Sir James Bevan, CEO of the UK Environment Agency is reported as saying that we need to be less squeamish about water recycled from sewage. He also wrote that people need to “change the way that they think about water” and “treat it as a precious resource, not a free good”. He’s right of course but he may have been better to simply remind us of what every child of my generation was taught in primary school – that there is a water cycle, and that every drop of water we drink has been recycled many times. It flows from oceans to clouds, to rainfall and makes its way back to the oceans via watercourses and groundwater. It really does just fall out of the sky. Having lived in Manchester I can vouch for that.
Sir James is right to describe water as a precious resource, something of an understatement. Life on this planet would not be possible without it. It is far too precious to entrust it to the global corporations and others seeking to control it to maximise their power and profits, and who have been draining deep underground aquifers to exhaustion. It may surprise some people to learn that global rainfall has increased, not decreased with climate change as temperatures have risen. That is a simple consequence predicted by systems theory when you increase the amount of energy in a complex system. It also predicts extremes of weather and more frequent sudden unpredictable chaotic changes in global weather systems. The amount of water in its various forms on the planet remains constant, so what needs to change is the way that we manage it, and the way we think about that must be a holistic, sustainable approach to the water cycle. Simultaneous droughts and floods are a sign that we are not doing that too well. Mass migrations in Syria and Africa have been preceded not just by conflict but have been driven by drought.
Water is only one of the global cycles that need to be brought into sustainable balance. We all know about carbon, and that its natural cycle has been tipped out of equilibrium by the use of fossil fuels. There are many more natural cycles which interact with each other. The balance of one cannot be restored without considering the interaction with others. A truly holistic approach must consider all of these cycles together. Land management is one way to do that, but a global approach does not require a world government run by a wealthy elite. It can be started at the grass roots in each nation and region, starting with local communities taking control of their land, energy and food requirements. We need to change the way that we think not just about water but about the way all the natural systems that we are a part of interact, and how our relationship with the land is key to understanding the whole.
Chronicles 