'The real threat to our future is peak water', Lester Brown

As population rises, overpumping means some nations have reached peak water, which threatens food supply, says Lester Brown Kansas's Quivira National Wildlife Refuge in 2012, during the worst drought in the United States in more than 50 years. Photograph: Jim Reed/Corbis Global threat to food supply as water wells dry up, warns top environment expert Lester Brown says grain harvests are already shrinking as US, India and China come close to 'peak water' (You can find a link to Lester Brown's article 'The real threat to our future is peak water' below, Ak) John Vidal, environment editor, The Observer, Saturday 6 July 2013, Wells are drying up and underwater tables falling so fast in the Middle East and parts of India, China and the US that food supplies are seriously threatened, one of the world's leading resource analysts has warned. In a major new essay Lester Brown, head of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, claims that 18 countries, together containing half the world's people, are now overpumping their underground water tables to the point – known as "peak water" – where they are not replenishing and where harvests are getting smaller each year. The situation is most serious in the Middle East. According to Brown: "Among the countries whose water supply has peaked and begun to decline are Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. By 2016 Saudi Arabia projects it will be importing some 15m tonnes of wheat, rice, corn and barley to feed its population of 30 million people. It is the first country to publicly project how aquifer depletion will shrink its grain harvest. "The world is seeing the collision between population growth and water supply at the regional level. For the first time in history, grain production is dropping in a geographic region with nothing in sight to arrest the decline. Because of the failure of governments in the region to mesh population and water policies, each day now brings 10,000 more people to feed and less irrigation water with which to feed them.".... More at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/jul/06/food-supply-threat-water-wells-dry-up "Water shortage is a big global problem ! It is not only caused by humans by spilling it, polluting it and contaminating it in their industrial and agricultural complex and at home; together with the use of a crop that needs more water then an indigenous crop, like corn instead of wheat, adds to the speed up of depleting some underground fossil aquifers that do not recharge ! A vast source of water is still there in the ocean, but that has to be desalinated and transported ! Pilot projects to do desalination in a sustainable manner have started and look promising like the Sahara Forest Project. More on that project in my next post..." Ak Malten, Pro Peaceful Energy Use 'The real threat to our future is peak water', Lester Brown at guardian.co.uk For a greener planet website  For a greener planet ( blog - this blog in: Atom - RSS ) More websites by Ak Malten