head of risks and resources at the Institute of Hydrology in Wallingford, England is quoted as saying in the International Herald Tribue articlethat “There would appear to be an increased frequency of droughts in the U.K. and in other areas of Europe,”. And he seems to be right.

Although the an average decreased rainfall does not instantly put the island country into jeopardy, with the driest years still having average rainfalls 77% of normal ones. The problem is definitely worsening. While floods still occur from time to time, the water use in the South East of England is to be restrained in order to preserve the vital resource. Just two years ago, drought conditions meant that reservoirs level have dropped by half in Sussex and Kent. The Environment Agency’s regional planning manager Peter Midgley has admitted that they are “in a major drought”. Actions were taken, including a hosepipe ban for the rest of the year for parts of the two counties. It’s hard to imagine that really. I’ve visited Kent before- and the place does live up to its title of “the garden of England” with its blooming flowers. And to keep up the water supplies so that residents can enjoy the luxury of using an average of 160-170 liters of water a day there, would require the construction of five new reservoirs in the coming 25 years. Otherwise, the leafy gardens may soon become a distant memory.

Increasing frequencies of drought is not contained in the U.K. Just over the channel on continental Europe, in France and Portugal, rainfall is unstable. And with the effects of global warming becoming stronger, severe heat waves that swept across Europe a few times in the last couple of years (the most serious being in the summer of 2003), Europeans are starting to realize that water shortage is not an isolated topic found only in the developing world. In Spain, particularly in Marcia and Alicante, as detailed in an article from The Independent residents were faced with having just a few weeks of water left when they were struck by drought in August 2006. Their situation is not helped by rusty and leaky pipes. Together with the Severn Trent case, it seems that while the developed countries have the facilities for delivering water, mismanagement and neglect have actually created more problems than solved.

It’s not just the farmers that are affected- tourism too. Spain’s tourism industry- the association with hotel resorts with large pools under the sun- is under heavy strain. Government authorities are keen to protect tourists and their business interest by not sharing their water problems. This includes special permission at some locations, such as golf courses- to not have limited water use to keep the pitches green. Of course, tourists may never see the fiasco when they are enjoying their fiesta- some Spanish farmers have to resort to using waste water for their crops.

Last year, Greece also faced a similar problem. Amidst over consumption of water during a heat wave, it struggled to have enough water to support its tourism industry. The Aegean islands, among others had to rely on ships to carry water from the mainland. Infact the situation got so bad that “The government reacted this week by declaring a state of emergency to ensure that taps did not run dry during a year in which a record 16.5 million tourists were expected“. Plans were quickly introduced to build reservoirs and desalination plants to convert sea water to drinking water. But before that happens, the falling water supplies have already cut the hydroelectricity production by half. To rely on people to make a difference may not be the most effective way as that may still take some time so some governments take it upon them.

Already realizing the poor maintainence could lead to water leakages and the need to reserve the resource, the Russian government has all pipe networks (which are centrally managed) cleaned during the summer. That means hot water supplies are stopped for a month every year, even in major cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg. Of course, the lingering sense of Communism control is not preferred but then again- it doesn’t seem like any part of Europe is spared from the water shortage problems. And why are more water stories on their soil not reported in the local press? Why is the media being so protective as to shield Europeans thinking that they are managing alright, when they clearly face problems of their own. Perhaps the danger does not lie in how serious the problems actually are- but that it has fostered passiveness and further neglect for people who don’t know the truth.